On Providence & the cause of sin
(Vermigli’s Common Places, Vol. 3)
Translated and Edited by JOSHUA benjamins
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Publication Date: August 29, 2024
About this book
God directs and orders all things.
Peter Martyr Vermigli (1499-1562) was a forgotten giant of the Protestant Reformation. Born in Florence, Italy, and rising quickly to leadership within the Augustinian Order in Italy, Vermigli discovered the gospel of justification and embarked on a reforming career that would take him to Naples, Lucca, Zurich, Strasbourg, Oxford, and finally back to Strasbourg and Zurich again, as he worked shoulder-to-shoulder with other leading Protestant Reformers Heinrich Bullinger, Martin Bucer, and Thomas Cranmer. He left behind him voluminous biblical commentaries and treatises, and a band of faithful disciples who collected his writings into the massive theological compendium, the Loci Communes.
Appearing now in English for the first time since 1583, On Providence and the Cause of Sin is the next installment in Davenant Press’s ongoing translation of the Loci Communes of Peter Martyr Vermigli. Presented here in a clear, readable, and learned translation, we first have Vermigli’s treatment of the topic of providence, accompanied by related questions on God’s control over both the Fall and temptation to sin. With his characteristic rigor, Vermigli provides a masterful Reformed articulation of the relationship between necessity, contingency, and God’s sovereignty. With the Scriptures as his final authority, the Church Fathers as his guides, and philosophy as his handmaid, Vermigli produced Loci that withstand the rigors of time and remain a helpful guide to Protestants everywhere.
Paperback | xxxii + 185 PAGES | 6×9 | PubliSHed august 29, 2024 | ISBN: 978-1-949716-55-9
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From the Book
“The Greeks call providence προνοία or προνοή [foreknowledge]. The Hebrews derive [the word hashgachah, “superintendence”] from the verb hisgiah in the hiphil, meaning “to precisely see and distinguish.” As for its definition, Cicero says in his book On Invention, “It is that by which something future is foreseen before it takes place.” But if this definition be applied to divine providence, it does not capture the latter, because that definition denotes merely knowledge of the future and the faculty of knowing in advance, whereas divine providence includes not only the knowledge of God’s mind but also his will and election by which it is fixed and determined that events will happen in one way rather than another. Besides these things, providence also includes the power and capacity to direct and govern the things for which he is said to make provision, since we find in things not only their very substance and nature but also the order by which they are connected to one other and tend one to another, such that one thing helps another or one thing is completed by another. And things have been well ordained in both of these respects, for all of them were said to be good individually with regard to themselves and to be very good generally with regard to order. That this order exists in things can be proved from the very nature of order. For Augustine defines order as an arrangement of equal and unequal things that allocates to each what belongs to each. And everyone knows that the parts of the world are varied and unequal if they be compared with one another. Further, both the testimony of experience and the teaching of the sacred writings show how fittingly God has allotted to every one of them their own places and their proper spots and positions. For we are told that God set a limit for the sea and the waters and that they do not dare to go beyond the boundaries prescribed for them [Prov. 8:29], and further that he measures the air with his fist [Isa. 40:12], and so on.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Volume Introduction, Joshua Benjamins
ON THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD
1
Providence is Defined
2
Preliminary Objections to Providence Are Answered
3
On Providence, Necessity, and Contingency
4
Providence Exists and Involves Power as Well as Knowledge
5
Nothing is Exempt from Providence
6
Providence is Immutable and Does Not Preclude Contingency
whether god is the author of sin
1
Arguments That God is Not the Author of Sin
2
Arguments That God is the Cause of Sin
3
A Solution is Proposed
4
Three Types of Divine Activity
5
God Is Not the Efficient Cause of Sin
6
God Suggests Things That Men Take as Occasions to Sin
7
God Permits Sin, But This Permission Involves Will
8
The Deformity of Sin Inheres in the Will
9
Sins Can Be Punishment for Other Sins
10
Arguments That God is Not the Cause of Sin Are Answered
11
Arguments That God is the Cause of Sin Are Answered
12
In What Sense the Will is Free
13
In What Sense Sin is Part of God’s Will
14
God’s Twofold Will
15
Conforming Ourselves to God’s Will
IN WHAT SENSE GOD IS SAID TO REPENT AND TO TEMPT
1
What It Means for God to Repent
2
Why and How God Tempts Men
3
Whether We Should Pray to Be Spared Temptation
Select Bibliography and Index
About the Author
Joshua C. Benjamins (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley) studies the social and intellectual history of late antiquity, early Protestant scholasticism, and the reception of patristic sources in 16th-century controversial literature. He has published on Augustinian metaphorology and Augustine’s sermons on the sack of Rome, and has translated a wide range of neo-Latin authors from thirteenth-century musical theorists to seventeenth-century mathematicians and philosophers. Dr. Benjamins resides in southern Michigan, where he teaches in the Classics Department of Hillsdale College.
praise for this work
“Benjamins contributes another volume to the important Loci Communes series by translating a section that treats one of theology’s thorniest conundrums: How do we square God’s absolute and active governance of the world with human freedom and personal responsibility? Or, as Sophocles would have put it (to give a nod to the humanism that Vermigli so embraced), can we blame Oedipus for murdering his father and marrying his mother when the gods foreordained it before his birth?
Benjamins provides a learned introduction that situates Vermigli’s thought on the matter in the context of ancient philosophical and humanistic ideas on providence and fate along with their reception and adaptation in Medieval Scholasticism. In doing so, he details the complex web of influences behind Vermigli’s approach to the problem, identifying Aristotle and Augustine as two major sources for his choice of vocabulary and categories of thought. As for the text itself, Benjamins admirably translates with his reader always in view. He manages to avoid the stiff, archaic, Latinized English that could make a text like this impenetrable and instead offers a precise but eminently readable and modern version.”
– KIRK SUMMERS
Professor of Classics, University of Alabama
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