Quotes about Decree
Another thing to which we desire to call particular attention is that the first two passages quoted above show plainly and teach implicitly that God's foreknowledge is not causative, that instead, something else lies behind, precedes it, and that something is His own sovereign decree. Christ was "delivered by the [1] determinate counsel and [2] foreknowledge of God" (Act 2:23).
- AW Pink
Rome has spoken; the case is closed.
- St. Augustine
The answer, The answer, my friend, is not yours to invent or create. It will be decided for you. It is outside you. It is real and objective and firm. One day you will hear it. You don't create it. You don't define it. It comes to you, and sooner or later you conform to it—or bow to it.
- John Piper
And if God permits it, it is because the ungodly action is part of God's plan for him. No one can speak and have it happen if the Lord has not decreed it (see Lamentations 3:37).
- Jerry Bridges
In 1965, in the Council's "Decree on the Ministry and Life of Priests" (Pres-byterorum ordinis, 10), the Church proposed a new institutional form, called the "personal prelature." Such an institution could accommodate both clergy and lay members cooperating to accomplish specific pastoral tasks.
- Scott Hahn
God neither wills nor decrees anything without having long before directed it to its proper end.
- John Calvin
As to their question-How can we be assured that this has sprung from God unless we have recourse to the decree of the church?-it is as if someone asked: Whence will we learn to distinguish light from darkness, white from black, sweet from bitter? Indeed, Scripture exhibits fully as clear evidence of its own truth as white and black things do of their color, or sweet and bitter things do of their taste.
- John Calvin
The decree is dreadful indeed, I confess.
- John Calvin
God did not look for a cause outside himself, but predestined us because it was his will to do it.
- John Calvin
The word predestinate refers not to election but to that decree or purpose of God by which he has ordained that his own bear the cross.
- John Calvin
To honor God as God, we must worship Him as He and He alone decrees.
- RC Sproul
What is to be, will be, and no prayers of ours can arrest the decree.
- Abraham Lincoln