vil no one can, apart from God's intervening grace, choose to enter the kingdom. "Good works do not produce grace but are produced by grace."36 And "calling [by God] precedes the good will . . . without his calling we cannot even will."37 Though God's foreknowledge includes all free decisions, he does not share responsibility for them all. God is no more responsible for the misuse of freedom any more than the giver of a gift is responsible for how the gift is used. For example, one might receive a gift of $1,000 to be used in helping an orphanage. If a high-powered rifle were instead purchased, then used to assassinate the President of the United States this in no way implicates any guilt on the part of the giver. Likewise, God gives the gift of freedom (and all things, for that matter), but he is not morally responsible for how it is used (cf., 1 Cor. 4:7b). God is behind all free decisions in an ultimate sense, behind free decisions in salvation in an efficient sense and behind free decisions unto reprobation only in a material sense. Consequently, "it is far from the truth that the sins of the creature must be attributed to the Creator, even though those things must necessarily happen which he has foreknown."38 The ability to believe is the material cause of salvation. For the effectiveness of God's mercy cannot be in the power of man to frustrate, if he will have none of it. If God wills to have mercy on men, he can call them in a way that is suited to them, so that they will be moved to understand and to follow . . . it is false to say that "it is not of God who hath mercy but of man who willeth and runneth," because God has mercy on no man in vain. He calls the man on whom he has mercy in the way he knows will suit him, so that he will not refuse the call [italics mine].39 God's decrees do not entail him being the material, efficient, formal and final cause of everything. It would be tantamount t...
