There is only one faculty of volition—the will—for us and for God. Nevertheless, the outputs of the volition can be categorized in different ways:
Type 0 outputs of the will of God (or more conveniently, type 0 directives): These are "desires" and "wishes". Type 0 may not be fulfilled in the space-time realm. God desires that Israel would have only Him as King. God desires that no man would divorce his wife. In 1 Timothy 2:4a, we read "[God] desires all people to be saved." Jesus said in Luke 12:49, "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" and in Luke 13:34, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!"
Type 1: This consists of his providence, fate, God's sovereign hand over His creation, the so-called "permissive will", etc. In other words, it is everything that has transpired.
Type 2: These are doctrinal codes, righteous precepts, morals, and the Ten Commandments.
Type 3: These are God's rhema words and God's most specific will in a given instance in the vertical-horizontal reality. In Jonah 3:4, it was the type 3 directive of God that Nineveh was to be destroyed in 40 days as proclaimed by Jonah. Only 6 verses later, it was again the type 3 directive that Nineveh was to be spared of the destruction proclaimed earlier.
The types are not mutually exclusive; e.g., a directive can be both type 1 and type 3. In fact, when sin and death disappear, all directives will collapse to type 4 = type 0 = type 1 = type 2 = type 3.
Type 0 outputs of the will of God (or more conveniently, type 0 directives): These are "desires" and "wishes". Type 0 may not be fulfilled in the space-time realm. God desires that Israel would have only Him as King. God desires that no man would divorce his wife. In 1 Timothy 2:4a, we read "[God] desires all people to be saved." Jesus said in Luke 12:49, "I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!" and in Luke 13:34, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!"
Type 1: This consists of his providence, fate, God's sovereign hand over His creation, the so-called "permissive will", etc. In other words, it is everything that has transpired.
Type 2: These are doctrinal codes, righteous precepts, morals, and the Ten Commandments.
Type 3: These are God's rhema words and God's most specific will in a given instance in the vertical-horizontal reality. In Jonah 3:4, it was the type 3 directive of God that Nineveh was to be destroyed in 40 days as proclaimed by Jonah. Only 6 verses later, it was again the type 3 directive that Nineveh was to be spared of the destruction proclaimed earlier.
The types are not mutually exclusive; e.g., a directive can be both type 1 and type 3. In fact, when sin and death disappear, all directives will collapse to type 4 = type 0 = type 1 = type 2 = type 3.
