The doctrine of concurrence exists precisely to hold a narrow and difficult path between two opposite errors, each of which destroys a truth Scripture maintains. On one side lies the deistic tendency, which so emphasizes the reality and independence of secondary causes that the creature is thought to act on its own, God having endowed it with powers and then standing back. This severs the creature’s every act from the God in whom it lives and moves and has its being, and it cannot account for the constant biblical testimony that God works through the rain, the king’s heart, the lots cast into the lap, and the free deeds of men.

On the other side lies occasionalism (and the pantheist drift), which so emphasizes that God works all things that the creature’s action is swallowed up—the creature becomes a mere occasion or instrument in which God alone truly acts, contributing nothing of its own. This dissolves the reality of secondary causes, makes the creature a cipher, and edges toward making God the immediate doer of every sin. Concurrence threads between: the same effect is produced wholly by God as first cause and wholly by the creature as second cause, on their respective levels, neither competing nor canceling the other. And in the matter of sin it adds the vital distinction—God concurs in upholding and ordering the act, but the moral defect arises from the creature alone, so that God remains holy and the sinner alone is guilty. The axe cannot boast against the hand that wields it, yet the axe truly cuts.