Providence

Stephen R. Lawhead:

     He saw his own world as one minute fleck against the darkness, and knew that his life, and the lives of every man who had ever lived, was but a single faltering step in the Great Dance of Heaven.

     The Dance flowed and ebbed according to the will of the Maker, and all moved with him as he moved. There was not a solitary figure in the Dance that was not in his plan—from the seemingly random shuttling of atoms colliding with one another through the limitless reaches of empty night, to the aimless scrabblings of an insect in the dust, to the directionless meandering of a river of molten iron on a world no human eye would ever see—all was embraced, upheld, encompassed by the Great Dance.

(Stephen R. Lawhead, Dream Thief, [Wheaton: Crossway Books, 1993], p. 355.)

A. A. Hodge:

…in his relation to the universe he is at once immanent and transcendent. Above all, and freely acting upon all from without. Within all, and acting through the whole and every part from within in the exercise of all his perfections, and according to the laws and modes of action he has established for his creatures, sustaining and governing them, and all their actions.

(Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology: Rewritten and Enlarged, [New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1878], p. 65.)

A. A. Hodge:

     2d. Hence it follows with equal certainty that the providence of God must be universal. It must comprehend in its grasp equally every agent and every event without the least discontinuity or exception. One event is never in any degree more providential than any other event. There prevails a very unintelligent and really irreligious habit among many true Christians of passing unnoticed the evidence of God’s presence in the ordinary course of nature, and of recognizing it on the occasion of some event specially involving their supposed interests, as if it were special and unusual. They will say of some sudden, scarcely-hoped-for deliverance from danger, “Why, I think I may venture to say it was really providential.” But would it have been any the less providential if they had been destroyed and not delivered? Would it have been any the less providential if they had not been in jeopardy at all and had needed no deliverance? The great Dr. Witherspoon lived at a country-seat called Tusculum, on Rocky Hill, two miles north of Princeton. One day a man rushed into his presence crying, “Dr. Witherspoon, help me to thank God for his wonderful providence. My horse ran away, my buggy was dashed to pieces on the rocks, and behold! I am unharmed.” The good doctor laughed benevolently at the inconsistent, halfway character of the man’s religion. “Why,” he answered, “I know a providence a thousand times better than that of yours. I have driven down that rocky road to Princeton hundreds of times and my horse never ran away and my buggy was never dashed to pieces.” Undoubtedly, the deliverance was providential, but just as much so also were the uneventful rides of the college president. God is in the atom just as really and effectually as in the planet. He is in the unobserved sighing of the wind in the wilderness as in the earthquake which overthrows a city full of living men, and his infinite wisdom and power are as much concerned in the one event as in the other.

     There is a distinction to be observed between God’s natural providence, which is universal and ordinary, and his supernatural providence, which is occasional and special. His natural providence is equally in every thing and event, but his grace and his supernatural intervention are in one event and not in another, at one time and not at another. It is proper, therefore, to distinguish his natural providence as general, and his grace or his supernatural providence as special. But it is essential to understand that in the ordinary sense of providence relating to the course of events in our natural lives the common distinction between general and special providence is unintelligent and irreligious. All God’s providence is at the same time both general and special, and general because it is special, and special because it is general. It is general because it reaches by continuous action equally every element of the world and every event. It is special for the same reason, because, reaching equally to every particular, it reaches universally to all particulars and to their entire sum. That which controls every link controls the whole chain. That which controls the movement of every atom controls the whole world. That which controls the thought and volition of every man controls the entire course of human history. God does not come down from above upon the course of our lives in spots. His whole infinite being dwells everlastingly in each atom and each spirit. He is universally in all things, because he is ever equally in each thing. In every grain of sand, in every drop of water, in every pulse of air, in every flower that blows, in every infant soul, in every human thought and will and act, in the equable flow of natural law, in the great catastrophe of exploding worlds or of nations brought to judgment, in the fall of Adam, in the giving of the law on Sinai, in the redemption of man on Calvary, in the mission of the Holy Ghost, in the resurrection of the dead and in the eternal judgment,—however heterogeneous these agents and events in themselves, however incommensurate their significance to us, and however various is the method of the divine operation in them severally, yet in them all the one Jehovah is equally present with his absolute perfections and in his supreme potency. Events may be infinitely different in their significance as well as in their importance to us, yet the truly religious mind finds equally in all things, even the least significant and the least important, the presence and supreme control and the benevolent administration of our heavenly Father.

(Archibald Alexander Hodge, Popular Lectures on Theological Themes, [Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1887], pp. 38-41.)

A. A. Hodge:

     III. It is no less certain that, whatever be the ultimate method of God’s exercise of his energy in providence, it must necessarily be in a manner perfectly congruous to the nature of his creatures upon which and through which he works, and with the laws of their action. It is impossible to believe that the all-perfect Creator of all things will in his subsequent control of their action violate the properties with which he has endowed them or the laws he has imposed upon them. The Scriptures everywhere and constantly take for granted the principles of “natural realism” which correspond to the instinctive judgments and the spoken and written languages of all men. Material and spiritual beings are real entities. They have real, substantial, objective existence. Although they are ever dependent upon their First Cause, they are nevertheless real active agents and causes. God has endowed them each and severally, according to their respective kinds, with their essential properties and powers of action, which, as far as we know, never change or fail. We trace an absolutely unbroken continuity in the action of these second causes through the entire history of the world and of mankind. These elements, thus originally endowed with unchangeable properties, act and react with invariable uniformity under the same conditions; and as the conditions change they act differently, but always in a way uniformly related to the conditions under which they act. As, therefore, the general adjustments or groupings of second causes under which they act are for the most part uniform from age to age, and change only locally and slowly, the uniformity of action which results gives origin to what are called “laws of nature,” which continue absolutely uniform as long as the adjustments or groupings of these causes remain unchanged. It is obvious that we apply this only to the world of matter and to certain spheres of the natural actions of spirits. The spirit of men in certain spheres of action is confessedly endowed with the divine power of originating and directing its own action independently of its external environment. But in the sphere of purely natural causes men never seek to attain their ends by violating the “laws of nature.” On the contrary, they seek by science to attain a definite knowledge of those laws under all varieties of condition, and then they so apply this knowledge, by varying the conditions under which the natural causes act, that the very laws of nature themselves, thus directed, work out their purposes for them. Thus steam and electricity in the hands of men obey the “laws of nature” as implicitly as they do when nature is left to itself, only the same causes naturally produce different effects under changed conditions.

     Now, men of pure science, habitually confining their attention to the uniformities of nature’s action under the uniform conditions existing, regard the habit of religious men in ascribing results to the action of a personal agent having personal aims in view, and special reference to human characters and necessities, as irrational and superstitious. And hence, on the other hand, many unintelligent religious men regard the point of view of men of science as essentially irreligious. But it is obvious that these contrasted views of the course of events in the natural world are not mutually contradictory, but supplementary. They are the two equally true and real sides of the one system of objects. If even men comparatively ignorant and impotent can so wonderfully make the powers and laws of nature subservient to their own purposes without violating them, why cannot God at least do the same? Nay, why, since God’s knowledge and power are alike absolutely limitless, should not the whole of nature be as plastic to his will as the air in the organs of a great musician who articulates it into a fit expression of every thought and passion of his soaring soul. The reason that this analogy is not immediately conclusive to every mind is, that when man arranges the conditions so as to render the action of nature subservient to his purpose you can always trace his trail, see the visible marks of his interfering agency, while the course of nature flows on with mathematical precision of physical action, without the least trace of a providential interference ab extra. But it is forgotten that while man is always locally outside his work, and acts upon all elements from without, and in succession, a part at a time, God is simultaneously present and active within every ultimate element. His impulse is therefore through, not outside of, their own spontaneities. His control is neither partial nor successive, but simultaneously in the entire universe, thus co-ordinating all adjustments and all reactions in the execution of one plan and in the current of one issue.

     There are two extreme tendencies to which different persons are inclined when regarding the course of events in the world, each of which is evidently false when exclusively indulged, but both of which together, when combined, lead to the true attitude which every Christian should cultivate: the view of the mere naturalist, in which the supernatural is altogether merged in the natural, and, conversely, the view of the pantheist, in which the natural is altogether merged in the supernatural. And these apparently opposite extremes virtually come to the same thing, because they both equally exclude a personal God and human freedom, and maintain a naturalistic fatalism. But both present a side of the one truth. The natural is the fixed and regulated method which the personal heavenly Father has laid down for his own guidance; the supernatural does neither exclude nor supersede the natural, but it is the self-revelation of the heavenly Father, who works through natural law, as the personal Agent who, having ordained law, uses it to accomplish his spiritual purposes. The universe has a personal basis. The laws of nature are the methods self-ordained of a personal Agent. The true scientists are the sons of God, who were not created for the laws of nature, but the laws of nature for them.

     After the Charleston earthquake the Christian preachers endeavored to enforce upon their hearers the scriptural lessons of the event viewed as a divine dispensation. The visiting scientists are represented as having scoffed contemptuously, maintaining that the preachers should have confined themselves to an exposition of the laws of nature and drawn comfort from the proven exceptional character of such experiences. These men of mere science may have been able and useful in their narrow specialty, but they were certainly very absurd philosophers. They were perfectly right in confining their own investigations to the scientific aspects of the phenomena, and the preachers had an equal authority in calling the attention of the Christian people to the aspect which the light of the inspired Scriptures, when thrown upon the providential facts, presented. We say, advisedly, that the preachers’ authority in the premises is limited to the application of the light of the inspired Scriptures to the current facts. They have no right to assume the role of prophets, as too many are at times inclined to do; and no man not the subject of plenary inspiration should dare to explain the ultimate divine purpose in any particular event or its relation to human guilt. The Master himself said, “Suppose ye that those eighteen upon whom the tower in Siloam fell were sinners above all men that dwell in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay; but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish” (Luke 13:4, 5).

(Archibald Alexander Hodge, Popular Lectures on Theological Themes, [Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1887], pp. 43-47.)

Eugene H. Peterson:

God is equally present and active in the history recorded in the Scriptures and the history recorded in our contemporary textbooks. Biblical history deals with the same historical materials as European, African, Asian, and American history. When the name of God is left out of the history of, say, the Exploration of the Amazon, God is not left out; he is still as present and involved as in the history of the Crossing of the Jordan. History is history, biblical history and modern history alike.

(Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 2005], p. 140.)

R. B. Kuiper:

     How very poor a showing many a Fundamentalist has made in an argument with a Modernist! This, I fear, is not accidental. The Fundamentalists do not value sufficiently a broad liberal education as the foundation of theological training. Every once in a while a Fundamentalist betrays his ignorance of the distinction between mechanical and organic inspiration and fails to do justice to the human element in the writing of the Scriptures. How wary many Fundamentalists are of admitting that God frequently employs natural means in performing miracles, in themselves supernatural. 

(R. B. Kuiper, As to Being Reformed: Second Edition, [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1926], p. 78.)

N. T. Wright:

On the other hand, the eighteenth-century idea of a ‘miracle’ envisaged a ‘God’ who was a remote, detached Being, who normally kept his hands clean from involvement with the space-time universe, but just occasionally used to ‘intervene’. That is a total travesty of the biblical picture. If saying you believe in miracles commits you to that kind of picture of God, then it would be better for a Christian to refuse.

     But what if the God who made the world has remained active within the world? What if the word ‘God’ itself might refer, not to this distant, remote, occasionally-intervening Being, but to a God who breathed with the breath of the world? What if this God, as the Old Testament says, feeds the young ravens when they call out, not (presumably) by dropping food ‘miraculously’ from the sky, but by being active within his creation, within ‘instinct’ and hidden motivations? When the Bible says that God commanded Adam and Eve to ‘be fruitful and multiply’, and gave them tasks to perform in relation to his creation, did this mean that he barked a command at them from a distance, or put up notices in Eden telling them what to do? Of course not. He put into their inmost beings, as creatures made to reflect his image into his world, a deep desire for one another, and a deep longing to create and nurture order and beauty within creation. This is a very different picture from the eighteenth-century one; it is much more Biblical, and at the same time (I think) much more believable. It puts the question of ‘God’ acting within the world into quite a different dimension.

(N. T. Wright, Who Was Jesus? [Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1993], p. 81.)

Charles Hodge:

He is immanent in the world. He sustains and guides all causes. He works constantly through them, with them, and without them. As in the operations of writing or speaking there is with us the union and combined action of mechanical, chemical, and vital forces, controlled by the presiding power of mind; and as the mind, while thus guiding the operations of the body, constantly exercises its creative energy of thought, so God, as immanent in the world, constantly guides all the operations of second causes, and at the same time exercises uninterruptedly his creative energy. Life is not the product of physical causes. We know not that its origin is in any case due to any cause other than the immediate power of God. If life be the peculiar attribute of immaterial substance, it may be produced agreeably to a fixed plan by the creative energy of God whenever the conditions are present under which He has purposed it should begin to be. The organization of a seed, or of the embryo of an animal, so far as it consists of matter, may be due to the operation of material causes guided by the providential agency of God, while the vital principle itself is due to his creative power.

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Volume II, [London and Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1872], p. 74.)

Charles Hodge:

In the first place, there are events therefore due to the ordinary operations of second causes, as upheld and guided by God. To this class belong the common processes of nature; the growth of plants and animals, the orderly movements of the heavenly bodies; and the more unusual occurrences, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and violent agitations and revolutions in human societies. In the second place, there are events due to the influences of the Holy Spirit upon the hearts of men, such as regeneration, sanctification, spiritual illumination, etc. Thirdly, there are events which belong to neither of these classes, and whose distinguishing characteristics are, First, that they take place in the external world, i.e., in the sphere of the observation of the senses; and Secondly, that they are produced or caused by the simple volition of God, without the intervention of any subordinate cause. To this class belongs the original act of creation, in which all coöperation of second causes was impossible. To the same class belong all events truly miraculous. A miracle, therefore, may be defined to be an event, in the external world, brought about by the immediate efficiency, or simple volition of God.

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Volume I, [London and Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1871], p. 618.)

Charles Hodge: (The Laws of Nature)

     The chief question is, In what relation does God stand to these laws? The answer to that question, as drawn from the Bible, is, First, that He is their author. He endowed matter with these forces, and ordained that they should be uniform. Secondly, He is independent of them. He can change, annihilate, or suspend them at pleasure. He can operate with them or without them. “The Reign of Law” must not be made to extend over Him who made the laws. Thirdly, As the stability of the universe, and the welfare, and even the existence of organized creatures, depend on the uniformity of the laws of nature, God never does disregard them except for the accomplishment of some high purpose. He, in the ordinary operations of his Providence, operates with and through the laws which He has ordained. He governs the material, as well as the moral world by law.

(Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology: Volume I, [London and Edinburgh: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1871], p. 607.)

Cf. Nancey Murphy:

     So it is a mistake to think that the laws, once “created,” are immutable; they merely reflect God’s ordinary way of working, and they can be suspended on occasion for some higher purpose. The important point for present purposes is that to assume that an event is an act of God only if it cannot be explained by natural laws is a degenerate view of divine action by Hodge’s standards. God works in the regular processes just as much as in miraculous interventions.

(Nancey Murphy, “Science, Divine Action, and the Intelligent Design Movement: A Defense of Theistic Evolution;” In: Intelligent Design: William A. Dembski & Michael Ruse in Dialogue, ed. Robert B. Stewart, [Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007], p. 157.)

Note: See further: Nancey C. Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy set the Theological Agenda, [Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2007], Pt. 1, Ch. 3 “Immanence or Intervention: How Does God Act in the World,” pp. 62-82.

A. H. Strong:

     B. Alternative and Preferable Definition.—A miracle is an event in nature, so extraordinary in itself and so coinciding with the prophecy or command of a religious teacher or leader, as fully to warrant the conviction, on the part of those who witness it, that God has wrought it with the design of certifying that this teacher or leader has been commissioned by him.

     This definition has certain marked advantages as compared with the preliminary definition given above:—(a) It recognizes the immanence of God and his immediate agency in nature, instead of assuming an antithesis between the laws of nature and the will of God. (b) It regards the miracle as simply an extraordinary act of that same God who is already present in all natural operations and who in them is revealing his general plan. (c) It holds that natural law, as the method of God’s regular activity, in no way precludes unique exertions of his power when these will best secure his purpose in creation. (d) It leaves it possible that all miracles may have their natural explanations and may hereafter be traced to natural causes, while both miracles and their natural causes may be only names for the one and self-same will of God. (e) It reconciles the claims of both science and religion: of science, by permitting any possible or probable physical antecedents of the miracle; of religion, by maintaining that these very antecedents together with the miracle itself are to be interpreted as signs of God’s special commission to him under whose teaching or leadership the miracle is wrought.

(Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology: A Compendium and Commonplace Book Designed for the Use of Theological Students: Three Volumes in One, [Philadelphia: The Griffith & Rowland Press, 1912], pp. 118-119.)

A. H. Strong:

     An event in nature may be caused by an agent in nature yet above nature. This is evident from the following considerations:

     (a) Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently counteracted and transcended by the higher (as mechanical forces and laws by chemical, and chemical by vital), while yet the lower forces and laws are not suspended or annihilated, but are merged in the higher, and made to assist in accomplishing purposes to which they are altogether unequal when left to themselves.

     …(b) The human will acts upon its physical organism, and so upon nature, and produces results which nature left to herself never could accomplish, while yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. Gravitation still operates upon the axe, even while man holds it at the surface of the water—for the axe still has weight (cf. 2 K. 6:5-7).

(Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology: A Compendium and Commonplace Book Designed for the Use of Theological Students: Three Volumes in One, [Philadelphia: The Griffith & Rowland Press, 1912], p. 121.)

A. H. Strong:

     (d) What the human will, considered as a supernatural force, and what the chemical and vital forces of nature itself, are demonstrably able to accomplish, cannot be regarded as beyond the power of God, so long as God dwells in and controls the universe. If man’s will can act directly upon matter in his own physical organism, God’s will can work immediately upon the system which he has created and which he sustains. In other words, if there be a God, and if he be a personal being, miracles are possible. The impossibility of miracles can be maintained only upon principles of atheism or pantheism.

(Augustus Hopkins Strong, Systematic Theology: A Compendium and Commonplace Book Designed for the Use of Theological Students: Three Volumes in One, [Philadelphia: The Griffith & Rowland Press, 1912], p. 122.)

Cf. Nancey Murphy:

     Strong intends to avoid the objectionable aspects of interventionism by emphasizing God’s immanence. It is not that God’s action itself is a force among forces in the universe, but rather that God’s will directs the forces of the universe, bringing about higher levels of reality and also extraordinary events.

(Nancey C. Murphy, Beyond Liberalism and Fundamentalism: How Modern and Postmodern Philosophy set the Theological Agenda, [Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2007], p. 76.)

James Iverach:

…creation is continuous. …everything is as it is through the continuous power of God; every law, every being, every relation of being are determined by Him, and He is the Power by which all things exist. I believe in the immanence of God in the world, and I do not believe that He comes forth merely at a crisis, as Mr. Wallace supposes. Apart from the Divine action man would not have been, or have an existence; but apart from the Divine action nothing else would have an existence.

(James Iverach, Christianity and Evolution, [London Hodder and Stoughton, 1894], pp. 175-176.)

Cf. B. B. Warfield:

Some lack of general philosophical acumen must be suspected, when it is not fully understood that teleology is in no way inconsistent with—is rather necessarily involved in—a complete system of natural causation. Every teleological system implies a complete “causo-mechanical” explanation as its instrument.

(B. B. Warfield, “Reviews of Recent Literature: Apologetical Theology;” In: The Princeton Theological Review: Volume VI: 1908, [Princeton: The Princeton University Press, 1908], p. 649.)

Note: See further: Concurrence (Concursus) — Primary and Secondary Causes.

καὶ αὐτός ἐστιν πρὸ πάντων καὶ τὰ πάντα ἐν αὐτῷ συνέστηκεν ~ Soli Deo Gloria