Bible
Study
Chapter
5:
Section
1: What is providence?
By:
Moses Flores
As we move along in the
Westminster Confession of Faith, we can begin to see that there is a certain
order in which we are progressing. We
began where all theology must derive from, the very words of God, which are the
Scriptures. From there we explored the
God that is described in the Scriptures as well as His nature and eternal
decrees for the creation He is responsible for.
Now, we come to the part in the Confession where we begin to see that
after God has created all things, that He also governs His creation according
to His sovereign will. Theologically
speaking, this is known as the doctrine of
“God, who created everything, also upholds everything. He directs, regulates, and governs every creature, action, and thing, from the greatest to the least, by His completely wise and holy providence. He does so in accordance with His infallible foreknowledge and the voluntary, unchangeable purpose of His own will, all to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.”
The relevant question this doctrine answers is how does God relate to the world? There are new and emerging views today, as well as old views that have infiltrated the Church and the secular world about God. For instance, it is common to assume that God created the world and left it to itself. Every now and then, God “steps down” into our world to make his presence known in some powerful and awesome way. But for the most part, God remains aloof and estranged from His own creation. This is one older view. More recently, is a theology called “Open Theism” or “Process Theology” in which God is “growing” with the world and changing with it as it changes. In other words, God is so inextricably bound up with the world, that He is influenced in His being by what happens in it and to it.
What does the Bible say about How God relates to His creation? This study of providence in chapter five will seek to answer that question broadly as well as shed light on some details along the way. We will begin by defining providence.
What is
The word “providence” comes to us from the Greek word pronoia and the Latin words “providere” or “providential”. The prefix “pro” indicates “before” or “in front of” while the basic root comes from the Latin “videre” which means “to see”. Thus, we have God’s “seeing before hand”, or His foresight or prescience. It refers specifically to God’s plan for the future, especially His plans of provision for His creatures, but especially, as we will see, for His Church.
Recall from chapter four of the Westminster Confession that it is the Triune God who created the world out of nothing. That is, there was no preexisting “stuff” or material that God used to form what we now know as the world and cosmos. Rather, prior to its existence, only God existed in perfect triune fellowship within His own being, perfectly sufficient in Himself. At some point, God decrees to create according to an eternal plan. Thus, through the Word of God and the Spirit of God, God speaks and “stuff” comes into being. This stuff however, is not inherent with self-sustaining powers. Indeed it could not be! Allow me to explain.
First,
as a created thing that did not cause its own being (ex nihilo, nihil fit; out of nothing, nothing comes), this “stuff”
– the entire created order – exists conditionally. Second, since it exists conditionally, we may
ask what are these conditions? The
Thus, what God does for creation is not merely create and then leave it to itself. Indeed, what power does a created, contingent and dependent thing have to sustain its own being? Though it might be obvious to us that a created thing exists by the will of another, some Christians have been led to believe that God has created a world and then left it to itself. This particular strain of thought is known as Deism. In this view, God maintains His creatorship but denies that God has any involvement with or special presence within or upon the creation after words. It is as if God “wound up creation” and it is able to be self-sustaining after creating it. Rather, the Scriptures teach that God constantly upholds and sustains creation. God is constantly providing for creation.
In Colossians 1, with some reference to early Gnostic beliefs, Paul asserts the primacy of Christ in the flesh. As Paul writes to the Colossians about the primacy of Christ he says in verse 17:
“And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (ESV)
The “all things” of verse 17 are the same “all things” of verse 16 which are “all created things”. The words used here that is translated as “hold together” is in the perfect tense meaning that at one point “all things” were brought together and continue to be held together, or sustained “in Him” or by the agency of the Word of God, who is Christ.
This
view has come to be known in theological circles as the doctrine of “divine
conservation” or the “constant creation” view.
It is called “constant” because creation is never left alone by God but
is rather sustained by Him and continuously upheld by His word. It is called “constant creation” because just as God’s word initially brought forth
creation into being, even today, God’s word brings forth creation’s events and
His will in His creation! Thus, God’s
word is constantly bringing forth the plan of God that has been decreed from
all eternity. We recall from chapter
three of the
Some
have, in this same line of thought, referred to the doctrine of providence as
“the outworking of God’s eternal decree.”
“Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power…” (ESV)
The NIV uses the word “sustaining” for the word “upholds” but the concept is still the same. Creation depends on God for its continual being.
But more than upholding, the Confession says that God “regulates and governs every creature, action and thing, from the greatest to the least…” To “regulate” means to bring under control through law or constituted authority; to govern or direct according to rule. That is, God’s regulations are His either natural or revealed laws that He has established for creation. These laws include what are might call “natural laws” or the “constancies” that we observe in nature. These also include what we know as laws like gravity, laws of inertia, etc…These laws describe regularities we observe in how God orders creation. These laws are, in a sense, summations of the observed regularities. These laws are not powers in themselves of causality. They are not entities or agents. Rather, these facts and laws of the world are what they are because God has ordained them to be so. To us, they are our observations that are consistently repeated in God’s creation.
God also regulates human behavior by giving to mankind His laws and statutes. These regulations are the moral law of God. These laws are not like the natural regulations, or laws, that we see and observe in nature. That is, these regulations are not DESCRIPTIVE. Rather, they are PRESCRIPTIVE. They are regulations that reveal to us how human moral life should look like. These regulations are based on the revelation of the moral character of God.
Yet, we know that though God prescribes moral statutes, or regulations, it is not the case that these regulations are followed. Again, noting a difference between moral laws and laws of nature, the created order, moral laws are regulated to moral agents who have a capacity for choice. Nature, on the other hand, has no capacity for choice. Rather, nature, it appears acts consistently and we sum up these consistencies with laws. These are the result of God’s regular governance. Moral agents have the capacity to disobey the prescriptive regulation of God. We call this sin.
But it is not as if even sin is beyond the control of God. Though we have the capacity to sin, there is a sense, especially in light of God’s decree, in which no one sins without the permission of God. No one sins unless that sin had not been planned by God (not in the sense of God’s will being the effective cause of sin, thus making Him morally culpable). John Calvin stated this concerning Adam’s fall into sin,
“Yet no one can deny that God foreknew what end man was to have before He created him, and consequently foreknew because He so ordained by His decree…And it ought not to seem absurd for me to say that God not only foresaw the fall of the first man, and in him the ruin of his descendants, but also meted it out in accordance with His own decision. For as it pertains to His wisdom to foreknow everything that is to happen, so it pertains to His might to rule and control everything by His hand.” (Institutes III: XXIII: 8)
What Calvin is asserting here is that God’s eternal plan has always included God’s use of and Sovereign rule over all things, especially sin. Daniel 4:34-35 says of God,
“For His dominion is an everlasting dominion,
And His kingdom endures from generation to generation;
All the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing,
And He does according to His will among the host of
Heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth;
And none can stay His hand or say to Him,
‘What have you done?’ ”
God’s absolute rule is here asserted. God rules, or governs His entire kingdom, or His limitless dominion, as He wills. Thus, whatever happens in all of creation, God’s dominion, happens according to the rule of God. God’s providence is that absolute.
This view of providence is often referred to as “meticulous providence”. Meticulous providence, as the name asserts, means that God’s plan and rule is over all things down to the very control of atoms and quarks! Nothing at all escapes His sovereign rule. Nothing has ever or will ever escape His rule. All things are “according to the plan of Him who works out all everything in conformity with the purpose of His will…”(Eph. 1:11).
God plan is so comprehensive that it even governs sin in the world. God’s control over sin appears in several narratives in Scripture. For instance, in Genesis 12:10-20, God causes the princes of Pharaoh to restrain themselves from committing sexual sins with Sarai, Abram’s wife. More will be said on this topic in a later section of this chapter. For now, suffice it to say that God rules all things, including the exercise and extent of sin in His own creation.
Meticulous providence, or sovereignty, is contrasted by the prevailing Evangelical Arminian, and even Roman Catholic view, of “general sovereignty”. In this view, God is sovereign to the extent that He is able to make the best out of the circumstances that autonomous and free creatures bring about. That is, God rules over the world and in His sovereignty has decided to give creatures an autonomous will from their creator. In this way, God is in no way involved with sin in the world. Rather, the creatures willfully disobey and disrupt the will of God.
This view has some obvious weaknesses in it. For starters, what good is the attribute of sovereignty if it is not exercised by God? Why speak of a sovereign God if He has relinquished His rule to the creatures? What comfort can one find in a world with in the hand of sinful creatures free to do as they please contrary to the general plans of the Creator? Why pray to God about things involving human decision if God has granted them autonomy from Himself? Wouldn’t it make more sense to pray to the will of those involved in human events?
In the general sovereignty view, God has a plan, but the plan may be frustrated along the way. It would not be fair to say of this view that God’s will is not ultimately done, but what happens along the way is not planned by God at all. How God accomplishes His will is actually hard to fathom in this. Moreover, here we become victims of randomness. If we are free from God’s absolute governance, what hope is there for the future? How do we know that we won’t freely choose to abandon God’s salvation under certain circumstances? What security is there in Christianity?
Theologically, this view has problems as well. For one, this view of God and of man finds no place within the revelation of God. God is rather viewed as a sovereign monarch, or king, who rules all things in His kingdom (cf. Dan. 4:34-35). This view would also have to place some ignorance in God for it would be inconceivable that God could know all the actions of free creatures with any certainty. At best, he could have knowledge of possibilities, or what is often called “Middle knowledge”. But this will not suffice for a being called God who bears the attribute of “omniscience”.
Some have actually seen the problems with this view, but rather than attempting to solve the dilemma by leaning toward the attributes of God, they have sought their answer in the nature of man. That is, these theologians have granted that man truly is autonomous and free from God to act as they will. Therefore, God’s “rule” of the world is not extended to moral agents, but only to non-moral things, such as nature or even animals (views on these vary from theologian to theologian). This view is known as the “Open view of God” because God is “open” to response from His creatures to influence and determine His being.
This view has been proposed as “consistent Arminianism” or the consistent application of the “general sovereignty” view of providence. To this, there is no disagreement as far as it being the consistent application of the doctrine of man to determine the doctrine of God. However, this ceases to be theology, but rather anthropology. All true theology begins with God and His own revelation of what He is and what we are in relation to Him.
Application of this doctrine to the life of the Christian
As asserted before, God’s rule and governance over all of creation is constant and meticulous. There is no thing, event, or decision of men that has escaped His plan. God has planned all things and rules the world according to that plan formed from the foundations of the world.
What this means for the Christian is that we should find comfort in the constant provision of our great King who cares for all His creation. In Matthew 6, Jesus teaches us about the great care that God has planned for all creation and especially for His children. Jesus says,
“Therefore I tell you, do not be
anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about
your body, what you will put on. Is not
life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither
sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds
them. Are you not of more value than
they? And which of you by being anxious
can add a single hour to his pan of life? And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they
grow: They neither toil nor spin, yet I
tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field,
which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much
more clothe you, O you of little faith?
Therefore do not be anxious saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall
we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For
the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that
you need them all. But seek first the
Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”
What Jesus is speaking about is our faith in the plan of God to care exceedingly for the most valuable of God’s creation, human beings who were created in God’s image. Christ shows us that God’s governance includes provision for even the animal and plant kingdoms. How much more, Christ argues, will God’s plan include provision for us?
Christians especially have no reason to be discouraged in life for we should know that, according to the meticulous providence view, God is constantly at work in our lives and that all things are proceeding according to His decree and purpose. Nothing that happens, no matter how calamitous, is contrary to God’s plan and will. There is nothing that can frustrate the will of God to save whom He has chosen to save, not even the will of the creature being saved! “Thy will be done,” is what Christ taught us to pray in the model prayer, and this to teach us that God’s will shall be done and we should want it and desire it to be done.
Christians should be encouraged about this doctrine, especially living in a world where sin and chaos against God can so easily appear to be the reality. But Scripture clearly shows us that God rules absolutely and even over the actions of sinful creatures. Were it not so, nobody, including ourselves, would be saved from the wrath of God. We would still be lost and dead in our trespasses and sins. We would still be in bondage to the Devil and sin; forever without hope of redemption.
We should also be encouraged that God’s plan is not arbitrary, or random. Rather, the Westminster Confession says that God’s providence is unto the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness and mercy. That is, this providence is not merely a plan, but it is Divine providence. It is a divine plan that is intended to reveal the wisdom, power, justice, goodness and mercy of God. It is far from random. Thus, our faith in God’s providence is nothing more than our exercise in the nature and character of God. The more that we know our God, the more we will understand how He rules His own world and takes care of His creatures and more than that, His children.
In sum, God’s providence could be likened to His blueprint that He sovereignly decreed and devised according to the good pleasure of His own will. It is His eternal plan from before the ages. The plan is not to be confused with the actual execution of the plan. We must make the distinction. When we speak of God’s providence, we are speaking of His plan to uphold and sustain His creation for the outworking of His will and glory. The doctrine of providence, necessarily follows from the decrees. To God, He knows His plan from all eternity. For us, we see that plan unfolding moment by moment and throughout all of the history of creation.
We should be
thankful for the doctrine of providence, especially for meticulous providence
for in it, we know that God has a plan for all things that occur be they good
or evil. We can know that our God is a
God of wisdom who fits all things together for His glory. Were God not to have a plan, we would not
know for certainty the state of our existence from one moment to the next. We could be here today and God could change
his mind all of a sudden, with no reason to held accountable to His any decrees
or plan. He could make things up as He
went. But this would make God a temporal
God, or bound to time. Such is not the
God of the Bible. He has planned from
all the ages according to His wisdom.
According to Divine