1. The Doctrine
Rev H M Cartwright
In Romans 11 the Apostle Paul discusses the way in which the histories of the Jews and the Gentiles would interact to bring about the salvation of all those in both categories whom God has purposed to save. As he considers the way in which God makes everything work together for the accomplishment of His purposes, the conclusion to which he comes is: “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgements, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? Or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things: to whom be glory for ever. Amen” (Rom 11:33-36). It is in that spirit we should consider the providence of God, and
6An Antidote against Arminianism, p ii.
1This is the first part of a paper given at the 2004 Youth Conference, which had as a subtitle, “The Doctrine and its Application to Personal Life”.
believing consideration of the providence of God should produce and promote that spirit in us. The Belgic Confession wisely cautions us: “As to what He doth surpassing human understanding, we will not curiously enquire into it further than our capacity will admit of, but with the greatest humility and reverence adore the righteous judgements of God which are hid from us, contenting ourselves that we are disciples of Christ, to learn only those things which He has revealed to us in His Word without transgressing these limits” (Article 13).
Here we shall merely try to outline certain aspects of this vast subject, which really takes in everything that God has done in the world since the creation. The plan is to consider (1) what is meant by the providence of God and then to refer to (2) some problems which are raised in connection with the doctrine, (3) some solutions which are offered to these problems, and (4) some applications of the doctrine which are to be made in our personal lives.
(1.) We must begin by considering what is meant by the providence of God. The Shorter Catechism (answer 11) states: “God’s works of providence are His most holy wise and powerful preserving and governing all His creatures and all their actions”. The Larger Catechism (answer 18) adds: “ordering them and all their actions to His own glory”. The Westminster Confession of Faith begins its fifth chapter, on providence, with this statement: “God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by His most wise and holy providence, according to His infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of His own will, to the praise of the glory of His wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy”. The Heidelberg Catechism (answer 27) explains the providence of God as “the almighty and everywhere-present power of God; whereby, as it were by His hand, He upholds and governs heaven, earth, and all creatures; so that herbs and grass, rain and drought, fruitful and barren years, meat and drink, health and sickness, riches and poverty, yea, all things, come, not by chance, but by His fatherly hand”.
Put quite simply, the doctrine of providence is that God has not abandoned His creation but continues personally and actively to sustain it and control it and direct it, in a way that pleases Him, towards the accomplishment of the purposes He has for it. This is true not only of the general course which the life of the individual and of the whole creation takes but also of each detail, good and bad. God is active in every moment and event. God is acting in keeping with His character in every moment and event, as “the most wise, righteous and gracious God”, manifesting
His “almighty power, unsearchable wisdom and infinite goodness”2
In all His activity in providence, in His preservation and control of everything in the material and moral realms, God is taking particular care of His Church and the interests of His people. All He does is intended to demonstrate His glory as God. With John Calvin, “we hold that God is the disposer and ruler of all things – that from the remotest eternity, according to His own wisdom, He decreed what He was to do, and now by His power executes what He decreed. . . . Not heaven and earth and inanimate creatures only, but also the counsels and wills of men are so governed as to move exactly in the course which He has destined. . . . Fortune and chance are heathen terms.”3 An old Scottish theologian says: “Providence is the care which God takes of all things, to uphold them in being, and to direct them to the ends which He has determined to accomplish by them, so that nothing takes place in which He is not concerned in a manner worthy of His infinite perfections and which is not in unison with the counsel of His will. More particularly we may observe that two things are included in the notion of providence: the preservation and the government of all things.”4 The older theologians spoke of God’s providence as including the knowledge of His mind, the decree of His will and His efficacious administration of the things decreed: “directing knowledge, commanding will and fulfilling power”5.
Several points may be made here:
(a) The God who feeds the fowls of the air and clothes the grass of the field, who counts the hairs of your head and without whom a sparrow does not fall to the ground, is described in each of these connections as the heavenly Father of His people. His providence is serving the purposes of His grace and securing that “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose” (Rom 8:28). Providence is not something impersonal or mechanical, the working out of pre-set laws which are independent of God even if set in motion by God. Providence is the God of our salvation at work. It is something completely different from fictional fate or chance, or from a clockwork view of the universe. As someone has put it, ideas of providence without Christ are confusion, “a groping in the darkness. . . . The words of Christ, ‘No man cometh unto the Father but by Me’, apply as well for coming to the knowledge of the Father’s providence.”6
2The Westminster Confession of Faith, 5.
3Institutes of the Christian Religion, Beveridge ed, vol 1, p 179.
4John Dick (1764-1833), Lectures on Theology, 1846 ed, p 217.
5As in Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol 1, p 489.
6G C Berkouwer, The Providence of God, p 46.
(b) The providence of God is all-embracing. It is concerned with both the good and the bad actions of men. We can understand the inclusion of the good, but we must not exclude the evil. This is illustrated most significantly in the history of Joseph and in the history of Christ. “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Gen 50:20). “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:23). There are many other instances in Scripture where God is said to bring about His purposes by means of the wicked works of wicked men. Providence is concerned with the smallest matters as well as the largest. A God who did not control the smallest matters could not control the flow of history. Momentous consequences may follow seeming coincidences or trivialities, such as the babe Moses crying when discovered in his basket, so that Pharaoh’s daughter had compassion on him, or a bird hitting a windscreen and causing an “accident” in which someone central to world affairs would be killed.
(c) In His providence, God uses means and generally acts in accordance with well-established and recognised procedures. This is what makes scientific research and conclusions possible. This is what makes it possible for ordinary people to believe that what goes up will come down and that a certain course of action will be followed by certain consequences. What we call the laws of nature are just God’s ordinary way of working, and without them stable human life in this world would be impossible.
(d) When it pleases, God He can act in ways that are out of the usual, without, above or, indeed, against the means or methods He normally uses. This is what we know as the miraculous. A Dutch theologian comments that God “is great in might in the common things of life, but it is especially in the unusual deeds, the miraculous signs, that He arouses the attention and amazement of His people and shocks Israel’s enemies with the invincibility of His works. . . . These miracles are presented to us in the Scriptures without suggestion of anything problematic being created in the relation between God and nature. We are simply pointed to the invincibility of God, for whom nothing is too miraculous. His deeds are always inscrutable, His ways unsearchable. But we are shown in miracles the unexpected and surprising, which, in turn, suggests afresh His Divine invincibility.”7
(e) God works in such a way that, while His purpose is infallibly secured, those used as instruments are properly liable to approval or blame for their actions. No taint of the sin of those who, by their sin, bring about the secret purpose of God clings to Him. While the Fall of man was according to the
7Berkouwer, The Providence of God, pp 205,214.
infallible decree of God, the guilt is shared exclusively by Adam, Eve and Satan. God justly inflicts His curse upon them. In the passage already referred to in Acts 2, the hands which took and crucified Christ are described as wicked, and those whose hands they were are called to repentance as those who had set themselves up in opposition to God.
(f) The basis for our belief in the providence of God is His self-revelation. The word providence may not be found in the Bible, as the word Trinity is not found, but the doctrine is there. The seventeenth-century theologian Turretin suggests that “there is no need to heap up the Scripture passages establishing this point. They are almost as many as there are pages in the Bible, since nothing is inculcated more frequently, nothing more clearly, in the Word of God.”8
It is taught dogmatically. It is illustrated in the Biblical history. It is acknowledged in the experience and praises of God’s people recorded in the Bible. It is, for example, illustrated at length in Job (with its emphasis on the agency of Satan) and Esther (in such events as the sleeplessness of Ahasuerus at a critical point). It is illustrated in the Book of Psalms and in the history of Israel. “The preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord” (Prov 16:1). “O Lord, I know that the way of man is not in himself: it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer 10:23). “Nevertheless He left not Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave us rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness” (Acts 14:17). “He giveth to all life and breath and all things; and hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him, and find Him, though He be not far from every one of us: for in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:25-28). Although five sparrows were sold for a half-penny, not one is forgotten by God and He numbers the hairs of our heads (Luke 12:6,7). God “worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” (Eph 1:11). The Son of God is “upholding all things by the word of His power” (Heb 1:3). “And He is before all things and by Him all things consist” (Col 1:17). The chariot wheels of Ezekiel 1, with their wheels within wheels (v 16), and the opening of the sealed book in Revelation 5ff by Christ, present pictorially the workings and unfolding of providence. The very nature of God, as He is revealed in the Bible, makes us expect an all-embracing providence.
So, put quite simply, the doctrine of providence is that God has not abandoned His creation but continues personally and actively to sustain it
8Institutes of Elenctic Theology, vol 1, p 490.
and control it and direct it – in a way that pleases Him – towards the accomplishment of the purposes He has for it. This is true not only of the general course which the life of the individual and of the whole creation takes but also of each detail, good and bad. And all is done in the interests of God’s glory and His people’s salvation.