Divine Providence

God's Love and Human Freedom

Bruce R. Reichenbach

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781498292856
• eBook ISBN: 9781498292863
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

We ask God to involve himself providentially in our lives, yet we cherish our freedom to choose and act. Employing both theological reflection and philosophical analysis, the author explores how to resolve the interesting and provocative puzzles arising from these seemingly conflicting desires. He inquires what sovereignty means and how sovereigns balance their power and prerogatives with the free responses of their subjects. Since we are physically embodied in a physical world, we also need to ask how this is compatible with our being free agents. Providence raises questions about God's fundamental attributes. The author considers what it means to affirm God's goodness as logically contingent, how being almighty interfaces with God's self-limitation, and the persistent problems that arise from claiming that God foreknows the future. Discussion of these divine properties spills over into the related issues of why God allows, or even causes, pain and suffering; why, if God is all-knowing, we need to petition God repeatedly and encounter so many unanswered prayers; and how miracles, as ways God acts in the world, are possible and knowable. Throughout, the author looks at Scripture and attends to how providence deepens our understanding of God and enriches our lives.

Chapter 1

Providence and Sovereignty

To reach the distant mountain of Moriah required a grueling three-day trek by foot. Abraham loaded the dusty donkey with provisions sufficient for the trip and rough firewood to burn on the altar to be constructed from coarse mountain stones. Two servants carried the remaining accoutrements needed for the arduous journey and the unspoken event. Again and again Abraham played out the sacrifice scenario in his mind as they determinately walked. A long climb up the steep mountain; unrelenting thorn bushes grabbing at the billowing robes; loose rocks sliding under foot and tumbling haphazardly down the slope behind them; the gathering heat of the day turning their heavy clothes damp with sweat. Together the father and son struggled up the mountain with the wood, brazier, and knife. Hauling on his back the dry wood for the burnt offering, Isaac read Abraham’s mind and asked the hitherto unspoken question, “The fire and wood are here, but where is the lamb for the sacrifice?” Abraham had prepared for that inquiry, circling around it in his mind for the three days and nights since God spoke to him in a startling dream. “God himself will provide the lamb for the sacrifice, my son” (Gen 22:8).

God provides. God’s last minute intervention to provide a sacrificial lamb exhibited it. In naming the place Jehovah Jireh, Abraham affirmed it. “And to this day it is said, ‘On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided’” (Gen 22:14). The destiny of the two participants in their roles as providing the blessing for all nations on earth established it. Among all his glorious titles affirming presence, strength, and observation, Yahweh is named “provider.”

The central theme of providence

Scripture repeatedly recounts the intentional actions of the providential God. The instances are too numerous to record here, but a sampling affords evidence of the diversity with which the biblical writers interpreted God’s hand in the events they experienced. They see divine providence spreading a wide umbrella over both natural and human events.

God provides for nature and through nature for humans. For the earth and its living things God sends rain (Job 5:10; Isa 43:20; Matt 5:45); for the birds and animals, wild and domestic, he provides food (Job 38:41; Ps 147:9). Even the lowly common sparrow cannot fall without God knowing and consenting (Matt 10:29). Scripture does not inform us about the means by which God cares for nature, only that nature’s features indicate that it falls under God’s knowledge, power, and provision.1

God provides for all nations and peoples. For all, God produces rain and storms, “crops in their seasons,” and “food in abundance” (Job 36:31; Acts 14:17). The Old Testament writers reiterate that God directs his care most particularly, but not exclusively (Egypt is his people, Assyria his handiwork [Isa 19:23–25]), toward Israel. In the often-recounted exodus story, God sends inarticulate Moses to the Israelites to deliver them from slavery (Exod 3), provides a Passover lamb as protection from the deathly plague that struck dead the Egyptian firstborn (Exod 12), guides by a pillar of fire at night and a concealing cloud of protection during the day (Exod 13:21), drops manna in the desert (Exod 16), gushes water from the rocks where there seems to be none (Exod 17:5–6), and brings decisive victory on the battlefield (Deut 7:17–24). God blesses the Israelites with fertile land (Ezek 34:29), with rain for their crops, plentiful harvests, pasture land, and healing (Isa 30:23–26). God brings peace and prosperity (Jer 33:9).

Biblical stories tell that God especially cares and provides for individuals. On the murderer Cain God placed an undeserved mark of protection (Gen 4:15); gave Noah and his family plans for the wooden ark, whereby they could save themselves and representative animals to re-populate the world (Gen 6:14–17); preserved David from the violent madness of Saul (1 Sam 23:14); saved the life of fleeing Jonah by means of a great fish when he was tossed overboard into the roiling sea (Jonah 1:17); and rescued the apostles from prison (Acts 5:19) and Peter from the deadly clutches of Herod (Acts 12:6–11).

God provides not only for our physical but also for our spiritual needs, offering redemption (Ps 111:9), a savior (John 3:16), and adoption into God’s family (Eph 1:5). Providential escape from temptation (1 Cor 10:13), the Spirit to guide us into truth (John 16:13), and the Scriptures for our teaching, training, and correction (2 Tim 3:16) supplement the Christian inventory. From our birth to death (Ps 139) God sees and cares, assuring us of his sufficiency through the metaphor of knowing the number of hairs on our head (Matt 10:30). Paul aptly sums it all up: God “richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (1 Tim 6:17).

These intentional, providential actions flow from God’s goodness (his benevolence), power, and knowledge, and are manifested in his actions toward us. From beginning to end, God providentially intervenes, both indirectly through nature (e.g., Paul and Silas are rescued from prison through an earthquake—Acts 16:25–26) and directly in our affairs. Providence lies at the core of the biblical text. Although the biblical writers see God’s guiding and caring hand in many events, two repeatedly stand out as central. The Old Testament most frequently refers to the providential rescue of Israel from slavery in Egypt (Pss 105 & 136). In the exodus story God provides for his covenant people liberation from bondage through Moses and Aaron, sustenance through manna and water in the desert, and the possibility for a prosperous future in a new rich environment. The providence exhibited in the exodus foretokens God’s rescue centuries later of a remnant from captivity in Babylon. Matthew recalls it to shape in part his Jesus birth story. The other is the theme of the New Testament, presaged in the Abrahamic story with which we began this chapter. God’s incarnational, deadly, atoning provision majestically but terribly reveals divine providence. Christ’s death brings salvation from sin, healing from the effects of sin, and restoration of the relationship with God destroyed by sin. In short, God’s love, care, provision, and protection constitute the running theme of the biblical text; from the beginning, where the creator God sees everything as good, they form the undeniable center around which the biblical stories, psalms of praise, interpreted historical events, prophetic pleas, theological teachings, and deeds of Jesus weave their web of narrative, songs, and discourse.

Providence and plans

Although “providence” literally means “to foresee,” as applied theologically to God it refers more broadly to God’s active loving care for, beneficial actions on behalf of, and guidance of his creation than to any passive observation or witnessing. Divine providence exhibits at least three dimensions of God. First, it proclaims God’s goodness insofar as God declares what he makes to be good and through love and grace seeks the good of blessing for what he created. God in his goodness is the source of blessing or happiness.2 Second, providence presupposes God’s power by which God realizes his purposes by his actions in the cosmos and, more especially, in the affairs of humanity. Third, providence invokes God’s wisdom revealed in his plans and purposes, to his understanding of the present and future, by which God directs us to what is good for us. (We will address God’s goodness in chapter 4, God’s power in chapters 5 and 6, and God’s knowledge in chapters 7 and 8.)

Scripture reveals that God has purposes for the universe as a whole, for groups and nations, and for particular individuals. For the cosmos God intends “to sum up all things in heaven and on earth in Christ” (Eph 1:10). What this means practically is unclear, but perhaps the thought is that Christ will not only be the head of the continuing church (Eph 1:22; 4:15)3 but also the cosmic focal point in the end times. According to Paul, God also has intentions or purposes for groups of individuals, for nations, and for his church. For example, God intended to bring the gentiles into the family of God to be joint heirs with Israel (Eph 2:13–22). For human persons God wills that all be saved (2 Pet 3:9), so that they conform to Christ’s image (Rom 8:39) and God can show “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us” (Eph 2:7). The content of the providential plan for people emphasizes salvation, healing, sanctification, and blessing. For particular individuals God has special purposes and callings. God selected reluctant Moses to deliver Israel and hiding Saul to be the first king of Israel (Exod 3; 1 Sam 9:15), chose Jeremiah as a prophet to deliver the word of the Lord (Jer 1:5–9), dramatically called Saul (later, Paul) to be God’s messenger to the gentiles (Acts 9:15–16), and commissioned Peter to feed Christ’s flock (John 21:15–17).

To realize his providential purposes, God institutes plans of action that might involve particular individuals or, corporately, nations. In Abraham he intended to bring about a nation through which all nations would be blessed (Gen 12:1–3). God worked through Pharaoh to release Israel from captivity (Exod 9:16), through Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonians to punish Judah for abandoning God, and through Cyrus to restore the Jews to their land (Isa 44:28). Through the Messiah, God instigates and carries out his plan to redeem humanity and destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8).

One has to be careful, however, to discern how much one can generalize from these particular cases of individual callings to the claim that all individuals are specifically called to particular tasks. In many instances we might understand what we do as God’s calling in the sense that we incorporate the presence of God into the task, situation, and community. This understanding can be termed our vocation or calling: God calls us to bring him into what we do, making him an essential aspect of our being and doing, wherein we take pleasure in our doing and serve others. We can discern our calling in a variety of ways: through a realistic understanding and assessment of our talents and abilities, through the insightful guidance and astute counseling of others, but most of all through the joy we find in our work or avocation. We truly have found our vocation or avocation when what we do productively coincides with what brings us delight, when we would rather not be doing anything else to fulfill ourselves in relating to, serving, and meeting the needs of others. But generally vocation is not to be understood in the sense that God wants you to do this particular task in contrast to everything else, such that engaging in any other task runs counter to God’s will for you. This latter, when pressed, can lead to guilt and despair when the circumstances militate against or remove opportunities to do what we think is God’s will for us or when we find what we do unfulfilling but cannot escape it.

We might put our point this way: to say that God has purposes and plans for his creation says nothing about their scope. Does God’s plan or purpose cover every detail of human history and personal experience, or are his plans often more general and only at times specific? The former is referred to as meticulous providence: nothing happens apart from specific divine planning; everything accords with God’s will. According to this frequently articulated view, God has a master plan or blueprint filled in complete detail, not only for the universe but also for each of us. All events that we experience express features of what God has carefully conceived for our lives; our role is to discover as best we can how all the diverse events fit into the whole of God’s plan and what we can do to perfectly conform to his program for us and others. God predetermined his plan and as all-powerful controls all aspects of our existence as he capably works to realize that plan. Thus, believers in meticulous providence say that whatever happens to them—good, bad, or indifferent—is part of God’s plan; God has and works his purpose in each event that he realizes.

Many often support their broad view of the detailed scope of God’s plans by citing Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the thoughts (machashebeth) that I think (chashab) toward you, says the Lord, thoughts (machashebeth) of peace (shalom), and not of evil, to give you an expected end (acharith).” The passage is ambiguous, as the various translations exhibit. Machashebeth comes from chashab (to think, account, or plan). The KJV translates machashebeth as “thoughts,” as it does the similar passage of Psalm 40:5 (see also Ps 33:11). The TNIV translates both instances as “plans” (but “purposes” in Ps 33:10–11). The RSV and the English Standard Version translate machashebeth in Ps 40:5 as “thoughts,” while they render it in Jeremiah 29:11 as “plans.” The two—“thoughts” and “plans”—convey very different meanings and connotations, such that how the versions render the passage depends upon the determinate perspectives of the translators. The context of the Jeremiah passage is a letter sent from Jeremiah to the exiles dwelling in Babylon, telling them to make the best of their situation, since they will reside there for seventy years. By the end the exiled adults will have died and new generations will take over. But, Jeremiah assures them, God will fulfill his promise to bring the exiles back to Jerusalem; this is the expected and promised end. To eventually return them to their homeland and to reestablish them in peace are the good thoughts or plans that the Lord has.

If divine thoughts are in view in this passage, there is little to support meticulous providence. The thoughts present no worked-out scenario of repatriation, no list of who will and who will not return, and no details about how God will orchestrate it all. The point of the passage is the reassurance that God has not forgotten them even though they live in distant exile, hundreds of miles away from their former homes in Judah. Faithful to his promise, God will certainly restore the exiles—not those taken captive, but through their corporate identity he’ll restore the exiles through their descendants—to their longed-for homeland.

Even if one follows the TNIV and RSV and translates machashebeth as “plans,” there still is little to recommend meticulous providence rather than a general plan in the Jeremiah (or Psalms) text. We get no indication here that the Lord has a plan all worked out how the descendants will return, which descendants (since more stayed in Babylon than returned), under what conditions, and at exactly what date. Rather, although the plan is general, Jeremiah assures his listeners that God’s promises are part of his overall purpose to restore exiled Judah. The purpose is there; the means are sketchy.

Although in one sense a belief in meticulous providence—that nothing happens apart from what God has planned, intended, and willed for the good of us, others, and indeed, all creation—is comforting, this view encounters serious difficulties when we think about the significant number of dysteleological events that we find difficult to consistently reconcile with a meticulous divine plan for our good. Some events bring unrelieved pain, serious suffering, and dysfunction that seem individually unrequited. Other events introduce obstacles to our realizing our perceived vocation. On the large scale it is difficult, if not impossible, to think that Stalin’s ruthless pogroms and murders in the Katyn Forest, the deadly deportation marches of the Armenians, Hitler’s racial cleansing and hideous concentration camps, Pol Pot’s massacres of his Cambodian people, the brutal Hutu genocide against the Tutsis in Rwanda, the Serbian massacres of Bosnian Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, and the tragic slaughters by ISIS in Syria and Iraq are part of God’s plan for the good of the people affected. It is difficult, if not impossible, to think that the colonial, degrading plantation enslavement and mistreatment of Africans and the American will...

Table of contents

• Preface
• Chapter 1: Providence and Sovereignty
• Chapter 2: Providence and Freedom
• Chapter 3: Freedom and Agency
• Chapter 4: God and Goodness
• Chapter 5: God as Omnipotent
• Chapter 6: God as Almighty
• Chapter 7: God’s Knowledge
• Chapter 8: The Open View of God’s Knowledge
• Chapter 9: When Providence Seems Absent
• Chapter 10: Providence and Petitionary Prayer
• Chapter 11: Providence and Miracles
• Chapter 12: Enjoying the Provider
• Bibliography