Mark W. Elliott - Providence Perceived: Divine Action from a Human Point of View

The early Christian writers were keen to show how Christianity showed a freedom that was purposeful, because it built on a creation order that manifested those values. If one might view him as synthesing much of the patristic thinking on the matter, then Augustine conceived of providence as intelligent, that God has a relationship of ordaining and ordering towards creation. Providence works on a cosmic scale, relating to groups (human race, church) before it comes down to individuals, yet it is for the individual who is pursued by supernatural grace to see how the divine cosmic plan has a place for him or her. How providence works in individual lives remains mostly hidden, with glimpses at odd moments, and is more clearly visible in key turning-points of public history. When individuals embrace it, then the prevenient grace working within them leads them towards providence.

With Boethius as representative of a less confident Christian society, Providence became more transcendent, even aloof, as it remained in heaven as a surveying presence there. Fortune and Philosophy moved in to fill the gap. With Eriugena too, it was not some intermediary world-soul but the Spirit Himself, understood as the divine power of a divine mind, who fulfilled the task of continuing creation and perfecting it while doing so, yet this was done to creation rather than inviting creatures to find their historical place within a divine plan. The earlier Middle Ages did not believe in the progress of nature, or the spiritualising of it, but in the revelation of God through misfortune so that there could be spiritual progress for souls, despite the worlds darkness and senescence (so, Hugh). This pessimism about this world could lead to an eschatological mentality, wherein the monastic movement was the harbinger of a new world taking shape, with Christs presence becoming stronger in the world until his return became inevitable. The theology of the Byzantine early middle ages insisted on free will against the insidious temptations of cosmic monism (Islamic determinism) or cosmic dualism (forces both divine and Satanic). Not all suffering is evil if the right reaction to it is chosen.

In Scholastic Theology Providence became even more strongly a doctrine about the Being of God, as reflecting on the combination of Divine Intellect and Will. Dominicans stressed both the Generosity and the Omniscience of God, with Predestination in the order of redemption as being more like an executive decision in time, posterior to the providential divine disposition. Franciscans held providence to be less a plan in the Divine Mind and more the exercise of that will. In that sense the Franciscans were true both to Augustine with his emphasis on the Creator-creation relationship, but also forward-thinking. Later medieval thinkers preferred to see Providence as to do with signposts in creation which gave persons a certain freedom to respond intelligently, rather than seeing Providence in overly directive terms. For Aquinas there was no sense of God being one cause among others, but that did now seem appropriate: divine and creaturely freedom in proportion allowed the affective to be effective, even while resistible. Causality could be viewed as transferred rather than as delegated or secondary, with an immediacy in creation, yet with other causes also being available. God could be related to and one could come to share in his providential detachment, even while trusting ones senses as the best way of being informed about life. One could have a prudential wisdom about the future and this in the image of God.

For Luther, Gods larger plans and providence in all His freedom and creativity were not accessible to the human mind, but graciously, guidance for ones own and family life could be glimpsed and even grasped. Special providence was not restricted to believers, since it works off the back of divinely instituted and guided institutions such as family, law, government (Melanchthon) and also culture and the arts (Calvin), but believers are able to recognise it and see God and Christ in it. With the later Reformation, Providence seemed more like judgement, with only a remnant remaining, as Predestination took over Providence, or at least stamped it indelibly. However in Bullinger, and in a continuing tradition, providence was an assurance of everyday goodness, even as the end of the Age approached.

The early modern interest in natural science led to a love of details in a period when theology seemed to be at in impasse in a divided Europe. Although some like Newton believed passionately in a God active in the world (while not belonging to the world as per some pantheism), the Enlightenment confidence affirmed a dignified freedom of humanity through reason. If concursus was a doctrine that intended to guard Gods part in human affairs, by the eighteenth century it served more to guarantee humanitys part in divine affairs. With an increase in subjectivity as the foundation of religion, providence got easily conflated with guidance or vocation, so long as (in Schleiermachers view) the things perceived were significant and not trivial. God remained at a height above the all. The humanity of Christ gave moral guidance to help plot ones way in life.

It will be observed that in the review of the last half-century or so on theology of providence, the particular theories of Process Theology and the Theologies in the light of Natural Science have been left to one side, or only mentioned in passing. If this means presupposing a particular theology and a particular Anthropology, then the justification for this can be sought in the following chapters. There are three things to notice in the recent Protestant treatments of the doctrine, which one could almost call trends: the turn to continuous creation to speak of the maintaining of creation, formerly known as conservation; the responsiveness of God in the concursus (a co-operation with creatures); the escha-tologising and simultaneously the universalising and developmental-constructive nature of gubernatio.

In what sense are the three components of the traditional understanding of the doctrine: conservatio, concursus and gubernatio to be preserved at all costs? These are not different actions, but three aspects of one Divine work that has been ongoing ever since creation. Translated into theological sense these mean, respectively, that God has to engage with the forces of chaos and un-creation unleashed or given access to the world through human sin, that he has to work with human agents, and hence there is a place primarily although not exclusively for the church, and that he has to steer the rudder in order to correct the direction that a sequence of events is taking, not least when human assertion of creaturely freedom is deceived into compulsive and uncontrollable tendencies. This might seem to make Gods Sovereignty look rather limited, with only the reassurance that the eschaton will bring him a full degree of control. (That is of course what Barth allows, while not wanting to speculate overly much on that latter scenario.) Conceived of in this way, conservatio and gubernatio amount to the same thing, leaving only concursus as the area for discussion. The former two could be accounted for through deistic-sounding principles of teleological moral law built into the world: opposing or straying from these will eventually prove ones undoing. Concursus however requires a consideration of hand to hand combat (of the Jacobs Ladder sort).