1. Providence Articles
    1. McClintock & Strong (Part V - Objections Answered)

McClintock & Strong on Providence

Objections and Answers

An infinitely good God caring for His creatures cannot be charged for the wicked acts of men.
God is as involved in the continued existence of man as in the rest of His creation. What must be remembered is that actions have no moral content on the part of man, it is the choice of his will that carries the moral charge. This leaves God free to use the actions of evil men to pursue His own good purpose without Himself participating in evil.
It degraded God's majesty to think of Him as concerned with every minor detail of creation.
What He has created is, by the very fact of His having created it, worthy of His attentive care. In human research, we often find great results coming of miniscule observations. Why would we think differently of Him in whose image we are created? Is it any less profound to see His hand in the intricacies of natural life, than it is to see Him moving in the cosmos?
Holy providence could not tolerate the wicked prospering and the righteous suffering.
The concerns of men are so intertwined that meting out justice to one can never be done without impacting others. Further, we must bear in mind that we have not seen the whole of God's justice in these matters, and cannot judge the propriety of the whole based on the little we see. Finally, if the righteous who suffer presently, are themselves satisfied as to the totality of God's activity towards them, what right have we who only observe the process to complain?
Providence is unnecessary, as the laws of nature suffice to explain the order of the universe.
The laws of nature can only describe the effects of that power which forms and controls nature, never the actual cause. The uniformity we see in nature are but the impact of God's providential working upon nature.

History

The doctrine of providence has shown up in many forms throughout the history of man.

Primitive superstition

Many of the gods of man in this period were representations of things seen in creation around them. Thus, in worshiping these gods, man was worshiping the world he knew. Zeus, Jupiter, Baal, Bel and others represented the sky. Demeter, Cybele, and the Anglo-Saxon Hertha were representative of earth. Neptune was the sea, and Phaebus or Apollo was the sun. The list goes on, and the same mindset shows in the philosophies of that time. First causes were sought first in the elements of creation, then in the non-physical elements, such as numbers. Others saw the world itself as a manifestation of God, the root of the pantheistic viewpoint. All of these contained the rudiments of providence in their thinking. Thus, Stoic belief taught that God was the force by which the universe worked, and Deity was the consciousness of that universe, with the human soul seen as an emanation of the universal consciousness. [Sound familiar, in a new-age kind of way?]

Distinctions seen between regular and irregular phenomena

As man noticed those events which diverged from the regular course of nature, they began to attribute these irregularities to acts of gods with human passions. Thus came the gods of chance: Minerva of wisdom, Mars of war, Mercury of eloquence, Pan of terror, Venus of beauty, Cupid of love, Nemesis of vengeance, and the like.

Monistic belief

Man progressed to understanding that there could be but one supreme and infinite God, perfect and sovereign over all. He was seen as using nature to pursue His will, changing its regular course as suits His purposes. Socrates saw this in part, taking the Judaic understanding, and adjusting it to understand God's special and general providences. This is the accepted belief of Christianity, confirmed in the Apostles' Creed. This belief has stood throughout the years since, a doctrine now of some 1500 years standing. It was to this foundation that the Catholics added the infallibility of the Church, and upon which Protestant understanding has supported the infallibility of Scripture. Both views assume and require the watchfulness of God over His creation, which is His Providence.

Dual Cause and General Cause

The majority view in both Catholic and Protestant belief is that every effect has two causes, a moral cause and an effectual cause. The effectual cause of every act is God, but the moral cause of man's actions lies with man. Thus, man is morally responsible for his sins. The Arminian viewpoint declares that God excites men to act in accord with their own nature, yet would agree that man is morally responsible for his sins. This view is shared in some sectors of the Roman church as well.

Occasionalism

This theory built upon the dual cause theory, but declared that God alone took action, and that men merely presented Him with an occasion to act. Thus, man was seen as being moved irresistibly in accord with God's own designs. This is the understanding of Malebranche, Schleiermacher, and Shweizer.

Division of Mind and Body

Leibnitz held that body and mind are in fact completely separate, that the mind's acts of volition are not directly tied to the actions of the body that appear to respond to that volition. The seeming correlation of volition to event is due solely to a pre-arranged harmony established between the two by God. God is kept from being tagged as imperfect in this view by blaming the state of creation on the nature of the monads that compose body and soul. There are echoes of Pythagoras, Plato, and Paracelsus in this view.

Mechanical Theory

This viewpoint sees man as having been given his powers at creation, and left to proceed as those powers dictate. Man becomes not much more than a wind-up clock. While some have accepted this theory, and even applied it to molecular science, as explaining the interactions we see there, it has been seen to proceed to a pantheistic end, where men such as Huxley have declared the self-evolving power of nature.

Providence as Law

In this viewpoint, the laws of nature are not subject to interference even by God. He is held to be perfect, yet the miraculous is denied. God, in this view, may not influence events except in accord with the laws of natural order. This was the view of Hippocrates.

Mind-Efficiency Theory

This view holds that there is no physical force except the mind. There is the divine mind, and the created mind, yet all that is in the universe exists and operates solely by the will of God.

Sound Doctrine

God is infinite in perfection. All is upheld by His direct actions. What we see as the laws of nature are but the typical methods of His working. He may occasionally create irregularities in those laws, and He may out and out interfere with those laws as He so determines. The law of His own nature is a higher law than that of nature, and so can justly supercede it. This viewpoint accepts the understanding of General Cause, with its view of man's free will. It also, claims the author, accepts Providence as Law, and the idea of Mind-Efficiency, but without the pantheistic tendencies. [I find this shocking, myself.]

Particular Providence

Whereas providence is the wisdom and power of God working to preserve creation for the accomplishment of His purposes, special or particular providence is that display of His power in emergency situations. Such acts are calculated moves, aimed at boosting conviction in a particular man, so that that particular man will pursue His interests, and recognize His guardianship.

Proof of Particular Providence

Moral Significance of Particular Providence

New Thoughts (10/28/02-10/29/02)

Well, I find at the end of this article that I have very mixed regard for the author's views. Some of what is declared here is just shockingly wrong. One wonders if perhaps the software version of their text developed some of these inaccuracies, or whether they are original to the paper source. Take, for instance, the closing definition of 'Sound Doctrine.' This starts out just fine. God is perfect. Agreed. All of creation is upheld by His direct activity. Check. The laws of nature are nothing more than our observations regarding the typical flow of His work in that regard. Yes.

God is free and just to break with the so-called laws of nature because the law of His own nature is a higher law, and takes precedence. Hmmm. OK, I suppose. Surely, however, God is free and just to operate outside the observed order of nature simply because the laws of nature, as we just established, are not laws at all, but merely observations of the typical? What justification is required to act apart from the typical pattern of things? What justification is required of me for choosing an alternate route to work, even though for the last decade or two I have predictably followed one course? No law has been established by my regular habit! How then, does God require justification to break with His own regular habits?

They accept the idea of general cause, rightly attributing the corrupt state of affairs on man's free will. Praise God, they don't go into the Arminian side of the equation, and claim that man's actions are but the result of God's exciting their wills to rebellion! How can one hold this view, and still claim that God is good? Is it not far more sound to declare that all that is good in us is solely due to His upholding hand? Is this not the testimony of Scripture? There is none good, not one. The worst that God can be charged with, then is allowing man to do what he will. Having once chosen corruption, man has enslaved himself to that corruption, and is no longer free to choose. His freedom is restricted to the corrupt course he has locked on to. It takes an act of God, it takes divine Redemption, to break the chains of that supposed freedom, and allow holiness to become an option once more!

However, the view of dual cause does make the propriety of God's actions a bit easier to see. If the moral content of the action lies in the will that chose to act, this is well and good. Man decides for himself how he will react to the situations he faces in each day. It is these reactive choices that define the moral accounting, the moral cause that produces the effect. Yet, God remains in control of His creation. The actions that may or may not proceed from these decisions of man are still His to stop or allow as His purposes dictate. Recall that Scripture itself teaches us that nothing is evil in itself. No mere thing is inherently evil. It is the choosing of how that thing is used that makes the difference. The Law of Moses was not evil, yet sin was able to use our reaction to that law to bring sin to life in us. Food is not evil, alcohol is not evil. However, when we insist on our right to eat a particular thing, or to drink in the presence of one who we know would be offended by our actions, sin has overtaken us in our choosing.

Here, we must recall that God works all things together for the good of those working in accord with His purpose. This is key! This is what assures us of His goodness. He is able to allow man his freedom to make moral mistakes. He is able to take the decisions of the most corrupt of men, and turn the actions resulting from those decisions to His own good purposes! Nebuchadnezzar was not choosing the course of righteousness in seeking to dominate the land, yet we are told repeatedly that he was a man of God's choosing. His actions were serving in God's purpose, and it was in God's purpose that all should be subjected to this man's rule for a time. Still, all things worked together for the good. History bears this out. God remains good, though He has been working through the activities of corrupt men. We would do well to remember this: being used by God does not make us godly. This is not the evidence we are told to go by. The fruit of the Spirit growing in our lives is the only evidence that matters. Our selfless love one for another is the evidence we are told will convict the world of the truth of the Bible; not our signs and wonders, not our eloquence, but our love!

Now, it seems, that the author's view of sound doctrine starts to elude me. He claims that sound doctrine upholds the idea of Providence as Law, especially with regard to miracles. Yet, the definition we are provided for that Providence as Law viewpoint denies the very possibility of miracles. How can we claim a Scriptural viewpoint is contained here, when the record of Scripture shows God breaking through the laws of nature with a fair degree of regularity? How can we claim that He is constrained to work within this law, when the Scriptures tell repeatedly of His activities outside such constraints? How can we claim that He is constrained by something that is no more than a description of our observations of the norm? Again, observations are not constraints, only descriptions. They can bind nothing.

Again, the offered definition degrades, accepting the dualism presented in the Mind-Efficient theory. Oh, they write, we don't hold to the pantheistic nature of the thing, just the theory. But, the theory is inherently pantheistic! True, God upholds the whole of creation by His will. Yet, there is nothing in that which requires that we deny the physical portion of the man whom He has created! This slips back to the earliest heresies, where the flesh was seen as the evil part of man, and the spirit as the good part. This is not the Scriptural viewpoint, and never has been. Man's corruption apart from his Redeemer is complete! There's no good part of man reserved from the effects of the Fall. Many false religions have cropped up around this idea of man's dual nature, yet God has created us with one nature, we are one as He is One. We are created in His image. This Mind-Efficient theory smacks of the 'dream of God' view of creation which eastern religions have long put forth. We are not a dream of God. We are real flesh and blood, operating in the midst of a real creation, with real thoughts, real choices, and real consequences.

God's providential acts continue to uphold all that is. Through Him, all things hold together. Is this not the testimony of Scripture? As is later noted, every Christian that ever was, and every Christian that ever will be, can attest to His personal activity in their own lives. It's a rare believer that cannot attest to at least some event where God has 'moved heaven and earth' for their preservation! How can we fail to be astounded by the simple fact that He can and does use us in His own good purposes? How can we fail to rejoice that He so uses us in spite of all our failings! In His providential activities, He has preserved us from our own poor judgment, He has protected us from things which should have been our undoing, He has spoken into our lives until our eyes and understanding were opened to see what He had been doing all along. What an awesome God we serve!

Laws cannot cause. This is one of the greatest fallacies of our day, that the laws of nature somehow do more than simply describe our observations. The attempt has been made to assign power to these laws, creative power. However, as many have said before, nothing plus nothing cannot create something. There is no power in law. It is nothing. It is only description. Attempts to attribute the creation of Creation to these laws of nature are abject foolishness. The laws of nature cannot create, any more than laws regarding the speed limit can create traffic moving at that speed. Cars are not powered by the speed limit. Creation, likewise, is not powered by those things that describe its typical operation. Nor is the God who by His power did create bound by such descriptions. The fact of the typical does not make the atypical an impossibility. At best, it makes the atypical atypical.

Alright. There's a couple of other points this article made that I find problematic. First, there is a claim made that the progression of man's religious understanding moved from the array of gods typical of much early culture to the monotheistic viewpoint. This view of the progression, if I understand correctly, has been a fairly longstanding viewpoint. However, I find part of what was said here points out the problem with that view. In saying that man progressed to this monotheistic view, the author points out that 'man,' in this case was adopting what the Jews already knew. How, then, is this a progression in the viewpoint of man? Man, in the Jewish faith, already had a long-standing declaration that God is One. The fact of pluralistic viewpoints in the surrounding cultures does not degrade the truth of their own belief, and the truth of its early presence in the history of mankind. Man did not begin in Greece. Greek adoption of the truth, even if they were the dominant culture of the time, does not become man's adoption of the truth. That it was adopted at all requires that it have been adopted from somewhere else.

I know there are other scholars out there who are now averring that monotheism is indeed older than polytheism. Some of the things we find in the records of older civilizations seem to indicate this trend. Whether we can know with certainty which came first, I don't know. What we can know with certainty is that the Lord our God is One. And, we can know that in His Oneness, He is a triune God: one in essence, three in person. We know that He is three in person because we know He loves, and love requires an other to love. Love must have an object. Communion requires some other with which to commune. God had in Himself that other. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have known this love and communion through all eternity. And, as they are one, so Jesus prayed that we might be one: unique in our persons, but one in our spirit and purpose: one in our pursuit of God's will.

Here's another point that bothered me about this article: We are told that God's purpose in creation was not only to reveal His infinite worth, but to show Himself worthy of our love. I find this last part very hard to take. The primary purpose of man is certainly to glorify God (to reveal His infinite worth), and to enjoy God (because He is worthy). All creation glorifies Him. All creation declares His great worth. It strikes me as particularly arrogant to think that He has some reason to prove Himself worthy of us! We, who are so thoroughly unworthy of His kind attentions have no room to be seeking proof of His worth. He has declared His love for us, and He has shown His love for us. He has shown His love for us in the face of our rebellious attitude. He has shown His love for us even as we despised that love. God has nothing to prove to man.

I really do not see that this is God's primary purpose in creation. No. Creation was an act of love, not a proof of love. Creation was an act of revelation. All creation reveals who the Creator is, what He is like. This is part of Paul's attack on the sinner's defenses. There is no defense in claims of not having heard about what Jesus did. Ignorance cannot be claimed, because everything around us shouts out that there is a God, and that He is most assuredly active in the universe of His creation. That which we cannot directly see of His essential nature, we can see in the things He has put His hands to. We can know of Him through what He has made.

Is it not, after all, the same with us? When we create, when we, for instance, compose a song or paint a picture, there is much about ourselves that will be reflected in that creation of ours. We cannot help but put some of what is in us into everything that we create outside of ourselves. An angry soul will create angry pictures and angry songs. A bitter soul will produce bitter works. It is a fact of life. How, then, would we expect anything different from our God? He has created us in His image. We need look no further than ourselves to begin understanding our Creator. Yet, there remains that which we must understand about ourselves before we can extrapolate from there to God's nature. We must understand our fallen nature before we can contemplate His holiness. We must understand the root of our sinfulness before we can contemplate His righteousness. Thanks be to God that He has given us a means of gaining that understanding, that He has left a record of important truth upon which we can build a true view both of ourselves and of Him!

So. In spite of the flaws I see in the article, there remain some wonderful truths to consider. First, I want to affirm that knowing His providential care does indeed build hope. But, let me make clear that head knowledge won't suffice by itself. Nor, I think, will experiential knowledge by itself be enough. Experience without understanding will leave us nothing better than the Fates of Greek mythology, or 'Lady Luck' if you prefer. Experience may make us feel that we lead a charmed life, but that's not hope. If that's all we have, we'll find ourselves crushed by the first event that comes against us.

On the other hand, if all we had was the teaching that God moves in these providential ways, but could see nothing in our lives that confirmed this to be true in our particular case, there would remain no hope. We would be stuck with those who think that God's power somehow dropped off rather drastically after the founding of the church, that miracles and wonders may have occurred back then, but they certainly don't happen now. Knowing what His providence is will not carry us through trials unless we have also experienced what His providence is. It is the combination of the two that produces hope, and allows us to persevere when things turn sour. We are able to 'meet the challenges of life with the full resources of both mind and faith.'

Faith is not blind. God does not insist that we leave our minds at the door. No! He welcomes the intellect that He created. He welcomes reasoned questions from His children. How better to teach? What sort of foundation can we have in a faith based on nothing? Again, we must face the fact that nothing cannot become something on its own. If our faith is in spite of reason, if our faith requires that we ignore what our minds know to be true, then our faith is an empty thing. It is no foundation at all, and any edifice we attempt to erect upon it will fail utterly at the first strong wind of opposition. It is a faith that has been thought through that cannot be shaken. It is a reasonable faith come to by a reasonable creature as he considers and studies what is knowable of his reasonable Creator.

This faith will find itself confirmed in the experiences of life. Experiential knowledge will reinforce learned knowledge will reinforce true faith. And upon that foundation, we can safely build our hopes. That faith will withstand the greatest challenges of life, because both mind and faith can be brought to bear. Indeed, you will not find one Christian out there whose life experience has not confirmed to him over and over again that God moves in special ways, in ways individually tuned to the particular person in their particular need at each particular moment. I have seen it even in the course of pursuing this study. The very timing of God's prompting me to look into this subject has been a constant source of strength through a rather difficult stretch of time. I have been overawed at how, in keeping me looking into this topic, He has kept my hope strong.

I have seen Him move in the particulars of a given day to display that providence I have been studying. Again, it becomes a combination of both book learning and experience. The real world is shown to behave as His truth tells me to expect it will behave. He has not left me with only dusty historical events that show how He did such things once upon a time. No! He has given me proof in my life and before my eyes that He has not changed. He still does such things for His children here and now. Oh, if we only had the eyes to see all that He does on our behalf! If only we, with our 'great and superior technical advancements,' could grasp the reality of God's active involvement in every moment and every breath!

I think our perceived advancements have left us in a place more precarious to our spiritual well-being than any time in man's history. We have become so confident in our own knowledge, in our comprehension of the typical order of the universe, that we have become completely blind to the Cause behind it all. We have fooled ourselves into thinking that knowing the laws of nature explains everything. It explains nothing, for it cannot even begin to answer the critical questions. All we are left with is "Creation for Dummies." We can understand, perhaps how it works, but we are given absolutely no answers for why it works.

God has given us the why to go with our how. He has not left us in the darkness of our ignorant knowledge. He has not left us to be wise fools. Man without an understanding of God is left, as our article says, as an orphan stranded in a godless world. But God has answered that lonely place. He has declared that we are His children. He has declared the adoption complete, and He has shown Himself to be a loving Father to His adopted children, caring for us as His own. This is what His providence is all about, the loving care of an infinitely good Father for His children. This is the confidence we have, that we can come to Him not as a fearful tyrant God, but as our loving Father. We can know that He is indeed all-powerful, and yet at the same time, know that His love for us is just as infinite as His power. We can be certain of our safety in confiding in Him, confiding both our hopes and our fears, our joys and our sorrows, our understanding and our questions. He is big enough to take everything we choose to bring to Him, and He is loving enough to provide the best answers. He is loving enough to deny us the things we pursue to our own detriment. He is loving enough to save us.

In considering how great is His personal care over us, we must come to the same conclusion that this article does: We have an incredibly strong incentive to live a virtuous life. We often blind ourselves to this incentive, and become convinced that if we can just hide our sin from man, then it will be alright. But God is not one who can be hidden from. Whether any other sees or not, God sees, and seeing, God cares. He cares enough to bring correction, for He cannot bear to look upon sin yet He longs to look upon His children with the love of a doting Father. He is so thoroughly involved in caring for us, in watching over us, that He cannot possibly miss our mistakes. Knowing this, how can we not do our utmost to pursue a life of righteousness? How can we bear to sin, knowing that He sees it in us and sorrows greatly over it? How can we so easily forget that we live out our lives before the face of God, our loving Father?

Lord, this has been a most wonderful study You have led me through. I thank You for Your sense of timing. I thank You for the wonders of Your revelation to us. I thank You for being there through my difficult times, holding me up by the power of Your great love. Indeed, You have fed me both in mind and in spirit. You have blessed me with a greater understanding, and confirmed that understanding to my spirit by Your actions. You have shown me yet again how active You have been in my life throughout, even in the times before I accepted that You were who You say You are. How can I ever hope to thank You sufficiently for what You have done? It is not possible, yet I would try.

You have called me to the life of a living sacrifice, to a life of intentional righteousness, and I know I have failed of that calling. I know, when I consider the last thoughts I have put down here, that I am speaking to myself. How can I forget so easily, Father? How can I do the things I do, knowing how much it hurts You? You have set me free from these matters, yet I have allowed myself to become entangled in them once more. I can only cry out to You to free me once more. I can only cry out to You to keep these eyes open, to keep this mind and spirit attentive to Your voice, that I may not stumble and fall again. I consider the things You have orchestrated even in the last day to wake me up to how miserably I have been acting even in Your own house, and I am awed once again by Your care over me.

Why should you care? What reason do I have to expect that You wouldn't just give up and leave me to follow my own path to destruction? There is nothing in me to recommend me to Your consideration. Yet, I know Your love! I stand amazed. Oh, that I might knows such love in myself! Oh! That Your image would grow in me, that You would raise me to the full stature of a son of God, so that the love You have shown towards me, I might show towards others. That's what it's all about, isn't it, Lord? It's the overwhelming wonder of Your love towards me, a loveless and unlovely sinner, that has saved me. It's that same love, in spite of what that love's object may be like at the moment, that will bring others to see Your magnificence. All praise be to Your name! Bring that reality in me, Father. Make of me a true witness to the truth of Your great care.