Providence

The God who upholds and governs

God did not finish the work of creation like a watchmaker who winds the spring and walks away. The Son is "upholding all things by His powerful word" (Hebrews 1:3), and "in Him all things hold together" (Colossians 1:17). The word comes from the Latin providentia, ‘foresight’, and so ‘provision’.

Jesus showed this care in the smallest things:

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from the will of your Father.

Matthew 10:29

God's rule reaches our plans: "A man's heart plans his course, but the LORD determines his steps" (Proverbs 16:9). It reaches even evil. Joseph, sold into slavery by his brothers, told them: "As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good" (Genesis 50:20). Yet God does no evil and is not its author. At the cross Jesus "was delivered up by God's set plan and foreknowledge" (Acts 2:23), and still those who put him to death were responsible for what they did.

Theologians have often spoken of three sides of providence: preservation, by which God keeps creatures in being; concurrence, by which he works in and with all their activity; and government, by which he directs all things to his ends. The Heidelberg Catechism gathers it up:

The almighty and every where present power of God, whereby, as it were by his hand, he still upholds heaven and earth, with all creatures, and so governs them 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.

Heidelberg Catechism, Q. 27

Where the traditions differ

All Christians confess that God rules all things, that he is good and not the author of sin, and that human beings are answerable for what they do; all reject both blind fate and blind chance. They differ in how they explain God's rule and human freedom standing together.

Reformed and Presbyterian churches confess that God from eternity ordained whatever comes to pass, yet in such a way that no violence is done to the will of creatures and the freedom of second causes is established rather than taken away Westminster Confession, ch. 3 (see the decrees of God). The Thomist tradition in the Catholic Church sees God as the first cause who moves free creatures to act freely, so that divine and human action are not rival forces on the same level Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. The Jesuit Luis de Molina proposed that God governs by a ‘middle knowledge’ of what every free creature would freely choose in any circumstance Molina, Concordia. The Wesleyan tradition teaches that God's providence reaches every particular, but that he foreknows and permits our free choices rather than ordaining them Wesley, On Divine Providence.

The Heidelberg Catechism names the fruit of this teaching: patience in adversity, thankfulness in prosperity, and a firm trust in our faithful Father for what is still to come (Q. 28). Providence is not an explanation to hand quickly to someone in pain, but a promise to hold in the dark. See the lesson Providence and Is God in control?