I. Human Reason and Divine Revelation
Where do we get our information about God’s providence from? On what basis do we build our understanding of God’s providence? These questions are important because many times the discussion of this matter begins from the Bible but then the discussion drifts to the arena of reason, shifting the question to: what is the most logical view of providence? This is not to say that the Bible is against reason, but first, we must ask: what is reason, and how do we determine if something is reasonable? What is the correct relationship between divine revelation and reason? We cannot put these two things on an equal footing, especially considering what the Bible says about human thought and human reason.
Being created in God’s image implies that humans can understand God’s revelation. One of the special capacities given to humans in creation is intellect or reason. Reason is the God-given faculty by which human beings can think and act according to logical forms. Through reason, they can also form beliefs, draw inferences, and formulate arguments. However, humans are dependent on God’s revelation to gain knowledge. Cornelius Van Til explains this principle by saying that human knowledge is essentially a reinterpretation of God’s interpretations.3 Van Til contends that “the self-existent God is the original of which man is the derivative.”4 In addition to this Creator-creature distinction, Scripture teaches that human capacities have been dramatically distorted by the Fall. As Van Til asserts “the human mind as it exists today should not only be thought of as derivative but should also be thought of as ethically depraved.”5 The Bible assumes that humans by nature became corrupt after the Fall, meaning that they reject the things of God. After the Fall, humans became enemies of God and did not accept to be subject to God and under his authority. The Fall, in essence, represents a desire to be independent from God and to even to take his place. We must keep these facts in mind as we think about how human beings perceive God’s providence.
Given this description of the human reason, is there any room for it as we approach divine revelation? Of course, yes. How can we understand divine revelation without thinking? We use our minds to understand the words in the Bible and their relationship to each other. However, the human problem is not merely intellectual; it is also spiritual and moral. This affects the way we discuss the biblical doctrine of the divine providence. As we approach the Bible and begin to understand what it teaches about providence, objections rise. These objections do not aim to provide an interpretation that contradicts the biblical text, but stem from the biblical teaching no longer being pleasing to our human reason. Examples of these objections include, “But this means we are not free?” Or “This means we are puppets?” These objections here are not necessarily based on biblical ground but rather depends on human experience, which certainly shows that we are not puppets. In other words, according to the biblical teaching on providence, God is completely in control of human beings including all their decisions. Many see this as inconsistent with their experiential freedom, leading to the rejection of this teaching.
Ironically, this rejection of the biblical teaching on divine providence does not necessarily come from non-Christians or those who deny the authority of the Scripture. In fact, many who profess that the Bible is the authoritative word of God and that they believe in God’s sovereignty still struggle with this concept. The question is: what do they mean by God’s sovereignty? Delving deeper into more detailed questions about divine providence often reveals that their belief in God’s sovereignty does not align with the teachings of Scripture. Even more perplexing is that different people, all claiming to believe in God’s sovereignty, can provide varying answers to these detailed questions. Therefore, to correctly understand God’s providence and sovereignty, we must derive these meanings from God’s revelation of Himself in the Bible, even if this challenges our preconceived notions. There is a significant difference between understanding what the Bible says about God and trying to make the Bible say what we want about God.
II. Two Dangers
Before going further, it is necessary to adhere to the revelation that God gives through his word. There are two dangers we need to be aware of as we approach God’s revelation on any doctrine in general, including divine providence. On the one hand, one must not go beyond the limits of the divine revelation of Himself in the Holy Scriptures and describe God in ways far beyond what he says about Himself. Sometimes Christians reach certain limits that they cannot cross in terms of divine revelation, encountering seemingly contradictory information that they cannot fully understand or reconcile. When this point is reached, the temptation is to sacrifice one piece of information so that the big picture may seem more logical. Most of the time, God’s sovereignty is sacrificed on the altar of human freedom.
On the other hand, Christians sometimes fall into an opposite error of claiming not to be able to know anything about God’s character. This claim presents itself in the guise of humility, suggesting that because God is transcendent, we cannot know or speak about him clearly, and it is better to say we do not know. This uncertainty has become a hallmark of post-modernism, which posits that truth is fluid or relative and there is no such thing as absolute truth. The problem with this view is that it downplays the objectivity of divine revelation. God revealed Himself to human beings not so that they would remain in ignorance, but so they would know him. One must neither ignore what the Bible teaches nor claim that it is not clear enough or subject to different interpretations. Such strategy is against the very concept of revelation. God revealed himself to us in the Bible so that we may know him and know ourselves, providing comfort and encouragement to his people. Ignoring what God says about Himself or convincing people that no one can understand the Bible deprives them of knowing God. Often, the reason for claiming one cannot know what the Bible says is a rejection its teachings. While open rejection is a violent reaction to the Bible, claiming unknowability seems more humble and acceptable, but ultimately results in the same outcome: denying or rejecting a truth that God has clearly revealed. With this background in mind, it is time to delve deeper into the meaning of divine providence, especially considering the suffering and evil that exist in the world created and sustained by God.
III. Does God Risk?
Why is there suffering? If God is sovereign and he is good, then why is there so much suffering in the world?Many people attempt to answer this question by trying to protect God from being responsible for pain or suffering. Their answer often goes like this: “God created human beings free and responsible for their decisions. They choose what they want. God cannot interfere in our decisions, otherwise we become like puppets in his hands. We decide whether to follow him or not, whether to be good or evil. Our free will determines what will happen. God respects our free will and does not interfere in our decisions. Unfortunately, we have abused this freewill, and the result is the pain and evil we see around us. God has accepted this risk, meaning the possibility of misusing our freedom, because he wants human beings to love him freely and not by compulsion, and the result is what we see now.”
Let us think about this statement, which we may have often heard or even believed. According to this statement, life and creation can be described as a divine risk.6 What is meant by the “risk” here is the following: Although God has an eternal purpose for creation and a final scene that he wants to see, this purpose can only be achieved through the free will of humans and angels, that is, all moral beings. Without these rational creatures carrying out their roles, the scene will not end as God intended. Based on this way of thinking, creation becomes a divine risk dependent on the decisions of creatures. Because of the freedom of creatures, the events of history can change and not follow the path God intended, and thus the endings may change. This view can be summarized as emphasizing the freedom of human will, and that man is the maker of history and events. According to this view, creation is a divine risk.
What are the repercussions of the idea of divine risk? This opinion is very widespread and seems to defend human freedom; its supporters believe that they are beautifying and glorifying God with this description. But is what they say true? Is the way they describe God consistent with God’s description of Himself according to the Bible? what are the implications of such view on our understanding of the character of God? Three main attributes of God shall be discussed in light of the divine risk view: God’s goodness, God’s omniscience, and God’s omnipotence.
IV. God’s Omniscience
Consistency with the view of the divine risk demands denying the fact that God is all-knowing. God created creation and gave man his freedom, and with all the existing human beings it becomes very complicated, as the end of things depends on the infinite possibilities of decisions that human beings make every day. God’s risk means that he does not know how things will turn out, but that he acts as a spectator and, at best, can predict what might happen, but he cannot be certain how things will end. Richard Rice argues, “The idea that God interacts with a world where there is genuine creaturely freedom does not require us to deny divine foreknowledge. It requires only that we define the scope of foreknowledge with care…God knows a great deal about what will happen…All that God does not know is the content of future free decisions, and this is because decisions are not there to know until they occur.”7 Those who adhere to the freedom of the human will as the ultimate controlling factor of human history will inevitably go to what is called open theism in theology.
Open theism teaches that “the triune Creator cannot be absolutely sovereign or know the future because it must be open for loving relationships to exist.”8 This view argues that for humans to be truly free, God must be not omniscient.9 For them, “exhaustive divine foreknowledge would destroy human responsibility.”10 This view is not new in church history; Augustine interacted with the same reasoning in Cicero’s views of foreknowledge in relation to freewill. Augustine describes Cicero’s view in the following words: “he (Cicero) attempts to accomplish by denying that there is any knowledge of future things, and maintains with all his might that there is no such knowledge either in God or man, and that there is no prediction of events.”11 Augustine understood that Cicero wanted to defend freewill with all his might and so he refused the foreknowledge of God;12 a position that Augustine strongly rejected by saying: “For, to confess that God exists, and at the same time to deny that he has foreknowledge of future things, is the most manifest folly.”13
This denial of God’s omniscience was also held by the Socinians in the 16th and 17th centuries who “openly withdraw from God the knowledge of future contingencies as not being in the class of knowable things, saying either that he does not them absolutely or only indeterminately and probably.”14 Francis Turretin refuted the Socinians’ views by arguing that, “the orthodox maintain that future contingent things fall under the infallible knowledge of God.”15 According to the latter view, all things, including the contingent, “fall under the infallible knowledge of God, not as knowing them only indeterminately and probably, but determinately, and most certainly.”16
The question here is: How can God be perfect when his knowledge is not perfect? According to this view, God is not perfect, but he is growing in knowledge. God becomes instead of God is. In this scenario, God created the world without knowing where it would go, and it may not turn out well in the end. Those who lead history here are human beings with their own free will. This is the risk. God decided to limit Himself, his knowledge, and even his freedom. The most he can do is anticipate their reactions because of his knowledge of the circumstances surrounding them. However, this also does not mean being certain about what will happen because, in the end, a person may do something unexpected of his own free will. Additionally, the circumstances surrounding each human being include other human beings with other own free wills, which makes the matter even more complicated.
People of this thought sometimes claim that God knows events without being in control of them. However, it is not possible to separate God’s foreknowledge from his control over everything. If God knows in detail everything that will happen in the future, then nothing can change. How could God know exactly what will happen while remains a possibility to change the things that he knows will happen? If God knows for sure what will happen, then there is no possibility that this could change, even if humans were free.
Some might argue that God does not know what will happen determinately but has a very high expectation of what will take place. However, does this perspective align with the biblical description of God’s knowledge and understanding? Doesn’t the Bible present God as omniscient? How then can we read Psalm 139? How can we understand Isaiah 46:9-10 “Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other, I am God and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done, saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will do all that I please.” The very concept of prophecy contradicts the idea that God does not know the future! The same applies to the teaching of the New Testament? For instance, how could Jesus know that Peter would deny him three times? Was there a chance that Peter would not deny Christ? Could Peter deny Christ once and then by his own free will change his mind and stop the denial act? How can we understand all the prophecies about the Second Coming, the New Heaven, and the New Earth? How can we know that the ending will be good? How can we confidently proclaim the promise: “All things work together for good to those who love God” (Romans 8:28)?
V. God’s Omnipotence
Holding to the concept of divine risk in relation to providence introduces a god who desires many things but is unable to implement them. his will may be good, but it is ineffective or incapable. The Bible teaches about many things that God wants which do not happen in creation. For instance, God wants all people to be saved and we know that this desire will not be fulfilled. But on the other hand, the Bible tells us that God does whatever he pleases (Psalm 115:3, Psalm 135:6), and there is no one who can withhold his hands (Daniel 4:35), and in the New Testament it says that he does all things according to the counsel of his will (Ephesians 1:11). The Lord confirms that his purpose will stand and that he will do all his good pleasure (Isaiah 46:10).
If God’s will is limited by our personal freedom, this implies that all of God’s promises to sanctify and glorify us (Romans 8:30) are empty promises that he cannot keep. How can he promise us something that is ultimately dependent on our freedom of will apart from him? This also suggests that he is not omnipotent, as something outside of Himself—the freedom of human will—limits God’s power.
Therefore, we must be careful when we talk about God’s will and ability, as the Bible distinguishes between God’s will in relation to his commands and God’s will in relation to his decrees. Regarding his commands, God’s will may be broken; this is evident in the Ten Commandments which humans break daily. The Ten Commandments are an expression of God’s will, yet they are always followed. However, when it comes to God’s decrees, they cannot be thwarted. God works all things according to the counsel of his will (Eph 1:11). When a person breaks a commandment, this act itself is part of the divine decrees. In this sense, the decrees cannot be thwarted. The greatest example for this reality is the death of Christ. John Piper explains: “The betrayal of Jesus by Judas was a morally evil act inspired immediately by Satan (Luke 22:3). Yet in Acts 2: 23 Luke says, ‘This Jesus was delivered up according to the definite plan (boule) and foreknowledge of God.’ The betrayal was sin, and it involved the instrumentality of Satan; but it was part of God’s ordained plan. That is there is a sense in which God willed the delivering up of his Son, even though the act was sin.”17 Therefore, the wicked, in their evil and rebellion against God, while breaking God’s moral or perceptive will, are simultaneously implementing the divine decretive sovereign will precisely.
An objection may rise that speaking of two wills of God that contradict each other presents unsolvable dilemma that should be avoided. Refuting the Calvinistic position on the divine sovereignty and the principle of the two wills in God, Randall G. Basinger contends, “while it is hard (if not impossible) to imagine Calvinism without the distinction between God’s sovereign will and his moral will, it is harder still to coherently conceive of a God in which this distinction really exists.”18 However, the biblical data challenges this objection.Sometimes we see that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, and no one can thwart his purposes; his grace is effective and succeeds in changing evil people into saints (cf. 1 Cor. 15:10). Other times, we see God regretting and backing down from doing certain things that he had intended to do, and we see people resisting God’s grace and rejecting the Gospel, as Christ says, “How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (Mat. 23: 37). How can we reconcile these facts together? There are three possible solutions:
The first solution is to say that the Bible contradicts itself and does not provide a consistent understanding of the will of God, and therefore there cannot be any true knowledge about God. This opinion is adopted by some liberal thinkers who reject the fact that the Bible is the word of God and do not see, or rather do not want to see, another solution to reconcile the data found in Scripture.
The second solution is to understand the descriptions of God as all-knowing, all-powerful in light of the parts that talk about God’s remorse and unfulfilled desires. In this view, statements about his immutability, unchangeableness, and omniscience are seen as exaggerated formulas and not necessarily true. Accordingly, as Helm describes this solution, “we should be committed to maintaining that God is at times ignorant, that he changes his mind, that he is open to persuasion, that his purposes of goodness are thwarted, and so on.”19 In this case, we greatly diminish God, making him just a human being like us, albeit an immortal with some abilities higher than ours.
The third solution is to understand the words about God’s remorse and unfulfilled desires in light of the parts that speak about God’s supremacy, great power, fulfillment of his purposes, and omniscience. In other words, the statements about the intensity of God’s power and knowledge must control the anthropomorphic statement and not vice versa. In this case, the parts about God’s remorse and unfulfilled desires must be understood as a condescending language through which God communicates with us as finite beings to confirm our responsibility before him. Calvin explains this line of thought as follows: “For because our weakness does not attain to his exalted state, the description of him that is given to us must be accommodated to our capacity so that we may understand it. Now the mode of accommodation is for him to represent himself to us not as he is in himself, but as he seems to us.20 God wants us to respond to him in a real relationship, so he condescended to us in a language that we understand. Rather, he spoke to us within the framework of time and place, as these are the frameworks through which we can relate. But all these real interactions are within a broader circle of divine sovereignty and providence that meticulously implements God’s plan. Calvin affirms this understanding by saying, “Therefore, since every change among men is a correction of what displeases them, but that correction arises out of repentance, then by the word “repentance” is meant the fact that God changes with respect to his actions. Meanwhile neither God’s plan nor his will is reversed, nor his volition altered; but what he had from eternity foreseen, approved, and decreed, he pursues in uninterrupted tenor, however sudden the variation may appear in men’s eyes.”21 According to this view, God does not take risks. History follows the path carefully drawn by God. This view does not deny the freedom of man’s will, but it holds that what man does with his free will is precisely what God intended in eternity.
VI. God’s Goodness
The last attribute strongly related to the divine risk view is God’s goodness. Generally, one of the most difficult questions we face as we study God’s providence and sovereignty is the existence of evil. A comprehensive study of the relationship between God’s providence and evil is beyond this lecture. However, in relation to the discussion of God’s goodness, if God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, then why did he intend for evil to exist in this life? Didn’t he know from the beginning that this would happen? This may be the most common question I have been asked by children: why did God put the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden? Didn’t he know that Adam and Eve would eat from it?
The famous response to this question from the risky position is: The freedom of the human will. God created man with free will, which explains the existence of evil in the world. But didn’t God know that this would happen? According to the idea of the divine risk, God knows with great probability what the human race will end up with because of their free will. Yet, out of respect for this freedom, he lets them follow this path, saying: This is what they want, so be it, no matter what end this will be. God even knows what will happen to the children and the powerless, and he knows that evil people will exploit them, oppress them, and rob them of everything precious and valuable. Yet he stands by and watches without intervening because he is committed to the law of free will. Let’s think about this idea. This means that God loves and respects this law more than he respects all the victims in history. He can sacrifice them, but he cannot sacrifice the freedom of the will. Is this love and is this goodness? Imagine a small child letting go of his father’s hand and running towards a road full of speeding cars, and his father leaves him in order to assure him that he respects his child’s freedom. What kind of father would do this?
In fact, the risky position does not solve the problem of evil properly and consistently with the goodness of God. While it portrays presents a blind God when it comes to knowledge, it presents a careless God when it comes to goodness. God’s goodness, according to this view, is reduced to mere wishful thinking. Yes, God is good, but his goodness means that he only desires good for the people, it does not go beyond that. This perspective limits God’s goodness to offering goodness, salvation, and grace to his creation, but asserts that he can accomplish none of them. God cannot do good to anyone without their approval.
While the risky position does not provide a satisfactory answer to the problem of evil, the issue still demands an explanation. How could moral evil or physical evil be consistent with a providential order established by an all-good, all-powerful God? One possible explanation is punitive: God is holy, and the suffering and evil we see around is an expression of his judgment against sin (cf. Romans 1:18-32; Rom. 8:23; Lamentations 3:38). However, as Paul Helm contends, this punitive view “can offer no explanation of why evil was permitted in the first place.”22 Accordingly, Helm goes further to argue for what is called the greater good. he says, “evil, moral evil, is necessary for a greater good…without the occurrence of moral evil certain other goods could not, logically speaking, arise. Without weakness and need, no compassion; without fault, no forgiveness, and so on.”23
There was no way we could understand what God’s forgiveness, restoration, renewal and new creation without the Fall. The existence of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil was not only to highlight the importance of freedom of will and Adam’s responsibility, although this is true. There was a bigger and deeper goal: that one day we may see a more glorious tree, which is the tree of the cross. This is what made Paul say in Ephesians 1:5-6 that the great purpose of the story is to praise the glory of his grace in Jesus Christ. The praise of his grace that is in Christ Jesus is the ultimate goal of the story from the beginning. The praise of God’s grace was not possible apart from the Fall. John Piper explains this line of thought as follows, “God’s ultimate purpose in creation and providence was not that his glory would be displayed and praised through means that did not involve the suffering of his Son. The cross was not an afterthought. It was part of the plan from before the foundation of the world (cf. 2 Tim. 1:9; Rev. 13: 8).”24
This question about God’s providence and his goodness also, and most importantly, deals with God’s saving grace. In other words, the issue that at stake is not only God’s goodness in general, but also the intensity of this goodness. The question about God’s goodness and how far it can reach “has been at the centre of a controversy about divine saving grace. Is that grace merely enabling, or is it effective?”25 How many times has God shown kindness to people who reject it, only to make this kindness effective in their lives? As they hurried away from him, even trying to persecute his people and openly rebelling against him, he sovereignly converts them to be his beloved servants. Isn’t this what God did with the Apostle Paul? Didn’t he do that to the Samaritan woman? Did Lazarus ask him to raise him from the dead? God gave his people covenantal promises that are clear manifestations of his goodness: “I will make with them an everlasting covenant, that I will not turn away from doing good to them. And I will put the fear of me in their hearts, that they may not turn from me” (Jer. 32:40)? God’s grace does not stop at offering salvation and goodness; it is effective and succeeds in its goal of bringing goodness and salvation to whomever God wants to save and bless. God’s goodness does not stop at offering goodness, waiting for people to respond of their own free will until they enjoy it. Rather, goodness goes beyond that, as God in his providence saves irresistibly and irrevocably those who are wicked and transforms them to be conformed to the image of his beloved Son.
VII. Concurrence
As shown above, the main issue the risky position wants to defend is human free will. Is a person truly free and able to do what he wants if God is totally sovereign, even over human choices? The Bible emphasizes man’s responsibility for whatever he does or chooses, and accordingly every person will give an account for his actions and choices. A person is morally responsible and has the ability to do many things. However, it can be said that man is a secondary cause of whatever happens. Since Thomas Aquinas, theologians distinguish between God as the “primary cause” and creatures as the “secondary causes.”26Behind all human choices and decisions is God’s providence, a position that both Pelagians and Socinians deny. Both the Pelagians and the Socinians “do admit an influence upon natural things, but upon free things, at least with respect to their predetermination, they deny it, so that they may have an independent indifference of choice.”27 In contrast, the Reformed view argues that God carries out his good, pleasing, perfect, and inevitable will through the free will and free decisions of human beings. Petrus Van Mastricht explains this concurrence as follows:
Second causes, whatever they may be, are first aroused and predetermined, insofar as this arousing and predetermining (besides the communication of strength and its preservation) is entirely necessary in order to bring forth into action what was previously in the potency of the creature. This is so in causes acting not only naturally, but also freely, and moreover, in the latter causes, it happens not only morally, by persuading, but also physically, by turning (Prov. 21:1; Phil. 2:13).28
Examples of this synchronicity or concurrence in the Bible are very numerous. For instance, conisder the story of Joseph and his brothers in the Book of Genesis, the king of Assyria in Isaiah 10, and the climax of all examples: the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Christ’s death was not a coincidence or merely the result of a conspiracy by Judas, the Jewish leaders, Herod, and Pilate. While these individuals decided and acted according to their evil desires, everything they did—and for which they will be held accountable—was part of God’s eternal, inevitable plan to redeem his people and restore creation (cf. Acts 4:27-28).
VIII. Conclusion
We should not dilute the teaching of God’s providence to uphold human responsibility. As Augustine argues, “let these perplexing debates and disputations of the philosophers go on as they may, we, in order that we may confess the most high and true God himself, do confess his will, supreme power, and prescience. Neither let us be afraid lest, after all, we do not do by will that which we do by will, because he, whose foreknowledge is infallible, foreknew that we would do it.”29
Contrary to the risky position, the Bible teaches that God’s providence encompasses everything that happens in this life, whether big or small, natural or moral. he makes the rain fall, the sun shine, and the flowers grow (cf. Psalm 147). Not a sparrow falls to the ground, nor a single hair from anyone’s head, without his permission (Matthew 10:29-31). In the Christian faith, there is no such thing as chance or luck. “The lot is cast into the bosom and all its judgment is from the Lord” (Proverbs 16:1). Perhaps what happened to the prophet Jonah is an example of God’s control even in the casting of lots (Jonah 1:7). While chance and luck imply randomness, God is a person with a clear purpose he is fulfilling. Chance is blind, but God sees everything. Chance is weak, but God is able. Chance is careless, but God is good. History is not guided by purposeless forces or a random system without intention. Rather, it is the wise, holy, all powerful, good and righteous God who leads history in all its details to an end that he intended from eternity.
What is striking about the definition of providence in the Westminster Confession is that it speaks not only of God’s sovereignty over all things but also of the wisdom and holiness of God in exercising this control. Here we must distinguish between God’s sovereignty and God’s providence. God’s sovereignty is his right and ability to do what he wants, whenever he wants. God has complete freedom and ability to accomplish his will as expressed in Job 42:2: “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.” This is the sovereignty of God. If it stopped there, it might be frightening, for if this God were evil or not good, the situation would be terrifying. But God is all good, all wise, and all holy. Therefore, the Bible teaches us about God’s providence, which means that God uses his sovereignty to accomplish his purposes that are consistent with his wisdom, holiness, and righteousness. God’s providence is the triune God’s wise use of his sovereignty to accomplish the purposes that he intended in eternity.
Holding to the risky position in order to defend human responsibility jeopardizes God’s wisdom, power and goodness. The doctrine of God’s providence, as taught in Scripture provides us with a caring, wise, loving, powerful and all-knowing God whose purposes can never be thwarted. This reality is well expressed by Turretin, “If God does not care for the world, it is either because he does not know or because he cannot or because he does not wish to. But how can this be said without the greatest blasphemy against him, since he is most wise (foreseeing all things and for all) and most powerful (with whom nothing is impossible) and the best (who as he created the world at first with the highest goodness, so he cannot but conserve and govern it when created by the same).”30
