by Benjamin Wirt Farley
Reformed theology has traditionally understood the providence of God to embrace a threefold work: God's preservation of creation, God's cooperation with all created entities, and God's guidance of all things toward God's ultimate purposes and their highest good. What this doctrine emphasizes is that the triune God, in goodness and power, preserves, accompanies, and directs God's entire universe. No facet of God's work is excluded from divine care.
This concept had been advanced and defended by many Reformed writers. Johannes Braunius notes: "The acts of the providence of God are three: (1) He preserves all things in their being and duration; (2) He moves all things to their action by concurrence, in fact by precurrence; (3) He steers and guides all things to the desired end to which they were appointed from eternity" (Doctrina foederum 1.12.2, in Heppe, RD, p. 256). Louis Berkhof observed that "providence may be defined as that continued exercise of the divine energy whereby the Creator preserves all His creatures, is operative in all that comes to pass in the world, and directs all things to their appointed end" (Systematic Theology, p. 166). Similarly, Karl Barth writes: "By "providence" is meant the superior dealings of the Creator with His creation, the wisdom, omnipotence and goodness with which He maintains and governs in time this distinct reality according to the counsel of His own will" (CD III/3, 3).
Reformed theologians further maintain that this doctrine is explicitly taught in Scripture, where God is portrayed as fulfilling this threefold activity, as outlined above. It is not a doctrine derived from general revelation; rather, it is a doctrine preserved and taught in Scripture.
First, the Reformed tradition understands the providence of God to be a work of conservatio, sustentatio, and preservatio. God actively preserves and upholds what God has created. God continues to see that the creation is maintained, that order prevails, and that life is sustained through, over' and above each species' divinely given power to propagate itself. As Calvin explained: "We see the presence of divine power shining as much in the continuing state of the universe as in its inception" (Inst 1.16.1).
God's preserving activity is a divine work in which the Son also participates. It exists for his glory (Rom. 11:36; Col. 1:17; Heb. 1:3). Christ is its principle of cohesion.
For Charles Hodge, preservatio means (1) "that the universe as a whole does not continue in being of itself" and that (2) "all creatures, whether plants or animals, … are continued in existence not by any inherent principle of life, but by the will of God" (Systematic Theology, 1:575). For L. Berkhof, preservation entails "that continuous work of God by which He maintains the things which He created, together with the properties and powers with which He endowed them." For Emil Brunner, God's conserving work is to be seen in the "constancy" of the "orders and forms of nature," which are expressions both of the divine will and of God's faithfulness to God's creation.
For Reformed theologians, however, it is not merely the preservation of the cosmos, or its orders, that Scripture emphasizes. God the Father through Christ the Son also preserves and upholds human life. This is accomplished both through God's commandment to the original couple (Gen. 1:28) and through the ineffable working of God's Spirit and God's divine loyalty to God's servants.
The Hebrew word shamar is central. It means "to keep, to preserve, to protect." It is the primary verb used to describe God's faithfulness to God's servants and is used in numerous passages (Gen. 28:15; Ex. 23:20; Num. 6:24; Josh. 24:17; Job 29:2; Ps. 16:1; 121:5).
Above all, the preserving activity of God is a divine work whose purpose is to sustain and uphold God's servant Israel and the church. God's work of preservation cannot be separated from the covenant and God's purposes of election in Jesus Christ. Neither the cosmos nor humankind possesses absolute value per se. The universe and human life exist for higher purposes than mere self-continuance, or self-affirmation, or propagation of the species. Both have been created and are sustained for the glory of God, who, in Jesus Christ, has resolved from eternity "to unite all things in him" (Eph. 1:10).
Second, Reformed theology has understood God's providential work as a divine cooperation with all creatures, or as a divine operation that accompanies the activity of all creatures. Orthodox dogmatics refers to this function as concursus. In L. Berkhof's view, concursus involves "the co-operation of the divine power with all subordinate powers, according to the preestablished laws of their operation, causing them to act and to act precisely as they do" (Systematic Theology, p. 170). Consequently, created powers do not act by themselves. Equally important, each power, as a second cause, is real and acts in accordance with its created powers. As such, it is accountable for its actions. Furthermore, second causes are voluntary, and not merely passive or involuntary instruments of God's will.
This distinction between active and passive, or between God's immanent accompaniment yet transcendent Lordliness, is viewed as a necessary qualification against pantheism on the one hand and Deism on the other. Nothing occurs aside from God's will. All things are allowed, foreseen, or caused by God. Yet second causes, in themselves, are accountable for their choices and actions.
As Calvin explained: "There is no random power, or agency, or motion in the creatures, who are so governed by the secret counsel of God that nothing happens but what he has knowingly and willingly decreed" (Inst 1.16.3). Yet God cannot be blamed for human sin. Rather, "in this way, while acting wickedly, we serve his righteous ordination, since in his boundless wisdom he will know how to use bad instruments for good purposes" (1.17.5).
Etienne Gilson identifies two further qualifications that are necessary to avoid extremes of "extrinsicism" and "intrinsicism." In "extrinsicism," God does it all by forcing God's will upon entities from without. In "intrinsicism," God does little or nothing, abandoning created beings to operate on their own. Neither extreme can be accepted without violating God's Lordship or humankind's uniqueness. Hence, God acts as a "total cause," conferring upon each being its unique capacities, while constituting the principal cause of all its interactions in the world.
Barth enthusiastically accepted the terminology of cause and second causes and believed it is a legitimate language for the theologian to use. He wrote, "The divine causare takes place in and with [our] causare."
Brunner is suspicious of such a doctrine. He considers it a "danger-zone" and warns that the church must renounce attempts to understand how human freedom and God's activity are interwoven. Barth, however, contends that if it is an error, it is an error meant to uphold the maior Dei gloria along with the Scripture's affirmation of the minor gloria creaturae.
Third, Reformed theology recognizes that the entire universe belongs to God and belongs to God to direct, both toward its immediate and its highest ends. This element is known as gubernatio, or steering. It has to do with the direction, purpose, and goal that God assigns to each entity as God directs the whole toward the accomplishment of God's divine purpose.
The Reformed tradition understands this work of gubernatio to pertain to nature, to all its sentient creatures, above all to humankind, and to history itself. Intelligent creatures and voluntary things especially come under God's guidance. So too do nations and history. All is in God's hands, and God knows the ends toward which God steers it (Eph. 1:9–12; Phil. 2:9–11).
Modern theologians from Friedrich Schleiermacher to the present (Rudolf Bultmann, Gordon Kaufman, and Langdon Gilkey) are quick to point up the inseparability of the nature-history nexus and the extent to which all things are caught up in a web of sociopolitical interconnections. Nonetheless, for Reformed theology, none of this erodes the central biblical conviction that the triune God, in goodness and power, is present preserving, accompanying, and guiding the entire universe toward God's highest will for it. Whatever aspects of self-determination God has conferred on voluntary creatures in no way detracts from God's power to forgive sin or to call forth believers to participate in God's providential ordering of the world.
Barth, CD III; L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (4th rev. and enl. ed. 1949); E. Brunner, Dogmatics, vol. 2 (1952); B. W. Farley, The Providence of God (1988); L. Gilkey, Reaping the Whirlwind (1976); E. Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas (1961); Heppe, RD; C. Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (1871),
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BENJAMIN WIRT FARLEY
Farley, B. W. (1992). Providence of God. In Encyclopedia of the Reformed faith (1st ed., pp. 306–308).