Theological Journal - May 9: Why God is Not in Control - And It's a Good Thng Too! (9)
God is in control – this the Christian view of
providence clearly affirms. But how God is in control is unclear or inscrutable
to our limited understanding. It is never predictable or offers an
incontrovertible take on events of our time or in our lives. We can never
affirm or contest God’s control by what happens to us or around us. Providence,
God’s control, is a matter of faith and trust in God.
The Problem With Providence
Over the last year I have received a lot of
critical e-mails questioning my faith because I am not willing to assert that
Donald Trump is God’s anointed servant to save America from the liberals
(mostly Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama).
In the last couple months, I have also received
e-mails from Christian anti-Trumpers who write to tell me that COVID-19 is
God’s punishment on the United States for electing Donald Trump.
Even if you believe in the Christian doctrine of
providence, as I do, both of these positions are theologically
problematic.
Does it make theological sense to invoke providence
in political debates? Should we build our approach to politics and government
on this doctrine? How do we reconcile providential claims–and the sense of
certainty that comes with them–with St. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13: 12: “For
now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I
shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” The Christian
scriptures teach that God is the “blessed and only Ruler, the King of kings and
Lord of lords” who “lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can
see.” (1 Tim. 6:15-15). And let’s not forget Isaiah 55:8-9: “For my thoughts
are not your thoughts,/ neither are your ways my ways,’ / declares the LORD.’ /
‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, / so are my ways higher than your
ways / and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
St. Augustine is helpful here. In book 20
of The City of God against the Pagans, he reminds us
what Christians can and cannot know about God’s work in the world. History will
end with the glorious triumph of the Son of God. But as we live with this hope,
we must be cautious about trying to pinpoint the specific plan of God in
history. We must avoid trying to interpret what is hidden from us or what is
incomprehensible, because our understanding is so limited. As Augustine writes,
There are good men who suffer evils and evil
men who enjoy good things, which seems unjust, and there are bad men who come
to a bad end, and good men who arrive at a good one. Thus, the judgments of God
are all the more inscrutable, and His ways past finding out. We do not know,
therefore, by what judgment God causes or allows these things to pass.
The Swiss theologian Karl Barth, who had
a strong view of God’s providential ordering of the world, warned us about
trying to get too specific in explaining the ways in which God’s work manifests
itself in the world. In his book, American
Providence, the late theologian Stephen Webb notes, Barth went
so far in “advising restraint, modesty, and caution in the use of this doctrine
that he nearly undermines his own insistence on its importance.”
The great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther was also
clear about what Christians can and cannot know about the will of God in human
history. Luther always erred on the side of mystery: God is transcendent
and sovereign; humans are sinful and finite. During the Heidelberg Disputation,
Luther was quite candid about the human quest to understand God’s purposes in
the world. “That person, Luther wrote, “does not deserve to be called a
theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were
clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened.”When it comes to politics, Christians
would do better to embrace an approach to citizenship with a sense of God’s
transcendent mystery, a healthy dose of humility, and a hope that one day
soon, but not now, we will all understand the Almighty’s plans for the nations.
We should again take comfort in the words of Augustine: “When we arrive at that
judgment of God, the time of which in a special sense is called the Day of
Judgment,…it will become apparent that God’s judgments are entirely just.” The
will of God in matters such as these often remain a mystery. As theologian
Charles Mathewes notes, “The lesson of providence is not that history
can be finally solved, like a cryptogram but that it must be endured, inhabited
as a mystery which we cannot fully understand from the inside, but which we
cannot escape of our own powers.
I
like to season any providential invocations with words like “perhaps” or
“maybe” or “might.” Or as theologian N.T. Wright has argued, “When Christians
try to read off what God is doing even in their own situations, such claims
always have to carry the word perhaps about
with them as a mark of humility and of the necessary reticence of faith. That
doesn’t mean that such claims can’t be made, but that they need to be made with
a “perhaps” which is always inviting God to come in and say, ‘Well, actually,
no.'”
https://thewayofimprovement.com/2020/05/08/the-problem-with-providence/?fbclid=IwAR0HNMY8bTMMQRHXkmRFqb01sjE4BBmwfLAa4mZfPxg-_x-RydWKd_MrpGY
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