Providence of God

The Providence of God

Today, a lot of research is being done about the nature of reality, especially in the field of quantum mechanics. A Christian witness to God's Great Story must be consistent with what we are reliably learning.

The Christian understanding of the nature of reality is found in its doctrine of the Providence of God. How does this relate to the latest research being done?

What is Providence?

Providence is God’s continual involvement in the created world. It affirms that God is the ground of all being and has a continued care and purpose for the created world. There are three main ideas to the concept of providence:

1. Preservation — The world continues to exist solely by God’s unceasing involvement. "For you created all things, and by your will they were created and have their being" (Revelation 4:11).

2. Concurrence — God’s power makes possible all natural operations and every human choice. “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

3. Government — God directs all events in the world toward the fulfillment of his ultimate purpose. “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36).

Providence is an essential part of a Christian worldview. It contrasts significantly with two other worldviews. Deism asserts that God created the world but then abandoned it to function on its own. And pantheism feels that God and the created world are one and the same. These alternative views are inconsistent with the biblical view of providence.

Despite the importance of providence for a Christian worldview, it has fallen out of favor in modern and postmodern times because it leads to three perplexing questions:

Is there free-will, or is everything pre-determined?

Is God responsible for evil?

When we improve a situation, do we resist providence?

The standard response to these questions from classic theology has been:

There is free will, but there is also predestination.

God is not responsible for evil.

To improve a situation is not to resist providence.

But these responses are just assertions. Classic theology provides us with precious little explanation to help us understand "why." At best, we are told it is all a mystery, as it well may be.

These three unexplained questions have shaken people’s confidence in providence. Today, providence is the “forgotten Christian doctrine.” While individuals still might maintain a devotional trust God for their needs (see Matthew 6:25-33, 7:7-11, 10: 28-31), providence no longer shapes the Christian worldview as it once did. Secularism causes people to see the world without seeing God.

Quantum Mechanics: The Beginnings of a New Understanding?

On the quantum scale, the world is completely unlike our normal world. Quantum particles continually pop into and out of existence, apparently without any prior cause. It’s a wild dance of existence and non-existence. Strange though these quantum fluctuations may appear to us, the phenomenon does exist and is backed by evidence.

Still, it goes against the evidence of our own eyes. The world appears orderly to us, with the presence of cause and effect. We say that our world appears "deterministic."

But quantum researchers say that it only seems that way. The quantum fluctuations are just averaging themselves out, giving us an orderly world. They say that, theoretically, your coffee cup, at any time, can suddenly go 'poof!' But the odds of all the particles in the cup suddenly going out of existence at precisely the same time are simply astronomical. The cup remains in your hand.

What quantum mechanics has been telling us for decades now is that even though the world may appear orderly, it really is non-deterministic and probabilistic. Another way of stating this is to say that the universe is "open."

This view of reality has begun to affect how some Christians understand providence. Because the universe is non-deterministic on the quantum level, this implies that many things just happen on their own — simply as a part of the workings of the open universe.

A Critique of the Open Universe

This new view of reality, at first, seems appealing. All at once, the three unexplained questions that undermined belief in providence for centuries seem to have a more satisfying solution.

For instance, a sudden quantum jump alters a strand of DNA and causes a child to be born with a genetic defect. The defect is not the act of a capricious God. It is the result of an unfortunate, non-deterministic fluctuation. Evil just happens because we live in a non-deterministic world.

This is the view adopted by what is known as open theology.

But compelling as this new view may be, it undermines rather than enhances our understanding of providence. It does so by removing God from the workings of the world. It says that the wild, quantum dance completely happens on its own apart from God. “God lets the world run free,” say John Conway and Simon Kochen, two leading mathematicians who have done work on quantum physics. But this is deism, not providence.

Providence affirms that God’s power makes possible all natural operations and every human choice. This also must include the wild, quantum dance of the particles. In other words, the biblical worldview requires that some kind of a deeper determinism has to exist behind the workings of the universe.

In 2006, Gerard ‘t Hooft of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, a leading quantum physicist, worked through the mathematics for a theory of a deeper deterministic reality. His technical paper, “The Mathematical Basis for Deterministic Quantum Mechanics” can be found here. But others say that ‘t Hooft's theory undermines an open universe.

A Possible Way Forward

Quantum physicists seem to be presenting us only with two options: that reality is either deterministic or non-deterministic. But what if neither option provides an adequate explanation for reality?

Providence itself seems to suggest a third option. Providence asserts that God’s power makes possible all natural operations and every human choice. It makes them possible, but it does not necessarily cause them. In other words, reality is neither strictly deterministic nor is it strictly non-deterministic. Reality has to be a combination of both in some unique way.

Since the time of St. Augustine, many theologians have tried to reflect this view. They carefully distinguish between a First Cause that operates behind the workings of the universe and secondary causes, which we set in motion. The First Cause makes possible the secondary causes, but the First Cause does not necessarily cause the secondary causes. Furthermore, God as the First Cause remains holy in His workings, while we as secondary causes remain responsible for our actions. This is all consistent with a view of reality that is both deterministic and non-deterministic at the same time.

Will we ever be able to fully explain the nature of reality? No complete description of reality has been developed by quantum mechanics and none may even be possible. The field of quantum mechanics, like the particles it seeks to describe, is itself in a state of constant flux. Theories pop into and out of existence.

This should inform us to be cautious before we modify the biblical doctrine of providence to mesh with the latest physical theory, as open theology has done.

Gradually, however, we can expect a fuller understanding of reality to emerge. The world very well may possess both deterministic and non-deterministic characteristics at the same time. Open theology is not a satisfactory answer because it is only non-deterministic. Nevertheless, the ultimate solution to the age-old question, "Is God responsible for evil?" will likely include a non-deterministic element of some type.

If we never fully fathom the nature of reality, then we will know why the Bible affirms providence while it talks about it as being a mystery. The old theologians may have more wisdom to offer us than we may have thought.

A Way Forward concerning Free Will

Although an ultimate understanding of the workings of the universe remains beyond our reach, we are making more progress in understanding the workings of the human mind. This helps us to answer that other nagging question which has dogged our understanding of the nature of reality, "Is there free will or is everything predetermined?"

The classic view of free will states that we are totally free moral agents. We can choose what we want when we want and this is what makes us morally responsible. Some call this understanding of free will, "deep free will."

But strong scientific evidence now suggests otherwise. Dr. Michael Silberstein reports that every physical system that has ever been investigated has turned out to be either deterministic or random ("Free Will: Now You Have It, Now You Don't" by Dennis Overbye, published in the New York Times, January 2, 2007). In one famous experiment, Dr. Benjamin Libet in the 1970's found that our brains signal us to perform an action a half second before we consciously "choose" to do the action. This suggests that deep free will is an illusion.

Do we totally lack free will, then? Not necessarily. A new understanding of free will is emerging, one that still includes moral responsibility. Under this new view, despite the fact that our minds are mechanistic, we also possess feed-back mechanisms which give us self-awareness and the ability to veto the choices of our subconscious minds. We also have the power to imagine our futures and to make choices to bring those futures to pass. Thus, under this new view of free will, we are still morally responsible for our actions. Only if our minds are damaged or undeveloped might it be argued that we lack moral responsibility.

A Christian Response to this New Research

The intent of this new research on the brain is to help us understand how the material aspects of our minds work. But a Christian understanding of humanity also affirms that we possess both material and spiritual aspects.

We should also recognize that Christianity has never affirmed the classical "deep free will" theory of total free moral agency. In the Christian way of thinking, "freedom" is when God regenerates us so that we can serve God from the heart. This differs from a view that says we can choose whatever we want.

The Christian viewpoint would also admit to the presence of the demonic. Certainly, it is difficult to explain the depth of evil within some people merely in terms of the workings of brain molecules. We all make choices. When we yield to our evil choices and to evil powers, we turn evil and demonic ourselves. Our souls can become corrupt.

As research continues about the workings of the mind, it is opening up a new understanding of free will and human responsibility. The emerging conclusion seems to be this: even as our minds possess deterministic elements, we are still morally responsible creatures. To this the Christian would add, "We very well may be sophisticated, mechanistic machines, but we are also able to commune with God and be affected by God."

A Few Suggestions for Preaching on Providence

Providence is a major, missing part of the Christian worldview today. We should preach on it even though we can not fully explain it. After all, the alternative is to leave the workings of the universe up to pure chance. But as St. Columba said in the 6th century:

'Tis not from chance our comfort springs.
thou art our trust, O King of kings.

So, how can we preach effectively on providence? I have found stories to be very important. Providence is not some theoretical, abstract doctrine. Instead, it is something we can personally experience. Often, I will begin a sermon on providence by telling three or four stories about God's providential care. That sparks interest.

For a scripture text, I often use Matthew 6:25-34. It contrasts a providential way of looking at the world with a pagan/secular way. In this text, Jesus jolts us out of the secular mindset and into a mindset that recognizes God's care for the world.

He does this by first telling us to stop worrying obsessively. Instead, we are to open our eyes to recognize all the goodness of God that exists constantly all around us. These two emphases — turning from obsessive worry and then turning toward God's goodness — can become two major movements in a sermon on providence.

I then ask people, "which way of looking at the world describes you?" To be honest, we are often somewhere in the middle. We believe, yet we often live with anxiety. When we are like this, Jesus has a word for us. He calls us, "you who are of little faith." This can then lead to a discussion about the specific issues of anxiety in our lives. What would Jesus say about each of them?

Somewhere in a sermon on providence, we should talk about the problem of suffering. I usually do it when talking about the goodness of God. And I usually do it by telling one particular story of someone I know of who suffered a terrible disease yet still experienced a remarkable sign of God's goodness in her life. God did not make her cancer go away, but God still gave her hope in the midst of the cancer. She saw an angel, by the way, and from that moment on she experienced a deep peace until her death.

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Credit: The opening image in the article can be obtained from www .jesusmafa. com.