Program / Course 15: The Problem of Evil and Suffering / Lesson 4.1
What you will learn
- Define providence and distinguish creation, preservation (sustaining) and governance.
- Explain the idea of primary and secondary causes and why it matters for suffering.
- Distinguish God’s causing, permitting and bringing good out of events.
- Read key biblical texts on providence, including those that seem to sit uneasily with suffering.
The big idea
Providence is the Christian teaching that God does not make the world and leave it, but keeps it in being and guides it toward his purposes. The tradition usually speaks of three things: God creates, God sustains what exists at every moment, and God governs events toward an end. This teaching offers comfort, since nothing falls outside God’s care. It also sharpens the problem of evil, since it seems to make God answerable for what happens. Careful Christian thinkers distinguish what God causes, what he permits and what he turns to good.
Key terms
- Providence
- From a Latin word for foresight. The teaching that God cares for and guides all creation toward its end.
- Preservation (conservation)
- God’s act of keeping every creature in existence from moment to moment.
- Governance
- God’s guiding of creatures and events toward the ends he intends.
- Concurrence
- The teaching that God works with creatures in their actions, so that an event is wholly from God and wholly from the creature, in different ways.
- Primary and secondary causes
- God as the first cause who gives all things their being and power, and creatures as the secondary causes through which events happen.
- Permission
- God’s allowing of an event, especially sin, without being its author or approving it.
- Deism
- The view that God made the world and then left it to run by itself. Christian providence denies this.
Background
Most Christians pray in some way for daily bread, for the sick, for rain. In doing so they assume that God is involved in the world’s events. Scripture is full of the thought. Jesus says that not one sparrow falls to the ground without the Father, and that the hairs of the head are numbered (Matthew 10:29-30). Paul tells the Athenians that in God humans live and move and have their being (Acts 17:28).
The teaching was developed in the early church against two opposite errors. One was the idea that the world is ruled by fate or by blind chance. The other was the idea that matter is evil and God has no interest in it. Against both, the Fathers taught that a good God rules a good creation. Later writers, such as Augustine and Aquinas, gave the doctrine a systematic form. The Reformation and the Catholic Reformation each wrote it into confessions.
This lesson sets out what the doctrine says in general. The next lessons ask how different traditions apply it, and how it relates to freedom and to suffering.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Creation and preservation
Creation, for Christians, is not only the start of the world. It is the continuing act by which anything exists at all. Aquinas taught that if God stopped willing a creature to exist, it would return to nothing. The Letter to the Hebrews says that Christ upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3). Colossians says that in him all things consist (Colossians 1:17).
This is why providence is not an optional add-on to belief in God. If God is the source of all being, then nothing exists without him. It also sharpens the problem of evil. If God sustains even the one who does harm, how can he be wholly innocent of the harm? The tradition’s answer begins with the distinction in the next steps.
Step 2: Governance and secondary causes
God governs, the tradition says, by means of creatures, not in place of them. Fire warms because God gave it the power to warm. A farmer plants and a crop grows. A friend visits and a lonely person is comforted. In each case there is a creaturely cause and a divine cause, and they are not rivals. Aquinas called God the primary cause and creatures the secondary causes, and argued that God’s causing an act does not remove the creature’s own causing of it.
This helps with freedom. The Westminster Confession of 1646 says that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, yet in such a way that he is not the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of creatures. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that God is the sovereign master of his plan, and that he uses his creatures’ cooperation. Both aim at the same balance.
Step 3: Causing, permitting and bringing good
Most Christian accounts say that God does not cause moral evil in the way he causes good. He permits it. To permit an act is to allow a creature to do what God does not approve. The Catechism says that in no way, directly or indirectly, is God the cause of moral evil, and that he respects the freedom of his creatures. The Reformed confessions say much the same, though they place more weight on God’s ordaining all that occurs.
A third distinction is between what God wills in itself and what he allows for the sake of a greater good. Joseph says to his brothers, “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Genesis 50:20). The brothers’ act was truly evil. God brought good from it. The cross is the central example: it was the greatest of crimes and the means of salvation (Acts 2:23). The tradition teaches that God can turn evil to good without making evil good.
Step 4: Hard texts
Some texts in Scripture seem to attribute evil to God. Isaiah 45:7 in the King James reads, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil.” Most interpreters hold that the Hebrew word here means calamity or woe, not moral evil, and that God is speaking of his sovereignty over events such as judgment and disaster. Amos 3:6 asks whether evil befalls a city and the Lord has not done it, in similar sense. Job’s friends and Job himself speak of the Lord who gives and takes away.
These passages are read in the light of others which say that God is not tempted and does not tempt (James 1:13), and that he takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezekiel 33:11). The tradition holds that all of Scripture must be read together. Different traditions give different weights to these texts, as the next lessons show.
Step 5: Why providence is both comfort and difficulty
Providence is the ground of the greatest Christian comfort. Romans 8:28 says that all things work together for good to them that love God. The Heidelberg Catechism’s first question names as the believer’s only comfort that he or she belongs, body and soul, to the faithful Savior, and that nothing happens apart from the will of the Father. For persons in grief, this can be a rock.
It is also the ground of the sharpest question. If God governs all things, then he governs the cancer, the accident and the war. The remaining lessons of this module study how Christian traditions hold the doctrine of providence and the reality of evil together.
- What does it mean to say that God sustains the world at every moment?
- How can both God and a creature be the cause of one event?
- What is the difference between causing an evil, permitting it and bringing good from it?
- How do you read Isaiah 45:7, and how does the context help?
- In which situations does the doctrine of providence console, and in which might it seem to wound?
- Why do you think the tradition says that God is not the author of sin?
Examples
The author and the characters
Aquinas and others used the image of a craftsman and a tool, and writers like C. S. Lewis used the image of an author and a story. A novelist is responsible for the whole story, yet the characters act in character. The images are not perfect, since God is not a part of his creation, but they show how one event can have two kinds of cause.
Joseph in Egypt
Joseph is sold by his brothers into slavery, jailed on a false charge, and later rises to save many in a famine. He tells his brothers that God sent him before them to preserve life (Genesis 45:5-8, 50:20). The text holds together human guilt and divine purpose. It does not say that each hardship was a good thing.
The sparrow
Jesus says that two sparrows are sold for a farthing and that not one falls without the Father (Matthew 10:29). Readers disagree whether this says that God causes each death or that he knows and cares. In either case, the point Jesus draws is that his disciples are of more value than many sparrows and should not fear.
Different perspectives
Catholic
The Catechism teaches that God is the sovereign master of his plan, using creatures as secondary causes and leaving them real freedom, and that he is in no way the cause of moral evil. It follows Aquinas in distinguishing God’s creating, conserving and governing. It also says that the full answer is known only in faith.
Orthodox
John of Damascus, whose Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith is a standard text, teaches that God cares for all things and that some things happen by his will and others by his permission. He distinguishes what is within human power, which God leaves to people, from what is not. Orthodox writers speak of providence as God’s loving care and are cautious about systems.
Protestant
The Westminster Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism state a strong doctrine of providence that extends to all creatures and events, with God not the author of sin. Calvin writes at length on it in the Institutes. Lutherans and Reformed agree on the core and differ in emphasis.
Critical views
Critics argue that a strong doctrine of providence makes God responsible for all the evil that happens, and that the distinction between causing and permitting is thin if God could prevent every evil. Some hold that the doctrine is a pastoral comfort rather than an explanation. Deists and others reject the idea of particular divine action.
Why it matters
A person’s view of providence shapes how they pray, how they bear loss, and what they say to those who grieve. Getting the distinctions clear prevents two common mistakes: saying that God does everything, including evil, in the same way, and saying that God does nothing at all in the world.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Providence means that everything that happens is good.
Correction: Christian teaching says that God brings good from events, not that every event is good. Evil remains evil, and the cross shows both its reality and its defeat.
Misunderstanding: If God sustains everything, he must be the author of sin.
Correction: The tradition distinguishes sustaining a creature’s being and power from authoring its misuse of them. Whether this distinction suffices is debated, but it is the standard Christian position.
Misunderstanding: Providence is the same as fate.
Correction: Fate is a blind necessity. Providence is the care of a personal God who relates to creatures and answers prayer. Early Christian writers rejected fatalism in these terms.
Knowledge check
What are the three parts of providence?
They are creation, preservation and governance. God makes the world, keeps every creature in being from moment to moment, and guides events toward his purposes. Some writers add concurrence, God’s cooperation with creaturely actions. Together these teach that God is involved with the world at every point and not only at the start.
How do primary and secondary causes work?
God, the primary cause, gives all things their being and power. Creatures, the secondary causes, really act through that power. An event can be wholly from God and wholly from the creature in different ways, as a book is fully the author’s and also fully shaped by the characters. This protects both divine sovereignty and creaturely freedom.
How does the tradition distinguish causing and permitting evil?
It teaches that God does not cause moral evil as he causes good. He permits free creatures to act wrongly, and he can bring good out of what they do, as with Joseph and the cross. Reformed confessions say God ordains all things but is not the author of sin. Critics ask whether the distinction removes responsibility.
How should texts like Isaiah 45:7 be read?
Most interpreters say the Hebrew word translated evil means calamity or disaster, not moral wickedness. The verse then claims that God is sovereign over events like judgment and disaster, and does not say that he commits sin. It is read together with passages like James 1:13, which say that God tempts no one to evil.
Think it through
- Have you found the idea that God is in control a comfort or a burden in hard times? What made the difference?
- Is the difference between causing and permitting convincing to you? Why?
- How would you explain providence to a friend who thinks that the world runs by chance?
Independent assignment
Three verbs
In your own notebook, write about 400 words. Choose a historical event or a story from Scripture. Describe it, then explain in what sense God might be said to have created the setting, sustained the people, governed the outcome, permitted the evil in it, and brought good out of it. Mark where you are unsure which verb applies. Keep the work private.
Further study
- Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Read selectively in the First Part on the government of the world.
- Catholic Church, Catechism of the Catholic Church Read the section on divine providence and the scandal of evil.
- Westminster Assembly, The Westminster Confession of Faith Read the chapter Of Providence.
- Zacharias Ursinus and Caspar Olevianus, The Heidelberg Catechism Read the questions on providence and on comfort.
- Matthew 10:29 Not one sparrow falls to the ground without the Father.
- Romans 8:28 All things work together for good to them that love God.