“Who is like Me? Let him proclaim and declare it; Yes, let him recount to Me in order, from the time that I established the ancient nation. And let them declare to them the things that are coming and the events that are going to take place. Do not tremble and do not be afraid; Have I not long since announced it to you and declared it? And you are My witnesses. Is there any God besides Me, or is there any other Rock? I know of none.”
– Isaiah 44:7-8 (NASB)
Dr. Jack Cottrell, in his book The Faith Once For All, has a section on Divine Providence and history. I want to borrow his outline for this post.
In essence, Christians believe that God is sovereign over His creation, and the orthodox view of God has been that, since God is eternal, He dwells outside of time and so God sees all things from the beginning to the end. The mystery, of course, is how God created human beings in His image (Genesis 1:26-27) with limited free will. Since God saw the Fall from eternity past, the Bible can make statements about Jesus Christ such as, “He was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you” (1 Peter 1:20) or speak of those whose name is recorded in the Lamb’s book of life before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8).
When it comes to God’s dealings with humanity, we can take three basic approaches to God and History:
1. God Has Nothing to Do with Anything
This would be the secular view and largely is the view held by many in the West today. This is the view held by all atheists (since there is no god) and all deists who don’t deny the Creator but simply believe that He has either hidden Himself (or Herself) and has left us alone without a revelation of this Creator. Often times you will hear people make statements such as “fate” or “karma” or “good luck” and “bad luck.” People often live their lives based on personal laws that they value and believe control their destiny. And we have popular jargon such as “Que sera, sera!” (“Whatever will be, will be”) or “When your time is up, your time is up.”
Psychological determinists believe that our destiny is the product of heredity and environment. They see two laws working together to decide our fates: natural law and man. In essence, this view believes that each person is the captain of their own ships and their own fates. “You made your bed, now lie in it.” In a way, this view is similar to the Hindu concept of the caste system in that the person born in that caste can only make their lives comfortable within their own caste. Reincarnation decides your fate based on karma (how much good you do in this life).
This sort of view of God and history doesn’t lead toward God but away from Him. People begin trying to look to the stars (astrology) or witchcraft (palm readings, psychics, New Age cults). People are aware that there are laws at work to make us who we are and where we are going but they often avoid looking to God and look to other things outside of themselves but not in the Bible. For evolutionists, natural law will take its course and there is simply nothing that can be done to stop nature.
2. God Has Everything to Do with Everything
This is the opposite extreme of the above view. In this view, God has everything to do with everything that happens; He is the only true causative factor in the universe. “Law” and “free will” are just names we give to certain ways that God works. This is called theistic determinism. This view is held by Muslims as well as within Christianity among Calvinists (this doesn’t mean that Calvinists and Muslims believe the same about God or His nature, but both do hold that God has everything to do with everything).
For Calvinism the key word is causation: God is the ultimate cause of everything. Omnicausality is central to the Calvinist concept of divine sovereignty. The cornerstone of Calvinism and omnicausality is the eternal decree of God. Eternal decree means that everything is predestined: history, salvation, even sin – all is foreknown and purposed by God who knows all things from beginning to end and causes all things from beginning to end.
This view holds three major points about God’s eternal decrees: they are comprehensive (“whatsoever comes to pass” encompasses all things); they are efficacious meaning that they will certainly come to pass by the unfailing power of the One who gave the decree; and they are unconditional meaning that God’s eternal decrees are not based on anything outside of God Himself.
The problem with such a view is that it does not allow for free will. Calvinists no doubt speak of free will, but they hold to a compatible free will meaning that human beings choose in accord to one’s inner character, motives, and desires which have been predetermined by God, who places His desires and motives in the person’s heart. A person may feel that they are making a free will decision, but God Himself has caused that person to do what they are doing by His own sovereign purpose. This view has led many to accuse God and say, “Why is God allowing this to happen to me?”
On a humorous note, I saw a coffee cup the other day that said, “Calvin’s God made me drink this.”
3. God Has Something to Do with Everything
This is the Arminian view of God, His providence, and history. This is based on three assumptions made by Arminians:
First, what kind of world did God create? We believe He created a world in which He gave relative independence, divine self-limitation, sovereign control, and conditionality.
Second, God created humans with two forces to initiate action and cause things to happen: natural law and free will. God created the world with natural laws meaning that the world operates on laws that He Himself set in motion. For instance, storms come not because God necessarily caused them but rather He set the natural laws in motion and He controls those laws if He so desires. Jesus controlled the natural laws when He calmed the seas in Mark 4:39. He also overcame natural laws such as healing people simply by His power (Mark 2:1-12). Most of the miracles of Jesus overcame natural laws.
However, God also gave humanity free will. We are free to act without our acts having been predetermined by God and without constant input from a divine remote control apparatus. Being made in the image of God, we can create ex nihilo not in a material sense but in creative events.
Yet the third point of the Arminian view is that God has something to do with everything, meaning that if God so chooses, He can step into time and act. History shows that He has done so and will do so in the future with the second coming of Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18; Hebrews 9:28). The history of Israel itself is a carving out a people from one man, Abraham (Genesis 12:1-3) to bring about His Messiah (Romans 9:5). God worked through Israel (Romans 3:2) while allowing them to choose their own destiny at times (Joshua 24:14-15). God allowed the Israelites to sometimes go astray after false gods not because He wanted this or caused this but simply He allowed the Jews to have limited free will. I say “limited” because God can and did step into Israel’s history to turn His people back (Acts 7:51-53). He did this to guarantee that His Son would come from the house of Israel (Galatians 4:21-31). God had something to do with Israel’s history but He did not have everything to do with Israel’s history (1 Corinthians 10:1-13).
The Arminian view is the best view in my opinion since it allows for God to interupt human history both in the past and in the future yet does not lay sin and evil at His door but our own. Wars, murders, violence, sins, evil, etc. are free will choices made by truly free creatures made in the image of God. This view does not deny the sovereignty of God but believes that God is sovereign in His control of all things but God is not the cause of all things.
Conclusion
One final note would be that we could add the Open View of God, but the problem is that the open view does not believe that God foreknows all things. The open theist believes that God’s understanding of history and future events are partly open (partly because some events will come to pass such as the second coming of Christ) but based on His unequaled wisdom. God does know some things better than we do and can read the times. While the open theist would side with the Arminian view on free will, they would reject that God has something to do with everything but rather believe that He operates much like we do in learning about humans and creation based on free decisions and natural laws. In the open view, God observes everything, operates in some things, but limits His involvement in most things. The open theist believes that this truly gives freedom of the will to human beings and takes God out of the arguments about suffering and pain since God does not operate based on a divine blueprint.
I reject this view since I hold that God does know all things from beginning to end and that this is based on His foreknowledge. While I reject the Calvinist concept of divine omnicausality, I do believe that God is omniscient in that He does know all things.
[Link to original post and comments at Roy Ingle’s website.]
