Providence

One of the clearest definition of the Christian idea of providence is given in Question 27 of the Heidelberg Catechism:

Providence is the almighty and ever present power of God by which he upholds, as with his hand, heaven and earth and all creatures, and so rules them that leaf and blade, rain and drought, fruitful and lean years, food and drink, health and sickness, prosperity and poverty—all things, in fact, come to us not by chance but from his fatherly hand.

At the heart of, and implicit in, the concept of providence is the biblical assertion that God is the lord of creation and of history; He directs all events according to His purpose and sustains them so that they rebound to His honour and glory. It is the foundation of the assurance that God is present with us here and now and He does not leave his creation and its creatures to an aimless and doubtful existence. Paul assumes the truth of divine provision when he asserts that "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose" (Rom 8:28).

Providence should be distinguished from creation. Providence assumes the reality of creation, and comes after it. God first creates. But He does not leave His creation to run on its own (as deists teach) to bloom or doom as it might. This distinction is important, it is felt, it has moral significance for Christian theodicy, i.e., the problem of suffering. Traditional Christian teaching emphasizes the goodness of the original creation but it underwent a catastrophic transformation with the fall of the first human pair. The providence is then understood to concern God's dealing with a fallen world. Confusing provision with creation would, therefore, "attribute sin to the creative goodness of God" (NDT, 541).

The new and emerging struggle in the Christian community to come to terms with the reality of evolution—whether as a fact of science or (as may Christians still hope) merely as an intellectual issue that will not go away—has made our understanding of divine providence more complex. If򴎤from a theistic evolutionary point of view—the living world is the product of divinely directed process, with evolution as its mechanism, then humans would be one of the latter creatures to be evolved, long, e.g., after the dinosaurs. The fall would, therefore, also have occurred long after the T. rex. However, the Jurassic world was already "red in tooth and claw." Pain and suffering was, therefore, a reality long before the fall, according to this scheme. How then is the doctrine of divine providence to be understood? The debate remains fluid as of the moment.