What Kind of Providence Can We Responsibly Believe In?
“God’s in charge”
Does it bother you when someone says something like “Well, I guess that was meant to happen…” or “It was God’s will…” Or, “everything happens for a purpose…” Or worse, when someone narrowly escapes an accident and says something like “God was looking after me…”
It may be very comforting to think that some external all-powerful deity is looking after us, but it raises some quite insurmountable dilemmas as well, such as why such a loving and caring all-mighty would allow certain terrible catastrophes to happen, other than the wonderful intervention He did for you? Why intervene here and not there? Capriciousness? Part of some kind of an overall plan which we humans just don’t get? Reward or punishment for something? Is God really in control of everything, like a puppet-master, almost? And what do we make of the claims – usually made by both sides of a conflict – that “God is on our side!”
The term “Providence” refers to a God who looks after, who cares for every detail. As our Sacred Text says “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows.” (Mt 10:29-30) Believers point to countless stories in Scripture where God intervenes in the course of history. Even the Gospel writers have their Jesus say things that can easily lead us to believe that God is fully in charge, fully in control.
Conflicting choices:
We have two major problems with an understanding of the relationship between God and the world defined in terms of “Providence.”
The first lies with our contradictory understanding of God. On the one hand, we have inherited a theology based on Greek thought, in which an almighty Creator is immutable and untouched by the vicissitudes of the world. And, on the other, we believe in a Biblical God who gets angry, changes His mind, rewards and punishes constantly.
The second relates to the relationship between what we believe about the world and our traditional theology. On the one hand, we have science which maintains that the laws of nature are inviolable, that the universe is a closed system and that new energy, such as required by any form of divine intervention, is simply not possible. And, on the other, we have a theology that has God intervene all over the place.
In our everyday theology, we seem to juggle between these two ancient traditions and our modern scientific knowledge and build some kind of hybrid world-view. To my sensitivity, neither of the two models of God work very well: one makes God totally aloof from Creation, perfect and untouchable; the other makes God like a puppet-master, controlling everything, and makes God responsible for all kinds of evil,. Neither is satisfactory. And because I respect that consensus of scientists around the nature of the universe, I either have to accept that God cannot intervene in human history, or I’ve got to find ways for some form of Presence which does not violate what we know as firm.
Can God intervene in human affairs?
Let’s tackle this third problem before we launch in exploring an alternative model of God that would permit some form of loving intervention.
There is a vast literature on this subject, but the most convincing book I have read on the subject – Philip Clayton’s God and Contemporary Science – argues very tightly that there are only five ways that God can intervene in the physical world without violating the laws of nature: God can create and sustain the universe, because these are metaphysical realities, not physical; God can collapse probability waves and set the initial conditions of iterative processes, because this introduces information, and not energy, into the universe; finally God can “whisper” into the minds of willing humans, because this is of the spiritual, not physical realm.
I personally find this a very convincing argument, and will use this as the starting-point in our exploration of Providence. What interests me among the five ways God can intervene in the world is the last one. (I’ll leave it to you to explore the first four, if you’re curious…)
The key to Providence: the Trinity:
Now to the model of God I offer as an alternative. If neither the Greek nor the Biblical model of God work well, where can we turn to find a model that avoids the problems of the two former ones?
The key to an alternative view of Providence lies, in my mind, in a Trinitarian understanding of Ultimate Reality. The First Person is the Ineffable Source of all Being, who pours itself into the created order, the Second Person of the Trinity (called “the Christ”), with the cosmic dynamism as the Third Person, the Spirit of Love, moving everything toward its fulfilment. Yes, this is a bit removed from the traditional “Father, Son and Holy Spirit”! But it’s defensible and not in the least heretical.
Before we unpack this a bit, let’s start off with the frank admission that we simply don’t know – can’t know, really, about such huge realities… The best we have are models. The Trinitarian approach I am proposing is a model. It uses symbolic language, because we don’t have words for cosmic realities this vast. You will judge this model – as you would judge any other – on whether it hangs together logically, whether it has some explanatory power in other areas of your life, and whether it provides you hope and energy to live your human life to the fullest and the most loving way possible.
The first point we have to make is that the Trinity is not an entity outside ourselves that we can walk around, measure, characterize, objectify, etc. We are in the Trinity. St Paul says that God is the “milieu” in which “we live and move and have our being.” We are in Creation and Creation is the outflow of the self-subsisting Pure Act of Being – the First Person of the Trinity – which pours its infinite potential into the created, finite, space-time universe as “beings.” This creation is continuous and creative: Being always wants more being, better being, more beings, better beings. Being is active, creative, prolific, and constantly evolves toward to more complex, the more conscious, the more loving. (I like to use the expression “be-ing” to emphasize that this reality is a verb, not a noun, an action, not a thing.)
We are in the Second Person of the Trinity – the “Christ,” the manifestation of the First Person. St Paul repeatedly says that we are “in Christ.” The best understanding of this “Christ” that we have is again Paul’s, who sees Christ 1) as Logos, the Word, at the beginning of Time, through whom all things come into being; 2) as the organizing principle in this evolving universe, keeping everything focused on its evolutionary goal of blossoming and fulfilment; and 3) as the end-product of this vast evolutionary project, when all will be fulfilled and will manifest the glory of the Pure Act of Being. We, who in this Creation are self-sentient, are called to participate in this “Christification,” or completion, of the universe, and we do so to the degree of our openness to this divine project, just as Jesus did, who was so fully open to this vision.
The Third Person – commonly called “Spirit” – provides the energy, the dynamism, the drive, the creativity, the love, the inspiration (in-spiration) required to bring this cosmic project to fulfilment.
Thus, the Trinity – Creator, Christ, and Spirit. One glorious evolving entity in which we participate.
Why a self-governing universe within the Trinity?
Science reminds us that our universe is self-governing: it operates by regular laws, and it evolves into ever more complex entities – from quarks and gluons at the smallest scale, through atoms, molecules, cells, organs, living beings, ecosystems, planets and moons, stellar systems, galaxies, and vast intergalactic structures, each with their specific set of laws governing their behaviour, the smaller affecting the larger and vice-versa. It is a profoundly relational universe, where everything depends on everything else.
If our Sacred Texts tell us anything, it is that our best understanding of the Ultimate Reality reveals that it is Love: the Ineffable Fount of Being – the First Person – offers love and desires to receive love. Love is defined as willing the fullness of something (or someone), whatever that is. Love is an act of will. An act of will requires a free will; it requires that one can will something else, something other than love. A universe fully under God’s control couldn’t do that. To create a universe capable of loving back requires that that universe be, to a large extent, self-governing.
To create a self-governing universe means to give it the freedom to be something else. A self-governing universe is in constant evolution. This evolution seems to have a direction: from the simple to the complex, from the inanimate to the animate, from the conscious to the self-conscious, from the self-centred to the other-centred.
To create a self-governing universe in evolution means to allow it to make mistakes, to explore dead-ends, to create new, unheard-of entities. It means to allow chance and randomness. It means to allow that different evolutionary courses may collide with each other and cause chaos and damage. It means to allow suffering and death as some of the consequences of all this.
In spite of the setbacks, the mistakes, the pain, and the death implied in the evolutionary process, the universe seems to be, nonetheless, biased towards blossoming – despite the setbacks caused by the inherent consequences of an evolving universe, and the self-centred decisions of self-sentient beings.
Remember that all of this occurs within the Second Person of the Trinity!
This model imagines that the Trinity experiences every moment of this evolutionary process, because the universe is the First Person’s self-expression in space and time. While the Ineffable Fount of Fullness does not control the outcome of this universe-in-becoming, it maintains a deep and profound relationship with it because this universe is the divine expression in our finite world. It uses the five ways we described above to guide this evolutionary expression. Its primary means of intervention, as I mentioned earlier, is to nudge, cajole this self-governing process towards its ultimate fulfilment by whispering to us self-sentient beings, if we but listen.
So, where is Providence?
So, does God look after me or not? No…. and yes. You and I, and everyone else, are unique expressions of the Divine. We may be insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but we matter. The model I am proposing would insist that the Divine loves each and every one of us, love being the will for each of us to flourish. And the big bias in the universe is towards growth and blossoming. That’s the “yes” part of this model of “Providence.”
The “no” part is that, aside from the general thrust towards growth and blossoming, which is consistent with the laws of nature, God does not intervene to “fix” things. Never has. Never will. Stories to the contrary are wishful thinking. And create no end of difficulty explaining why a loving God lets terrible things happen. Within the Second Person of the Trinity, ever evolving into the fullness of Being, we live in an evolving world, and a world in which humans have free will: as a result, good and bad things happen all the time, helping or hindering the ongoing “Christification” of the universe. Nonetheless, as Julian of Norwich maintained long ago, “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”
There’s a story of a man caught in a terrible flood. The water is up to the ceiling in the house, and rising. He seeks refuge on the roof. He prays to be saved. A fireman comes by in a boat and offers the man a ride to safety. He declines, saying that Providence will save him. The water rises. A helicopter hovers overhead and throws the man a ladder to climb up. He declines, saying that Providence will save him. The water rises, sweeps him off the roof, and he drowns. He arrives in Heaven and complains to God: “Why didn’t you save me?” God replied “But I sent you a fireman and a helicopter!” Think of this story in terms of the whispering and nudging that God does all the time. Our job is to always listen: perhaps we are the ones nudged to help someone in distress. Perhaps someone has paid attention to our own distress, and offers us a helping hand. That’s how Providence works.
Disappointment… so, what next?
The conclusion is probably not what we wanted to hear… What can we do about it?
I’d suggest we start by looking at our Egos. That’s the biological part of us that looks after us, protects us from danger, finds ways to promote our success. We know it by its incessant chatter in the back of our minds about whatever is happening. It’s judging, evaluating, always looking out for our interests. Its greatest fear is letting us down. It just loves the idea that a divine “daddy” is looking after us.
Our task is to recognize the work – usually very good! – of our Egos, and realize when it gets in the way of a mature assessment of reality. Essentially, our job is to detach ourselves somewhat from our Ego, and observe it from a slight distance. We have an Ego; we are not our Ego! Some time ago, the American spiritual teacher Fr. Richard Rohr reminded us of a few unpleasant facts: our life is not about us; and we are insignificant. These are not words our Egos like to hear. But they are an honest assessment of our place in the grand scheme of things. But he goes on to suggest that, while our life may not be about us, it’s about something far greater, and, while we may be insignificant, we are important. The world is not the uncaring place scientists would have us believe in. We are unique expressions of the Ineffable Fount of Being; we live in a universe structured by the Christ and driven by the power of Love of the Spirit. The Divine is closer to us than we are to ourselves, and is always whispering to us our next best move. Our job is to stop, step aside from our chattering Ego, and listen. This, in my opinion, is Providence at its best. Are you ready to respond to the call to be the divine Providence in any given situation?