(Arbeiten Zur Kirchengeschichte) Mark W. Elliott - Providence Perceived - Divine Action From A Human Point of View-De Gruyter (2015) PDF

Mark W.
Elliott
Providence Perceived
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Mark W. Elliott
Providence
Perceived
Divine Action from a Human Point of View
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Contents
Introduction 1
Chapter One: Providence in the early Christian Church’s Theology 5

Ecumenical Beginnings after the Apostolic Era 5
The Western development 37
Political History 45
Chapter Two: The Medieval Account of Providence 55

Boethius first 55
Medieval Historiography 71
Byzantium and Eastern Christianity 84
The Western High Middle Ages 92
Chapter Three: Later Medieval Developments 104

Alternatives to the High Medieval Consensus 104
More radical traditions 128
Chapter Four: Reformation Providence 135

The impact of Luther 135
Calvin and the Swiss-Dutch tradition 141
The Heidelberg Catechism and Bullinger 149
And the Lutherans? 157
Catholic voices 166
Chapter Five: The Doctrine’s Fortunes in the Early Modern Era 173
Protestant and Catholic perceptions 173
Philosophical Moves 189
Theological responses in the Early Enlightenment 194
Chapter Six: The Enlightenment’s ongoing Challenge to the Doctrine of

Providence 202
Later Enlightenment voices 202
Hegel and Beyond 221
Chapter Seven: Providence in twentieth-century theological

discussion 231
The major contribution of Barth: renewing the tradition 233
VIII Contents
Reactions to Barth on Providence 242

Providence in post-confessional German theology from 1960
onwards 247
English-speaking discussion 260
Recent Catholic contribution to the Doctrine 267
The place of the historical in God’s purposes 272
Chapter Eight: Coming up to date: works in the last five years 279
Conclusion 291
Bibliography 295
Index of Scripture References 325
Index of Key Figures 328

Introduction
This opening chapter is not the place to try to be synthetic, let alone systematic.
Indeed, even the chapters that follow will hardly please the reader who is look-
ing for such qualities. At times this book might seem annaliste in the sense of
recounting “one damn thinker after another.” Moreover, a short apology as to
why this work will be largely an attempt to describe past thinking using the his-
torical research of others is required. First, theology has always drawn on the
past generations’ theologizing as its life-blood,hence the need to present move-
ments and thinkers in some sort of historical order and with full assistance from
the work of the respective experts on each period. That is to resist the temptation
for modern theologians to ignore both the sequence of primary sources and rel-
evant historical theological scholarship in a hurry to annex the realm of “the tra-
dition” and to dispose of it like its property. This work intends to counter the ten-
dency among theologians to treat history badly and anachronistically. For,
employing postmodernism as a fig leaf for such shameful behaviour, such mod-
ern theology asserts that there is no such thing as history, only things in the past
that can be made useful, like the odd original fireplace in one’s hi-tech dream
home. Ideas, one is told, get “received according to the mode of the receiver” (it-
self a re-conditioned idea from Thomas Aquinas) and that justifies pinning a
modern idea to an ancient name, and colonizing it.¹ It is hence understandable
that some contemporary theology prefers to escape from the contingents of past
traditions and prefers to deal in more general discourse of meta-ethical nature
with reference to “community”, “hospitality”, “inclusion.”
However, for all this unfortunate behaviour towards the past (those who col-
onise it and those who ignore or patronise it), there are plenty of examples of
exemplary practice in allowing the voices of the past to be heard in concert,
even if the perfect eludes us. Jaroslav Pelikan’s The Christian Tradition comes
to mind, as does Bernard McGinn’s The Presence of God. Multi-authored attempts
are something different, but one stands in awe and admiration before the (Prot-
estant) Handbuch der Dogmen-und Theologiegeschichte and the (Catholic) Hand-
buch der Dogmengeschichte. One or two attempts at the history of exegesis are
also inspiring. Henri Brémond’s Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en
France is more specialized yet in its own way “immense.” Alister McGrath’s Ius-
titia Dei continues to offer much for understanding the development of “Justifi-
 John F. Wippel, “Thomas Aquinas and the Axiom ’What is Received is Received According to
the Mode of the Receiver’”, in A Straight Path: Essays in Honor of Arthur Hyman, ed. Ruth Link-
Salinger (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 279 – 89.
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2 Introduction
cation,” and provided that author with a tracing flare to guide his subsequent,
popular introductions to Christian theology.
Second, in attempting to be synthetic about a period or a school or a thinker
from the past, drawing on a goodly amount of teamwork is appropriate. If a re-
spected contemporary scholar (or two or three) has written a book on the theme
of Providence (or its cognates) in x, then it not only saves time in the attempt to
allow a wider picture to emerge, it is an act of collegial trust to resist the urge
always to go back ad fontes and re-read the primary texts for oneself. Obviously
important things can be missed even by the best scholars, but not every piece of
scholarship needs to be like the dissertation, with a fixed amount of primary ma-
terial from a certain provenance, whose secrets yet need to be brought into the
sunlight. A good monograph on ‘Providence in x’ will point one to the key pri-
mary texts, where the argument turns, or is pithily summed up by the original
author. Hence something of that flavour should come through. No further or lon-
ger apology needs to be made for the reliance on secondary sources. Secondary
sources which are studies based on primary sources have done the work of se-
lecting and compressing that a work of this sort very much needs. It strikes
me as something almost disrespectful to rely on our own three-hour dip into a
commentary or a treatise when there is a work devoted to that text that took
three or more years in the researching. Creativity comes in the use and interweav-
ing of research of others, and often in going through the secondary sources to the
primary ones, when specific questions related to Providence go unanswered. This
will involve diving into primary sources at many points where the thing remains
unexplored, or the questions one has to ask are somehow different. Yet what is to
be avoided is large paraphrase of chunks of primary text, unless it comes from a
text that has not yet been translated.
Furthermore, one looks at specialist studies partly because they often aim to
put texts in their contexts. Therefore Church History or, rather, that which is re-
flected in the primary texts of Christian theology and spirituality through the
years and according to context, is invaluable when heard as much on its own
terms as possible, not least for this particular doctrine: Providence. For Church
History deals with as a matter of first importance the perceptions of God’s deal-
ings with his people. Church History is invested in understanding how the way
people have regarded Providence has in turn made a difference to how they re-
ceived biblical and historical teaching anterior to themselves, and how they
themselves then added to the growing tradition. The biblical texts themselves
in turn stand as records of how the history of God and humanity in particular
times and places was grasped and interpreted. This re-appropriation went on
even during the biblical period: books like those which make up the so-called
“Wisdom Literature” emerge from a self-understanding of writers representing

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Introduction 3
a people that is quite well aware of its own historical “situatedness.” In the
chapters after this one we shall look afresh at some of these texts, from the
bible as interpreted by Christian theologians and the Christian tradition (with
some reference to Jewish thought too). (It might be said here that intentionally
faithful reading of authoritative Scripture is likely to have more to illuminate
the biblical text than fanciful use of Scripture for rhetorical effect: proof texting
proceeds on the idea that someone else has already established the link between
a verse and a doctrine: this of course is not a sufficient way of hearing the bible,
but it is arguably better than modern allegorical readings where the Scriptural
text is melted down to one idea-e. g. “exodus” and then re-fashioned into
some modern cause. Even G. Gutierrez said too much was made of “the exodus”
by liberationist theologians.)
Third, this work will try not to be too defensive, not least in claiming that the
fact the raw material for this study comes from the past does not mean that its
truth is outdated. It could be said that the history of human ideas is the database
for all research in the humanities. Ortega y Gasset in his Historia como sistema
(Towards a Philosophy of History, 1941) following Michelet and even Vico put
it this way: “Man in a word has no nature; what he has is history.”
Unfortunately there has been a wrong sense of what Providence is – people
have seen it as a ghost that lives near them rather that Intelligence which forms
the whole, their little bit included. If there is truth in Kierkegaard’s adage, that
life is lived forwards but understood backwards,² then ecclesial theology has
quite a wisdom to gain from reviewing the life of the ecclesia to this point. Yet
one feels admiration for the Systematician who feels confident enough to help
herself from the larder of historical theology according to her tastes and require-
ments. There is nothing worse than information served up with all the élan of a
telephone directory. Certainly the questions one should ask of the past should
not (for the most part) be those of the antiquarian. Yet history is our resource
as an alternative to natural science or even human science in the sense of soci-
ology, where there often seems to be very little taken account of that is joyfully
and non-self-consciously contingent and apparently accidental, even flukey.
With Providence (and it shall be capitalised when it is meant as a concept),
any self-abandonment to it³ requires a belief that there is something behind that
name which will preserve our best interests, or at least will not allow a result that
 Journals IV A 164 (1843).

 As in J.-P. de Caussade, Abandonment to Divine Providence, (publ. Paris, 1861, 110 years post-
humously) it is the idea of self-sacrifice, where the offering is something that does not cost one
nothing (1 Chr 21:24) and gives value to the notion that our hold on things, even life, is only as
tenants (not quite the same as “stewards”).

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4 Introduction
is overall harmful to us. It will not cause us so much hurt that we would feel less
inclined to trust in the future than we do at this present moment. The right
human disposition towards Providence is not so much “saving faith” but faith
that God intervenes in this world too, and not merely for the sake of our partic-
ipation in the afterlife, but for penultimate ends too. As such it might well ap-
pear a rather self-centred kind of doctrine, even while the very reverse is the
point of its content. A God who looks after me? It is almost the very opposite
of Aristotle’s famous view in Metaphysics XII,9, that divine providence does
not extend “beneath” the guiding of the stars and planets. The corollary is the
idea that humans are then freed to act and not be mannequins, but rather re-
sponsible moral agents, who flourish in the knowledge, the cognitive “good out-
look,” that a Providence is playing and will play its part. Something of this con-
cern was also there in the ethical teaching of Proclus. So the ancient
understanding of the doctrine was not one that encouraged passivity, let alone
indolence. The flipside, as it were, of Providence, one might say the religious af-
fect that accompanies the doctrine, is that of fiducia.⁴
 See recently Simon Peng-Keller and Ingolf U. Dalferth, eds., Gottvertrauen: Die ökumenische
Diskussion um die fiducia. Quaestiones Disputatae 250 (Freiburg: Herder, 2012.) Or as Klaus
Fischer has recently expressed it: “Ziel der Studie ist es, den biblischen Grund des Glaubens
an Gott herauszuarbeiten, sodass er als Chance für die Begegnung mit dem Schicksal begreifbar
wird: in Vertrauen, Gelassenheit und Freiheit des Geistes (Filippo Neri).” Klaus P. Fischer,
Schicksal in Theologie und Philosophie (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2008),
10.

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Chapter One: Providence in the early Christian
Church’s Theology
Ecumenical Beginnings after the Apostolic Era
Genevieve Lloyd recounts how the ancient playwrights struggled to show how
even the gods were subject to necessity at times, and that as a counterpoint,
human beings did have a measure of control over the way things turned out.¹
In the Alcestis of Euripides, Apollo gave Ametus reprieve from mortality for
being a good master to him, while Alcestos is able to step in and make a differ-
ence. The lesson to learn was to accept mortality and be brave where freedom
could be asserted: “there is no horror in the inevitable.” (Aeschylus’ Hypsipyle
would be admired by Chrysippus and Cicero.²) In this pre-Christian vision
“true wisdom lies in the delicate art of learning to live with both necessity
and chance.”³ The playwrights and Cicero maintained free will where the Epicur-
eans gave all to chance and the Stoics all to fate. Cicero in De Natura Deorum
(2.35.88/44.115) is able to see Providence as neither: there is a design, an intelli-
gence, which might just deserve the epithet “personal.” For Foucault, the an-
cients believed that humans had resistance to offer the course of events, and
this disposition could be summed up in the term parrhesia. The body needed
to be taken hold of, and yet the soul in so doing was nevertheless serving the
body, even in the example of the medicalization of sexuality.⁴ All in all there
was some “further” reason for such ordering. Human beings seemed to require
“a bigger scheme of things,” even a “macrocosmos” to work with or over-against.
Epictetus (born 55 CE) seemed surprisingly like Paul to the point that some like
Theodore Zahn thought there just had to be an influence at work.⁵
The New Testament thought that certain things were indeed fixed, the two
advents of Christ in particular, but little else is predetermined and no plan
 Genevieve Lloyd, Providence Lost (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008.)
 Fischer, Schicksal in Theologie und Philosophie, 19.
 Ibid., 40. As for Lucretius comments: “Still, the knowledge that our free will rests on random
cosmic ‘swervings’ may hold terrors of its own.”
 See Histoire de la sexualité III: Le Souci de Soi (Paris: Gallimard, 2004), 185.
 Whereas Stoic epistrophe meant a turning back to one’s source, ancient Christians believed in
something else. “Il s’agit d’un bouleversement de l’esprit, d’un renouveau radical, il s’agit d’une
ré-enfantement du sujet par lui-même, avec au centre, la mort et la resurrection comme experi-
ence de soi-Même et de rénoncement de soi à soi.” (Michel Foucault, L’herméneutique du sujet
[Paris: Gallimard, 2009], 208) Foucault proposes a third: return of the self to the self and to
being no longer being distracted by the world around.

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6 Chapter One: Providence in the early Christian Church’s Theology
may be discerned. There is not much mention of pronoia in the sense of divine
overseeing or provision. The New Testament is very interested in the prophesied
and enacted history of salvation in Christ, but that in turn does not give much
insight into the course of world history of individual life stories.⁶ If one has to
resort to Jewish contemporaries, Josephus names as one of the distinguishing
features of the Pharisees their belief that “Fate” took the choices of humans
into account.⁷ Even this is still more determinist than what one learns from
Avot 3:15 from Akiva: “All is foreseen, but freedom of choice is given.” For Jose-
phus himself at times (in Ant 2,4) he could assert a Stoic-like providence against
Epicureans (although when it came to particular events like the Red Sea crossing
he was less sure.)⁸ The book of Wisdom has a long coda where God’s working
with Israel in history is a manifestation of his clear involvement in the world
(see especially Wisdom xiv.3, xvii.2). It would seem that cosmological ordering
is then given some sort of fulfillment in the history of Israel, as it is presented.
Josephus too could look back and attribute the fall of Jerusalem and the temple’s
destruction to providentia Dei et confusione hominum.⁹ One senses, however, that
with the interest in creation and new creation in an “eschatologically minded”
first century, that there was less space available for the present and the penulti-
mate.
Philo held the Logos (as distinct from “Sophia”) to be responsible for Prov-
idence. David Winston comments:
But if this “dance of the Logos” involves a “perpetual flux”, how is it to be reconciled with
Philo’s belief in the ultimate advent of a messianic age? The answer appears to be that the
rotational equality that rules the present cosmic era will ultimately be replaced by a steady-
state form of equality. The ideal natural law embodied in the Mosaic Torah will then govern
 Wolfgang Schrage, Vorsehung Gotttes? Zur Rede von der providentia Dei in der Antike und im
Neuen Testament (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner, 2005), 137: “Vorsehung ist also anders als in
der Stoa nicht auf die göttliche Weltregierung fokussiert.” 157: “[…] dass mit der Gewissheit des
durch Gottes Vorsehung begründeten unumstößlichen Heils kein Universalschlüssel für eine
sinnvolle Erklärung des Weltgeschehens oder des eigenen Lebensschicksals gewonnen wird.”
 Antiquities xviii.1, 2.
 See Harold W. Attridge, The Interpretation of Biblical History in the Antiquitates Judaicae of
Flavius Josephus, Harvard Dissertations in Religion 7 (Missoula: Scholars, 1976).
 See Bernhard Mutschler, “Geschichte, Heil und Unheil bei Flavius Josephus am Beispiel der
Tempelzerstörung,” in Heil und Geschichte: Die Geschichtsbezogenheit des Heils und das Problem
der Heilsgeschichte in der biblischen Tradition und in der theologischen Deutung, eds. Jörg Frey,
Stefan Krauter, and Hermann Lichtenberger, (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 103 – 27.

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all the nations of the world, so that there will no longer be any dislocations in the divine
economy and hence no need for periodic redistributions.¹⁰
In other words, Philo did not see Providence as the occasional but sharp inter-
vention which might well get more and more disruptive, but rather as a steady
rotational equilibrium that will be replaced by a non-rotational, stable one.
Now clearly Philo is writing more from God’s viewpoint, or trying to, and placing
the emphasis on order and constancy. When Socrates wrote that providence
could be demonstrated from the careful arrangement of human anatomy, he
was doing something similar to Philo.¹¹ The latter’s De Providentia is neither
thorough or systematic – it is more a refutation of his nephew Tiberius J.
Alexander that the very existence of evil disproved providence. It is a proper
question: How can the provident yet transcendent God extend his providence
to creation? For creation to exist in time its creation has to be in between divine
planning and continual sustaining.¹² Relying on the work of David Runia, Peter
Frick comments on the Philonic “three levels” of the Logos: “On the highest,
transcendent level, the Logos is the mind of God, and on the lower, immanent
level, the Logos administers the cosmos with its attendant powers. Combining
both of the levels on a second level is the Logos as the instrument of creation.”¹³
In this Philo came quite close to the Middle Platonist Atticus. It seems a little
strange to say that Philo thinks of God as essentially provident when it seems
clear that in Spec 1:209 προνοητικός seems to follow on from creation, i. e. his
treatment of God as such comes after saying he is ποιητής γεννητὴς. It is not
the case that a predicate demands “essence.” But Runia and Frick’s general
point is well-taken: God’s Providence is a doctrine about God and Creation,
not just about God and His excellence – as was the case with Atticus.¹⁴ For
Philo then, the Logos provides a gracious link between God and human soul
via the rest of creation. God’s gracious providence that is greater than goodness
is not something apophatic but is goodness in action. Pronoia originally meant
“intention” as in 2 Macc 4:6; or “eternal plan” that freed the Israelites (Wis 17:2).
 David Winston, “Philo and the Wisdom of Solomon on Creation, Revelation, and Providence:
The High-Water Mark of Jewish Hellenistic Fusion,” in Shem in the Tents of Japhet, Essays on the
Encounter of Judaism and Hellenism, ed. James Kugel, Supplements to the Journal for the Study
of Judaism (Leiden: Brill, 2002), 120 – 30.
 Xenophon’s Memorabilia, i.4,2.
 Peter Frick, Divine Providence in Philo of Alexandria, Texts and Studies in Ancient Judaism 77
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1999), 190. See Philo, Opif 171– 72.
 Ibid., 115, with reference to David Runia, Philo and the Timaeus, Philosophia Antiqua 44 (Lei-
den: Brill, 1986), 242.
 Frick, Divine Providence, 65; Runia, Philo and the Timaeus, 441

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For the Neoplatonists pronoia was a general rule that allowed for no exceptions.
With Philo it was very much related to the law and one’s following of it.¹⁵ It is
about taking part in an eschatological conflict between good and evil spirits,
whose dialectic drives history’s course, or rather the destiny of the individual.¹⁶
If Philo’s work was really a polemic against fatalism, rather than a treatment of
the theme as a whole, then it could be argued that before Plotinus there was no
work dedicated to the topic, unless one counts Book X of Plato’s Laws. There was
much more done on Fate: Seneca’s work De Providentia is actually about fate (of
a fairly blind sort), and offering oneself up to it.¹⁷ Yet, insisted Seneca, it is in-
cumbent on a person to struggle to hold his course against his fortune.
In the earliest decades of the history of the Church there seems to have been
little real attempt to address the issue of Providence; the Apologists only touch
on it when claiming that God’s sustains the world through the Pax Romana,
while some contemporaries were convinced the world was at an end, so that
to speak of God’s providence of it would have been a futile pursuit. Justin Martyr
saw biblical, interventionist providence as concerned with the souls of believing
individuals only. Tertullian viewed anything lying outside of salvation history as
simply demonic, with safety only found in God’s ownership. Compared with the
other second-century Apologists for whom Creation and its initial goodness, was
more of a concern, Athenagoras had quite a lot to say on Providence as God’s
ongoing ordering activity in creation and human free will. He was possibly the
first Christian to distinguish “general” from “specific” providence. Much of his
writing mixes in influences from Plato and the Stoics wherever they fit with
the biblical view of a ruling, upholding God. As David Rankin outlines, “From
Chapter 24 on of the Legatio, after he has indicated that the spirit opposed to
God was given the administration of matter and material things, he speaks of
the general and universal Providence over all things exercised by God alone
and of the particular Providence which is given to angels called into existence
 Folker Siegert, Philon von Alexandrien: Über die Gottesbezeichnung “wohltätig verzehrendes
Feuer” (De deo), WUNT 46 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998), 135 f. “Philon will möglicherweise
an Stellen wie Spec. I, 308 ff. oder der unseren etwas Ähnliches sagen; doch wirkt bei ihm die
Vorsehung ausschließlich auf dem Wege der (physikalischen und ethischen) Gültigkeit des
(Mose‐) Gesetzes.”
 Jutta Leonhardt-Balzer, “Heilsgeschichte bei Philo? Die Aufnahme der Zweigeisterlehre in QE
I 23,” in Heil und Geschichte: Die Geschichtsbezogenheit des Heils und das Problem der Heilsge-
schichte in der biblischen Tradition und in der theologischen Deutung, eds., Jörg Frey, Stefan
Krauter, and Hermann Lichtenberger, WUNT 248 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 129 – 147.
 De providentia 5,8: “grande solacium est cum universo rapi. 9: non potest artifex mutare ma-
teriam; hoc passa est […] contra fortunam illi tenendus est cursus.”

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for this purpose (24.3).”¹⁸ Yet at 25,2 he is quite happy to say against the Stoics
that God is quite happy to delegate oversight of sub-lunar regions to the wills of
angels (perhaps a “third providence”) and men, and that the only necessity is
that of consequence. God’s providence will only fully catch up with earthly his-
tory on the day of Judgement (De resurrectione 14.5).
An awareness of Providence can be seen in the religious practice of late an-
tique Egypt: “No, no-one prayed for sun to rise, but they prayed for the Nile to
rise.”¹⁹ Reports on what seems to have been a widespread view of providence at
a popular level at the end of the second century. Where there was contingency,
there arose a felt need for special providence. In this respect second-century
Christian thought was more like Josephus and Wisdom than like Philo. Robert
Grant relates that the world of Imperial Rome, at least when interpreted by
those with religious sensitivity, is quite ready to ascribe events to the action of
supernatural power. It was well known that the Twelfth Legion was “miraculous-
ly’” spared when the Quadi tribe was struck by lightning.²⁰ Furthermore divine
help was actively sought and expected: Dio Cassius (60.9.2– 5) reports incanta-
tions, or prayer to Mithras before battle. But the divine employment of the ele-
ments was not always so predictable. As Theophilus of Antioch, reflecting on Jer-
emiah 10:13 and Psalm 134:7 has it: “multiplying lightnings turn into rain. It is
God himself who controls the flashes from burning up earth.”²¹ Also, Theophilus
declared that humans are like seeds within the pomegranate who cannot see
outside it. Foresight is not guaranteed.²² These few details that Grant helpfully
relates seem a world away from how Philo wrote about providence, or maybe
one could say as far as a heaven’s eye-view is from an earth-bound one. Having
established that the term “Sebaoth” (LXX: pantakratôr) means one who has ac-
tual, limited power, Gijbsert van den Brink notes that there took place a gradual
semantic shift toward a definition of “omnipotens,” i. e. as one having actual un-
limited power, but in the first few centuries of the Common Era this was not so.
The actuality of this function combines with the idea of divine “total sustaining,”
a notion, he argues, introduced by Posidonius into Stoic circles. Hence kratein
 David Rankin, Athenagoras Philosopher and Theologian (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), 61. Cf.
Michel Spanneut, Le stoïcisme des pères de l’église: de Clément de Rome à Clément d’Alexandrie,
Patristica Sorbonensia 1 (Paris:Le Seuil, 1957).
 P. Oxy. XXXVI, 2782.
 Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica V,5,3. See Robert M. Grant, ‘God and Storms in Early Chris-
tian Thought’, in Andrew B. McGowan, Brian E.Daley and Timothy J. Gaden (eds.), God in Early
Christian Thought (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 351– 60.
 Theophilus, Ad Autolycum, 23.
 Eusebius, ibid.

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came to mean “sustain, preserve, hold” and not just “have power.” He con-
cludes, “Instead of describing God’s sovereign power as exemplified in creation,
on occasions the term pantokrator is now more and more going to point to a con-
tinuous relationship between God and the world.”²³ In other words, a providen-
tial one. He adds that most of the fathers have this, from as early as Theophilus
of Antioch: “But he is called Pantakrator because he himself holds (kratei) and
embraces (emperiechei) all things (ta panta) […] there is no place withdrawn
from his power” (Ad Autolycum I,4)²⁴.
One needs also to remember the “Gnostic” contribution to the formation of
Christian thought. As one might expect, there is evidence of a very full, possibly
overwhelming activity of God for those who have been chosen, of their being
progressed until a point where the loving Father is happy with his choice crea-
tion, those who long to be “at home.”²⁵ For it is unikely that humans are able to
look after themselves given their captive state and so need God to move them to-
wards their destiny. In Letter to Flora Ptolemaeus writes of a προνοία that be-
longs to the Creator only and which, when he comes to earth, moves soul out
of the realm of Fate (Heimarmene) into that of Pronoia,²⁶ whereas Valentinus
seems to speak about Christians – including the heart’s sanctification. Why
would such a believing soul have been in the realm of fate in the first place?
This strengthens Markschies’ case that the early Valentinians did not think of
pre-fixed natures but rather of divine condescension in order to make a differ-
ence. If a soul is destined for salvation would God not look after it before?²⁷
But Valentinus, despite what Clement is suggesting in Stromateis II 115,1, does
not think of those “saved by nature.” Yet Clement adds: “why say the heart be-
comes ‘pure’ if it was not ‘impure‘ in creation?” Clement’s point is that not just a
few but in fact all receive care from a universal Pronoia. Certainly with Clement
the educative function of providence comes to the fore (Strom 4.12.87) to disci-
 Gijsbert van den Brink, Almighty God: A Study of the Doctrine of Divine Omnipotence (Kamp-
en: Kok Pharos, 1993), 52.
 Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium 126 (GNO II, 366) “So when we hear the name pan-
tokrator, our conception is this, that God sustains in being all things, both the intelligible and
those which have a material nature.”
 Christoph Markschies, Valentinus Gnosticus? Untersuchungen zur Valentinianischen Gnosis
mit einem Kommentar zu den Fragmenten Valentins (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992), 77 “Der Ge-
dankenfortschritt liegt in dem Nebensatz ‚μέχρι μὴ προνοίας τυγχάνει‘. Wer wendet aber dem
Herzen Sorgfalt, Vorsorge zu? Der folgende Satz und das Stichwort προνοία legen es nahe, an
‘den allein guten Vater zu denken, der das Herz heimsucht.‘”
 Ibid., Anm. 143 “nach Theodot führt der Kyrios die Menschen, wenn er zur Erde kommt, von
der Heimarmene zu seiner προνοία” (Exc. Thdot 74,2).
 Ibid., 80.

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pline for sin, specifically. In fact this is what shapes Clement’s literary corpus,
argues Osborn, who also notes that Clement is very close to Irenaeus in respect,
except for a notion of faith as participation, and an emphasis on the present age
of salvation history. (Irenaeus paid more attention to the sweep of the “past” bib-
lical evidence.)²⁸
In his introductory musings about ancient philosophy and Providence,
Christian Parma puts his finger on the relationship of Providence to ethics as
well as epistemology (with God the providential founder of truth). In other
words, that is how Providence serves: it offers guidelines for moral living.
These are not immediately obvious or of the nature of laws carved in stone: it
takes a while to perceive this kind of Providence properly – close inspection
and comparison, the workings of wisdom with which human need to align them-
selves. Creation requires some amount of getting used to, but humans are to
think of themselves as possessed with free will if this Providence is to make
sense, for it cannot be so strange to creation that it would override it. Humans
are responsible for maintenance and fine-tuning of a given moral order.²⁹ For
a Seneca the way of progress is steady virtue and fixity of soul, whereas for a
Horace it means keeping oneself ever more withdrawn from the world. Ovid in-
troduced the idea of the “roundness of life’s wheel of fortunes,” an idea perhaps
already there in Herodotus, History I,20,7.³⁰
For Stoics, it was not about generous benevolence by God but a balanced di-
alectic of accepting the rough with the smooth. What comes together needs to be
accepted, as Marcus Aurelius (Mediations V,8) taught.³¹ What the Stoics do con-
tribute is a sense of Providence as horizontal and linear, not vertical or transcen-
 Eric Osborn, Clement of Alexandria (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 55: “The
divine movement from invitation (Protrepticus) through instruction Paedagogus) to perfected hu-
manity (Stromateis VII) is as decisive as are the earlier ages of the plan of salvation. Movement
goes on in the new age which has been inaugurated, as humans participate in the salvation
which God offers and move from faith to the vision ‘Face to face’.”
 Christian Parma, Pronoia und Providentia: Der Vorsehungsbegriff Plotins und Augustins (Lei-
den: Brill, 1971), 4.
 Nicole Hecquet-Noti, “Fortuna dans le monde latin: chance ou hazard?” in La Fortune:
themes, representations, discours. Recherches et rencontres, eds. Yashima Foehr-Janssens and Em-
manuelle Metry (Geneva: Droz, 2003) : 13 – 29, 19.
 Aldo Magris, Destino, provvidenza, predestinazione. Dal mondo antico al cristianesimo (Bres-
cia: Morcelliana, 2008), 475: for Stoics “La provividenza infatti è anche destino, e il destino è
anche il logos, cioè il col-legamento […] L’idea stoica della pronoia non è quella di una generosa
beneficenza da parte del ‘Dio’, come in Platone, ma una dialettica che cerca di vedere un nesso
nel chiaroscuro dell’esperienza e sopportarne le conseguenze senza meravigliarsi, senza lamen-
tarsi per come vano le cose, poichè il riconoscomento della provvidenza fa tutt’uno con l’accet-
tazione del destino.”

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dental. According to Foucault, Plato had seen the need for leadership with par-
rhesia even in a state where laws and magistrates were perfect and the city well
governed.³² This would test, cajole and guide. Aldo Magris argues further that
Pronoia of the philosophers was God’s taking care of the whole world, but the
Jewish “wisdom” personified the assistance God gave to Israel, including the
punishment of their earthly enemies and so providence can to be understood
as the showing forth of miracle and sign. And yet even with the Latin writers,
a common Aristotelian ontology remained strong,³³ just as the Church Fathers
resisted Gnostics. There was no place for “Evil,” as such and it is humans
who are the principles of their own movements. The Saviour has freed human
beings from dark, overpowering forces (Gal 4:3 – 9), and Deut 30:19 calls all to
choose life or death, a theme especially important for the early Christian Apol-
ogists and Clement of Alexandria.³⁴
Picking up on Philo’s distinction of the Logos as logos endiathetos-logos pro-
phorikos, Clement took the matter a step further.³⁵ Although the Kerygma Petri
already contained the idea of this outward-looking arché being made in time,
in Stromateis VI,7,58,1, with a thought that would be developed by Origen’s epi-
noia-teaching, Clement asserted that the creation of humanity takes place within
the life of the Trinity. It did not take place once, but eternally, hence repeatedly
and providentially. God as eternal is always pantakrator, and He needs a creation
to reveal this, not to make it so.³⁶ And in any case, it seems that his nature as
Wisdom in his relationship to the Father God means that his activity ad extra
will not be arbitrary, or of the “absolute power” type. In fact, as far as most
church fathers are concerned God has to be true to Himself and his ordaining
of things.³⁷
 Michael Foucault, Le Gouvernement de soi et des autres, Cours au Collège de France, 1982– 3
(Paris: Gallimard-Seuil, 2008), 187 f.
 Magris, Destino, provvidenza, predestinazione, 602.
 Ibid., 584.
 Jean-Pierre Batut, Pantocrator. ‘Dieu le Père tout-puissant’ dans la théologie prénicéenne, Col-
lection des études Augustiniennes, Série Antiquité 189 (Paris: Institut d’Etudes Augustiniennes,
2009), 363. “Mais la lecture de Clément marque un net progress. En effet, il n’y a plus là deux
étapes de l’existence du Logos, mais deux aspects de ce meme Logos, totalement un en lui-
même: il est désigné comme ‘Sagesses’ lorsqu’on le considère dans sa relation à la Pensée du
Père, et comme “Principe” dans sa relation aux hommes.”
 Ibid.,526.
 Ibid., 506 “Dieu ne peut exercer sa toute-puissance que de maniére ordonnée, c’est-à-dire
conformément à sa Sagesse, parce qu’il cesserait d’être Dieu, si, par impossible, il n’agissait
pas ainsi.”

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One is indebted to Silke-Petra Bergjan’s work to see how Clement, Origen

and Eusebius contributed to a significant development in the Christian under-
standing of providence, quite possibly in response to a challenge, or, better, a
stimulus from philosophers. According to this Christian tradition, Pronoia is
not God’s looking out in advance to plan the course of history but instead is
his interactive care for the world, which is quite unlike the business of causing
all things to be as they are (unlike Fate or Heimaremene).³⁸ Origen is clear that
providence means the arrangement of distributive justice, and that God is watch-
ing to take note of moral performance, in order to give informed judgement post
mortem.³⁹ Whereas Justin differed from pagan Philosophers in believing that
God doesn’t just care for types but for each Christian individual, Clement agrees
but specifies that the Christian difference is that there is individual pronoia only
for those who accept discipline and paideusis. One chooses to join the Elect by
responding well to Providence.
More recently, as part of an upsurge in Clement studies, Bergjan has revisit-
ed Clement. Clement liked to gloss pronoia as epimeleia and kédemón and to vis-
ualise God as “shepherd” and “king.” More direct divine care is accorded to
those who will be delegated responsibility to care through leading (Strom VI
158, 1– 2).⁴⁰ For Stoics the immanence of fate (heimarmene) as an indwelling
force in the world makes it difficult to speak of any intentional overseeing. Berg-
jan differentiates between the familial-pastoral language of Sirach 18:13 – 14 and
Stoic legal metaphors. However, one might want to speak of “house rules” as a
kind of fusion of influences.⁴¹ Some souls will end their lives still very much in
need of learning, but the gnostic will be like Job who will not be bothered by
innocent suffering. “The gnostic’s destiny will not lie in Tyche’s hands.” Love
bears and endures all things (Strom IV.52, 2– 4).⁴² Of course individual free
choices can map out fate for us. If events were guided by the stars then there
 Silke-Petra Bergjan, Der fürsorgende Gott: Der Begriff der “Pronoia” Gottes in der apologeti-
schen Literatur der Alten Kirche, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 81 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001),
conclusion.
 Ibid,334.
 Οἱ ἡγεμονικοὶ καὶ παιδευτικοί, δι᾽ ὧν ἡ ἐνέργεια τῆς προνοίας ἀριδήλως δείκνυται. Cf. VII,42,7
for the idea of under-shepheds and under-rulers
 As at VII,70,8 where the family man providing for the household offers a εἰκόνα ἀτεχνῶς
σῳζοντος ὀλίγην τῆς τῇ ἀληθείᾳ προνοίας.
 Silke-Petra Bergjan, “The Concept of Pronoia in the Stromateis, Book VII”, in The Seventh
Book of the Stromateis, eds. M Matyáš Havrda, Vít Hušek and Jana Plátová, VCS 117 (Leiden:
Brill, 2012), 63 – 92. See also Jon D. Ewing, Clement of Alexandria’s reinterpretation of Divine Prov-
idence: the Christianization of the Hellenistic idea of pronoia. Lewiston, N.Y. (Lampeter : Edwin
Mellen, 2008.)

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would be a lot of confusion since on that account the stars compete with each
other. “Instead of fate and stars a new star arose, Christ or Kyrios, who supersed-
ed fate and the providence of the powers through his pronoia” (Exc. 69,1– 74,2).
Even if this excerpt here paraphrased is not by Clement himself, nonetheless the
idea of a new arrangement is his. Angels will be given not only to nations but to
specific individuals (Strom VI.157,4– 5). Pronoia now starts with the individual,
Jesus or a disciple.⁴³ Clement is too Trinitarian to believe that the Logos only
looks after particulars: in fact the whole and the individuals receive the same
amount of attention:⁴⁴ “So the universal pronoia passes on its active power (en-
ergeia) through the movement of the closest beings down to particular things”
(Strom VI.148,6).⁴⁵ The Incarnation has guaranteed that providential working
can be channelled through receptive people. Stromateis V.6.2 speaks not of
mere “conservation” but of the same active power of creation. Strictly providence
here is assigned three roles: the punishment of the impious, the overseeing of
prophetic fulfilment regarding Christ and the orderly appearing of things skilful-
ly made.
Clement’s spiritual successor Origen emphasized the idea of the cosmic
whole with each in its place (princ 2.9.6) with much less of an interest than Clem-
ent in the formative aspect of providence in psychological terms. Instead, indi-
viduals are simply parts of that whole which needs divine ordering so that
each part plays its role. Origen employed the Stoic “body and members” meta-
phor (princ. 2.1.2). Pneuma permeates the rational realm and beyond to maintain
it. Pseudo-Aristotle too in De mundo had though of providence as that which ties
all together, and hence not especially about educating rational beings. Human
progress on the other hand does not seem tied to pronoia, which is about consol-
idation, even if of a flowing, non-static cosmos.⁴⁶ Origen agreed with certain phi-
losophers that the world is not subject to God by necessity but by word, reason,
teaching, through stimulus to freely chosen improvement.⁴⁷ Origen however dif-
fered from pagan philosophers on freedom of the will because he had a distinc-
tively Christian idea of Providence, as matched to individuals and their circum-
stances. Fore-seeing meant just that: God looked to see how people would
 Ibid. 82: “Clement summarises as follows: pronoia cares first for the individuals, second for
people as a community, and third can be found everywhere.” (Strom VII.6,1)
 Ἐντεῦθεν ἡ πρόνοια ἰδίᾳ καὶ δημοσίᾳ καὶ πανταχοῦ.
 τῃ τοὺ τεχνίτου ὲνεργειᾳ συντελούσας τὸ οἰκεῖον ἒργον, οὕτως τῃ ἡ καθολικῃ῀τοῦ θεοῦ
προνοίᾳ διὰ τῶν προσεχέστερον κινουμένων καθ᾽ὑπόβασιν εἰς τὰ ἐπὶ μέρους διαδίδοται ἡ
δραστικὴ ἐνέργεια.
 Ibid., 184.
 Princ 3,5,8.

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choose, making the universe more a moral one. Unlike some, Origen did not
deny that humans operated without being influenced. They were not independ-
ent from divine power, but free choice presupposed how they had responded to
these impressions and impacts. However if Origen substituted oikonomia for pro-
noia this does not mean that how God influences human lives is restricted to
Heilsgeschichte, but rather that the former term includes the ordering of all
events in this world (“eine Anordnung aller Ereignisse in dieser Welt”).⁴⁸ Yet it
is not clear that such an “economy of the spirit” (which in Origen’s view
would be for the Church only) exhausts divine planning (as in the 18th Homily
on Jeremiah.) If anything the texts that Benjamins (such as the Homily on Ezekiel
16:5) adduces indicate the Father of all to be the one who cares. It might well
have been a heilsgeschichtlich oikonomia that counted, for those before, during
and after the coming of Christ.⁴⁹ One might want to note that in De Principiis
(Peri Archôn) III.1.10 – 11 where God’s “act” that leads to Pharaoh’s hardening
of heart is mentioned, Origen’s argument is directed against Alexander of Aph-
rodisias for whom any divine entities were completely blind. Gijsbert van den
Brink leaves us with an interesting point to consider: “Contrary to what is gen-
erally suggested for example, Origen as far as I can see never directly equates
God’s being pantokrator with His sustaining activities.”⁵⁰ (The same could be
said for Athanasius.)⁵¹ Providence is much more actively committed to world-his-
tory than to mere “creation order” and much more alert and anticipating than
blind or disinterested ‘sustaining’.
For Origen, God could and did know the outcome of contingent events with-
out determining all of them.⁵² In Peri Archon III,2 – 3 he emphasised how “free-
dom of the will” endured against the background of demonic temptation: the
 See Hendrik S. Benjamins, Eingeordnete Freiheit. Freiheit und Vorsehung bei Origenes, Sup-
plements to Vigiliae Christianae 48 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 193 & 208 f. Origen ‘follows’ Clement
in extending the meaning of oikonomia from Irenaeus’ limiting it to “biblischen Heilsgeschichte’.
‘Es […] kann bei Origenes von einer ‚Individualisierung‘ der oikonomia gesprochen werden.”
 Ibid., 188 – 91.
 Almighty God, 54 f. For Origen, see e. g. De Principiis II 9 1; Excerpta in Pss 23,10, pace André
de Halleux, “Dieu le Pere tout-puissant” in Patrologie et oecuménisme (Leuven: Peeters, 1990),
68 – 89.
 With reference to Carmelo Capizzi, Pantokrator saggio d’esegesi letterario-iconografica, Orien-
talia Christiana Analecta 170 (Roma: Pont. Inst. Orientalium Studiorum, 1964).
 Benjamins, Eingeordnete Freiheit, 130: “Freilich meidet Origenes den Determinismus, der aus
dieser Kette hervorgehen könnte durch den Satz, daß die zukünftigen Ereignisse, die sich zu
einer Kette gliedern, kontingenterweise miteinander verknüpft sind. Demnach kennt Gott den
Ausgang des zukünftig Kontingenten im Voraus. Alexander hält es dagegen für logisch unmö-
glich, daß die Götter wissen, wie das zukünftig Kontingente ausgehen werde.”

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story of Job shows just how restricted those powers are. God has taken human
freedom of choice into account in his planning, but there is no note of Stoic res-
ignation. Theiler had assumed Origen favoured the Ammonian idea, that souls
made a pre-existent choice that would fix their destinies, but when it comes to
the shape of one’s life, it seems to be rather the deeds on earth that now matter
to God’s planning and interaction.⁵³ The soul is poised between spirit and flesh
equally (Romans 7) and God gets involved in order to make it more of an even
conquest, to give each person a chance.⁵⁴ Albrecht Dihle observed that Origen’s
principle of choice did not really correspond with the bible’s clear voluntarism –
the divine will which Greek philosophy tended not to take into account.⁵⁵ He
was, in Dihle’s view, guilty of giving inappropriate weight to the rationality of
the order of being. Benjamins defends Origen from this charge; because in con-
tradistinction to both philosophical überpersonale and mechanistic views of
Providence,⁵⁶ the point is “interaction.” God’s goodness certainly reaches to-
wards the rational beings (Vernunftwesen), yet he pays more attention to the
one who prays, while graciously also burning up his mistakes. God is free to
give more than is deserved (Peri Euchês VI.4)⁵⁷ and also to harden in response
to choice. God acts according to the character and personhood of each, so
God is not necessitated by reason in a pre-determined course. Correspondingly,
it takes the living Spirit for humans to realise what is going on in God’s purpose:
rationality by itself cannot grasp such. Because it is a plan that develops, it is not
bound by its first principles.⁵⁸
Oikonomia signifies in its usage that some things have been fixed before
time, but there is a lot to play for. It is the most important work of Providence.
Clement had widened the concept of oikonomia out from meaning the history of
salvation (Irenaeus) so that by Origen’s time it was wide enough to include the
 Ibid., 143: “Weil die Schöpfung der Welt gerade auch auf diese vorweggenommenen zukünf-
tigen Taten eingestellt ist, wird die Bedeutung der Vergeltung des Vorlebens abgeschwächt.”
 Ibid., 138: “Alles in dieser Welt wird von Gott verwaltet, und als gerechter Leiter des Kampfes
überwacht er die Kämpfe, so daß wir mit ebenbürtigen Gegnern, die unserem Vermögen nicht
überlegen sind, zu kämpfen haben.”
 A. Dihle, Die Vorstellung vom Willen in der Antike (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1985.)
 As laid out by Heinrich Dörrie, “Der Begriff Pronoia in Stoa and Platonismus,” FZPhTh 24
(1977): 60 – 87, 62 ff.
 Benjamins, Eingeordnete Freiheit 1, 53. This in accord with the parable of workers in the
vineyward.
 Ibid., 167: “Origenes’ Auffassung von der Vorsehung bezieht sich nicht auf irgendwie Gesetz-
mäßigkeit der pronoias, durch die diese Welt verwaltete ist. Sondern sie bezieht sich auf einen
Heilsplan Gottes.”

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Logos teaching all people (including the Jews in the Old Testament). For Origen
(Contra Celsum VI.80 and Comm Matt X.10) there are two economies – one old
and one new;⁵⁹ but one might argue that Origen blurred the line between
these two by de-historicising the biblical narratives, turning them into oracles
suited to individual reception as part of the providential gift of Scripture.
The secondary impress of divine economy and revelation was what Scripture
was seen to be. For Origen it is a question, not of any conciliar or synodal deci-
sion but of tradition, which handed down the Scriptures under the sway of divine
providence.⁶⁰ Origen’s contribution was to try to see just what was received by
all, and he insisted on what the church universally agreed on: Homologumena;
but those not recognised everywhere seen as Antilegomena. In his Letter to Afri-
canus 8: “Providence who has given edification through the Holy Scriptures to all
the churches of Christ, did it not have care for those purchased at a price, for
whom Christ died […] so that all things would be gifted to us?” Here there is
an interesting use of ἵνα as if to say that the provision of the Scriptures by
God is predicated on and guaranteed by the giving up of Christ in his death. Ori-
gen does not go so far as to make the pun of traditio evangelii (handing down of
the gospel) and traditio Christi (handing over of Christ), but the idea is there.
Commenting on the Letter to Africanus 8 & 19, with reference to Origen and
the Book of Tobit, Edmon Gallagher writes:
Though contextually this passage concerns textual distinctions between Jewish and Chris-
tian manuscripts, Origen here establishes the general principle that what is received in the
Churches is given by Providence. These comments from the first section of the letter should
control the interpretation of Origen’s statement later that ‘the churches use Tobit.’ In other
words, if what is received among the churches is given by Providence, then Providence has
given Tobit to the Church, since the churches use it […]. [This is] to signify that Tobit con-
stitutes part of the Providentially-ordained bible.⁶¹
 Ibid., 188.
 Th. Zahn, Grundriß der Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons (2. Aufl., Leipzig: Böhme,
1904), 41: “Das entscheidende Wort hat bei Orig. die kirchliche Tradition, welch ebenso wie die
Entstehung der hl. Schriften unter der Leitung der göttlichen Vorsehung steht (ep. Ad Afric. 4.9).’
(ἂρα δὲ καὶ ἡ Πρόνοια, ἐν ἁγίαις γραφαῖς δεδωκυῖα πάσαις ταῖς Χριστοῦ Ἐκκλησίαις οἰκοδομήν,
οὐκ ἐφρόντισε τῶν τιμῆς ἀγορασθέντων, ὑπὲρ ὦν Χριστὸς ἀπέθανεν […] ἵνα σὺν αὐτῶ τὰ πάντα
ἡμιν χαρίσηται [Rom 8,32].)
 Edmon L. Gallagher, Hebrew Scripture in Patristic Biblical Theory. Canon, Language, Text,
Supplement to Vigiliae Christianae 114 (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 57– 58; with reference to Adam Ka-
mesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the Quaestiones Hebraicae in
Genesim, Oxford Classical Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 15 – 17.

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Origen immediately follows this with an appeal to Prov 22:20’s injunction not to
change the boundary stones of one’s predecessors. The context is that of the deu-
terocanonical books that Origen wants to keep, but the principle applies to the
New Testament ones too, as he moves on to discuss the case of Hebrews. Old Tes-
tament and New Testament apocrypha get lumped together (the Didache and
Shepherd are Origen’s favourites). For him these were appointed by the Fathers
to be read by those who newly join us. One is therefore catechised by these
books, which might appear counter-intuitive to those for whom basic doctrine
might seem to come from the core books of the New Testament. It seems odd,
but the idea is that piety can be taught even before doctrine. In any case the var-
ious scriptures are given to make us better because they are divine.⁶² They are
part of divine provision.
As Origen himself has it: “In his providence God willed to share with human-
ity the way of salvation and included the simple folk in this. Hence the Holy Spi-
rit announced all this in narratives and laws […] but the main purpose was to
reveal the spiritual connection of the whole economy of salvation” (Peri Archon
IV, 2,9).⁶³
In what Athanasius writes in 359 about the canon there are only three pos-
sibilities, but while Origen and Eusebius were content to speak of certain disput-
ed ones, the time for disputation has now passed. One cannot receive the Apos-
tles’ view of the homoousion of the Son at Nicea and not also receive the full
canon of Scripture. Yet as the Church in 325 came to sum up true doctrine on
the authority of what it has received, so the Nicene Church in the mid-fourth cen-
tury did with Scripture. The only difference in method was that this is clearly not
building on the authority of other councils, synods or rulings. There is something
more mysterious: it has worked out for the good through history, although at
times it all looked precarious, especially for five of the seven Catholic Epistles
and Revelation.
 Lothar Lies, Origenes’ ‘Peri archon’: eine undogmatische Dogmatik: Einführung und Erläuter-
ung. (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1992), 32: “Kurzum, die Schriften des Alten
und Neuen Testamentes sind gott-erfüllt” (endeon) with reference to PA IV.1,7.
 PA IV.1,7 links the obscurity of Scripture to the hiddenness of Providence. Marquerite Harl
comments: “Origène parle le meme langage pour faire comprendre que l’action divine s’étend
à travers tout le texte ‘inspiré’ […] de meme que la Providence est partout à l’œuvre dans la cré-
ation, jusque dans les plus petites choses, sans toutefois que nous puissions en reconnaître la
puissance partout […] le lecteur de la Bible trouvera autant de difficulties pour tout comprendre
dans les Écritures que le savant en recontre lorsqu’il essaie de tout comprendre dans le monde.”
(Philocalie, 1 – 20:Sur les Écritures, SC 302 [Paris: Cerf, 1983], 60) Cf. Spanneut, Le Stoicisme des
Pères de l’Eglise.

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Although the Early Christian writers do not use the term “providence” any
more than “canon” in explaining the addition to the Old Testament of the
New Testament, the idea that chance was a factor would have seemed very
odd. If anything, chance did not have a chance, since there was no long period
of evolution of New Testament Scripture. It is not the case that Irenaeus or Ori-
gen or Athanasius thought that Paul’s words were authoritative because they
were incorporated into the canon, but that they were received by the original
readers and each put into the canon almost in a single movement: as they
were written to be added. It might well have taken time for all the Church to
come to an agreement in recognition, but that’s a different matter.
In a recent edition of Modern Theology devoted to the topic of Spiritual Inter-
pretation of Scripture, Brian Daley comments, with reference to Origen:
Just as we only come to recognize the working of divine providence in human history retro-
spectively, and God’s guidance is seldom evident in the moment when it is actually oper-
ating, so the inspiration of Scripture – the fact that God is guiding human writers to speak
his truth for the salvation of all peoples – is something that is only fully known in retro-
spect, when promises are fulfilled. The insight of Christian faith is that the focus of that ful-
fillment is Jesus, and with him the community of his disciples now gathered and led by his
Holy Spirit.⁶⁴
The same providence that guided salvation history guided its imprint. Likewise
Herbert Haag in Mysterium Salutis maintains: “That the most ancient manu-
scripts, which in any case contain more than one Gospel (P45, 3rd century,
which contain all four (and Acts) is more than a bare fact: it is a symbol for
the sure spirit-led Hand which proved the Church in its decisions.”⁶⁵ Or, accord-
ing to G. Steins: “The connection of the link between Scripture and its subject
matter is best done in liturgy when the reading of Scripture helps to make pres-
ent the reality whereof the texts speak.”⁶⁶ The economies of Heilsgeschichte and
Heilige Historie are very closely related to each other.
 Brian E. Daley, “‘In Many and Various Ways’: Towards a Theology of Theological Exegesis,”
Modern Theology 28 (2012): 597– 615, 610.
 Herbert Haag, “Die Buchwerdung des Wortes Gottes” in Mysterium Salutis , vol. 1: Die Grund-
lagen heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, eds. Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer (Einsiedeln: Be-
nyiger, 1965): 289 – 427, 383: “Daß die älteste Hs., die überhaupt mehr als ein Ev. enthält (P
45, 3.Jh), sie gleich alle viere (und Apg.) enthält, ist mehr als ein nacktes Faktum:es ist ein Sym-
bol für die sichere – ein Christ wird bekennen: geistgeführte – Hand, die die Kirche in ihren En-
tscheidungen bewies.”
 G. Steins., “Kanon und Anamnese. Auf dem Weg zu einer Neueren Biblischen Theologie” in
E. Balhorn-G. Steins (ed.), Der Bibelkanon in der Bibelauslegung: Methodenreflexionen und Beis-
pielexegesen, 110 – 129, 128 f.: “Anamnese, Gedächtnis und Erinnerung sind nicht nur ein Thema

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Overall then, in Origen’s understanding the goal of pedagogical pronoia was

the restoration of the original unity through the renewed participation in him as
he co-ordinates things.⁶⁷ Through the co-ordinating of one Heilsgeschichte there
can be a return to the plan of what Tzamalikos names “providential creation,”⁶⁸
i. e. the original prelapsarian one. So when Heilsgeschichte is analysed it is really
a made-to-measure education for all, one which incited each to freedom and a
universal order of justice.⁶⁹ If salvation means new creation in Christ, there is
a sense that there is an accompanying fatherly guiding of the created potential
of persons, parallel to although not separate from the story of personal salvation.
Unlike the Stoic future of an endless return, there is progress, as souls are direct-
ed with their own wills (De Princ. II,3,4). For Origen moral praxis rather than
philosophical theory mattered in his scheme,⁷⁰ such that truth is not so much
about grasping ideas as doing. For Origen creation’s fulfillment through provi-
dential care and salvation history are two sides of the one and same divine
self-communication. It is through this perfecting of men and its reception in free-
dom that is as history the way of knowing God – and there is so much value in
that creation.
In her assessment of Origen, Bergjan takes issue with calling Origen’s doc-
trine of Providence “paideutic” as had Hal Koch,⁷¹ a study which Andrew
Louth commends for its demonstration of the Alexandrian’s debt to Plato on
in der Schrift, sondern die formale Bestimmung des Sinns der Schrift überhaupt […]. Der genuine
Ort einer solchen Schriftauslegung ist nicht die historische Forschung, sondern der Ritus, indem
der Bezug auf Vergangenheit nicht temporal konstruiert wird, sondern ontisch.”
 Christian Hengstermann, “Christliche Natur- und Geschichtsphilosophie: Die Weltseele bei
Origenes,” in Origenes und sein Erbe in Orient und Okzident, Adamantiana 1 (Münster: Aschen-
dorff Verlag, 2011): 43 – 76, 69.
 Panayiotis Tzamalikos, Origen: Philosophy of History & Eschatology, Supplements to Vigiliae
Christianae 85 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 254: “Nevertheless, a difference between Origen and the He-
braic pattern of history is that providential creation precedes the actual creation of the world.”
 Hengstermann, “Christliche Natur- und Geschichtsphilosophie,” 70.
 Everhard Schockenhoff, Zum Fest der Freiheit: Theologie des christlichen Handlens bei Ori-
genes, Tübinger Theologische Studien (Mainz: Grünewald-Verlag, 1990), 279 f.: “[…] sein dezi-
diert ethisch-geschichtsphilosophisches Wahrheitsverständnis, nach dem nicht vorrangig die
philosophische Theorie, sondern die sittliche Praxis Kriterium, der Wahrheit einer angefeindet-
en Lehre wie der christlichen ist.” Hengstermann comments: “Wahrheit ist bei Origenes damit
keine primär erkenntnistheoretische, sondern mehr noch eine ethisch-geschichtsphilosophische
und sogar politische Kategorie” (“Christliche Natur- und Geschichtsphilosophie,” 73).
 Hal Koch, Pronoia und Paideusis: Studien über Origenes und sein Verhältnis zum Platonismus,
Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 22 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1932).

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such matters, despite Edwards’ recent arguments.⁷² For Koch was happy to say
that oikonomia or pronoia – which he used interchangeably – means nothing
other than the training of the soul through chastisement and instruction.⁷³ Ori-
gen first built his system himself and then read it into Scripture. His concept
of God was fairly static, wanting to avoid Manichean and folk religion ideas of
God as embodied and passible. God is not almighty in the sense that he can
do anything; in Origen’s scheme God is not above the good-evil distinction as
in the Neoplatonists. Also, Origen’s biblicism demands that even if God did
not create the sensible creation directly he is nevertheless involved in it. (Here
Koch seems to contradict himself: now biblicism shapes Origen’s theology,
whereas earlier Koch maintained Origen used Scripture according to pre-set
ideas.) Free will means that logical beings have the power to follow God ethically
and spiritually, and Origen in Hom in Gen III,2 and De Principiis II,1,1 is clear that
providence does not follow exactly what God wants in all situations but has to
accommodate other wills at points. Providence really means “knowledge of”
rather than “causation of” all things.
Koch’s argument would be favourably received by Werner Jaeger. However,
Bergjan’s controverting case is that the “platonic” Origen viewed providence
as that which is saved up for the judgement. He thereby shared common ground
with Celsus that the governance of the whole is what God does in the present but
adds that in the future individuals will be accountable as part of this providen-
tial oversight.⁷⁴ The divine providence is distributive rather than summative in
assessment.⁷⁵ The implied answer is reminiscent of Kant: God sets and marks
the examination, but he does not coach. The Homily on Jeremiah 6,2 is the
only place where pronoia is used in association with teaching, but there the
point is proved because people do not learn if they don’t want to. Pronoia
 Bergjan, Der fürsorgende Gott, 137: “Die Strafe dient aber nicht nur der κάθαρσις. Sie hat zu-
gleich einen positiv erzieherischen Einfluss, und zwar in doppelter Weise. Erstens dient sie an-
deren zur Warnung […]. Auch auf andere Weise wird Gottes Strenge gegen den einen zum Nutzen
anderer.” Suffice it to say that I find somewhat unconvincing Mark Edward’s case in Origen
against Plato, Ashgate Studies in Philosophy & Theology in Late Antiquity (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2002) defending Origen from the charge of believing in the pre-existence of souls despite Princ
3,3,5.
 “[D]iese Ökonomie aber ist nichts anderes als die allmähliche Erziehung der Seelen durch
Strafe und durch Belehrung” (Bergjan, Der fürsorgende Gott, 145).
 Bergjan, Der fürsorgende Gott, 188: “Fortschritt besteht in der wiederholten Einordnung des
einzelnen in das Ganze, in einem Prozeß von Zustandsbestimmungen und der Summe einer
Reihe von gerechten Zuteilungen an die Vernunftwesen. Nach Origenes schreiten die Vernunft-
wesen fort und können sich die Menschen verändern, aber deswegen verändert sich Gott nicht.”
 Ibid., 175: “Die Pronoia verteilt die Noten, aber wird sie damit zum Lehrer?”

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does not have a pedagogical aspect of changing people but only a distributive
one, of putting people where they were meant to be, and that means according
to what they chose to put themselves. Providence does not help the performance
but stands at a distance and weighs up the choices made, which for Origen fun-
damentally means the choice made before birth.⁷⁶ This means that God takes
care that all get their just desserts, and this runs through world-history – it is
not merely to be revealed eschatologically, but can be seen already, e. g. in the
fate of Pharaoh. It needs to be added that Origen had no place for astrology,
yet acknowledged that the stars could be portents. He quotes Gen 1:4 “let
them be for signs” and Jeremiah 10:2 “be not dismayed at signs of heaven”
and allows that perhaps the stars cause the seasons in their regularity.⁷⁷ Is
this then not, rather than the triumph of free will, rather a psychological deter-
minism, by which those who accept forgiveness and co-operate, had the right
disposition to begin with? It does seem however – to qualify Bergjan’s argument
– that pronoia in Origen can provide wisdom or instruction, probably from
events.⁷⁸ Pronoia then works for those already signed up and willing: it moves
along with the Church, the realm of the Holy Spirit. If this is the case then pro-
noia presupposes oikonomia. But the latter sends sun (regular) and rain (more
contingent) on the just and unjust. In Contra Celsum Origen makes it clear
that even Jesus’ prediction of his death is not what made it inevitable. It
would have happened without his prediction. Providence is for all but believers
know how to tap into it and make the most of it.
The continuation of this Alexandrian providentialist way of thinking can be
evinced in Dionysius of Alexandria, who seems to be more Stoic in the sense that
he views Providence as that which provides for all creation. Providence is a di-
vine intentionality within the texture of creation. It took the New Testament to
realise that divine care of the world was not limited to the history of Israel. Dio-
nysius sees the point of creation and providence not to lie in their place in im-
proving human beings, but in showing the divine glory as divine action, and in
 Even if this is disputed (see Volker Henning Drecoll, “Review of Der fürsorgende Gott: Der
Begriff der pronoia Gottes in der apologetischen Literatur der Alten Kirche by Silke-Petra Berg-
jan,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 129 (2004): 531– 534.)
 Alan Scott, Origen and the Life of the Stars: A History of an Idea, Oxford Early Christian Stud-
ies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 145. See also In Num hom 24.2.
 Hom in Ierem; SC 232, 334: “Ἐπᾶν οὖν τὰ ἀπὸ τῆς προνοίας γίγνηται πάντα εἶς ἡμᾶς. Ἵνα
συντελεσθῶμεν καὶ τελειωθῶμεν, ἡμεῖς δὲ μὴ παραδεχώμεθα τὰ τῆς προνοίας τῆς ἐπὶ
τελειότητα ἡμᾶς ἐλκούσης […].”

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this he thinks very differently from Origen.⁷⁹ There is no employment of a Logos

idea either. Dionysius’ vision is much more Stoic and the fragment on Ecclesi-
astes 12:7 speaks of God active in working, guiding, doing good, caring (as quot-
ed in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica VII,19,7). It carries the idea of immanent
purpose. Yet what humans do get out of it is not so much soul-making but aware-
ness and awe over against the revelation of divine glory in this Providence.⁸⁰ For
a God to be worth anything, as Lactantius put it, he could not let evil go un-
checked.⁸¹ It is a poor creator who is negligent of what goes on in the world.
If Clement based his Christology on pronoia (strom 1,11,52,2; 6,15,123,2), then
Eusebius built pronoia on Christology as it related to the doctrine of God.⁸² With
Eusebius, as in Origen, there is a tight connection between providence and dis-
tributive justice. Knowing this belongs to the Grundgewissheit of Christians, espe-
cially martyrs to and for Christ, who know that they would not be helped in this
life but would be taken into the world to come.⁸³ A generation ago Glenn Chesnut
claimed Eusebius distinguished between general and special providence, and
that God chooses particular events out of set of possibilities.⁸⁴ Bergjan is, I
think, wrong to say that this means the Chesnut is claiming that Eusebius be-
lieved that providence concerned itself with individual human persons.⁸⁵ Rather,
for Eusebius it was about individual concrete events, not about individual peo-
ple.⁸⁶ Of course the original Roman ideas of pax Romana and salus generis hu-
mani became, it seemed to Christians, more of a reality with the accession of
 Wolfgang Bienert, Dionysius von Alexandrien, Patristische Texte und Studien (Berlin: de
Gruyter, 1978), 114: “Der πρόνοια-Begriff hat bei Origenes eine heilsgeschichtliche Dimension
und kann mit dem Leitgedanken der παίδευσις geradezu identisch werden. Dionysius aber
geht us nicht um Gottes Erziehungswerk am Menschen – auch dies unterscheidet ihn von Ori-
genes – sondern um das Wunderwerk der Schöpfung, durch das Gottes Vorsehung hindurch-
schimmert. Die Vorsehung wird bei Dionysius sogar zum handelnden Subjekt, die sich um
Schönheit und Nutzen der Dinge kümmert.”
 Ibid., 118: “Die Welt ist nach Dionysius für den Menschen eine Werkstatt, ein Theater, eine
Schule und eine Sporthalle, d. h. Ort der Bewährung und Gegenstand der Betrachtung, die zur
Erkenntnis des Menschen über sich selbst führen soll.”
 De ira Dei 4,5 – 7: “sed si nihil curat, nihil providet, amisit omnem divinitatem.”
 “Euseb von Caesarea konzentriert in den späten Schriften die Pronoia Gottes mit all ihren
Aspekten auf das Subjekt des Logos, dies hat nicht mot soteriologischen Überlegungen zu
tun, sondern mit der Gotteslehre.” (Bergjan, Der fürsorgende Gott, 339).
 Ibid., 304.
 Glenn A. Chesnut, The First Christian Histories: Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and
Evagrius (Paris: Beauchesne, 1977).
 Bergjan, Der fürsorgende Gott, 279.
 Chesnut, The First Christian Histories, 75,

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Constantine.⁸⁷ In his Triecennial Oration of 336, one year before Constantine’s

death, Eusebius’s argument went as follows: “it is not only God, but Constan-
tine, who guides the turbulent chariot of the world; and whereas Christ is said
[…] to have resumed his hearth, or hestia, with the Father.” Eusebius notes
that Constantine restored the sacred Hestia of Jerusalem.⁸⁸ Even at Rome’s
most glorious moment, Jerusalem was not forgotten. Its health guaranteed that
of Rome.
Recently Gerhard Richter has dealt with the very question of the relationship
between pronoia and oikonomia in the early church.⁸⁹ Richter writes that pronoia
does the job of God’s arranging and confirming of the world and the givens of
Nature or divine action in history, where God’s hand can be discerned in consis-
tency with what has gone before.⁹⁰ Oikonomia has more to do with God’s action
considered from his point of view: set in contradistinction to theologia which is
about God in himself. Richter insists that a change took place in theology just
after 400 which brought humanity into the centre, a change he sees evidenced
in Nemesius.⁹¹ The point is that it was already there in the Cappadocians, and
as good as completed with Theodoret. The idea was that God could be as inter-
ested in the human cosmos as much as in the non-human one and has demon-
strated this by sending Christ, yet without worrying too much about how salva-
tion is accommodated to individual situations.⁹² Human choices are caught up in
God’s saving order; oikonomia concerns souls and their salvation directly, pro-
noia only indirectly as regulating the created order. Whether speaking of the ac-
tions of God or man, Chrysostom used oikonomia to denote a certain decisive ac-
tion, one which results in marvellous and great things: organising spiritual
 See Eckhard Schendel, Herrschaft und Unterwerfung Christi: 1 Korinther 15, 24 – 48 in Exegese
und Theologie der Väter bis zum Ausgang des 4. Jahrhunderts, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Bibli-
schen Exegese 12 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1971).
 Rebecca Lyman, Christology and Cosmology: Models of Divine Activity in Origen, Eusebius, and
Athanasius, Oxford Theological Manuscripts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993).
 Gerhard Richter, Oikonomia: der Gebrauch des Wortes Oikonomia im Neuen Testament, bei
den Kirchenvätern und in der theologischen Literatur bis ins 20. Jahrhundert, Arbeiten zur Kirchen-
geschichte 90 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005) makes a provisional judgment at 172: “Origenes weder in
Hom. in Ez.6,1 noch in princ. 1,6,3; 2,10, 5 f das Wort προνοια/providentia verwendet.”
 Ibid., 199: “Indem Origenes von der Oikonomia Gottes nicht von einer stetig wirksamen Für-
sorge spricht, sondern sie als Maßnahme ausgibt, die er den Gegebenheiten anpaßt.”
 Ibid., 429.
 Ibid., 437: “Theodoret nimmt damit Wesentliches von der ursprünglichen Bedeutung der Oi-
konomia als Fürsorge auf […]. Über die göttliche Lenkung eines einzelnen verliert er kaum ein
Wort.”

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things, not least the church for a great purpose.⁹³ It would seem indeed as
though Humanity or the Church does come to the fore. Oikonomia has the disad-
vantage of being a term that implies a resistance to disruption (if one can permit
such a double negative), keeping things ordered. Richter insists that the idea of
Heilsgeschichte or recapitulation is something that gets added in: by itself oiko-
nomia lacks an eschatological dimension.⁹⁴ In reading Richter’s account one
senses he is fighting a losing battle to keep the two apart. Although Richter
has over-emphasised eschatology, the idea is that Heilsgeschichte builds upon oi-
konomia. The question that remains is: does pronoia encompass both? Let us ex-
amine the evidence from the late Fourth Century.
Basil the Great wrote of God as an attentive Father and physician. For hu-
mans there is no way of escaping the privilege of being in God’s image, especial-
ly sharing his moral freedom (proairesis).⁹⁵ All is providence, including nature
and redemption.⁹⁶ Basil was close to Origen in linking Spirit to the Son in
their activity in creation. The Son is the creator of all, while the Spirit’s job is
more about getting rational creatures to acknowledge that, with the help of
Scripture. As with Proclus, obedient recognition of Providence is itself providen-
tial.
In Gregory Nazianzen’s account pronoia seems to have the role of improving
creation⁹⁷ as well as preserving it.⁹⁸ If it is the Logos that works creation, then it
is the common energy of the Trinity that goes out into the world. Richard equates
this to the place of the logoi spermatikoi in the Stoic scheme. Gregory wrote a
Poem (Ι,Ι,6)⁹⁹ on Providence, against Epicurean atomism. He also opposed Aris-
totle (really pseudo-Aristotle, De mundo) for its famous limitation of providence
 Ibid., 345: “Geringer belegt hat Chrysostomos das Handeln Gottes im alltäglichen Leben des
einzelnen Menschen.”
 Ibid., 89 f.
 Basilio Petra, Provvidenza e vita morale nel pensiero di Basilio il grande (Romae: Pontificia
Universitas Lateranensis, Academia Alfonsiana, 1983), 126.
 Ibid., 127: “Tutto è provvidenza: natura e storia, creazione e redenzione. L’una fissa e codi-
ficara nella legge naturale garantita dalla parola creative di Dio; l’altra dinamica e attenta
sempre a recuperare la novità umana in una possibilità di salvezza individuale e colletiva.”
 Anne Richard, Cosmologie et Théologie chez Grégoire de Nazianze, Collection des études Au-
gustiniennes: Série Antiquité, 169 (Paris: Institut d’études Augustiniennes, 2003), 84 f. Or 40,45
says: “καὶ Προνοία. τοῦ ποιήσαντος διοικούμενον, δέξασθαι τὴν εἰς τὸ κρεῖττον μεταβολήν.” Cf.
Or 30,11 on Jn 5,17 (“My father is always working even to this day”).
 Or 28,16: (SC 250, 134): “et la préservation conformément à la nature première des choses.”
Cf. Athanasius, Contra Gentes 41: “so God did not have to start again […] so things can remain
stable (βεβαίως διαμένειν).”
 PG 37,430.

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to the supralunary realm. In Oration 27,10 he attacked the erroneous interpreta-

tion of Psalm 35:65 (“power appears unto the heavens”); as Clement had re-
marked in Stromateis V XIV,90.3, this interpretation encouraged over-estimating
the division and distance from heaven to earth with intermediaries. For Nazian-
zen God was present in the world as continual cause and transcendent, even
while omniscient. Yet again we also see Origen’s legacy, when Gregory writes
that in one sense he reigns only in those who submit to his will (Or 30,4; SC
250, p232), when divine light can be received without ontological change. Other-
wise God withdraws his presence.¹⁰⁰
It might seem invidious to give the two Gregories such short shrift, especially
given the pastoral seriousness of the issue that is manifest in what Gregory of
Nyssa had to deal with in his Contra Fatum. However this work was intentionally
less about constructing a doctrine of Providence as it was about destroying the
theoretical undergirding of superstitious practice. Here he criticises some believ-
ers for being led astray by pagan prophecies and astrology. The occurrence of
happy events does not mean that fate controls things, for demons can deceive
people into thinking that they have power in history, in objective terms. The turn-
ing away from looking at God, which would prepare for oneself an outcome full
of good things, rushes above all to the demons. To have trusted those who do not
discern what the divine will holds concerning the life, but in the turning of stars
and the power coming from them, he rather fixes on a vision of the blasphemic
nature of demons.¹⁰¹ Nyssa insists on the principle of free will at all costs, with
perhaps strong influence from the Sceptic Carneades (according to Amand).¹⁰²
Nazianzen is rather similar in his intention in his Peri Pronoias.¹⁰³ Akolouthia
is that salutary sequence by which God brings things to their providentially ap-
pointed telos.¹⁰⁴ Providence not only mends, it enhances.
The sole Christian figure who seems to have taken on the issue of Providence
and given it the prominence in his anthropology by devoting the last two chap-
ters (42&43) of his work (De natura hominis) to it, as well as discussing issues of
the stars and our position in the cosmos from Chapter 35 onwards – this is the
 Richard, Cosmologie, 116: “La presence divine est alors aussi communication au sens d’un
dialogue, d’un échange.”
 Contra Fatum (GNO VI; GRHGORIOU EPISKOPOU NUSSHS KATA EIMARMHNHS), 62,19.
 David Amand, Fatalisme et liberte dans l’antiquité grecque: Recherches sur la survivance de
l’argumentation morale antifataliste de Carnéade chez les Philosophes grecs et les théologiens
chrétiens des quatre premiers siècles (Louvain: Université de Louvain, 1945).
 Andreas Schwab, ed., Gregor von Nazianz: Peri Pronoias, Classica Monacensia (Tübingen:
Gunter Narr Verlag, 2009).
 Paul M. Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy: Creator and Creation in Early Christian The-
ology and Piety, Oxford Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 152.

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shadowy figure, Nemesius. A contemporary, perhaps a good friend of Gregory of

Nyssa, his writing is often labelled as derivative, but ironically it was also largely
influential, not least on Maximus and John of Damascus. His work is derivative
perhaps; however, such detailed and explicit interaction with the pagan schools
is rare in a Christian (he was, it seems, a late convert in the style of Marius Vic-
torinus or Augustine). Nemesius nails his colours when he begins by saying that
providence is especially known in the “divine and incredible work of providence
in the embodiment of God on our behalf through the overflow of his love;” the
Incarnation is model for understanding Providence in terms of God’s ordering of
the world. In Telfer’s translation: “He [the human] is the creature whom God
thought worthy of such special providence…through which all things now and
to come and through which God became man, ending up in immortality and es-
caping the mortal […].”
Yet immediately after this, Nemesius supplies a good example of a proof of
providence (to those who do not believe in the Incarnation) and of a caring God
with the case of the poet Ibycus. Here was a man who was murdered in the coun-
tryside without anyone seeing it except for some birds, cranes in fact, whom the
villains spotted. A few weeks later, when the authorities had all but given up
finding any leads, the murderers were sitting at the games when some cranes
flew overhead and one, with a loose tongue exclaimed – “Ibycus’ witnesses!”,
thus indicting himself and the others. God, as well as keeping us alive and re-
warding hard work and virtue, also speaks to people in needy or desperate sit-
uations through dreams. Nemesius, for all his love of a story which sounds
more like a moral tale for keeping one’s mouth shut, is alert enough to the ques-
tion in the philosophers as to whether creation and providence need to be kept
distinct. He insists they must be. Creation is like the work of a craftsman; prov-
idence is more like the work of shepherds. Providence includes the preservation
of what made us distinct, so that as individuals we do not in growing old end up
looking the same; people do not confuse each other and therefore incest is avoid-
ed. The distinguishing features of jackdaws and crows (or is it hooded crows and
crows?) helps them keep to their own and continue the wonderful diversity that
is God’s creation. Providence preserves creation in its integrity, diversity and
morality included.
Here Robert W. Sharples makes a telling point: “Rather, what is central to his
[Nemesius] account is the implied contrast between the universal and the indi-
vidual or particular (τὰ καθ᾽ἔκαστα, τὰ κατὰ μέρος).”¹⁰⁵ God is concerned
 Robert W. Sharples, “Nemesius of Emesa and Some Theories of Divine Providence,” Vigiliae
Christianae 37 (1983): 141– 155.

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about the lives of individuals, unlike Aristotle’s laissez-faire divinity, which could
hardly be sub-lunar regularities, such as ensuring the continuation of species.
Sharples is right to hold that Nemesius was opposing the supposition that prov-
idential concern is beneath God’s dignity, that we not deign to do more than en-
sure the preservation of kinds. However his dismissal of Telfer’s view that Nem-
esius had the Neoplatonists in view here, in favour of thinking that it is rather
Alexander of Aphrodisias, the follower of Aristotle, two centuries previous, is
not backed up by hard evidence but only the coincidence that Alexander was no-
torious for his denial of the immortality of the soul, which Nemesius notes as
“Aristotelian” in his review of philosophical positions. Of course he mentions
this, and it is tightly connected to the question of God’s “particular providence,”
but surely those envisaged are the theological philosophers such as Aetius and
Eunomius (the so-called “neo-Arians”) who wanted to keep God at a far remove
from material creation, although not from rational perception. Whereas the Aris-
totelians speak of a lower, particular providence that works from nature (even
though people’s nature goes against what God is trying to do generally), the Sto-
ics claim that people have free will as the bit that fate (including natural forces
and impulses) allows them to do. Nemesius counters this position, citing biblical
examples and alluding to others, that the “work of providence” is the obedience
in trials which have happy endings, and meantime, the conclusion is that all can
be well even if it appears otherwise. This is to speak from God’s viewpoint and is
hence not “Panglossian” optimism. But that which is good is also “provided”.
Commenting on the Twelve Prophets Theodore of Mopsuestia took the see-
ing stones of Zechariah (3:9; 4:3; 4:10) to stand for providential governance: At
the time [νῦν], in fact, the disclosure of these events brought no little consolation
to the wronged; and after the fulfillment of the disclosures they even further that
this had been said of old by the will of God and had later come into effect, both
representing proof of God’s care for them. So it was obvious that he had made
this disclosure out of care [ἐπιμέλειαν] for the people to whose salvation God di-
rected great attention, as I have often remarked.¹⁰⁶ By the time John Chrysostom
came to write his discourse On Providence, his outlook would have been shaped
by not only his ascetical tendencies but also a recent experience of running
through mountain passes to escape from those who would seek to arrest him
even in his place of refuge, after being driven out of Constantinople a second
time by the fickle Empress Eudoxia. The work was written while John was in Cu-
 Comm. Obad. (before v. 1 but no preface) 176/159. Thanks to Hauna Ondrey for alerting me to
this passage. God’s care for Israel constitutes a prominent theme of Theodore’s commentary on
the XII Prophets.

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cuse (on the edge of Armenia) in 407, which he described in Epist 224 as “the
loneliest place in the world.”¹⁰⁷ Yet at least it was tranquil. He had come from
Caesarea where monks had attacked him; he was missing friends, the mail
was unreliable and the excessive cold was exacerbated when at one point in win-
ter 405 he had had to flee even further because of wild Isauriens. When he wrote
this, not beaten and certainly not bowed, things had improved a little. The work
was written for Olympias and all the community at Constantinople. The flavour
of gritty endurance as well as a grasp of providence as seen from personal expe-
rience flavours the work. John insists that our intelligence as a gift from God can
give us some idea of God’s action in world.
To give a short account of this work in paraphrase: Even Paul who only
looked at one part of God’s providence (concerning the Jews) was overwhelmed,
realising not only how incomprehensible, but how inexplicable God’s ways were
(Rom 11:33; II,7 [p64]: οὐ μόνον γὰρ καραλαβεῖν τις οὐ δύναται, ἀλλ᾽οὐδὲ ὰρχὴν
ἐρεύνης ποιήσαςθαι). So, unlike the Manicheans, we refuse to say anything cre-
ated is bad; on the other hand, we part company with the Greeks (philosophers)
who thought creation was divine. The Sun is harmful to eyes, it dries up the
ground and makes it into desert and other things that seem negative; maybe,
but our touchstone is “God saw it was good,” and we should not doubt this.
Meanwhile, laughing and living in pleasure may not be the good they seem to
be. Take Solomon who lived too easily; he was to lament this later. Night, despite
appearances, can be a good thing – though dark, it provides rest from evils, and
is re-energising. Is affliction an evil? Not necessarily: Lazarus was crowned for
his poverty and Job became famous through his suffering! The advantage of
being a child of God is that not only do we get his oversight, as do all human
beings, we also get his love, and that is received by us not in the agape a
human receives from God apart from Christ and faith, but as eros. Yet what is
striking here is John’s belief in the caring paternity of God with respect to every-
one – God saw the Ninevites even before they began to pray – and that the love
for us is, as Gregory of Nyssa had already said in his sermons on the Song of
Songs, eros is intensified agape. In the case of the Christian, the parent becomes
the lover. There is no hint of awkwardness at the “Oedipal” nature of this image:
these are just images of divine mysteries. But parental care which becomes inten-
sified towards the believer is an interesting metaphor.
One should note that earlier in his career John preached (while at Antioch)
on Isa 45:1:
 St. Jean Chrysostome, Sur La Providence (SC 79), 8: “Dans toute la correspondance, l’ex-
pression ἐρημότατος devient une sorte d’épithète de nature, inséparable du nom de Caucuse.”

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Do not let the false prophets undermine you; God can give you peace and consign you to
captivity – the meaning of ‘making peace and creating evils.’ For you to learn that this is
true, let us make a precise examination of the individual expressions: after saying before, ‘I
am the one who brought light and darkness into being,’ he then went on, ‘Making peace
and creating evils.’ He cited two opposites first, and two opposites after that, for you to
learn that he is referring not to fornication but to calamities. I mean, what is set as the op-
posite of peace? Clearly captivity, not licentiousness, nor fornication, nor avarice. So just as
he cited two opposites first, so too in this case; the opposite of peace is not fornication, nor
adultery, nor licentiousness, nor the other vices, but captivity and servitude.¹⁰⁸
In John’s account, God does not make sins, but he does make the punishments.
Scheffczyk notes that Chrysostom has “Providence being understood as that con-
tinuous Creation which is necessary if the world is to remain in being, if it is to
exist at all (Ad populum Antiochenum. Hom., X,2– 3).”¹⁰⁹ Perhaps, but the dark
side of Providence is divine retribution for sin, not the sin itself. There is no
trace of cosmic dualism here.
In the next generation Theodoret of Cyrrhus reinforced the disparagement of
Greek literature when he says there is nothing worth contesting in the work of
Greek poets. Basil in On the Value of Greek Literature had confined himself to
Homer, Hesiod, Theognis and Prodikos. As more oriental in his influences, The-
odoret is suspicious that any unqualified views of common grace or universal
providence may lurk behind appeals to the value of pagan “wisdom.” Showing
off his training in the history of Greek philosophy, Theodoret sketches or carica-
tures the extreme of the Epicureans (God with his back to us in a corner of the
universe) or the Stoics (no space for free-will, even if God not totally determinate
of all that happens). Finally he turns to Plato who, at Philebus 30c, “must be
drawing on Hebrew sources,” such is the similarity to the Scriptures, since the
One “who rules and orders months, years and seasons, [and] is called σωφία
καὶ νοῦς.” Plato’s Laws (II, 661a–d) is cited approvingly, and Plato is seen to
have formulated what must be the first principle of providence. Likewise, Ploti-
nus is right to criticise those who complain about a part of world without seeing
 Old Testament Homilies: Homilies on Isaiah and Jeremiah Volume Two, translated with an
introduction by Robert Charles Hill (Holy Cross Orthodox Press: Brookline, Massachusetts,
2003), 36 – 39: Homily on Isaiah 45.6– 7. Cf. Silke-Petra Bergjan, “‘Das hier ist kein Theater,
und ihr sitzt nicht da, um Schauspieler zu betrachten und zu klatschen’: Theaterpolemik und
Theatermetaphern bei Johannes Chrysostomos,” Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 8 (2004):
567– 592.
 Leo Scheffczyk, Creation and Providence trans. Richard Strachan (London: Burnes & Oates,
1970), English translation of the original German Schöpfung und Vorsehung, Handbuch der Dog-
mengeschichte II/2a (Freiburg: Herder, 1962/1963).

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the beauty of whole. Plotinus might even have heard David (Ps 18LXX:2) “The
Heavens proclaim the glory of God […].” Theodoret acknowledges the aesthetic
argument which he then further elaborates. As a good rhetor he begs to offer
an addition to complete Plotinus: “The only thing I would add: it is unthinkable
that the Creator, the divine architect would leave lost humanity to neglect, espe-
cially when he made the whole rich world for us.” This theme is repeated, with
the interesting twist: “His visiblity kept him sheltered from sin.”
Theodoret goes on: it would have been easy to destroy sin and save the
world without the covering of the flesh (δίχα τους τῆς σαρκὸς προκαλύμματος),
but God preferred to show the justice of providence more than its power, just as
when the prophetic message had come through mere men. So, he constructed a
human skein for himself. Thus the union did not mean the pouring together of
both natures nor was the maker of time made subject to time, but each nature
stayed distinct from the other, with one undergoing passion – of hunger and
thirst. Like a good doctor, he tried the medication first. Theodoret adds a flourish
that the Word taking on flesh has had universal ramifications: ignorance is gone,
idolatrous error departed, Greeks Romans and Barbarians all recognise the divin-
ity of the crucified and they worship the Trinity; martyrs are honoured and as-
cetic retreats sanctify the furthest flung places. This optimism reflects the rela-
tively stable situation of the 440s. There is much more emphasis on the
Incarnation as a seal of approval and care than in Chrysostom who preferred
to regard it as a scandal of costly love, supremely brought to its perfection
and forever symbolised in the Cross. Theodoret introduced the sign of Jesus as
a sure and public sign of God’s philanthropic love (while the resurrection was
a more secret event), and Theodoret’s “optimism” compared with Chrysostom’s
“realism” shines in the examples he gives of responses to situations people
found themselves in. However, it is an optimism at the price of ignoring some
messier individual cases.
Andrew Louth has argued that the Stoic idea of the cosmos as a living being
with soul and reason was a doctrine that Greek Christians came to express by
calling human kind a “little cosmos:” “In consequence the Stoics regarded the
cosmos as ordered, not just for the good, but for the human good, a view rejected
as absurd by Platonists and Peripatetics (e. g. Alcinous, for whom the soul had
no master), but as we shall see, enthusiastically embraced by Christians.”¹¹⁰ A
belief in Providence to the exclusion of Fate runs through Greek Christian think-
ing when Westerners had turned their attention to predestination and grace,
 Andrew Louth, “Pagans and Christians on Providence,” in Texts, and Culture in Late Antiq-
uity, ed. J.H.D. Scourfield (Swansea: The Classical Press of Wales 2007): 279 – 297, 284.

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even to the point of long-running debates about the fixing of the date of one’s
death.¹¹¹ Of course there have been one or two exceptions: as Louth reminds
us, contemplation of Providence is the lowest level in Evagrius (e. g. at Gnostic
Centuries I.27) – including especially one’s knowledge of one’s own place in it.
Now, this interpretation of Evagrius, still largely dependent on Hans Urs von
Balthasar’s two 1939 articles on him, has been contested by Irénée Hausherr
and recently Gabriel Bunge. Origenists like Evagrius thought of the henas as
an essence in which creatures gathered and where they could become partakers
of the divine monas (i. e. the unicity existing between the three divine hypostases
and the intelligible creation which was made for this relationship with the di-
vine) about unity with his creation.¹¹² In other words at least the intellectual cre-
ation is well taken care of in God’s provision.
For one who stands in this tradition, Maximus sounds quite different in Dif-
ficulty 10,19 where he distinguishes between Providence which holds together
the universe through logoi and Judgement which differentiates things according
to logoi; providence further raises up possibilities for the human race (Diff 10,
31 f), while judgement is a testing of performance. For Plato (seen perhaps
through Alcinous’ eyes), “What is up to us comes under the sway of providence,
i. e. God works through our free choices (including prayer) to achieve the designs
of his providence, while the consequences of our actions are ruled by fate,” but
God can temper the outcomes, so in Christian thinking the last part of this does
not apply. Neoplatonists like Plotinus agreed with Christians that religion and
prayer could work. For Proclus, Providence as its names implies, is an activity
“prior to intellect”’ by which is meant “prior to any intellective element in any
causal process as such.” “Thus, belief represents the ineffable element interpret-
ed primarily from below and providence the same element viewed from
above.”¹¹³
What Balthasar has to say about the positive features of Maximus’ under-
standing of providence is that God is free to adapt nature according to his pur-
poses. Reality then is more than just a fixed ontology, but includes the superna-
tural-historical activity of the same Logos who created that ontology (with the
law of Nature) and the modifications (the Old Covenant) as shaped towards
 Ibid., 279.

 Gabriel Bunge, “Encore une fois: Hénade ou Monade? Au sujet de deux notions-clés de la
terminologie technique d’Évagre le Pontique,” Adamantius 15 (2009): 9 – 42, 40.
 Stephen E. Gersh, From Iamblichus to Eriugena: An Investigation of the Prehistory and Evo-
lution of the Pseudo-Dionysian Tradition, Studien zur Problemgeschichte der antiken und mitte-
lalterlichen Philosophie 8 (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 117 f.

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the Incarnation.¹¹⁴ God acts in the world through Krisis and Pronoia (a pairing
received from Evagrius), with the latter reinforcing the latter’s judgements
which divide reality into its component parts in order to fix them and re-integrate
them, rather like a mechanic working on an engine.¹¹⁵ So there is the interrup-
tion of grace if providence is to work and lead to an eventual rest from sin. It
is not about the overcoming of opposites in its cosmic movement.¹¹⁶ Punishment
can hence be seen as educative. Krisis is no longer the ripping of unity but is part
of providence. Movement is no longer a bad thing as in Evagrius or even a nec-
essary process to alleviate a problem but is part of the world’s reality.¹¹⁷ Provi-
dence affirms creation in its particulatiries and its limitations, including its de-
sire for God as a felt lack. ¹¹⁸ As ‘middle-man’ God is the overseer of the
procedure as well as the initiator and completor (Rom 11:15). As Logos, He con-
tributes the Logoi of the divine will to the movement of the creation (Amb 42; cf.
Gregory Nazianzen, Oration 14, 31).¹¹⁹
It can be argued that Maximus reduced or qualified Origenist personalism in
the sense of God’s being found in his self-revelation to conscious receivers of his
words and messages.¹²⁰ Providence was more a subtle yet powerful energy than
a summons to vocation. According to Albert the Great’s inheritance of this, in
fact from Albert’s reporting on Maximus’s commentary on Dionysius, Divine
 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie: Das Weltbild Maximus des Bekenners (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1941), 121: “aber sofern Gottes Vorsehung frei, souverän und übernatürlich
bleibt, steht über dem Naturlogos immer (antistoisch!) der aus ihm unableitbare Vorsehungslo-
gos; in diesem Sinn unterscheidet Maximus sorgsam die θεωρία τῶν ὄντων von der θεωρία προ-
νοίας καὶ κρίσεως […]. vielmehr öffnet sich alle Wesensschau ja schon auf eine Schau der ge-
schichtlich-übernatürlichen Wirklichkeit; ist ja historisch derselbe Logos, in Naturgesetz wie
in Schriftgesetz (d. h. in der geschichtlichen Ökonomie vom Alten zum Neuen Bund) verkörpert,
auf beiden Wegen unterwegs zu seiner Menschwerdung.”
 Ibid.: “‘κρίσις betrifft die gute wesens-begründende Unterscheidung der Dinge, die ja selbst
eine Form der Nachahmung Gottes ist, und προνοία hebt, in der Lenkung der Wesen auf Gott
hin, diese Unterscheidung nicht auf, sondern begründet und bestärkt sie, indem sie die in
böse Vereinzelung versunkenen durch erlösende Liebe zur gottgewollten und gottnachbildenen
Integration führt (Amb 91 1133C–36 A).”
 Ibid., 347.
 Ibid., 607: “‘Werden’ und ‘Bewegung’ faßt Maximus stets in aristotelischen Sinn einer na-
turhaften (keineswegs dem Sündenfall, sondern der Geschöpflichkeit als solcher zu verdanken-
den) Dynamik von Potenz zu Akt”’ (ibid., 532.). Also: “Denn die προνοία ist nicht ein Prozeß, der
nur auf Überwindung seiner selbst hindrängt, sondern eine ausdrückliche Wahrung der Welt in
ihrer Unterschiedenheit und Endlichkeit.”
 His Ambigua 91,1220 questions all Origenism (cf. CG 144.1.10.)
 Blowers, Drama of the Divine Economy, 164.
 Antoine Lévy, Le Créé et L’incréé: Maxime le confesseur et Thomas d’Aquin (Paris: J. Vrin,
2006), 479.

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Names c13, it is Providence that saw to movement as part of the natural way of
things. It seems to be a force that sees not only to the going out of creation but
also to its return, even by overcoming obstacles. As such history of salvation
seems to be included in this natural process.¹²¹
One might also say that for Maximus, the One (Monad) is like the hub of a
wheel in touch with all the logoi as radii towards the periphery. It is the hub that
directs and drives the periphery. For Dionysius “universal providence” meant
creation, while “general and specific acts of providence” meant preservation
of each creature in its capacity to act (Divine Names I.7 596D–597 A). This in-
cludes a free decision to return (epistrophe): “Thus, God exercises His providen-
tial role only over the beings who return to Him […]. The purpose of providence is
the return of all the beings which God contained beforehand to Him as their final
home.”¹²² Can Providence have a purpose before the creature decides to return?
Maximus in Ambigua 7 however seems to anticipate this objection by insisting
on the term anaphora (the liturgical connotation should not be overlooked),
which is qualified by the two adjectives epistreptike and cheiragôgike. God is
very much involved in the action of turning and leading (by the hand). Yet for
Dionysius Providence as such was more about preserving the creature so as to
be able to turn or convert to its superiors, love its equals and provide care (pro-
noia) for those weaker. Also, the logos of well-being is reached on the way to the
Logos of Eternal Being in God (Amb 7,1084C; 10,1160). One might want to speak
of “penultimate” goods. Maximus accepts this, but develops the point that par-
ticular creatures matter (Quaestiones ad Thalassium 2,272AB). For Judgement
(krisis) is not about the education of sinners as in Evagrius but involves distinc-
tion, i. e. the preserving of differences.¹²³
The early Byzantines held to a fairly impersonal view of Providence because
it was a force that did not single anyone out for special treatment or help and left
it to the free agents to personalise providence through making it their own; prov-
idence set up the conditions for relating to God whoever one was, whether one
was born barbarian or in Constantinople, but any individual “fortune,” material
 Ibid., 430: “De manière générale, le reditus des créatures est l’objet constant de la Provi-
dence divine. Le mouvement selon l’opération naturelle serait non seulement impossible sans
l’opération d’une Providence divine antérieure qui en produit le principle, mais sans les effets
d’une Providence actuelle qui en assure l’exécution sans entrave.” He goes on, “Ainsi, l’idéé de
Providence contient l’histoire du salut à titre de moyen terme entre l’exitus créateur et le reditus
glorieux” (480).
 Vladimir Cvetković, “Predeterminations and Providence in Dionysius and Maximus the
Confessor,” in Dionysius the Areopagite between Orthodoxy and Heresy, ed. Filip Ivanović (New-
castle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2011): 135 – 156, 147.
 Cvetković, “Predeterminations and Providence,” 150; cf. Louth, Maximus, 66.

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or spiritual, good or bad, belonged to the realm of personal spirituality. Scripture

verses on providence were more likely to be of the type “God sends the sun and
the rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” than “You intended this to harm
me but God intended it for good.” Providence is less a story of God’s game of
chess and more the chessboard and the rules or conditions established.
John of Damascus, who could not believe that God had wanted Jerusalem to
fall to the Ummayads, was driven to argue, concerning a child conceived in adul-
tery that God was never the author of evil things. Indeed God has stopped creat-
ing anything.¹²⁴ He has withdrawn from the creation process after the seventh
day and before the Fall and left such things up to human agency. The will of
God is only that which is holy, in accordance with the commandments. God is
so far off so that his immanence is only a moral one (God is near when we do
his will). In sum, only God causes good. Only men and the devil cause evil.
Nine dialogues of different lengths correspond to real questions Christians
received.¹²⁵ Three of these seem to concern the question of Providence, to
which John provides answers:
1. The bible doesn’t say that God begat Seth, but that Adam did, since God’s
creating days were over; to the objection: “yet what about Jer 1:5 ’I sanctified
you since the womb?’”, the Christian has to reply that Jeremiah was proph-
esying baptismal regeneration. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob must have been
baptised.
2. The Jews who crucified Christ followed God’s tolerance, not his will: there is
distinction between θέλημα and ἀνοχὴ και μακροθθμία.
8. When a worm appears in a wound, who made the worm? Certainly not God.
It is just like when after the fall the earth was condemned to produce weeds.
To evaluate this: 8. has something to compel it, but 2. hardly offers a typical case
of God putting up with any old sin – the specific issue is not addressed, and 1. is
hopeless on exegetical grounds.
 Raymond Le Coz, Jean Damascène: Ecrits sur l’Islam. Présentation, commentaires, et traduc-
tion, Sources Chrétiennes, 383 (Paris: Cerf, 1992), 150: “Ce que le Musulman appelle création con-
tinue n’est autre que la procréation. Mais nulle part ailleurs le Damascène n’explicite pas sa pen-
sée, qui demeure donc très incomplète et très floue. Ainsi ne voit-on pas très bien à quelle
moment se situe, pour lui, la creation de l’âme chez l’homme.”
 LeCoz in Ecrits sur L’Islam, 87. Daniel J. Sahas, John of Damascus on Islam: The “Heresy of
the Ishmaelites” (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 101– 102 has observed: “As far as the content matter is con-
cerned, the subjects discussed in the Disputatio are all found in Chapter 100/101 of the De Haer-
esibus […] the Disputatio is a supplement to, and an elaboration of, the preliminary discussions
of Chapter 101. It is found among the Opuscula of his student Abu Qurra – the content at least is
the product of John’s thought.”

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Of course that is not the end of the story: the Expositio Fidei, argues Louth,
includes a more mature version of his doctrine of Providence with more room for
human agency taken up in the divine plan. As Bouteneff observes, John omits
any parallel references to other religions and systems even as he draws on Nem-
esius.¹²⁶ He works with the stock definition related by Nemesius and passed on
by Maximus: “Providence, then, is the care that God takes over existing things.
Providence is the will (βουλήσις) of God through which all existing things receive
their suitable direction.”¹²⁷ Yet what is the place of συγχώρησις, the permission
which God’s patience offers? Origen had made the distinction in his Homily on
Gen 3:2, where he pondered: Is Providence other than will: is providence permis-
sion
John adds, however:
When I say all things, I mean those things that do not depend on us (ta ouk eph’ hêmin); for
that which does depend on us is not a matter for providence, but for our own free will’
(Expos. 43.21– 5).
To quote Andrew Louth on this passage:
This would provide a potentially massive exception to the remit of divine providence, and it
is not clear to me that it is an exception that could be carried through without effectively
denying God’s providential care over human affairs. The paragraphs that follow, however,
return to a closer dependence on Nemesius, and seem to qualify this stark exception.¹²⁸
John introduces a distinction between what happens by God’s good pleasure

(kat’ eudokian) and what happens by his permission (kata sygchorêsin). What
happens by God’s good pleasure is unequivocally good; but he permits misfor-
tunes, and even plainly evil things, to test human virtue or make it manifest,
or to bring about some greater good, as in the case of the Cross. God appears
to abandon people for various reasons: for the instruction of others, “for we
are naturally humbled, seeing the suffering of others” (Expos. 43.37– 8); or for
the glory of another, as with the man born blind for the glory of the Son of
Man (John 9:3).¹²⁹ On this account Providence always has to have a special pur-
 Peter C. Bouteneff, “The Two Wills of God: Providence in St John of Damascus,” Studia Pat-
ristica 42 (2006): 291– 296.
 Expos 43.2; Bonifatius Kotter (ed.), Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos. 5 vols. Berlin
1969 – 1988, II, 100; cf. Maximus Amb. 10.42; Nemesius Nat. hom.42,343 f. (Morani [ed.], 125.).
 Andrew Louth, St. John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology, Oxford
Early Christian Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2002), 261.
 Ibid., 43. Cf. Louth’s “Pagans and Christians on providence,” 279 – 297.

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pose of a spiritual or redemptive sort wherever it allows evil. Where that could
not be the case (e. g.the child born in adultery), that would continue to be out-
side God’s providence.
The Western development
One can understand why Leo Scheffczyk in his textbook treatment of Creation
and Providence wanted so much to keep Providence attached to Creation. It
stops the latter getting mixed up with Soteriology, and works like a buffer be-
tween the orders of creation and salvation. For that reason he praises the East
– for John of Damascus God only foreknows all things and allows free will in
the economy of salvation. There is a dichotomy between Creation-Providence
and the divine economy of salvation, and yet the two are in parallel, since crea-
turely freedom is assured in both and both are equally about orderly movement.
Augustine with his idea of divine foreknowledge as control according to God’s
plan in civ dei IV,33 and V,9, was much clearer on the goal to which Providence
leads creation. Yet is inaccurate when Scheffczyk writes: “The philosophy of his-
tory underlying De civitate Dei is concerned more with the revelation of divine
justice and wisdom than with the leading of the world to Christ.”¹³⁰ For creation
has its own becoming through a process which involves the Trinity (V,11), into
which the economy of salvation fits. This includes forgiveness and that seems
unlike the dichotomy in the Damascene, and none the worse for that.
Just after 386 Ambrosiaster wrote both answers to two Questions (115 & 116).
The latter (on Astrology) was directed more against “false Christians” and was
mostly a polemic against astral fatalism – at least up to paragraph 38.¹³¹ God
does not submit himself to his own decrees; and individuals can change accord-
ing to discipline and according to the Law. To believe in Fate is to disbelieve in
Last Judgment. Furthermore, how can stars affect fate when they have no power
to alter own courses?
This is actually consonant with what Parma concludes that for Augustine
there is an outer divine law that we can’t understand, but is also that which
drives us to struggle within. Providence does not move world history but enrich-
 Scheffczyk, Creation and Providence, 101, n. 32. Cf. Anne-Isabelle Bouton-Touboulic, “Ordre
manifeste et ordre caché dans le Sermon sur la Providence de saint Augustin,” in Augustin préd-
icateur (395 – 411), ed. Goulven Madec (Paris: Institut d’Études Augustiniennes, 1999): 303 – 319.
 Marie-Pierre Bussières, Ambrosiaster. Contre les Païens. Sur le destin. Texte, traduction et
commentaire, Sources Chrétiennes 512 (Paris, Éditions du Cerf, 2007), 48: “En réalité, la nature
de chacun est determine par le hazard et là où il y a du hazard, il ne peut y avoir de destins.”

Authenticated
es the soul. Likewise, even in the later Augustine, there was never any doubt but
that human will was responsible for sin and all its trouble.
C. Parma put his finger on something important: that belief in Providence
rather than eudaemonia is what drives and steers Augustinain ethics. Providence
needs to involve a sense of God’s having sight or consciousness, or it soon be-
comes very much like fate or luck.¹³² For Providence is what allows humans to
be free enough from strong, often irrational forces to be able to choose. That
Providence might be communicated in grace to the individual in prayer or via
the church, or it may come through institutions and good habits of cultures in-
fluencing the individual to make a choice that is now informed by the Good. Eth-
ically, then, it leads the sinner on the right way, which is not to despair.¹³³ If one
just thinks of oneself, one fears others as enemies, and one comes to adapt a big-
ger picture only after the failure of one’s own project, as Augustine himself had
experienced. For Plotinus both reward and punishment are immanent to the
human spirit; for Augustine there is an outer divine law that we cannot under-
stand due to its complex intelligence. It is not that God causes humans to act
well; rather, those who are aware of playing their part in God’s providential
plans will act better.¹³⁴ Patterns of custom and best practice should contribute
to human performance.
For Augustine God has a relationship of ordaining to all creation but no
other relation. God is “other” to it, and Augustine tries to lessen any danger of
pantheism by saying that creation has no existence per se, not even by God’s im-
plantation. Indeed, Augustine did not identify Providence with God any more
than Plotinus did with the One – it is an effect of God and hence a property.
This is a one-way street. God gives his goodness to his creation. Creation is
not such an “other” as to be able to contribute to God’s work.¹³⁵
In summarising Augustine’s position, Parma maintains that God created all
in is goodness and as such preserves all things as summa causa through his
word, which as Wisdom contains the reasons of all things.¹³⁶ Matter is created
at the same time, yet is still receptive, secondary. And hence creation becomes
 Parma, Pronoia und Providentia, 4: “Der Mensch will sich so gut wie möglich verwirklichen.
Zur Selbstverwirklichung in Einzelsituationen wie in seinem Lebensentwurf überhaupt bean-
sprucht er die Vorsehung, die göttliche Fürsorgen als das Gute, an dem er sich orientiert,
durch das er geleitet wird.”
 Ibid., 9.
 Ibid., 123.
 Ibid, 74.
 Ibid. 91. Cf. Batut, Pantocrator, 507: “ce qui est proprement patristique, et qui demeure in-
tact chez Augustin, est le lien de connaturalité entre la puissance et la Sagesse”. God can go with
nature but in flexible way.”

Authenticated
providence because it is all in time. Augustine sees providence as working in two

ways: the natural operation and God’s voluntary operation, and, as that affects
humankind, for the sake of body and then of soul. Both are equally valued by
God.¹³⁷
Why does God give of himself to his creation, yet only want to save a few
people (Soliloquies I,2.10)? Augustine implies that for the good that any creatures
do, there is already grace from the Summum Bonum at work. Responsibility for
sin lies in the defect in the will of the creature, hence there is nothing “necessa-
ry” about sin. Predestination is about the knowledge God has.¹³⁸ Freedom to
align with God is available. It is “we” who chose not to keep up. De vera religione
I,17,34 sets out the connection of Providence to the placing of things in their cos-
mic order towards “the other,” giving the world a form.¹³⁹ Providence is for the
whole human race, not just individuals (I,25,46), and therefore, we should each
be humble. It is almost like a form to the world (Mor II,17,45).
The early work De Ordine 1,7,19 maintains that there is just no place for evil
things in the created order. God’s order excludes rather than includes or compre-
hends them. A true distribution means distinguishing between good and evil: it
is not a case of a harmony of opposites. Also, De ordine I,5,12 tells us that there
are many things that have purpose yet which have no obvious utility to us. This
is because Providence works for the whole human race (note, not “ecology” or
“the earth”), and not just individuals (cf. De vera rel 25,46 and De div qq q44).
Like Plotinus, Augustine argues that one needs to have the right spirit to discern
providence (de ordine I,1,1): to see God in things and in knowledge of them. To
think of Fate as a world principle leads to dualism.
In Bouton-Touboulic’s monograph, L’Ordre Caché, she sums up the signifi-
cance of the early De Ordine for the question of Providence. It might seem as
though things don’t look ordered, but the point is that Providence is doing some-
thing behind the scenes, in a series of quiet judgements leading to a very public
eschatological judgement.¹⁴⁰ In De Ordine the solution in the meantime is to
adopt a contemptus mundi attitude and not be trapped by wrong expectations.
 De Genesi as Litteram II, viii,9,17. (Parma, Pronoia und Providentia, 126).
 Praed sanct. 10,19: “Praedestinatione quippe Deus ea praescivit, quae fuerat ipse facturis:
unde dictum est: ‘Fecit quae futurae sunt.’ Praescire autem potens est etiam quae ipse non facit;
sicut quaecumque peccata.” See Friedmann Drews, Menschliche Willensfreiheit und götlliche Vor-
sehung bei Augustinus, Proklos, Apuleius und John Milton, Topics in Ancient Philosophy 3 (Frank-
furt: Ontos, 2009), 2:643 – 55.
 See Parma, Pronoia und Providentia, 29.
 Anne-Isabelle Bouton-Touboulic. L’Ordre Caché: la notion d’ordre chez saint Augustin, Col-
lection Etudes augustiniennes (Paris: Institut d’études Augustiniennes, 2004). Cf. civ Dei XX,2; re
Rom 11:33.

Authenticated
(When it comes to the more political realm as the City of God describes, divine
justice is more apparent.)¹⁴¹
Unlike with Plotinus the Christian God does not arrive at providential rulings
necessarily by some process, but rather reflects and decides.¹⁴² And against the
Stoics, Providence is a secret of the transcendent divine will and does not belong
immanently to the world. In his Enarratio on Ps 148:8 Augustine proclaims that
all the weather elements execute his word of command, and on Ps 148:10: there
is distributive justice, giving each region the weather that it is due.¹⁴³ If we are
believers, God will remind us by making us see things that happen as too
much his work for them to be coincidences. The natural work of providence is
continuation of creation; in this “Part II”, God acts through the wills of angels
and men. He is often at work to counterbalance: some apparent orders need
shaken. But there is also a saving order: There is order if we hold on to it in
life. It will lead to God, and if we do not hold to it in life, we will not reach
God.¹⁴⁴ This requires grace and inner illumination by the Teacher within, relating
to God through conversion, charity and political involvement. Whereas Plotinus’
discourse is one of identity and difference, Augustine’s is of dependent relation.
For Plotinus substance goes over into relation, and on into showing itself. So
Providence is the noetic “making known structure,” and the relationship of sub-
stance and knowledge is Providence, to be perceived in the soul, giving knowl-
edge of itself into life. With Augustine there remains a sense of God’s objective
action which in turn serves to correct faulty noetic structures.
The best part of two decades later Augustine can be seen returning to the
topic, but this time with more an emphasis on human history, not least salva-
tion-history. Writing Q.24 of De diversis questionibus, he posits: “Creatures are
in a different mode from God.” That means supremely their deficiency, which
 In the early Contra acad 1,1,1: “divinam providentiam non usque in haec ultimata et ima
pertinendi” – but that is the Stoic solution. To which Augustine’s answer runs: “Nam si divina
providentia pertenditur usque ad nos, quod minime dubitandum est. mihi crede, sic tecum agi
oportet, ut agitur.” See Jörg Trelenberg, Augustins Schrift De ordine: Einführung, Kommentar, Er-
gebnisse, Beiträge zur Historischen Theologie 144 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009).
 Bouton-Tourboulic, L’Ordre Caché, 234: “Il n’en reste pas moins qu’à ses yeux la Providence
n’est pas le produit d’un processe ontologiquement nécessaire, mais l’attribut relevant en propre
de la volonté d’un Dieu auquel on peut assigner des choix réfléchis, des signes de volonté
(nutus), parfois explicitement rapports à la Providence.”
 Ibid., 241.
 De ord I,9,27: “Ordo est, quem si tenuerimus in vita. Perducet ad deum, et quem nisi ten-
uerimus in vita, non perveniemus ad Deum.”

Authenticated
by providence is ordered to the whole of creation to alleviate it.¹⁴⁵ At Q.27 of De

diversis questionibus,¹⁴⁶ he seems to admit that God can use evil, and that not all
of God’s providence is salvific. To give a paraphrase:
It could be that through evil, divine providence ought punish and assist humans. For the
ungodliness of the Jews supplanted the Jews and for the Gentiles amounted to salvation.
Likewise it could be that divine providence which comes through a good person both
damns and helps, as the Apostle puts it: We are to some the odour of life to life, to others
the odour of death towards death. Every tribulation or punishment of the ungodly is also
a training of the righteous since in both cases it is the same thresher (tribula) and ear
(of corn) and corn comes out of the ear of corn, from where tribulation gets its name.
Again, since peace and rest from bodily troubles both gives rewards to the good and cor-
rupts the bad, all things are moderated by divine providence according to the merits of
souls. However the good do not choose for themselves the ministry of tribulation, and
the evil do not love peace. Those through whom providence happens in a way that they
do not know, they accept the reward of their malevolence, but not of justice, which must
be ascribed to God. In this way it cannot be imputed to the god whatever harms, but to
the good mind the prize of benevolence is given. Therefore other creatures, for the merits
of their rational souls either visible or hidden, are either troublesome or helpful. With
God on high administrating well what he has made, there is nothing inordinate in the uni-
verse and nothing unjust, either to us knowing or not knowing. But in part the sinning soul
offends; however since where there is for merits, there she deserves such to be and suffers
those things which is appropriate to suffer, she deforms the whole kingdom of God in no
way by her filthiness. For this reason, since we do not know all things that the divine
order does for us, we act according to the law in good will alone. For the law itself remains
unable to be changed and He moderates all mutable things with the most beautiful gover-
nance. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men of good will.
Third, Augustine’s Epistle 231 to Darius in 429 mentions his own sermon on Prov-
idence. For a long time this work was missing, only to be found by Dolbeau at
Mantua in recent times; he dated it to 405 – 415, and 408 – 9 seems most likely.
In this recently discovered sermon there are, observes Bouton-Touboulic, thir-
ty-one occurrences of “ordo” or its cognates.¹⁴⁷ In some ways sermon 243’s dia-
tribe is atypical, as it does not start with a complaint about human misfortune
but is more balanced between a consideration of good and bad in the universe.
As with City of God XII,4, there is an implicit admission that humans are not in a
position to appreciate order and beauty of the universe, and they certainly can-
not see the whole of history. The big question is: does divine order contain good
 Mor II,7,10: “in quantum autem ab essentia deficit, non sit ex deo, sed tamen divina prov-
identia semper sicut universitati congruit, ordinetur.”
 CCL XLIV.1, p. 33.
 Bouton-Touboulic, “Ordre manifeste et ordre caché,” 303 – 319.

Authenticated
and bad, or are the pagans right that there is no such thing? The divine order is
real, but it is hard to know it. As in all study, it seems one has to move from the
tangible to the intangible. There seems to be no way of predicting who will be
rewarded for their behavior in what way.
Unlike a decade earlier in his work De ordine, Augustine’s mature account of
Providence now presupposes the existence of order, present behind the apparent
disorder. If God gives order to bees and ants, then so also for humans and angels,
even though the latter one is hidden not least because of human sin, which
makes the yearning for order even greater. This should not be too hard: it is
clear that our bodies are providentially made.¹⁴⁸ It is the fact of revelation
which paradoxically tells us that there is a hidden reality. The Incarnation is
the main proof of divine care, and that apparent evil can serve good. So
“order” obtains a historical and temporal value. It cannot show itself completely
so as to settle questions concerning providence, at least not until the escha-
ton.¹⁴⁹ In the light of the Judgement to come, Christ has taught us true value,
such that happiness for an evildoer might actually be a punishment (Sermo de
Providentia 8,134 f). As Madec puts it, conversion is the condition for opti-
mism.¹⁵⁰ The human body is ordered by reason, so also the world, and if ani-
mals, then more so humans (1 Cor 9:10), which makes it even more imperative
to be aware of it and not act anti-rationally.
Certainly the course of his own life, as seen in his Confessions,¹⁵¹ is sugges-
tive: Confessions (X,4,6) alludes to Psalm 9:2, that God was determining his life
course. But he also supposes the work of providence in the Confessions: with ref-
erence to God’s moving out from heaven to the ongoing creation in time, Augus-
tine speaks of the divine will reaching the object through love. Hence there is a
type of being that matter possesses through that act of love (Conf XII,6,6).¹⁵² The
scheme is not as harmonious in Augustine as it was in Plotinus, for substance is
subordinated to relation such that the creation is outside of God and there is no
mutuality.
 “Adtingit a fine usque ad finem fortiter et disponit omnia suaviter” (7,118 f.).
 Bouton-Touboulic, “Ordre manifeste,” 318: “Les res humanae ont leur ordo qui les trans-
forme en une histoire orientée par une eschatologie.”
 Goulven Madec, “Thématique augustinienne de la Providence,” RÉAug 41 (1995): 291– 308.
Madec adds (297), that for Augustine here God created all in his Word. In non-human creation
He works by natures, in human realm he works through wills, as is clear from De Gen ad Litt
VIII, 23 – 24 “biperto providentiae suae opera.”
 God is addressed as “Peccatorum autem tantum ordinator” (Conf I,10,16).
 Conf XII.7,7: “Tu eras et aliud nihil, unde fecisti caelum et terrram duo quaedam, unum
prope te, alterum prope nihil.” ‘Nihil’ seems somehow to be in relation with God:

Authenticated
Fourth, in City of God XII,21, God himself is described as the source of the
rationes which give order and system to creation. This accords with what he
said in XII,9 that right intelligence for free and wise decision-making is given
– as a gift of enlightened intelligence, which is not quite the same thing as saving
grace, falling some way short of it.¹⁵³ The City of God XI,22 also tells Christians
not to speculate what Providence is, but to believe that there is Providence.¹⁵⁴
Augustine opposed the use of “fatum” by Christians back in City of God V, as
he had earlier with “fortuna.¹⁵⁵ However, good and evil are contained within,
as XIX,17 clearly states. He quite probably had read Plotinus Enneads II,2 on Pro-
noia. Hence in Gen ad litt XI,15, it speaks of providence over both “cities”; in City
of God VIII, Providence is seen to be natural through the secret administration of
God, by which he gives growth to trees and plants, but it is also voluntary
through the wills of angels and humans.¹⁵⁶ The famous passage (Gen ad Litt
6.14– 17) about “seminal reasons” in creation does not mean a pre-programming
of nature but allows space for divine agency to shape and influence in history:
“they also specify the ways in which things in the world can be acted on by
God.”¹⁵⁷ If evil is committed, then God re-establishes order (Conf I.10,16). Augus-
tine would later confirm this, for as City of God XI,20 has it, the angelic “dark-
nesses” were ordained, although not approved.¹⁵⁸ Just before he attacks Origen
on the reason for material creation in XI,23, in XI,21 he posits that God “does
not look ahead to what is future in the way that we do, or glimpse what is pres-
ent, nor look back to what is past; but in another way, far away from the way of
our thoughts […] he comprehends all these things in a stable and everlasting
 Parma, Pronoia und Providentia, 140 f: “Gleichermaßen erreicht die zur bona voluntas erfor-
derliche göttlliche Gnade (conf XII,9) den Menschen nicht von ‘Außen’, sondern ist die Befreiung
des Menschen aus seiner Festlegung; insofern kann der Mensch sich nicht von seinem—so fes-
tgelegten—Selbst her befreien, sondern ist auf das momentum intelligentiae der einsetzenden
rechten Einsicht in diese Festlegung und deren Kriterien angewiesen.”
 At Conf VII,13,19 he appeared to be able to contemplate creation as a whole. Of course this
is not quite the same as knowing God’s providential plans.
 c. Acad I,1,1: “Etenim fortasse, quae vulgo Fortuna nominator, occulto quodam ordine re-
gitur, nihilque aliud in rebus casum vocamus, nisi cuius ratio et causa secreta est.” In Retr
(I,1,2) he wishes he had never even mentioned Fortuna, since “cum videam homines habere
in pessima consuetudine, ubi dici debet: hoc Deus voluit, dicere: hoc voluit Fortuna […] forte,
forsan, forsitan, fortasse, fortuitu, quod tamen totum ad divinam revocandum est providen-
tiam.”
 Civ dei VIII,9,17: “naturalis quidem per occultam Dei administrationem, qua etiam lignis et
herbis dat incrementum, voluntaris vero per angelorum opera et hominum.”
 Rowan Williams, “Creation,” in Augustine through the Ages: An Encyclopedia, ed. Allan D.
Fitzgerald (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 251– 254, 252.
 “tenebrae autem angelicae, etsi fuerandae ordinandae, non tamen fuerant adprobandae.”

Authenticated
present.”¹⁵⁹ One might say that Providence clearly works on the individual (Con-
fessions)¹⁶⁰ and on the human race (City of God), and that in both modes it is a
question of an “eternal present.” In City of God XIV,3,2 unlike in Plotinus, En-
neads III 6,14,1 – which appears dangerously to give humanity an otherness of
a species to the divine species, both belonging to a common genus – Augustine
wants to emphasise that there is a dependency in that otherness, which is not a
noble but a vulnerable position for humanity to be in.¹⁶¹
There is, despite some recent emphases,¹⁶² a place in Augustine’s account for
meaningful God-pleasing activity in history, under God, as it were. Even the con-
troversial Christian Emperor Theodosius I in City of God 5.25 gets praised after
all! Yet Augustine quickly adds that eternal salvation is all that counts.¹⁶³ Is
this then a case of Providence being subsumed in the history of salvation, as
Madec seems to think?¹⁶⁴ Well, Madec thinks Parma over-reacted against Norbert
Scholl’s attribution of personalism to Augustine’s doctrine of Providence in his
1960 Freiburg dissertation.¹⁶⁵ Augustine does seem to talk more of pre-vidence
of a future-gazing sort and God as one who belongs within history to the degree
that he does not transcend it completely, but is part of it. What about the picture
of Wisdom advancing to believers smiling which he got from Sap 6:17?, wonders
Madec.¹⁶⁶ The question is: is that anthropomorphism really how Augustine un-
 “non enim more nostro ille vel quod futurum est prospicit, vel quod praesens est aspicit,
vel quod prateritum est respicit; sed alio modo quodam a nostrarum cogitationum consuetudine
longe alteque diverso […] ipse vero haec omnia stabili ac sempiterna praesentia comprehendat.”
 Conf V,6,1: “qui me tunc agebas abdito secreto providentiae tuae.”
 Parma, Pronoia und Providentia, 132: “Diese Begrenzung führt zu einer gewissen Selbstän-
digkeit des Menschen, einer Isolierung vom Urgrund, deren Intensität von der Distanz abhängt,
aus der der Mensch als ‘Spiegel’ das göttliche ‘Licht’ reflektiert.”
 I think here of the exaggerations in the reception of Robert Markus’ Saeculum: History and
Society in the Theology of St Augustine, Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1970).
 “Quorum operum merces est aeterna felicitas, cuius dator est Deus solis veraciter piis. Ce-
tera vero vitae huius vel fastigia vel subsidia, sicut ipsum mundum lucem auras terras aquas
fructus ipsiusque hominis animam corpus, sensus mentem vitam, bonis malisque largitur; in
quibus est etiam qualibet imperii magnitudo, quam pro temporum gubernatione dispensat”
(civ dei V.26.1). Books 4&5 were published before Orosius’s Historiae of 415.
 Madec, “Thématique Augustinienne de la Providence,” 299: “La Providence de Dieu s’ex-
erce donc aussi admirablement dans l’économie du salut” – especially in De vera religione
7,13: “Huius religionis sectandae caput est historia et prophetia dispensationis temporalis divi-
nae providentiae, pro salute generis humani in aeternam vitam reformandi atque reparandi.”
 Norbert Scholl, Providentia: Untersuchungen zur Vorsehungslehre Plotins und Augustins
(PhD Diss.; Freiburg i. Br., 1960). See Madec, “Thématique Augustinienne de la Providence,” 296.
 Madec, “Thématique Augustinienne de la Providence,” 297.

Authenticated
derstood it, or is it more in the way of a simile? As Madec affirms, the Providen-
tial God is at least like someone who condescends to Israel in some way. Scholl is
probably right, that the image of Wisdom is not to be taken too realistically.
Of course Augustine insisted on distinguishing providence from luck
(“casus”) and from fortuna, as is clear from City of God IX,13 and Contra academ-
icos I,1,1. In this one might see (as Calvin would make more explicit) providence
as the truth between the two extremes of the disorder of fate and the iron bond-
age of Fortune. Augustine’s view that God is reflective, that He knows the content
of his will before choosing to execute it, implies a contingency, which Plotinus
did not know.¹⁶⁷ God is indeed a creator or artifex who takes his time: see
Conf XII,12,13. City of God XIX,13 tells us that order is the disposition of things
equal and inequal, putting each where it belongs. Christians are told to make
use of the good things for the sake of peace with God.¹⁶⁸ It does seem for now
that God’s providence does embrace some less than ideal things. History is to
be the place where evil intergrates itself back to order. Order is part of God’s ac-
tivity as an artist.
Political History
In their allegorising of the holy city of Jerusalem, Clement and Origen seem to
have proceeded by identifying the heavenly city as the soul itself, with the eccle-
siological option then appearing as a conglomeration of souls. According to
Thraede, Clement relies on a combination of Phil 3:20 and Gal 2:20, which he
splices together to speak of a citizenship of the believer’s higher self in the heav-
ens.¹⁶⁹ Meanwhile in Origen’s account, it was significant that Gal 4:26 and Heb
12:22 have Israel as “seeing God,” so that Jesus went to Jerusalem in order to
get to upper Jerusalem above (Jn 12:12), even if the terrestrial place’s part in sal-
vation history was not totally ignored. The literal sense of Jerusalem as the his-
torical city, which continued to have the holiness the Old Testament bestowed on
 33: “Die Interpretation der manus dei als dei potentia, dei invisibiliter dei visibilia schafft,
läßt aber offen, wie die Relation beider Bereiche zu denken sei.”
 646: “la signification de l’ordre reside principalement dans la relation qu’il induit entre
l’homme et Dieu.”
 Klaus Thraede, “Jerusalem II (Sinnbild),” RAC 17 (1995): 718 – 764, 730: “In diesem Sinn hat
Clemens auch Phil. 3,20 in Verbindung mit Gal 2,20 zu nutzen versucht: Ich lebe aber, obwohl
ich noch im Fleische bin, als wandelte ich schon im Himmel […] schon jetzt gleichsam als Bürger
der Himmelsstadt (strom. 4,12,6).” See Karl Ludwig Schmidt, “Jerusalem als Urbild und Abbild,”
Eranos Jahrbuch 18 (1950): 207– 248.

Authenticated
it could elevate the imagination as material for meditation, perhaps in a way that
is the reverse of the direction of sacramental grace: ascent rather than descent
(cf. Origen on Is 54:11).¹⁷⁰ Likewise with Didymus: the allegorical sense of Jeru-
salem concerned the soul, while the literal sense was about the church. This re-
minds one of what Origen, in Rufinus’ version did with the Song of Songs. But
Thraede concludes that there is a similar combination of ideas and texts to
that which Augustine would employ.¹⁷¹ And Orosius would simply take this fur-
ther: the pilgrimage sites and the church’s sacred space occupy a blessed half-
way house between individual and empire.
Eusebius saw the larger horizon – it is very much the Logos asarkos who
drives things, and he is understood to have worked as Saviour from the era of
the patriarchs onwards.¹⁷² History swallows up cosmos, as it runs towards the
end times. Moreover, Eusebius is really the first to combine chronicle with a the-
ology of history. Like other early Christian writers, the idea is to exhibit the an-
cient pedigree of Christianity, but as the account of history gets closer to the pres-
ent day, the focus gets much narrower. As Winrich Löhr puts it, universal history
shrank to fit the dimensions of the Church,¹⁷³ even though it still thinks of itself
as universal chronology in genre. For Eusebius, unlike Africanus, the time after
Christ was just as important to God and his purposes as the time of praeparatio
evangelica.¹⁷⁴
Accordingly in Late Antiquity, Jerusalem became a place of pilgrimage (cf.
Egeria’s travels), but also a place or a collection of places that also symbolised
 Thraede, “Jerusalem II (Sinnbild),” 732: “Nicht einfach ‘die Seele’ erlangt dies […] denn es
gibt […] verwerfliches Dasein (s. oben zu ’Israel’ in princ. 4,3,8), sondern die anima dei capax als
Civitas dei, das sind alle, die in populo ecclesiae (=unter den Töchtern Israels) auf ihrem Weg
zur spiritalis sapientia […] den Fluß der Weisheit überschreiten, der jene ‘Stadt Gottes’ laut Ps
45,5 bewässert (in Num.hom.26,7 [GCS Orig. 7, 254,22 f.].”
 Thraede, “Jerusalem II (Sinnbild),” 742. Cf. Bonaventura, who borrowed from (Ps)-Diony-
sius in his Coll. in Hexaem xxii,2: “as the sun receives light from moon so does the militant
church from the church on high”: “Caelestis hierarchia est illustrativa militantis Ecclesiae.”
However Bonaventura had less interest in church than in soul.
 Friedhelm Winkelmann, Euseb von Kaisareia: Der Vater der Kirchengeschichte, Biographien
zur Kirchengeschichte (Berlin: Verlags-Anstalt Union, 1991), 127 ff.
 Winrich Löhr, “Heilsgeschichte und Universalgeschichte im antiken Christentum,” in Heil
und Geschichte Die Geschichtsbezogenheit des Heils und das Problem der Heilsgeschichte in der
biblischen Tradition und in der theologischen Deutung, eds. Jörg Frey, Stefan Krauter and Her-
mann Lichtenberger, WUNT 24 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009): 533 – 558, 557: “Die universalge-
schichtliche Chronographie wird – teilweise – in Kirchengeschichte transformiert […]. Eine ein-
gehendere heilsgeschichtliche Strukturierung ist nicht festzustellen.”
 See the essay by William Adler, “Eusebius’ Critique of Africanus,” in Julius Africanus und
die Christliche Weltchronistik, ed. Martin Wallraff, TU 157 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006): 147– 157.

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and referred to the Jerusalem above. In Christian terms it was not a place to be
had and held for itself. It served the religious function of mediating heavenly re-
alities enjoyed directly by the blessed departed and also the political one of un-
dergirding the Christian Imperial project. But this extra mysteriousness only
added to its exotic charms. Describing the attitude of the mid-century Bishop
Cyril of Jerusalem, J.W. Drijvers has written: “In particular, Jerusalem’s holiness
represented by the physical presence of sites and objects – the Cross especially
– was important to Cyril. Jerusalem’s direct and tangible connection with the
early history of Christianity made the city the center of the Christian world.”¹⁷⁵
This mission (“the propagation of Jerusalem’s holiness”) would be contin-
ued by Cyril’s successor John, and the campaign seemed to have been successful
when it achieved the recognition by Chalcedon of its position as apostolic see.
Yet the status would be short-lived, contested even in the two centuries between
Chaledon and the Muslim takeover – an event which put an abrupt end to Jeru-
salem’s claims to any residual ecclesio-political significance.¹⁷⁶
One may observe a Western development of this idea in the ideas of Marius
Victorinus.¹⁷⁷ For him, Jerusalem on earth serves politically, i. e. its political mas-
ter, Rome, (presumably meaning that in Paul’s time, Jerusalem was under the
Roman heel) whereas: “The free city is our mother to whom we must hasten.”¹⁷⁸
But, somewhat curiously, Victorinus insists that “there is earth both here and
there,” i. e. even an earth somewhere above the heavens. Cooper in his commen-
tary tries to play this down. Victorinus, he claims, would not have departed from
Neoplatonism so much as to make any sense of an “earth above the heavens.”¹⁷⁹
But, notwithstanding that consideration, for Victorinus heavenly Jerusalem has
spatial dimensions, it would seem.
For Augustine the heavenly city has its feet firmly on earth and so it is not
the case that the heavenly city needs to be mirrored in the church on earth.
 Jan Willem Drijvers, Cyril of Jerusalem: Bishop and City, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae
72 (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 177.
 For what might have been, the recent book by Pauline Allen, Sophronius of Jerusalem and
Seventh-century Heresy: The Synodical Letter and Other Documents, Oxford Early Christian Texts
(Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2009) is suggestive.
 On Victorinus, Thraede, “Jerusalem II,” 755: “Seine um Textnähe bemühte Exegese von Gal
4,26 zeigt sehr schön, wie leicht die Argumentation des Apostels in eine spätplatonisch gefärbte
weltbildhafte Vorstellung umgebogen werden konnte; der Autor versteht das paulinische sursum
(άνω) als supra caelos […]. Paulus habe aufs himmlische J. verbunden, weil es, als nicht in
mundo befindlich, nicht diene; In-der-Welt-sein bedeutet Dienen.”
 Steven A. Cooper, Marius Victorinus’ Commentary on Galatians (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2005), 323.
 Ibid., 343, n. 121.

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Yet the city, also known as ‘the heavenly Jerusalem”, has its centre, one might
say its centre of gravity, located in heaven.¹⁸⁰ In his study of The Two Cities,¹⁸¹
Johannes van Oort was much more interested in the sources (Semitic-Punic par-
ticularism as found in Tertullian, admixed with a certain amount of Manicheism)
for Augustine’s City of God rather than in the Nachleben of that book. Van Oort
insists quite correctly that we should not translate civitas as “state” but as “com-
munity.”¹⁸² The idea is that of a community rather than a city, let alone “the
state:” “In the metaphorical language of Scripture, the civitas Jerusalem is a
city, as is its antithesis Babylon,” and van Oort sees the germ of the idea in cat-
echetical teaching which is salvation-historical in tone, employed by Augustine
as early as cat rud 31.¹⁸³
Donald X. Burt helpfully points out that in the City of God Augustine wants
to speak of a city of Seth, or “longings,” where Christians aspire to share in the
City of God. Situated somewhere in between that and city of Cain (in moral-spi-
ritual terms) was Rome, although it sat a little closer to Babylon than to Jerusa-
lem, as Augustine puts it (civ. dei XVI,1; 17; VXIII,2).¹⁸⁴ Of course it is clear that
Jerusalem has no political status, only a religious significance as the heavenly
city.¹⁸⁵ Unlike the Babylonians who worshipped demons, the Jews were the
only ones to get religion right (civ. dei VII,32), and they ascribed a providentialist
function to the law, temple and priesthood. Staubach notes that the place of the
interpretation of the biblical texts about Jerusalem in Augustine’s understanding
of cities had been rather overlooked. For Augustine, Jerusalem, in its ideal form
 Émilien Lamirande, “Jérusalem Céleste,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 8, edited by Marcel

Viller, Charles Bumgartner, and André Rayez (Paris, Beauchesne): 944– 958, 949: “On remar-
quera que ce n’est pas l’Église terrestre qui est l’image de la cité celeste. Celle-ci est exile et pere-
grine en une partie de ses membres et aspire après le jour où il lui sera donné de les réunir à la
société angélique: “civitas Dei peregrinans in hos saeculo” (XV,20,1).”
 Johannes van Oort, Jerusalem and Babylon: A Study into Augustine’s “City of God” and the
Sources of His Doctrine of the Two Cities, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 14 (Leiden: Brill,
1991).
 Ibid., 161
 Iibid., 167.
 Nikolaus Staubach, “Quattuor Modis Intellegi Potest Hierusalem. Augustins Civitas Dei und
der Vierfache Schriftsinn,” in Alvarium: Festchrift für Christian Gnilka, edited by Wilhelm Blüm-
er, Rainer Henke and Markus Mülke, JAC 33 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2002): 345 – 358, 350: “Rom
und Jerusalem stehen einander auf der gleichen Stufe der Kultgeschichte als Repräsentanten von
civitas terrena und civitas Dei gegenüber.” Cf civ. dei X, 32 “Haec est igitur univeralis animae lib-
erandae via.”
 Donald X. Burt, “Cain’s City: Augustine’s Reflections on the Origins of the Civil Society
(Book XV 1– 8),” in Augustinus: De civitae Dei, ed. Christoph Horn (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
1997): 195 – 210.

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at least, was home for Christians. He may not have a theory of universal history,
but the special historical events of scripture, prophetically mediated, are bearers
of more than merely moral meanings there, for nations as for individuals, but
such “prophetic history” (VII,16.2) is the extra.¹⁸⁶ There is to be no talk of build-
ing a civilisation and progressing in a godly direction.¹⁸⁷
However it was Augustine’s contemporary John Cassian whose Collationes
14,8 containss the memorably pithy statement of the four senses of Jerusalem.¹⁸⁸
This choice of Jerusalem as example for the exegetical technique was far from
coincidental. In this particular monastic tradition of interpretation, spiritual
reading did not rely on the literal, but on the application of the particular in a
figural way. In the ninth-century Navigatio S. Brendani the monastery of St
 Gerard O’Daly, City of God. A Reader’s Guide (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), 195. Cf. Ernst
A. Schmidt, Zeit und Geschichte bei Augustin (Heidelberg: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1985).
 Karla Pollman, “Augustins Transformation der traditionellen römischen Staats- und Ge-
schichtsauffassung (Buch I–V),” in Augustinus: De civitae dei, ed. Christoph Horn (Berlin: Aka-
demie Verlag, 1997): 25 – 40, 39. Augustine denied a this-worldly Tun-Ergehens-Prinzip. Regulus
did not have good fortune in this life (City of God I,24) and piety is really a gift, not a desert.
 “Theoretice vero in duas dividitur partes, id est, in historicam interpretationem, et intelli-
gentiam spiritalem. Unde etiam Salomon cum Ecclesiae multiformem gratiam enumerasset, ad-
jecit: Omnes enim qui apud eam sunt, vestiti sunt dupliciter (Prov. XXXI). Spiritalis autem sci-
entiae genera [sunt], tropologia, allegoria, anagoge; de quibus in Proverbiis ita dicitur, Tu
autem describe tibi ea tripliciter, super latitudinem cordis tui (Prov. XXII). Itaque historia prae-
teritarum ac visibilium agnitionem complectitur rerum quae ita ab Apostolo replicatur. Scriptum
est enim, quia Abraham duos filios habuit, unum de ancilla, et alium de libera; sed qui de an-
cilla, secundum carnem natus est; qui autem de libera, per repromissionem (Galat. IV). Ad al-
legoriam autem pertinent quae sequuntur, quia ea quae in veritate gesta sunt, alterius sacramen-
ti formam praefigurasse dicuntur: Haec enim, inquit, sunt duo testamenta: unum quidem de
monte Sina, in servitutem generans, quod [Lips. in marg. quae] est Agar: Sina enim mons est
in Arabia, qui comparatur huic, quae nunc est Jerusalem, et servit cum filiis suis. Anagoge
vero de spiritalibus mysteriis ad sublimiora quaedam et sacratiora coelorum secreta conscen-
dens, ab Apostolo ita subjicitur: Quae autem sursum est Jerusalem, libera est, quae est mater
nostra. Scriptum est enim: Laetare sterilis, quae non paris; erumpe et clama, quae non parturis;
quia multi filii desertae magis quam ejus quae habet virum (Ibid.). Tropologia est moralis ex-
planatio, ad emendationem vitae et instructionem pertinens actualem, velut si haec eadem
duo Testamenta intelligamus practicen et theoreticen disciplinam; vel certe si Jerusalem aut
Sion animam hominis velimus accipere, secundum illud, Lauda, Jerusalem, Dominum; lauda
Deum tuum, Sion (Psalm. CXLVII). Igitur praedictae quatuor figurae in unum ita si volumus con-
fluunt, ut una atque eadem Jerusalem quadrifariam possit intelligi: secundum historiam civitas
Judaeorum, secundum allegoriam Ecclesia Christi, secundum anagogen civitas Dei illa coelestis
quae est mater omnium nostrum; secundum tropologiam anima hominis, quae frequenter hoc
nomine aut increpatur, aut laudatur a Domino. De his quatuor interpretationum generibus Apos-
tolus ita dicit: Nunc autem, fratres, si venero ad vos linguis loquens, quid vobis prodero, nisi
vobis loquar, aut in revelatione, aut in scientia, aut in prophetia, aut in doctrina (II Cor. XIV)?”

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Ailbe gets described in terms of scriptural accounts of the temple, especially

those of 1Kings 6 and the vision of the last chapters of Ezekiel.¹⁸⁹ What seemed
to matter was the form, not the matter (e. g. tabernacle cloth, temple stone, even
spiritual flesh). With a nod to the work of Thomas O’Loughlin, David Jenkins con-
cludes: “By the seventh century Jerusalem was an accepted liturgical motif as
the place where God was to be met.”¹⁹⁰ There are liturgical resonances in the
De locis sanctis of Adomnan.
Eusebius had made sure that universal history preceded Church History in
his account. (Here can be traced Origen’s influence on Eusebius, according to
which Church History was like a second tier, building on universal history.)
Yet when we come to Orosius, there seems to have been a losing sight of protol-
ogy and eschatology, and subsequently he is always trying to account for the
whole and the parts of history, with the sense of the parts being somewhat rela-
tivized.¹⁹¹ Orosius had read City of God IV.33 and concluded that God was not
bound by his own providence: therefore although God had hung an ominous
cloud over Constantiniple and prophecy of doom, repentance and then divine
mercy followed (Orosisus, 3.3.2).¹⁹² Christianity has saved the Empire for now
– but clearly its existence is contingent on divine will. Christians suffer less be-
cause they know their sins are to blame (Orosius, 7.41). “Alaric’s Goths are the
precisely targeted instruments of God’s Providence: as barbarians, they loot
and rampage but as Christians they do so in an urbane way.”¹⁹³ Alaric spared
blood and even honoured churches: Christianity overcame barbarians. The
case of Placidia, the daughter of Theodosius I showed how piety could soften
the likes of her fierce pagan captor, Athaulf. Her capture was therefore “provi-
dential.”¹⁹⁴ It is interesting that in the proemium to Book 5, Orosius asks:
“Shall I thus call our times happy? We surely think they are happier than the
past.” For example, one has a passport to flee to any part of Empire, which
 David Jenkins, Holy, Holier, Holiest. The Sacred Topography of the Early Medieval Irish
Church, Studia Traditionis Theologiae 4 (Turnhout: Brepols 2010), 85.
 Ibid., 143.
 Martin Wallraff, “Protologie und Eschatologie als Horizonte der Kirchegngeschichte. Das
Erbe christlicher Universalgeschichte,” in Historiographie und Theologie: Kirchen- und Theologie-
geschichte im Spannungsfeld von geschichtwissenschaftlicher Methode und theologischem An-
spruch, eds. Wolfram Kinzig, Volker Leppin, and Günther Wartenberg, Arbeiten zur Kirchen-
und Theologiegeschichte 15 (Leipzig: Ev. Verlagsanstalt, 2004): 153 – 167. Sozomen (HE 1.1.11.15)
will agree with Orosius that only a Chrisian historian can see what the true causes of events are.
 Peter van Nuffelen, Orosius and the Rhetoric of History (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2012).
 Ibid., 183.
 Ibid., 185; Orosius 7,40.

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was not the case before. As well as encouraging mobility, Christianity is spread-
ing a deeper unity of the Empire. Van Nuffelen concludes: “Orosius’ view of his-
tory is thus ecclesiological, in the sense that it attributes the prime role as agent
to the Church.”¹⁹⁵ For most of the last century many, like Erik Peterson, saw Or-
osius as the opposite of Augustine. But Orosius agrees with Augustine that the
past was hardly to be admired and that it will not be a Christian Empire that
is to be looked to, as though the old structure could serve the ever-new spirit.
What Orosius suggests is that the Church can be understood as a mediator or in-
tercessor.¹⁹⁶
Orosius’ and Augustine’s contemporary Prosper of Acquitaine wrote De prov-
identia dei around 416,¹⁹⁷ at a time when Gaul was being decimated by invasions,
adding piquancy to a consensus that life in general was not fair. Prosper argues
that some amount of opposition of forces is good in nature, since working
against resistance builds strength and gives force.¹⁹⁸ Or, that which is poison
can be medicine.¹⁹⁹ God should not be understood in human terms as if too
much care taken on his shoulders would wear him down. He penetrates every
member of the world and has the power even to remit sinssimply as part of
his general power. Humans should not despair about themselves too much,
since Christ and the saints provide a remedy to add to the gift of reason.²⁰⁰
One should learn to have trust for God’s care in the afterlife through seeing
his care in this. Nature has been put at our disposal by the power of reason.
Even the Hebrews in the desert were preserved.²⁰¹ The Law was placed in hearts
before ever it was written down.²⁰² Furthermore, Christ absorbed mortality; re-
ceive in heart that message from heaven. As part of his overall providence,
God’s care extends to salvation for all, as His love gets diffused among all.²⁰³
 Ibid., 189.

 The pagan history as preparing the way for Christ the king was presented by Orosius cf.
Hans-Werner Goetz, Die Geschichtstheologie des Orosius, Impulse der Forschung 32 (Darmstadt:
WBG, 1980).
 Miroslav Marcovich, ed., Prosper of Aquitaine – De Providentia Dei: Text, Translation, and
Commentary, Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 10 (Leiden, Brill: 1989).
 123 – 6: “contraria discors/omnia motus alit, dumque illi occurritir illo,/vitalem capiunt
cuncta exagitata vigorem./Quae vel pugra situ, vel prono lubrica lapsu/aut cursu instabili, sta-
bili aut torpor perirent.”
 150: “et quae sola nocent, eadem collate mederi.”
 Ibid., 206 – 7; 222.
 Ibid., 413: “nec membris nocuisse aevo, nec vestibus usu.”
 Ibid., 434: “Nec nova cura fuit nostri, cum tradita Mosi/littera.”
 Ibid., 547– 9.

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To continue the paraphrase of Orosius: One is to serve the higher by using

the lower for seeking salvation. People should remember that they are not im-
prisoned by external forces so as to be prevented from obeying God, but are
held captive only by forces within. God has so arranged it. Now, as for those
who complain that there is no justice, would you want it for evey single fault,
including that of your own?²⁰⁴ Also, we wouldn’t want all the virtuous to be
here and now given their reward by being taken to heaven and leaving the
earth impoverished. Yet all the same there is justice, albeit only to some ex-
tent.²⁰⁵ Of course innocent children get killed, and this maybe for the sins of
their fathers, which is better than for their own guilt; this reminds us to accept
correction when it comes. Lastly, as if getting to the point and the pressing con-
cern, it is wrong to blame God for the marauding Goths. They have come because
we have opened the citadel of our mind to false teaching. Let the wicked prosper
outwardly, so long as the faithful God’s people remained faithful.²⁰⁶
By the end of this period of political instability, as some amount of civilised
solidity emerged, one finds in Gregory the Great’s Moralia in Job a treatment of
this biblical saint that aimed to show how inconsiderable Job’s sufferings were,
not what a martyr he was. “While literal, Christological and anagogical levels of
exegesis are present, Gregory is most interested in the moral and ecclesiological
meanings of the text: how Job represents the good Christian, the elect or the
Church itself. As such the Moralia is a compendium of his spiritual teachings,
and was for the medieval monks and preachers a manual of moral, ascetic
and mystical advice and inspiration.”²⁰⁷ Gregory was more ascetical than Augus-
tine in his conclusions: pain was no bad thing. Yet even more one senses the
mystical flavour of a “wounded by love” discourse,²⁰⁸ as drawn from Job 5:18.
“For he himself wounds but will heal, he cuts and his own hands will mend”
(cf. Deut 32:39 and Cant 2:5 for a spirituality of wounding with love: Mor
6,25,42), turning from a wounding of affliction into a wounding of love which
he gets from Augustine’s Confessions. God is breaking the believer down, sending
an arrow from which we both flee and yet are drawn towards. Penitence and
 Ibid., 747.

 Ibid., 839 ff.
 Ibid., 923.
 Carol Straw, Gregory the Great: Perfection in Imperfection, Transformation of the Classical
Heritage 14 (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1991), 49
 Jean Doignon, “Blessure d’affliction et blessure d’amour. une jonction de thèmes de la spi-
ritualité patristique de Cyprien à Augustin,” in Grégoire le Grand: Actes de Chantilly, Centre cul-
turel Les Fontaines, 15 – 19 septembre 1982, eds. Jacques Fontaine, Robert Gillet and Stan Pellis-
trandi (eds.), (Paris: CNRS, 1986): 297– 303.

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compunction become a permanent inward disposition because of the uncertain-

ty of God’s judgement and the impossibility of knowing either one’s own sinful-
ness or the sufficiency of one’s penance. One might conclude: the Moralia in Job
is really spiritualia in Job, to do with life in relation to God’s mysterious purposes.
Job as figure of the suffering Christ is the true hero of the poem; and yet the
power of God rather than the innocence of Job is the lesson (although that is not
“moral’” as such). Carole Straw on Moralia in Job 33,30 comments: “The good
which we do comes at the same time from God and ourselves; from God by
his prevenient grace, and from us by the free will which follows his grace […].
By the agreement of free will we have chosen the good actions which we
do.”²⁰⁹ God’s Providence is thus more “made to measure” than “one size fits
all.” Fear gets balanced by hope. One keeps penitent and, as with Job, continues
to offer sacrifices in the hope of God’s mercy (especially for sins of ignorance).
Gregory taught that one of main results of the Fall is mutability, and this
even in man’s spiritual nature.²¹⁰ It is a true consolation that all penal suffering
comes from the Creator’s hand because as one knows this, one can repent and at
least be free from unrighteousness. Gregory lays weight on the importance of hid-
den judgements, which only later become obvious as such. In general, difficul-
ties should be viewed as signs of divine grace. Job represents the totus Christus²¹¹
in the sense of being the corpus Christi over against the corpus diaboli. There was
no longer a secular city to speak of by the time of Gregory, who turned away from
the world into a divine dispensation, with Christ at centre of this. God’s purpose
for the likes of Gregory was to seek no earthly glory but to devote himself to fol-
lowing that longing for the patria.²¹²
 Grégoire le Grand, Morales sur Job. Pt 6, Livres XXVIII–XXIX; texte Latin de Marc Adriaen
(CCL 143B); introduction by Carole Straw; translated by Les Moniales de Wisques; notes by Adal-
bert de Vogüé( Paris: Cerf, 2003).
 Katharina Greschat, Die Moralia in Job Gregors des Großen: ein christologisch-ekklesiolo-
gischer Kommentar, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 31 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2005), 100, on Moralia VIII 32,54 (from Is 45:7): “Dann versteht Gregor darunter, daß mit den
äußeren flagella die Dunkelheiten der Schmerzen geschaffen werden, um im Inneren das
Licht des Geistes durch die Erkenntnis zu erhellen’ – intus per eruditionem lux mentis accendi-
tur.”
 Ibid., 248.
 See Michael Fiedrowicz, Das Kirchenverständnis Gregors des Großen: eine Untersuchung
seiner exegetischen und homiletischen Werke, Römische Quartalschrift für christliche Altertum-
skunde und Kirchengeschichte 50 (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1995).

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Gregory was confident that God would bring his will to pass on a wide field
of history, and this distinguished him from Augustine.²¹³ Gregory was more mor-
alising than Augustine in the sense of expecting Christians to get involved in
countering the enemy activity: daily life is like death and is passing, with the
growing old of the world senectus mundi. Christians should seek the bona caeles-
tia and not the bona temporalia. Rade Kisic reminds us that Gregory certainly did
act: we should not read his exegesis without the context of his letters, which in
their crisis-solving and pastoral admonishment, witness to a programme of activ-
ity which he deemed to be God’s will.²¹⁴
 Rade Kisic, Patria Caelestis: Die eschatologische Dimension der Theologie Gregors des
Großen, Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 61 (Tübingen: Morh Siebeck, 2011),
185: “Darin wies er immer auf die Vorsehung Gottes hin, die alles auf das Endziel der Geschichte
hin steuert.” Cf. Gregory, dial III, 36..
 Ibid., 262.

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Chapter Two:
The Medieval Account of Providence
Boethius first
If for Augustine Providence was to be considered in linear terms, from creation to

eschatological summation, as the ancillary facilitating of salvation-history, then
Boethius drew on the Aristotelian and Neoplatonic heritage that considered
Providence to stand for the truth that there was a divine realm above, to
which one could hope to ascend (through Wisdom or its equivalents). However
by contrast, Fortune raises up only to cast down and is considered to have some-
thing of that false promise of future hope. Indeed Wisdom warned that Fortune
would lead one blindly towards a precipice lurking beyond the horizon. Yet there
was no complete escaping from Fortune in this life, as Boethius’ own life story
only too painfully illustrated. While God’s Providence as previously understood
was, as Augustine had taught, about “the big picture” of world-history, about
God’s preservation of his church in world-history, individual human lives were
more ruled by Fortune: an entity excluded by Augustine, but that Boethius
had allowed back in.¹ Fortune or Fortuna works in Boethius’ Consolation of Phi-
losophy “comme une médicamentation par anamnèse.”² Yet, arguably for all her
unreliability in the long run, Fortune is better than a fickle mistress, for she tells
Boethius she gave him a good long period of success (Consolation II,2).
If human knowledge is pitifully subjective, divine knowledge is much more
comprehensive and in the divine mind is where providence is to be first located
(IV,4,6).³ Here Boethius seems to have been agreeing with the Neoplatonic phi-
losopher Ammonius’ criticism of the Aristotle commentator Alexander of Aphro-
disias, for whom the gods could know only possibilities. There is a second type
of necessity to be considered in addition to the first type, that of absolute neces-
 Matthias Vollmer, Fortuna Diagrammatica: Das Rad der Fortuna als bildhafte Verschlüsselung
der Schrift De consolatione Philosophiae des Boethius, Studien zur Kulturgeschichte und Theo-
logie 3 (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 239.
 Emanuelle Métry, “Fortuna et Philosophia: Une Alliance Inattendue,” in La Fortune: Thèmes,
Representations, Discours, eds. Emanuelle Métry and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, Recherches et Re-
contres 19 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2003): 59 – 70, 60. Momigliano famously argued that Boe-
thius’ Christian faith collapsed and the Consolation of Philosophy was the result, but this view
receives little credit these days.
 Pierre Courcelle, ‘La Consolation de philosophie’ dans la tradition littéraire: antécédents et
postérité de Boèce (Paris: Études augustiniennes, 1967), 217: “si Dieu est l’éternal present, il
peut connaître de façon determine l’événement des futurs contingents.”

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56 Chapter Two: The Medieval Account of Providence
sity (e. g. “all men are mortal”). This second type, as Boethius tells us (Cons.
V,pr.6,91) is where if one knows that someone is walking, then they “must be”
walking; in such a case the necessity is not natural, but comes through the ad-
dition of a condition. God has not forced things to be what they are, but rather
things necessarily are what they are as they become so.
Hence Boethius’ view of Providence was that it was of little earthly use to
most ordinary mortals whose vision was horizontal, and that it mattered exclu-
sively to those who looked upwards after Fortuna had disappointed them.⁴ In
Consolation of Philosophy IV,6 Boethius calls fate “a disposition inherent in
changeable things by which Providence connects all things in their due order.
In other words, “Providence is the vision of the divine mind as it sees the unfold-
ing in time of all things, and sees all these things all at once, whereas the unfold-
ing of these events in time, seen as they unfold in time, is called Fate.” For prov-
identia est ipsa illa divina ratio in summo omnium principe constituta’, a reason
which could guide those who appreciated the gift of divine wisdom, of which
there were alarmingly few. Or it is something one shares in with hindsight:
“ergo providentia non pertinet ad cognitionem practicam sed speculativam tan-
tum.”⁵ Neither of these statements sound very reassuring; that is one reason
why the work is called “the Consolation of Philosophy” and not “The Consola-
tion of Providence,” since it was Philosophy that comes close in one’s hour of
need and would lead us to Providence away in her high chamber. Providence
will not condescend in order to console, but lets Fate or Fortuna deal its
hand, and Philosophy hold out its helping hand. Tilliette makes the point that
it was the figure of Philosophia and not Fortuna that was appreciated as contri-
buting to the popularity of the Consolatio.⁶
Alternatively, Providence arranges for a gift of philosophia, which too often
has not been received as practical wisdom. Isidore’s definition of fatum in Ety-
mologia 8.11.94 is significant:⁷ Fate should be set apart from Fortune, since the
latter is less predictable than fate. Fate might sound like a very pagan thing,
 Marc Fumaroli, “Préface: in Boece: Consolation de la Philosophie, edited and translated by Co-
lette Lazam, Rivages Poche/Petit Biliothèque 58 (Paris: Rivages, 1989), 36: “la participation de
l’homme à l’ordre divin, son concours à la harmonie transcendante de l’univers.
 At Consolation of Philosophy I.9 Boethius’ prayer is indeed as universal as it is personal; he
longs and prays for a reditus: and the phrase “vector dux semita” echoes John 14:6.
 Jean-Yves Tilliette, “Éclipse de la fortune dans le haut moyen âge,” in La fortune thème, rep-
rèsentation, discours, edited by Yasmina Foehr-Janssens and Emmanuelle Métry, Recherches et
Recontres 19 (Genève: Droz, 2003), 93 – 127.
 “Fatum autem a Fortuna separant: et Fortuna quasi sit in his quae fortuitu veniunt, nulla
palam causa; fatum vero adpositum singulis et statutum aiunt.” The distinction goes back to Cic-
ero (Academica I,29).

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Boethius first 57
but one should be more suspicious of the plausible and more pious sounding
Fortune. In any case these two stand on the ground, while Providentia, the divine
planning, hovers above, high, aloof and not at all obvious.
To say that the high point of the work, the view of God and his providential
ways in the hymn “O Qui perpetua” of Consolation III,vi is “personal,” as Dronke
does, is perhaps to claim too much:⁸ “Boethius’ terminology at times looks Cal-
cidian and hence Platonic: Boethius’ distinction between providence and fore-
sight (providentia and praevidentia), for instance, is very close to a passage
(176) where Calcidius insists that Providentia does not “run ahead” (praecur-
rit).”⁹ Béatrice Bakhouche thinks Boethius had immediate access to the Calcidi-
an commentary that accompanied the translation, whereas Courcelle proposed
Macrobius as an intermediary.¹⁰ In any case Boethius shared with Calcidius (1)
the idea of a God who did not look let alone plan ahead from the first to the
last, but more “spectated” on high, and (2) the universe’s perpetuity, with its
own built-in transformative powers,¹¹ and as a corollary the somewhat “hands
off” approach of the Divine Ruler. In other words God oversees but does not in-
tervene in human affairs. In turn the human soul has two powers: there is the
prudence (opinatrix), which helps one deal with mutable and generated things
of everyday import. But moreover there is wisdom (sapientia), to contemplate im-
mutable nature. However, “[i]n connection with the problems of destiny, Calci-
dius says that when a planned outcome is complete, it is ‘comprehensible’.”¹²
Again we see the benefit of hindsight. In the present age wisdom has little
chance to predict the flow of events but is there best to adapt to them. The
world itself as a network has its own ways and even will. Necessity is not of
the absolute type, only conditional, i. e. on the basis of freely chosen action
(as Boethius in turn articulates at Cons. V,6,18 – 26) such that humans too have
freedom, for God never knows anything in advance so as to fix or predetermine
 Peter Dronke, The Spell of Calcidius: Platonic Concepts and Images in the Medieval West, Mil-
lennio Medievale 74; Strumenti e Studi 17 (Firenze: SISMEL edizioni del Galluzzo, 2008), 42.
 Ibid., 46.
 Béatrice Bakhouche, “Boèce et le Timée,” in Boèce ou la chaîne de saviors: Actes Du Colloque
International de la Fondation Singer-Polignac, Présidée Par Edouard Bonnefous, Paris, 8 – 12 Juin
1999, edited by A. Galonnier, Philosophes Médiévaux 44 (Louvain-la-Neuve/Paris: Éditions de
l’Institut Supérieur de Philosophie/Éditions Peeters, 2003): 5 – 22.
 Calcidius’s patron was Ossius, and hence wrote perhaps prior to or just after Nicea; al-
though: Waszink wants to date him circa 400.
 Dronke, Calcidius, 10.

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it.¹³ In the Calcidian scheme, Providentia is exalted in being identified with Nous
such that the anima mundi obeys her. Such Providence holds and embraces all
things more closely than the Transcendent Good, having penetrated matter
(silva) entirely, “forming her fully, not like the visual arts giving form to the sur-
face only, but in a way that nature and soul, permeating solid bodies, bring ev-
erything to life.”¹⁴ Providence is Divine Wisdom in action, caring for the every-
day things: “Boethius’ divine pilot steers with perpetual, not with eternal,
reason.”¹⁵ The word perpetua is tellingly chosen. In Book V of the Consolation,
Boethius averred that God has seen everything from eternity and that humans,
far from being under his control are free to practice virtue, in other words to
practise right things whatever way the world’s events take them. Worldly
goods and prospects don’t matter: since all things long to return to God, we
should all the more cling to God as the fons bonorum.
The Anonymous of Sankt Gallen in his commentary on Boethius was the
“first of the Carolingians to identify the anima mundi with the sun,” as suggested
by Calcidius: the sun is at centre of all things, like a body’s vivifying heart, and
one is warmed “by the homeguiding fire” (ignis redux).¹⁶ King Alfred the Great’s
free translation and expansion of the Consolation emphasised that the first ex-
ample of the Creator’s tenderness towards creation is the phenomenon of the
changing seasons. Further, where Boethius had “drawn all things from exemplar
on high,” Alfred wrote “without exemplar.” Albert popularised the notion that
not just Fortune, but the human soul itself is like a wheel that rises upwards
when it reflects on God, but downward when it gazes on transient things. In Beo-
wulf the term “wyrd” means humankind’s lot. “What comes out in Beowulf is not
the old-Germanic belief in Fate, but a Christian resignation to the inevitability of
the course of events as they are ordained by God’s Providence in his benign rule
of history.”¹⁷
Calcidius’ work also persuaded John Scotus Eriugena:
 Peter H. Huber, Die Vereinbarkeit von göttlicher Vorsehung und menschlicher Freiheit in der
Consolatio Philosophiae des Boethius (Zürich: Juris, 1976), 57 ff. This is in contradistinction to
the emphasis of Ammonius.
 Dronke, Calcidius, 25.
 Ibid., 42.See Periph I.452C: theos is defined as He who runs through all things in that his
word runs rapidly (velociter currit sermo eius).
 Courcelle, Consolation, 51.
 Paul E. Szarmach, “Boethius’s Influence in Anglo-Saxon England: the Vernacular and the De
Consolatione Philosophiae,” in A Compnaion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, ed. Philip Edward
Phillips, Brill’s Companoins to the Christian Tradition 30 (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 221– 54, 246,
with reference to B. J. Timmer.

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Boethius first 59
“to see matter in a way that was far from mere imperfection or privation: rather, as having a
unique bond—informitas—with the transcendent divine realm. Calcidius likewise intro-
duced Eriugena to the Aristotelian concept of the “perfected life,” the entelechy […] and en-
abled him to relate his non-Platonic concept to Plato’s anima mundi, as the fount of all par-
ticular souls.¹⁸
What is perpetual is a perennial transformation which has a near vertical trajec-

tory in the sense of ascent towards the higher. Pseudo-Dionysius in his Celestial
Hierarchy (261B) had contended against the view that there were angels for dif-
ferent races, since there was one pronoia and one source of all. In that sense God
directs all races, and Eriugena echoes this in his commentary on Dionysius,
where (Expos 9.528) he claims that Jews are wrong to think that God does this
only for them, and for other peoples uses angels. God contains all providential
activity within Himself, even as he sees it all unfolding (Periphyseon II, 590B).¹⁹
According to Eriugena in Periphyseon III, 6 – 7, “Nothingness” is merely the
flipside of Being rather than its presupposition, or matrix.²⁰ “Nothingness”
helps to reinforce the contingency of that which is, or works at least as a symbol
for that contingency. All things have been in God’s word, before they have come
into being (Periphyseon III,15) such that a true understanding of the ex nihilo is
“from the Word of God.” And of course, while there is real difference between
Creator and Created, there is not a separation for they come together in the
act of creation.²¹ Also, God’s vision of everything is its foundation (Periphyseon
I,12:704B). Moreover, while essence is that which something has or is at core in
God, nature is that which can change and grow (just as indicated in the root
meaning of the Greek word physis (Periphyseon V,3). With allusion to Maximus’
resolution of opposites in Ambigua 37, Periphyseon V,8 develops the idea to
the point that in the state of perfection all that will remain are the spiritual un-
changeable substances, which will be taken up into world of ideas. Hence in the
 The Spell of Calcidius (Firenze: Sismel 2008), xx.

 Cf. Jean Trouillard, “Erigene et la theophanie creatrice, in The Mind of Eriugena: Papers of a
Colloquium, Dublin 14 – 18 July 1970, eds. John Joseph O’Meara and Ludwig Bieler (Dublin: Irish
University Press, 1973): 98 – 113.
 Dirk Ansorge, Johannes Scottus Eriugena: Wahrheit als Prozeß. Eine theologische Interpreta-
tion von ʽPeriphyseon’ (Innsbruck; Wien: Tyrolia, 1996), 221: “Eriugena hingegen, der vor allem
an der Unveränderlichkeit Gottes festhalten möchte, geht davon aus, daß das Seiende von Ewig-
keit her in Gott geschaffen ist. Damit aber kann das ‘Nichts’ nichr mehr als etwas begriffen wer-
den, das dem Geschaffenen zeitlich irgendwie vorausgeht. Es ist vielmehr etwas, was mit dem
Seienden als solchem immer schon gegeben ist.”
 “Diese aber trennt das Geschaffene nicht vom Schöpfer; sie vereint vielmehr beide im schöp-
ferischen Geschehen selbst” (Ibid., 238). This refers to: “Datum refertur ad naturam, donum re-
fertur ad gratiam” (Comm Jn III, ix, Jeauneau, 53).

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human understanding of things we are wrapped up in the Word; and this means
that just as there is process in the world’s unfolding, so too there are processes in
understanding it. Only thus will bodies qualify to share in glory, as spiritual bod-
ies by association with spiritual minds.²² Boethius notion of perpetuitas, argues
Giulio D’Onofrio, was a gift to Eriugena, who developed it into his notion of tem-
pora aeterna.
Eriugena employed the term endelechia to mean the perfection of the soul as
that which (and here he was much more Platonic than Aristotelian) has the func-
tion of being the perfector of all things. He resisted any idea of a created anima
mundi as the force at work, and at Periphyseon I,476 he approves of Gregory of
Nyssa’s De imagine, because it does not resort to the notion of anima mundi.
In Periphyseon II,563 it is clearly God the Holy Spirit at work in guiding and per-
fecting creation, not a creaturely anima mundi. Thus in Eriugena’s Periphyseon,
providentia was viewed as a divine Mind (nous) at work. Matter and divine wis-
dom have formless nothingness in common and thus they come to meet and
complement each other: the latter comes to exist in the former. The extremities
of being are thus linked. As Dronke puts it: “the highest and the lowest have a
bond that links them, they have certain features in common. It is such a bond
that Calcidius had seen between the divine Mind and primordial matter (Provi-
dentia and Silva), and which Eriugena envisages between divine and material
formlessness (informitas).”²³ Matter is something positive for Eriugena’s scheme
of creation’s perfection: “He thereby distinguishes matter, the non-being which is
pure potentiality for form, from neediness – the non-being which is privation of
form.”²⁴ The point is that creation is continuing.
A further side of this immanentism can be found in Periphyseon V,8 – 12,
where this vision set forth shows many signs of Stoic thinking and an emphasis
 Giulio d’Onofrio, “A proposito del ‘Magnificus Boetius.’ Un’ indagine sulla presenza degli
‘Opuscula Sacra’ e della ‘Consolatio’ nell’opera eriugeniana,’ in Eriugena. Studien zu seinen Quel-
len: Vorträge des III. Internationalen Eriugena-Colloquiums, Freiburg Im Breisgau, 27.–30. August
1979, ed. Werner Beierwaltes, Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften,
Philosophisch-Historische Klasse (Heidelberg: Winter,1980): 189 – 200, 198: “Provvidenza è per
Boezio la forma immobile di tutte le cose stabilita nel presente eterno senza tempo del
sommo principio, e cioè quello che Giovanni Scoto indica come ‘tempora aeterna’; fato è l’ordine
e la connessione temporale delle cose mutabili, secondo il piano della dispozione provviden-
ziale, ossia, secondo l’Eriugena, lo svolgersi dei ‘tempora saecularia’. […] Ma la prospettiva
del ‘reditus’ permette a Giovanni Scoto di accogliere in un certo senso questa idea [perpetuitas],
attribuendo alla creature una durata senza fine che può adeguatamente essere definite ‘perpet-
uitas’, in quanto tutte rientreanno nelle loro ‘rationes’ eterne.”
 Dronke, Calcidius, 79 f.
 Ibid., 12.

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Boethius first 61
on continuity between old and new creation.²⁵ Despite the fall humanity has es-
sentially speaking remained the same in God, even though nature has been
spoiled.²⁶ One might ask whether the thing that is relied on to become and
grow is also that which has been vitiated, and then enquire how those two things
can be correlated. In all this apparent “panentheism” one might also wonder
whether Eriugena’s much-vaunted individual human freedom (as charted in
his De Praedestinatione) is only provisional. Yet part of the gift of grace, as dis-
tinct from the given of creation, is individuation of human persons, for Christ is
not just principium adunationis but also principium individuationis. Human na-
ture is changed: human individuality exists in recognising the truth of one’s
common elevation, in which the dialogue with God will continue endlessly.
Put another way, the change Christ brings was primarily a noetic one, whereby
the good that creation contains and its being “Spirit-formed” can now be recog-
nised.
As already mentioned, the vision of God is the very foundation of the uni-
verse. Seeing and making are one and the same, such that the vision of it is
his will and the working of his will. Moreover, God even somehow sees Himself
in His creating.²⁷ Creation’s essence is what it is at its core and in God, but natura
is something that can change and grow.²⁸ Grace reaches out beyond the existent
towards theosis.²⁹ One can say that all is to be taken up into God. As created be-
ings, human bodies are bound for glory just as much as souls; together they will
become spiritual bodies by the overcoming of division.³⁰ Human nature is
changed: one’s individuality exists in recognising the truth of our common ele-
vation.
One might then say that for Eriugena, Providentia is higher than creation be-
cause it is nous: the anima mundi or “second mind” obeys it, and as such is the
personification of Fate, which is ultimately controlled by a chain of command,
although it enjoys a fair bit of freedom. Providence holds and embraces all
 “totus homo manens secundum animam et corpus per naturam, et totus factus Deus secun-
dum animam et corpus per gratiam. Naturarum igitur manebit proprietas.”
 “suae pulchritudinis vigorem integritatemque essentiae nequaquam perdidit neque perdere
potest.” (Periphyseon V,6).
 704B (Periphyseon I,12): “visio dei totius universitatis est conditio. Non enim aliud est ei vi-
dere et aliud facere, sed visio illius voluntas eius est et voluntas operatio.”
 See Periphyseon V, 3. Here there is a strong influence of Maximus, Ambigua 37.
 Ansorge, Johannes Scottus Eriugena, 303: “‘Gabe’ bezieht sich auf die Schöpfung in ihrer Ge-
gebenheit, ‘Geschenk’ hingegen auf deren gnadenhafte Vollendung: ‘Datum refertur ad natur-
am, donum refertur ad gratiam” (Cf. Comm Jn III, ix, Jeauneau, 53.).
 “totus homo manens secundum animam et corpus per naturam, et totus factus Deus secun-
dum animam et corpus per gratiam. Naturarum igitur manebit proprietas” (Periphyseon V,8 – 12).

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things more closely than any Transcendent Good alone would. Providentia has
penetrated silva or matter entirely, forming her fully, not – as with the visual
arts – giving form to the surface only, but in a way that nature and soul, perme-
ating solid bodies, bring everything to life.³¹ This is work that is ongoing, and a
commanding holiness persuades silva to offer herself,³² to the extent that sapi-
entia and Providentia become synonymous.³³ By the Twelfth Century, the busi-
ness of creating new forms was also ascribed to Natura, as in Bernardus Silvest-
ris Cosmographia and Alan of Lille’s hymn to Natura. Accordingly sapientia is
also able to develop.
Ever since Alcuin’s discovery of Boethius’ Consolation in the late Eighth Cen-
tury, it became increasingly popular,³⁴ not least because it advocated learning
Wisdom as some sort of natural theology, which drew from experience and in-
clined towards virtue. Among the Carolingians, Remigius the pupil of Eriguena
actually made sure to deny any power to Fortuna. As Courcelle noted, Remigius’
approach was an assertively Christianising one.³⁵ Fortune or fate could be tamed
if put in its place, under the close attention of Providence. For Richard of Reims
(c 980) who used “Fortuna” twenty times, the term Fortuna was associated with
 Ansorge, Johannes Scottus Eriugena, 25.

 Ibid., 270.
 Eriugena worked with the concept of “primordial cause,” which he received from Augus-
tine’s De Gen ad litt. Robert Crouse, “‘Primordiales causae’ in Eriugena’s Interpretation of Gen-
esis: Sources and Significance’, in Ioannes Scottus Eriugena: the Bible and Hermeneutics, eds.
Gerd van Riel, Carlos Steel, and Michael Richter (Leuven: Peeters, 1996): 209 – 220, 213 com-
ments: “In any case, it is evident that the causal reasons have an ambivalent status: they are
eternal, one and unchanging in the eternal Word of God; they exist aliter in the elements of
the world, where all things were created at once, timelessly; and they exist also in things
which are created through the process of time. As defining the ideal natures of created things,
they prescribe also the ends towards which all creatures move, as returning into their primordial
causes,” which exist in the mind of God; but the passage quoted by van Riel at n.26 on p.219 (re.
De Gen ad litt VI,10,17 CSEL 28/1,182: “Sed haec aliter in verbo Dei, ubi isti non facta sed aeterna
sunt, aliter in elementis mundi, ubi omnia simul facta futura sunt, aliter in rebus, quae secun-
dum causas simul creatas non iam simul creatas non iam simul, sed sua quaeque tempore crea-
tur”) – this really contains nothing as fancy as he claims. Eriguena is hardly true to Augustine at
this point.
 Courcelle, Consolation, 47: “Enfin, dans une Lettre aux moines d’Hibernie, Alcuin revient sur
les degrès de la Philosophie boécienne et ose presenter les sept disciplines comme le moyen
nécessaire pour monter jusqu’au faîte de la perfection evangélique.”
 Quoted in Ibid., 288: “Nota fatum nihil esse, ut beatus Augustinus aliique dicunt. Sed quid-
quid providentia Dei disponente foris agitur, fatum vocatur? Sed beatus Gregorius dicit fatum
nihil esse. Sed si fatum aliquid esse dicendum est, fatum est naturalis ordo rerum ex providentia
Dei venentium. Siquidem fatum dicitur locutum, et dixisse Dei fecisse est: Dixit et facta sunt,
mandavit et create sunt (Ps 32:9). Fatum est igitur opus Dei quod ex providentia descendit.”

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Boethius first 63
the rupture of harmony, although it was used in a slightly more positive sense by
Liudprand of Cremona. The study of Providence in that sense (not trying to trace
God’s purposes in history but to observe meaningful patterns of human behav-
iour, apparent “coincidences” and consequences both in private and public life)
could take one to the portal of the gospel. At least Remigius of Auxerre and oth-
ers up until the high middle ages thought so, and would also benefit from the
rediscovery of interest in things classical during the Renaissance. It is perhaps
no coincidence that Eriugena remained very much part of this appreciative
movement. The idea of the “world-soul” immediately implied the extra-tempo-
rality of the world in its formal essences. For Boethius, the esse of creation
was already in God’s mind, but “id quod est” needed creation. The gloss on Boe-
thius by Remigius which might well come from his master, Eriugena, states that
before things are made they are “God” and “wisdom” in his providence and dis-
position.³⁶
Boethius could help one to see that there was a quasi-secular, “pre-sacred”
or “ordinary” realm in which created agents were free to work, and God moved
in a sort of eternal present, so as to be cause of all, yet cause of no event in par-
ticular.³⁷ Courcelle points out that the medieval commentaries on Boethius
seemed to miss his warning about Fortune as a fickle and evil mistress and al-
most inverted his message. Fortune under Providence’s tutelage and guidance
gained respect the more was ascribed to her as delegated by Her Guide, despite
the warnings from the Carolingians. For on the one hand there was Augustinian
Heilsgeschichte for the Church and the State, i. e. political theological history as it
were, the kinds of things which God was directly interested in, and on the other
hand there was the Boethian-inspired “other history,” wherein Providence uses
proxies to mediate between the eternal God who “spectates” and all that is cre-
ated, all for the sake of spiritual improvement. Creation in turn experiences prov-
 Siobhan Nash-Marshall, “Boethius’s Influence on Theology and Metaphysics to c.1500,” in

Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, eds. Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phil-
lips, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30 (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 163 – 91, 187, n.62,
quoting Commentum in Opuscula 3: “Omnes enim res quaecumque sunt, ante essentiam, id
est antequam in formam essendi veniant, deus sunt et sapientia sunt in providentia et disposi-
tione eius.”
 Jean-Yves Tilliette, “Éclipse de la fortune dans le haut moyen âge,” in La fortune thème, rep-
rèsentation, discours, eds. Yasmina Foehr-Janssens and Emmanuelle Métry, Recherches et Ren-
contres 19 (Genève: Droz, 2003): 93 – 127, 99: “La doctrine de Jean, qui s’emploie à sauvegarder
la liberté humaine, s’appuie notamment sur la distinction, d’origine augustinienne, mais aussi,
me semble-t-il, d’inspiration boétienne, entre deux orders de temporalité, les tempora saecular-
ia, au sein desquels s’exerce cette liberté, et les tempora aeterna, temps de Dieu étant pour lui
pure contemporanéité.”

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idence as fate dealt out by resolute Fortuna and, as experienced, often seems
plain contrary to reason. It is this that provides humans with the framework
and chain of events in which they have to act. Humans are free in that they
can rise above their history, surf it, as it were.³⁸ Boethius gave his medieval read-
ers an alternative realm which was part of the Christian universe, not just the
pagan one. In turn, the writers of Parzifal and Erec (Wolfram von Eschenbach
and Hartmann von Aue) knew Boethius from summaries of the early medieval
schools, which were provided in the Arts faculties. It is not insignificant that
of all the church theologians, Bocaccio cited only Augustine and Boethius.³⁹
One might wish to compare and distinguish, Isidore of Seville (d. 636) one
who was more interested in reinforcing the place of his own national unit,
Spain,⁴⁰ as vital for God’s continuing purposes. There were, so he thought,
seven ages of world history; yet he interpreted these without having space for
Heilsgeschichte as such. There was no sense that the history was sacred or in
any sense fashioned according to biblical history.⁴¹ The point of Isidore’s Etymol-
ogies was to give moral guidance from Providence’s instruction – in this he
seems quite close to Boethius – but on a wider, national level. God’s plan in his-
tory, unfortunately did not seem very obvious to those who followed him. Medi-
eval commentaries on Boethius’ Consolation therefore typically focused on the o
qui perpetua poem (Cons. III,9), the sort of paternal consolation which keeps one
trusting for a happy outcome. As Dronke puts it, “Boethius’ divine pilot steers
with perpetual reason, not with eternal. The word perpetua is tellingly chosen.”⁴²
It is not the case that humans, however pious, can gain a God’s-eye view. There is
an echo of what the Wisdom of Solomon 7:27 (et in se permanens omnia innovat)
 Frederick P. Pickering, Augustinus oder Boethius? Geschichtsschreibung und epische Dichtung

im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit, 2 volumes, Phiologische Studien und Quellen 39 and 80 (Ber-
lin: Schmidt, 1967– 1976), I: 88: “Zwischen dem ewigen Gott (spectator cunctorum) und allem Un-
geschaffenen und Geschaffenen vermittelt die göttliche Vorsehung; alles Erschaffene (Sonne,
Mond, Gestirne, der Mensch) erlebt in der Zeit die Beschlüße der Vorsehung als unerbittliches
Fatum, das für den Menschen –- infolge der Unvollkommenheit der ihm bescherten ratio –
oft vernunftwidrig erscheinen muß. Zwischen dem Menschen und seinem Fatum vermittelt For-
tuna; in Ausübung seines librum aribitrium handelt er; sie gestaltet seine Geschichte, den jewei-
ligen eventus.”
 Ibid., 94.
 Arno Borst, “Das Bild der Geschichte in der Enzyklopädie Isidors von Sevilla,” in Deutsches
Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 22 (1966): 1– 62, 3: “ […] vielleicht schuf er [Isidor] sogar
als Gegenstück zum universalen Geschcichtsverständnis des Orosius die Grundlagen für das na-
tionale Geschichtsbild des spanischen Mittelalters.”
 Ibid., 59: “Es fehlt die über die Zeiten hinwegspringende Typologie, der Glaube an die Sen-
dung der Roma aeterna.”
 Ibid., 38.

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Boethius first 65
ascribes to Wisdom. The procession-return of creation reflects that of God: the

world-soul turns round the nous and moves the cosmos. By making ultimate re-
ality cosmic, one can be less perturbed by things not working out so well at a
personal or national level.
The O qui perpetua presents a picture of order being brought into the world,
both in the visible and invisible realms, through restraining, guiding and leading
back. The point is that for the godly, God will be seen in rest as beginning, mid-
dle, guide and end. Boethius’ theological respectability was safeguarded in part
through the selective reading which privileged this and a few other key passages
where the stability of Divine Providence is lauded, even though it does seem
rather to have been “kicked upstairs,” leaving Fortune as its untrustworthy stew-
ard. Despite Boethius’ Christian taming of Fortuna – “the motif of the Consolatio
that proved most influential in narrative and iconographic terms is Fortuna at
her wheel, an allegory of the inconstancy of the human condition […]. But
when she [Fortuna] reappears powerfully in the literature of the High Middle
Ages, in most cases it is rather the image of the licentious, fickle donator of
worldly goods and controller of the wheel that proves more influential than
her Boethian manifestation.”⁴³ Fortune is dangerously neutral, a double agent.
In Alan of Lille’s Anticlaudianus she is depicted as living on a steep rock in
the sea and needs to be persuaded to help in making the new perfect human
being.
To describe a shifting Fortune as having a residence seems paradoxical. For-
tune itself is a bit of a vagabond, and in the Anticlaudianus Books 7– 8, Alan dis-
agrees that noble origins are a result of noble morality: Ridiculing this, Alan as-
serts that nobility is something quite contingent, a mere accident of birth. This
applies to Fortune herself. Alan and Bernard Silvestre see Fortuna as without
falsehood, well-meaning enough yet with a torn and flawed cloak, which is Na-
ture. Alan likes to use Prudentia as a synonym, although the sense is a prescrip-
tive one: in theory Fortune with scales placed in her hand by God (following Wis-
dom 11:21) touches heaven while being shaped for humans on earth. Continuing
in this vein, by the Thirteenth Century Fortuna is somewhat sacralised by its em-
ployment in the cultivation of virtue, so that Aquinas could view Fortuna favour-
ably; as Aristotle mentions, it can make one generous (STh2.2 q129,a8).⁴⁴ Al-
though Aquinas is not a representative of a “double truth,” his distinction of
 Christina Hehle, “Boethius’s Influence on German Literature to circa 1500,” in A Companion

to Boethius in the Middle Ages, eds. Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips, Brill’s
Companions to the Christian Tradition 30 (Leiden: Brill, 2012): 255 – 318, 283.
 “Introduction” à l’édition, avec traduction française, de la Consolation de Philosophie de
Boèce (Paris, 2009, collection “Lettres gothiques”).

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the orders of grace and nature, with the latter slotting into the purposes of the
former and yet also being sustained and renewed by it, illustrate a Boethian-
Eriugenian as much as an Aristotelian approach to history, that of creation in
its being moved.
The Middle Ages viewed Fortuna as the unexpected turn of the wheel, while
God’s Providence moved at a level that was “higher” than in that of individual
lives.⁴⁵ In the case of the Emperor Henry IV the fortuna could be sad, and
came close to fatum, but in other cases it was not without favour; however,
this seemed to occur precisely because the unhappy circumstances of his “pri-
vate life”⁴⁶ took him away from the steady guidance of the advance of salvation
history. The lack of connection between ethical behaviour and fortune corre-
sponded to an area not as tightly governed by Providence which had delegated
responsibility to a lower force.⁴⁷ Fortuna was both good and evil: it was unpre-
dictable, just like a wheel. As Aquinas would represent it: ethics follows (mis)for-
tune, not vice versa.
Manegold of Lautenbach was bishop in 1133 when he wrote a commentary
on the Consolation (with cross-references to Ovid’s Metamorphoses) showing
how divine power is able to order all things. The ethos of Ovid’s work where
the one constant seems to be “capricious transformation” does not sound very
reassuring for the reader, unless one thinks it is about misfortunes that happen
to other, less pious people! Certainly in the notable humanist William of Conches
one learns that morality is linked to the whole organisation of the world, to a
degree which can sound almost “karmic:” “The mixing bowl is Plato’s name
for divine providence […]. Human souls are contained in the bowl which is divine
Providence […]. Human souls, that is, share even in the realm of divine Provi-
dence, though their destiny is not the immutable one of the World-Soul, but is
full of vagaries.”⁴⁸
 Hans-Werner Goetz, “Fortuna in der hochmittelalterlichen Geschichtsschreibung,” in Das

Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung Zeitschrift des Mediävistenverbandes I, H 1:
Providentia-Fatum-Fortuna, ed. Joerg O. Fichte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1996): 75 – 89, 86: “For-
tuna und providentia Dei repräsentierten folglich unterschiedliche Sichtweisen, doch sie be-
wirkten letztlich dasselbe Geschehen.” This with reference to Otto of Freising’s Chronik and
the anonymous Vita of Emperor Henry IV.
 Georges Duby, ed., A History of Private Life, Vol. 2: Revelations of the Medieval World, trans.
Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
 Ibid., 88, Anm. 104: ‘Rahewin, Gesta Frederici [Barbarossa] 4,4: Deo favente ‘mores non mu-
tabimus cum fortuna.’ [Sallust, Catil. 2,6.]. I
 Rosalind Love, “The Latin Commentaries on Boethius’s De consolatione Philosophiae from
the 9th to the 11th Centuries,” in A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, eds. Noel Harold

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Boethius first 67
Peter Abelard changed his mind about this Anima Mundi. From supposing
like William of Conches that it could be a real entity, even the Holy Spirit in
the world, he came to view it more like a metaphor for God’s universal effects.
For Abelard, the vivifying power of the World-Soul in human souls means noth-
ing other than the spiritual life which the Holy Spirit grants to souls through its
gifts; its quickening of all physical bodies is a “beautiful metaphor” (pulchrum
involucrum) for the working of God’s love (caritas) in human hearts.”⁴⁹ Citing
the phrase from Psalm 135:5, – “he who has made the heavens in his intellect”
(Qui fecit caelos in intellectu) – Abelard adds, “as if there were a twofold creation
of things: a first one in the ordering itself of divine Providence, a second in the
handiwork. In accordance with these two creations, philosophers have affirmed
that there are two worlds, one intelligible, the other sensible (sensilem)”.⁵⁰ By
“sensible” one could understand “the things of the world in as much as these
are not immediately part of the divine purpose, but accidental to it.”⁵¹
By and large only the Chartres scholastics felt comfortable enough to com-
ment on vv. 12– 21 of the O qui perpetua in the Consolation where the sense
seems at times both cosmic in a physical sense and yet also metaphysical. Yet
the very final verse (Principium, vector, dux, semita, terminus idem) and hence
the poem as a whole seems very much to echo the Wisdom of Solomon as
John of Fécamp and Thomas de Cîteaux saw. In Thierry of Chartres’ account, na-
ture is more a force, one which presides over birth and becoming of things. It
exists under God to complete His works and has a certain amount of influence
of its own.⁵² In this idea of semi-autonomous Nature, that which is embodied
shares in dignity, with the divine goodness as final cause of creation’s goodness.
The Word has knowledge of the end of things, but the anima mundi does seem to
give definition to divine providence, not least by its omnipresence. Thierry drew
on Eriugena to posit an intimate presence of God to all creation. God as the es-
sence of all seemed to his enemies to suggest that the Holy Spirit operated on a
lower level and was therefore subordinate in the Trinity, but direct references to
Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30 (Leiden:
Brill, 2012): 75 – 134, 116.
 Dronke, Calcidius, 122.
 Ibid., 124.
 Ibid.
 Tullio Gregory, Anima mundi: La filosofia di Guglielmo di Conches e la Scuola di Chartres
(Pubblicazioni dell’Istituto di filosofia dell’Università di Roma, III; Florence: Sansoni, 1955),
182: “Qui la natura non appare più come una semplice epifania del divino o un simbolo di
realtà morali, ma piuttosto è una forza che presiede al nascere e al divenire delle cose; pur
sempre rimanendo soggetta alla divina volontà, la natura ha avuto una specifica funzione,
cioè continuare e completare l’opera del Creatore, e perciò ha acquisitato un autonomo valore.”

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the Spirit are rare in his work on creation. If for Thierry, the anima mundi brings
form and matter together, for William of Conches it also holds creation together,
along with (Augustine’s) seminal reasons which keep creation continuing.⁵³ Here
we have possibly the Holy Spirit, but it actually seems more like a divine energy
common to the Trinity. Rather than delineate the Trinity in terms of “power-wis-
dom-will,” which proved overly controversial for William’s career, Thierry’s pupil
Clarenbald of Arras (d. 1160) wrote that the Father creates, but the Son “is the
force that providentially imposes forms on matter, moving it from the state of
pure potentiality to the state of fulfilment, in which it can be known by the
human mind. In addition, the Son supplies the created substances thereby
brought into being with seminal forms.”⁵⁴
In Bernard of Silvestris’s Cosmographia the character Natura persuades Nous
to make things better – Silva can be beautiful once more. Creation is understood
to be engendered by tertiary theophanies.⁵⁵ Nous has to admit it is not all Care-
ntia’s fault but nevertheless she has been remiss. Wisdom is then presented as
the divine power and plan, and is not totally identified with Christ, – although
there is some amount of fusion; Natura is to enlist Urania and Physis her sisters
to help her in beautifying things anew: in a garden the three fashion a new
human being with a soul and provide her with intellect so she can overcome ne-
cessity.
Peter Lombard had no place for such speculation in his Sentences. In fact, he
had to give the angels a lot of work to do in the administration of creation (Sent
II,d.2– 8). It was quite unacceptable to divide up the work of creation between
the Persons of the Trinity. Instead, the angels were created all at once (and treat-
ed in Sentences II,dd.10 – 11), then everything else arrived over six days, for Lom-
bard agrees with Gregory against Augustine that creation did not all happen si-
 Ibid., 310 ff.

 Ibid., 317. Cf. Michel Lemoine and Clotilde Picard-Parra, eds., Théologie et cosmologie au XIIe
siècle: l’Ecole de Chartres, Sagesses médiévales 2 (Paris: Belles Lettres, 2004). Also, Willemien
Otten, “Nature, Body and Text in Early Medieval Theology: From Eriugena to Chartres,” in Mi-
chael Treschow, Willemien Otten and Walter Hannam (eds.), Divine Creation in Ancient, Medieval,
and Early Modern Thought: Essays Presented to the Rev’d Dr. Robert D. Crouse, eds. Michael Tre-
schow, Willemein Otten, and Walter Hannam, Studies in Intellectual History 151 (Leiden: Brill,
2007): 235 – 256. For the texts: Nikolaus M. Häring, Commentaries on Boethius by Thierry of Char-
tres and his School, Studies and Texts 20 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies,
1971). Edouard Jeauneau, “Le prologus in Eptateuchon de Thierry de Chartres,” MS 16 (1954):
171– 175, reprinted in ibid., Lectio philosophorum. Recherches sur l’école de Chartres (Amsterdam:
A.M.Hakkert, 1973): 87– 91.
 Marcia L. Colish, Peter Lombard, 2 volumes, Studies in Intellectual History 41 (Leiden: Brill,
1994), I: 307.

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Boethius first 69
multaneously. Yet “seminal reasons” can do the work of continuing creation,

along with the angels of course. Like Hugh of St Victor,⁵⁶ Peter seems anxious
to get on to the order of redemption than to discuss cosmology. At Sent
II,dd.24– 26, having treated the Fall, he comments that the body of man was pre-
viously both mortal and immortal, in that it was both able to die and not to die,
and at d.29: “For he was not able to take a step without the aid of operating and
co-operating grace; yet he was able to stand straight.”⁵⁷ In other words the inter-
vening of God seems reserved for God’s relating to pre-lapsarian Adam and to the
ordo restaurationis, but nothing in between. If there is something quasi-provi-
dential in postlapsum creation, it is something built into it rather than something
belonging to divine superintendence.
The strong influence of the Neoplatonic and Pseudo-Aristotelian work
known as the Liber de Causis can be felt as the high Middle Ages approached.
According to the Liber, the heavens and the earth are connected in a parallel mo-
tions.⁵⁸ Some writers like William of Auvergne would oppose any such valoriza-
tion of physical laws with a strictly moral ontology adapted towards the changes
of history. The law of the gospel (lex evangelii) leads one on from the law of na-
ture (lex naturae) towards perfection: many of Moses’ laws are included as be-
longing to this natural law, which has not lost its relevance. These two realms
(of nature and history) overlap of course, but later developments like the laws
of the Mohammedans were to be considered laws of sensual pleasure.⁵⁹ William
ridiculed the idea that the Hebrew laws had their origin in Saturn, the source of
prophecy and revelation, which was the reasons the fortunes of the Jews were so
very variable. Simply, stars and planets do not have souls, and as ignoble they
cannot influence the noble (souled) on this earth. Nevertheless despite William’s
 De Sacramentis I,2, where Hugh says that an example of Providence presiding over its own
creation by judging evil and paying sinners the wages of sin–death.
 Peter Lombard, The Sentences, Book II: On Creation, ed. and trans. Giulio Silano, Mediaeval
Sources in Translation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2007), 143.
 “Moventur enim motores particulares in hoc mundo ad aliquid simile vel proportionale illius
ad quod movent superiores et universales motores” (William of Aragon, De pronosticatione
sompniorum, p26; quoted in Tullio Gregory, “I Sogni e Gli Astri,” in Mundana Sapientia: forme
di conoscenza nella cultura medievale, Storia e Letteratura: Raccolta di Studi e Testi 181
(Roma: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1992): 347– 387, 376.
 Michael Schmaus, “Das Gesetz der Sterne. Ein Kapitel aus der Theologie des Wilhelm von
Auvergne,” in Speculum Historiale. Geschichte im Spiegel von Geschichtsschreibung und Ge-
schichtsdeutung – Johannes Spörl aus Anlass seines 60. Geburtstages, dargebracht von Weggenos-
sen, Freunden und Schülern, eds. Clemens Bauer, Laetitia Boehm, and Max Müller (Freiburg/
München: Karl Alber, 1965): 51– 58, 53: “Das Gesetz der Natur ist der Ontologie, das Gesetz
der Hebräer ist dem menschlichen Schicksal zugeordnet.”

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warnings, the Liber influenced the popular theory of dreams and astrology; a fu-
sion of physical and spiritual terminology borrowed from the bible often ap-
peared.⁶⁰ Fire as a principle of life is a supreme example of the physical and
the metaphysical,⁶¹ and was related to fire as the quality of the sun’s sustaining
power; fire in its activity however could move and have some sort of subtle but
powerful agency. This line of thinking resulted in Thomas Aquinas’s refusal to
ascribe agency absolutely to God without remainder, so as to emphasise the
role of things as causes – it is fire that heats, not God, as some more self-con-
sciously Augustinian writers would claim. On the whole, dreams were not to
be relied upon unless they were clearly a revelation from God: one can receive
one-off impressions in the soul during sleep, but otherwise knowledge came
through the senses. Yet Albert the Great and Roger Bacon would see dreams
as providentially sent, especially in preparing for the struggle against the Anti-
christ.⁶²
As the noonday of the Middle Ages approached, human destiny was seen as
being in the image of divine providence, hence containing true freedom and op-
portunity for virtue and blessing. With the translation of Nemesius by Alfanus of
Salerno and then by Burgundio of Pisa, the intellectual tradition of “Christian
Stoicism” enjoyed attention by mainstream theologians such as Robert Grosse-
teste and Albert the Great: “Whereas destiny is an invariable chain of causes
and effects, providence supplies for everyone that which is profitable and bene-
ficial.”⁶³ Unlike the Plotinian alternative, this theology believed that God did not
emanate from himself but freely created the contingent as contingent, as in keep-
ing with the Timaeus. For Albert, God creates all things but co-creates with these
all their activity. The view that St Paul was influenced by Seneca had become a
 Gregory, “I Sogni”, 379: “Nella teoria dei sogni – come nell’astrologa – il naturalismo aris-
totelico-arabo toccava forse uno dei suoi limiti estremi per la progressive riduzione entro termini
fisici di fenomeni che tradizionalmente appartenevano alla sfera del sacro e constituivano mo-
menti fondamentali della storia biblica e cristiana.”
 Tullio Gregory, “La Nouvelle Idée de Nature et de Savoir scientifique au xiiie siècle,” in Mun-
dana Sapientia: Forme di Conoscenza nella Cultura Medievale, Storia e Letteratura: Raccolta di
Studi e Testi 181 (Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1992): 115 – 143, 125: “calor artifex est
quidem omnium quae generantur, et ipse est causa generationis principalis” (cf. Alan, Libellus
de effectibis qualitatum).
 Speculum astronmiae ch3 in Roger Bacon, Opus maius, ed. John Henry Bridges (Frankfurt:
Minerva-Verlag, 1964): 266 – 269; quoted in Gregory, Mundana Sapientia, p. 385, n. 106.
 Gérard Verbeke, The Presence of Stoicism in Medieval Thought (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1983), 78.

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commonplace, and hence there was no automatic rejection of Stoicism.⁶⁴ How-

ever, Verbeke concludes that Thomas Aquinas “rejects the unbreakable connec-
tion between causes and effects as it was presented by the Stoics.”⁶⁵ One can see
that accentuated in Ulrich of Strasburg, for whom things are best executed for
Providence by the children since they love the Father and act freely; slaves act
out of fear and the animals need pushed. God takes real care especially over
those that can also have a supernatural end.⁶⁶ For Providence to work best crea-
tures need to co-opearate. God will succeed in realising his purposes quicker and
easier if (like children) humans listen, rather than (like slaves) merely blindly
obey wihout using their imagination and initiative to help fulfil God’s will.⁶⁷
We cannot make Providence responsible for all, for virtue and vice play a
part. Indeed sometimes an event that seems nasty might be good, like a doctor’s
cure.
Medieval Historiography
Whereas as late as 1100 the iconography of the wheel was widespread, this was
not brought into association with any “goddess” Fortuna, until around 1220, as
evinced by the Munich BS.4660 (fol.1.v1220). The political context was that of the
Gregorian attack on self-vaunting monarchy. Profane history is presented as cir-
cular and meaningless, in thrall to Fortune.⁶⁸ Nevertheless there was something
 Ibid., 8. Also, William of Moerbeke in the late 1200s would translate Alexander of Aphrodi-
sias, De Fato and Proclus, De providentia.
 Ibid, 93.
 Joseph Georgen, Des heiligen Albertus Magnus Lehre von der göttlichen Vorsehung und dem
Fatum: Unter besonderen Berücksichtigung der Vorsehungs- und Schicksalslehre des Ulrich von
Straßburg (Vechta: Albertus-Magnus-Verl., 1932.)
 Ibid., 161: “Was häufig geschieht, irrt, wie die Sklaven im Hauswesen, häufig von der Ord-
nung ab und dient dem Gut und dem Wohl des Universums nur unter der Leitung des immer
Geschehenden. Was selten geschieht. Verhält es sich zur ersten Ursache wie die Haustiere
zum Hausvater, dient es dem Wohl des Universums nur unter der Leitung und Zügelung des
immer und häufig Geschehenden.”
 Jean Wirth, “L’iconographie médiévale de la roue de Fortune,”, in La Fortune: Thèmes, Rep-
resentations, Discours, eds. Emanuelle Métry and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, Recherches et Recon-
tres 19 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2003): 105 – 28. Also Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, “Quand Fortune,
ce sont les homes Aspects de la démythification de la déesse d’Adam de la Halle à Alain Chart-
ier,” in La Fortune: Thèmes, Representations, Discours, eds. Emanuelle Métry and Yasmina Foehr-
Janssens, Recherches et Recontres 19 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2003): 177– 206, 177: “Le succès du
Roman de la Rose et la vulgarisation du De consolation Philosophiae de Boèce, traduit (entre au-

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about the stability of Rome that helped one to feel that in this life, things were
somehow under divine control. For a while in the very early Middle Ages Chris-
tian Rome was promoted as the image of the heavenly Jerusalem, even its “shop
window.” For instance in the Vita St Fulgentii (PL 65.131) one reads what suggests
a harmonious correspondence, a parallel between the heavenly Jerusalem and
the earthly Rome: “Fratres, quam speciosa potest esse Hierusalem coelestis, si
sic fulget Roma terrestris!,” words said to be uttered by Fulgentius as the trium-
phant Theodoric visited Rome in 500. After all, Rome had the bones of Peter and
Paul: “But when the senate of the city faded out in the late sixth century, the
popes emerged as the authority best equipped to rule Rome.”⁶⁹ Hence the Emper-
or was able to depose Pope Martin I in 653 but not Pope Sergius in 687. Accord-
ingly, “in the eighth century the entire imperial infrastructure in Rome steadily
became papal.”⁷⁰ The papacy also became dynastic during the ninth century,
and it could be argued that Rome was becoming too much the earthly player
to have any enduring pretentions to be a holy pilgrimage destination. Further-
more, the Carolingian church with its conservative, even retrospective mentality
was bound to privilege Christian Jerusalem (and even Jewish Jerusalem, or rather
the eschatologically to-be-restored temple) over Christian Rome. Indeed the Libri
Carolini go so far as to equate Rome with Babylon. For Aachen was to be the new
Rome with its chapel imitating the “tomb church” (which would become the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre), which in turn was understood to symbolise the
heavenly Jerusalem in a sacramental arrangement.⁷¹ The Patriarch of Jerusalem
sent the key of the sepulchre to Charlemagne in 800 at his coronation in Rome,
but it was intended for Imperial, not Papal custody. While Rome became progres-
sively identified as the earthly seat of the Pope, the Emperor was to rule over a
“city of peace”, a spiritual though earthly Jerusalem purchased by Christ.⁷² Char-
tres) par Jean de Meun, ont largement contribué à la floraison de Fortune à la fin du Moyen
Age.”
 Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: Illuminating the Dark Ages 400 – 1000 (London:
Penguin, 2009), 147.
 Ibid.
 Robert Konrad, “Das himmlische und das irdische Jerusalm im mittelalterlichen Denken:
Mystische Vorstellung und geschichtliche Wirkung,” in Speculum Historiale: Geschichte im Spie-
gel von Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsdeutung – Johannes Spörl aus Anlass seines 60. Ge-
burtstages, dargebracht von Weggenossen, Freunden und Schülern, eds., Clemens Bauer, Laetitia
Boehm, and Max Müller (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 1965): 523 – 540, 532: “Die Pfalzkapelle
in Aachen stellte wohl das Abbild der Grabeskirche zu Jerusalem dar. Das ist von fundamentaler
Bedeutung, denn die Grabeskirche könnte auch als Abbild des himmlischen Jerusalem gelten.”
 For Alcuin, “Karl herrscht vielmehr über ein geistiges Jerusalem, die civitas pacis, errichtet
durch das kostbare Blut Jesu Christi” (Alcuin, Epp; MG EE IV, nr 198, p. 327), whereas, on the

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lemagne was to rule as gubernator on behalf of Christ. Furthermore, the Carolin-

gians changed Augustine’s definition of “Jerusalem” as of visio pacis to civitas
pacis, which emphasised the communal aspect of the experience rather than
that of its content.⁷³ Earthly providence and rule matched that of heavenly order.
For some “the Jerusalem descended from skies” was not any place on earth,
but was the pilgrim Church. Haimo and Rupert in their commentaries share this
patristic principle, but Gregory the Great and Bruno of Segni think of it to be the
higher place where angels and men dwell together. Either way the earthly and
the heavenly movement worked together. Curiously, as Rome came to assert itself
as a holy city in the present, Jerusalem became more and more the place of pil-
grimage, and Jerome’s old warning against pilgrimages to the City went unheed-
ed.⁷⁴ The verse Ezekiel 5:5 (“Thus says the Lord Jehovah: ‘This Jerusalem have I
placed in the midst of the nations, and raised about her the countries”) was pop-
ular in the collective imagination. Abelard saw Zion as caput regni Christi; Peter
the Venerable regarded the Tomb of Christ as the heart of the world.⁷⁵ But this is
clearly in idealized, not political terms. As Konrad notes, Jerusalem is hardly
central on maps of the world around the turn of the millennium.⁷⁶ What mat-
tered more was its quasi-sacramental relationship to the heavenly.
The Christian grasp on the Holy Places seemed always to be at best tenuous,
and ironically the agonic Crusades helped to foster the symbolic value of Jerusa-
lem which becomes conceived as a centre “ou nombril du monde,” not least in
Urban II’s 1095 sermon where he proclaimed: “Jherusalem umbilicus est terrari-
um…civitas regalis, in orbus medio posita. Pugnat pro duplici regno, quia quaerit
utramque Jherusalem, decertat in hac ut vivat in illa.”⁷⁷ To paraphrase: “let him
fight for the two-fold kingdom since he seeks each Jerusalem” or “one has to
fight for this one so as to live in the other.” Jerusalem was first and foremost
the earthly version. Again, as with the early Christian theologians, the relation-
ship between the two levels is not a sacramental one, but is predicated on a
other hand, “Christus gilt als Stifter einer irdischen Herrschaft. Seine civitas auf Erden kann als
Spiegelung des himmlischen Jerusalem gelten.” (Konrad, “Das Himmlische und das Irdische Jer-
usalm,” 528 – 9). There was a myth-saga of Charlemagne’s crusade in the Chronik of Benedict of
S Andrea [MG SS III 701 f.](Konrad, “Das Himmlische und das Irdische Jerusalm,” 530, n. 35).
 .Cf. Johannes Spörl, “Die Civitate Dei im Geschichtsdenken Ottos von Freising,” La Ciudad de
Dios: Revista de cultura e investigación167.2 (1956): 577– 597.
 Rahewin, Gesta Frederici imp lib IV, ed. G Waitx, 320. (This on Lamentations 4:12: “vere Hi-
erusalem erat mater nostra Romana ecclesia.”)
 Sermon II: PL 189,978.
 Konrad, “Das himmlische und das Irdische Jerusalm,” 532.
 Lamirande, “Jérusalem Céleste,” 953, quoting Godefroy de Bouillon.

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grasp of salvation history in which just as Christ ascended to Jerusalem before

ascending to heaven, so too must the penitential pilgrim.
“Nothing in the Scriptures, nothing in Christian tradition or literature, had
prepared the church for what happened on 15 July 1099. In a providential way,
the City of God has been given back to God’s people.”⁷⁸ To take up the crusade
was to fulfil Christ’s command to take up the cross. Yet after that initial success,
weariness set in, as can be viewed in William of Tyre’s work: “The sense of prov-
idential guidance that was so marked a feature of the progress of the crusaders is
not sustained by subsequent decades. A description of a divine act has been re-
placed by a the [sic] history of a kingdom: Latin Jerusalem.”⁷⁹ As pessimism re-
placed crusading triumphalism, on the basis of Galatians 4:26 and Lamenta-
tions, Jerusalem could be viewed as “our mother Church” only in an ideal or
eschatological sense. Jerusalem was, as it were, eventually “kicked upstairs”
and Rome was left full of power, as a place where sacred and political resources
were hard to distinguish. The parallels with the respective cases of Providentia
and Fortuna are hard to ignore.
Augustine had already established that Christians on earth were only citi-
zens of God through their being co-citizens with angels (civ dei XI,7&24), and
monks already had angelic life, since for Bernard of Clairvaux, the angels
were already brides of Christ. Monks at Clairvaux could even be said to be ‘in
Jerusalem” as in the case of Philip canon of Leicester whom Bernard excused
from going on further to the Holy Land.⁸⁰ Verses such as Rev 21:2 & 9 – 10
were popular ones which Augustine had hardly cited. Unlike Augustine, Bernard
equated the bride with the City and joined the love of the community to love for
Christ. The flip-side of an exalted view of Christian leadership is the opposite re-
gard for the church’s enemies. The corpus diaboli idea was much received in the
high Middle Ages, but of course this now seems an error of interpretation of the
Church Father, since although quoted by Augustine in De Doctrina Christiana, it
 Colin Morris, The Sepulchre of Christ and the Medieval West: From the Beginning to 1600 (Ox-
ford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 184.
 Ibid., 189.
 “Et si vultis scire, Clara-Vallis est. Ipsa est Jerusalem, si quae in coelis est, tota mentis devo-
tione, et conversationis imitatione, et cogitatione quadam spiritus sociata.” Then In cant s 55.2
“Puto enim hoc loco [Soph. I, 12] prophetam Jerusalem nomine designasse illos qui in hoc sae-
culo vitam ducunt religiosam, mores supernae Jerusalem conversatione honesta et ordinata pro
viribus imitantes […]. Mea autem, qui videor monachus et Jerosolymita, peccata […]”; in terms of
spirit the monk is in heaven and “l’una civitas deviennent una sponsa.” (Quoted in Morris, The
Sepulchre of Christ, 178.)

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was not much employed by him.⁸¹ But actually the likes of Otto of Freising were
not so misinformed as moderns are, argues Nikolaus Staubach; Augustine did
think that the city of God was on its way to societas perfecta, such that Robert
Markus’ “liberal” reading of the evidence is possibly too one-sided. Indeed,
the point is that although Gregory VII was wrong to see political powers as mem-
brum diabolicum and his church as pure, nevertheless the notion of imperium
Christianum can be seen as a continuation of Augustine’s idea – which was de-
termined not to separate liturgy from social structure.⁸² In all this, sacred history
brought the providential affairs of nations and kings “kicking and screaming” in
its wake. As the Church became more Christianized through the monastic influ-
ence, society around it became more civilized.
A new wave of interest in theology of history came from the Reichenau mon-
astery around 1050. Otto of Freising who emerged from this context looked on
the changes of epochs without alarm, as clear signs of a definitely structured
plan for history which God was rolling out. The need for civilisation to mature
was the main reason why Christ was born so late in time.⁸³ Otto made the con-
nection of Consolatio III,9 to Plato’s Timaeus 27d as he found it in Calcidius, and
used it to help praise the constancy of God who made time continue to flow out
of eternity.⁸⁴ History could be written to trace the tendency or tenor of the events,
at its worst to show the miseriae mutabilium casibus rerum alternantium. In other
 See Friedrich Ohly, “Halbbiblische und außerbiblische Typologie,” in Schriften zur mittelal-
terlichen Bedeutungsforschung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977): 361– 400,
376.
 See Jeannine Quillet, “La tradition de l’augustinisme politique dans L’Europe medieval,” in
L’unite de culture européenne au moyen âge: XXVIII Jahrestagung des Arbeitskreises Deutsche Li-
teratur des Mittelalters Straßburg, 23 – 26. September 1993, eds. Danielle Bushinger and Wolfang
Spiewok, Wodan – Greifswalder Beiträge zum Mittelalter 38 (Greifswald: Reineke-Verlag, 1994):
103 – 110. See also see Nikolaus Staubach, “Geschichte als Lebenstrost: Bemerkungen zur histo-
riographischen Konzeption Ottos von Friesing,” MjB 23 (1991): 46 – 75.
 Hans-Werner Goetz, “Der Umgang mit der Geschichte in der lateinischen Weltchronistik des
hohen Mittelalters,” in Julius Africanus und die Christliche Weltchronistik, ed. Martin Wallraff,
Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Altchristlichen Literatur 157 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2006): 179 – 205, 190: “Die Geschichte war für Otto somit durchaus von Wandel und Zäsuren ge-
kennzeichnet…durch einen politischen Wandel, zugleich aber (als göttliche Heilsgeschichte)
durch einen geordneten Wandel, der sich vor allem in der vorbestimmten Abfolge (und Aufei-
nanderfolge) der Reiche manifestierte, besonders der vier großen Weltreiche […] Den Geschicht-
sablauf verstand Otto dennoch als eine fortschrittliche Entwicklung.”
 Hans-Werner Goetz, Das Geschichtsbild Ottos von Freising: Ein Beitrag zur historischen Vor-
stellungswelt und zur Geschichte des 12. Jahrhunderts (Köln/Wien: Böhlau, 1984), 86; 181.

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words, History really served to show just how unreliable things are.⁸⁵ The virtu-
ous are those who stand fast, holding out for the values of the age to come. The
theological impulse came perhaps from Hugh of St Victor’s pessimism (De sac-
ramentis fidei I,3,15). Hugh’s doctrine of creation viewed God’s initial work as
very much intended as a basis for the work of restoration (opus restauarationis).
One should also consider Hugh’s distinction in I,4,17 between a substantial good
(bonum secundum se) and an accidental one (bonum ad aliquid), i. e. good for
some purpose. Hence there are evil actions which God can make use of, with ref-
erence to Augustine,⁸⁶ and to the failure of the Crusades. Goetz however claims
that for Otto, such difficulties provide the very path to Glory, and so this cannot
be understood as pessimism, not least (also) because Revelation is available
through these events. God has revealed himself in history even while transcend-
ing it, so that the human mind may perceive him via His effects. For Otto, God’s
will controls all that happened, and is “providential” as the guiding power in
history.⁸⁷ After taking over from the world empires, Christ now reigns directly.
Yet he conserves the world in his grace.⁸⁸ And yet the goodness of his creation
also has a say in how history will develop, especially in the case of the created
acting person (angelic and human), here using the Boethian definition as devel-
oped by Gilbert of Poitiers. This helped Otto have a view of individuals as unique
and irreplaceable, yet he made sure to use the term “Person” only about humans
and not about God. Fortune’s wheel is really God’s will. Yet humans are to play
their part in God’s purposes, trying to move from mutability to stability.
In some ways Otto’s vision of the end-times was more ambitious than that of
Joachim of Fiore a century later; there was to be a spiritualisation of the whole of
society which would form a perfect bride for Christ to come back to, including a
Papacy without secular pretensions.⁸⁹ Providential patterns could be seen in
God’s judgement on Rome: Odoacer, like Cyrus was a judge-liberator. “Geschichte
ist grundsätzlich Heilsgeschichte” not least because God’s rule is extending into
 Ibid., 87: “Otto folgt der Darstellungsweise des Orosius, indem er eine ‘Unglücksgeschichte’
schreibt,” but without any sense that things would get better during the course of world-history.
 Civ dei 11,17; cf. Otto, Gesta Fredrici I, 66.
 Ibid., 103: “dort, wo Otto konkret wird, spricht er eher von nutus, consilium oder iudicium
Dei.”
 Chr. Prol: “Sub potenti manu Domini regna mutantis ac pro voluntate sua cui voluerit miser-
entis humiliemur ipsiusque misericordiae […].”
 Amos Funkenstein, Heilsplan und natürliche Entwicklung: Formen der Gegenwartsbestim-
mung
im Geschichtsdenken des hohen Mittelalters, Sammlung Dialog 5 (München: Nymphenburger
Verlagshandlung, 1965), 110.

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all of history and society.⁹⁰ It is changeable yet foreplanned: on the way to fulfil-
ment there is no place for blind fate or violence that will not be checked and
judged.⁹¹ Church and kingdom very much overlap. Christ raises up his kingdom,
“regnum suum, quod est ecclesia” – a phrase Otto is not afraid to use – to become
Lord of the earth through it. Otto agreed with Eusebius’s likening of Constantine
to the sunshine, for since that Emperor’s regin there had no longer been a history
of a civitas terrena but instead one of Church. This is of course a civitas permixta,
yet even so the civitas Dei is becoming increasingly more visible and political
throughout; it as it blooms on its way to blessedness. Now, the Investiturstreit
means dark times of division, yet there is hope coming from monasteries,⁹²
and spreading stability as the antidote to fragile mutability, which is the
image of death, and which the whole Chronicle laments.⁹³
On this account, Providential History is connected to the ontological order in
a way that means that it too is ordered, demonstrating the firm structures of the
realities behind it. Scripture was understood as tracing that history and yet man-
ifesting timeless truths at the same time.⁹⁴ For example, Guibert of Nogent in his
Gesta Dei per Francos claims that Zechariah 12:1– 9 concerned the siege of Jeru-
salem in 1099. It takes a gift for spiritual interpretation to interpret history prop-
erly, but Guibert displayed a healthy optimism in his search for patterns in his-
tory and in creation as a whole, with the help of Scriptural interpretation. Those
facts of ancient biblical saving history could continue to guide contemporary life.
Events signified truth, which in turn meant the perception of present and near-
future events.⁹⁵
 Otto von Freising, Chronik oder die Geschichte der zwei Staaten (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftli-
che Buchgesellschaft, 1960), introduction by Rudold Buchner, xlii.
 Ibid., xii.
 Ibid., l: “Ihre letzte und feierliche irdische Wirklichkeit gewinnt die civitas Dei in den mön-
chischen Orden.”
 Ibid., lxii: “Die mutatio rerum ist die rückbedeutende Gegenfigur, rückdeutend auf die Erhe-
bung und den Fall Adams und der Engel. Die mutatio ist damit das Sinnbild des Todes, welcher
aber das Leben in Gotes Staat erst sichtbar macht.”
 Laetitia Boehm, “Der wissenschaftstheoretische Ort der historia im Mittelalter: Die Ge-
schichte auf dem Wege zur ‘Geschichtswissenschaft’”, in Speculum Historiale: Geschichte im
Spiegel von Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsdeutung – Johannes Spörl aus Anlass seines
60. Geburtstages, dargebracht von Weggenossen, Freunden und Schülern, eds., Clemens Bauer,
Laetitia Boehm, and Max Müller , (Freiburg/München: Karl Alber, 1965): 663 – 693, 687: “Die his-
toria gehört beiden Ordnungen an: der Ordnung des Wirklichen und der dahinterstehenden Ord-
nung des Wahren.”
 Cf. Alan C. Charity, Events and their Afterlife: the Dialectics of Christian Typology in the Bible
and Dante (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966).

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To regard history as something in decline, a view perhaps already there in

Augustine, was, as W. Kamlah saw, something that held medieval and early mod-
ern Christianity captive. If all is repetition or no more than new permutations of
combinations, then the earthly city has no future and no chance of progress.⁹⁶
This was all part of a contemptus mundi education.⁹⁷ Staubach is even more
scathing about what he finds in Otto. It hardly deserves the name “history.”
There seems no sense of obligation to wait and see or try to judge history in
any a posteriori way, or that new situations require wisdom of a fresh sort. In
the end, and in contradistinction to Rupert of Deutz, Gerhoh of Reichensberg⁹⁸
and Joachim with their chronological typology, Otto complained that history
doesn’t make sense; hence, one needs to look beyond it to the heavens, focusing
on the City of God as it rises above and is immune to earthly vicissitudes.⁹⁹ What
history teaches us is how to be sober and have lower expectations. This is not
Spengler-style pessimism, but one that is very selective and cautious in its opti-
mism.¹⁰⁰
At some point Otto seems to have lost his Orosian sanguinity and any idea of
civitas permixta, probably around the time of the investiture conflict. The Corpus
permixta doesn’t mean that state has taken over church but simply that in it
 Wilhelm Kamlah, Christentum und Geschichtlichkeit: Untersuchungen zur Entstehung des

Christentums und zu Augustins “Bürgerschaft Gottes” (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1951), 337:
“Diese raum-zeitliche Ordnung der terrena civitas also gibt die besonderen Allgemeinheiten
her, in denen Augustins Geschichtsphilosophie wie spielerisch sich betätigt, während sie die Be-
sonderungen eines allgemeinen Fortschritts der Heilsgeschichte vernachlässigt.”
 Staubach, “Geschichte als Lebenstrost,” 74: “Es ist fraglich, ob man diese Nutzanwendung
der historia für das Heil des Betrachters als Geschichtstheologie bezeichnen darf.”
 Cf. Erich Meuthen, Kirche und Heilsgeschichte bei Gerhoh von Reichersberg, Studien und
Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 6 (Leiden: Brill, 1959), 761, n. 89: “Bei Gerhoh von
Reichersberg werden regnum und sacerdotium im Rahmen seiner Lehre von den sieben Weltrei-
chen und der Daniel-Vision mit civitas diabolica und civitas Dei identifiziert und im Sinne einer
triumphalen exaltatio sacerdotii einander untergeordnet.” Cf. Gerhoh on Ps 64 (MGH Ldl III,468).
 Staubach, “Geschichte als Lebenstrost,” 73: “Die Gottesstaat gehört dagegen dem Jenseits an
und ist hier allein als Ahnung und Vorgeschmack erreichbar, indem man sich aus der Hingabe
an die Welt löst und der Betrachtung der ewigen Heilswahrheiten zuwendet.” This with refer-
ence to Chronica I,Prol: “Haec est civitas Dei Ierusalem caelestis, ad quam suspirant in peregri-
natione positi filii Dei confusione temporalium tamquam Babylonica captivitate gravati. Cum
enim duae sint civitates, una temporalis, alia eterna, una mundialis, alia caelestis, una diaboli,
alia Christi, Babyloniam hanc, Hierusalem illa esse katholici prodidere scriptores […] 8 – 9: his-
toriam […] per quam Deo largiente erumpans civium Babyloniae, gloriam etiam regni Christi
post hanc vitam sperandam, in hac expectandam ac pregustandam Ierusalem civibus ostender-
em.”
 Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes: Umrisse einer Morphologie der Weltge-
schichte (München: Beck, 1923).

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there are also heretics and excommunicates abroad in the state. A theocracy of
the type of the rule of Abel over Cain seemed possible to Gerhoh. In the case of
Otto there was a good combination, not only of Augustine and Orosius, but also
Boethius was added to the mix.¹⁰¹ Otto not only made room for, but placed at
centre stage the notion of Fortuna in his Gesta as something belonging to indi-
vidual leaders, an idea which he had excluded in his Chronicle work. The
Chronicle viewed things from God’s position of overall hegemony and direc-
tion,¹⁰² but when the Gesta focused on individuals it was clear (e. g.) that for
Frederick I, his misfortune was his own fault.¹⁰³ If Ordericus had rediscovered
Fortuna as a fickle force, then Otto developed this idea. Otto came to see history
as being all about mutation and mutability, with political power one tool to try to
make order out of that chaos.
For Bernard of Clairvaux, the angels were already brides of Christ, and
monks at Clairvaux were already at Jerusalem as illustrated by the famous anec-
dote concerning the would-be pilgrim to Jerusalem, Philip, canon of Leicester.¹⁰⁴
In terms of spirit the monk is in heaven and “l’una civitas deviennent una spon-
sa.” Written by the sixth successor of Bernard, Henri, just before 1190, the De Jer-
osolmitana Peregrinatione acceleranda¹⁰⁵ offered a foil to Otto’s historiography.
Although more aware of Augustine at every turn, Henri starts not with angels
and Abel but with Exodus, and all the Old Testament history is preparation
 Cf. Pickering, Augustinus oder Boethius?

 Yves M. Congar, “Église et Cité de Dieu chez quelques auteurs cisterciens à l’époque des
croisades, en particulier dans le De peregrinate civitate Dei d’Henri d’Albano,” in Melanges of-
ferts à Etienne Gilson, Études de philosophie médiévale. Hors série. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute
of Mediaeval Studies 1959): 173 – 202, 185: “L’évêque de Freising, lui, rédige ses Chronica sive His-
toria de duabus civitatibus comme une histoire humaine appréciée du point de vue du plan et
des jugements de Dieu.”
 Elisabeth Mégier, “Fortuna als Kategorie der Geschichtsdeutung im 12. Jahrhundert am Bei-
spiel Ordericus, Vitalis und Ottos von Freising,” MiJa 32 (1997): 49 – 70, 67: “[…] in den Gesta er-
scheint die fortuna gerade als das, was sie in der Chronik nirgends ist, nämlich als das persön-
liche Glück des Herrschers, was besonders im Kontext des verunglückten Kreuzzugs wie eine
Provokation wirken muß. Otto, der in der Chronik auch die wechselnde fortuna fast nicht kennen
möchte, macht in den ‘Gesta’ aus der fortuna-Glück den Angelpunkt seiner Darstellung.”
 Congar, “Église et Cité de Dieu,” 178. Resting at Clairvaux en route, Bernard told him he had
already arrived in Jerusalem. “Et si vultis scire, Clara-Vallis est. Ipsa est Jerusalem, si quae in
coelis est, tota mentis devotione, et conversationis imitatione, et cogitatione quadam spiritus so-
ciata.” Then In Cant sermo 55.2: “Puto enim hoc loco [Soph. I, 12] prophetam Jerusalem nomine
designasse illos qui in hoc saeculo vitam ducunt religiosam, mores supernae Jerusalem conve-
satione honesta et ordinata pro viribus imitantes […] Mea autem, qui videor monachus et Jero-
solymita, peccata […].”
 PL 207,1057– 70.

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for Christian history, in contrast to Otto’s disparagement of it. The City of God is
brought into current history and observed there. The pilgrimage metaphor gave
way during the 1250s or so to a military one, which connoted the eccleisa militans
as ready to wage literal war.¹⁰⁶ One could conquer the earthly Jerusalem as a sac-
ramental stepping-stone towards freeing the heavenly one (the Church). Henri
stressed the theme of liberty associated with “the city above” from Galatians
4:26,¹⁰⁷ gained by means of a new penitence associated with crusade. Henri
was still more pessimistic about the size of the crime fitting the corresponding
divine punishment: it has been the sins of the spiritual Jerusalem that had
caused disaster to the earthly one, and there was great need for renunciation
if any liberty were to ensue. It was part of Otto’s contribution to blur the lines
between the two cities, which went against Canon Law’s keeping them apart,
but had some Cisterican precedent. Whereas for Henri, the City of God was pres-
ently best suited to monks, who needed to purify themselves for blessing to
ensue, Otto, as uncle to the Emperor, liked to see ecclesia-civitas as identical
with Christian society. To give one example:
But from this time [of Theodosius I] on, since not only all the people but also the emperors
(except a few) were orthodox Catholics. I seem to myself to have composed a history not of
two cities but virtually of one only, which I call the Church. For although the elect and the
reprobate are in one household, yet I cannot call these cities two as I did above; I must call
them properly but one – composite, however, as the grain is mixed with the chaff […]. How-
ever, the faithless city of unbelieving Jews and Gentiles still remains, but, since nobler king-
doms have been won by our people, while these unbelieving Jews and Gentiles are insig-
nificant not only in the sight of God but even in that of the world, hardly anything done
by these unbelievers is found to be worthy of record or to be handed on to posterity.¹⁰⁸
Looked at the other way, the Church is very much a political and providential
agent. To re-inforce this with a taste of Otto’s rhetoric:
How can I interpret ‘The stone cut out without hands’ (Dan 2,34&42) as anything other than
the Church […]. It is clearly the Church that smote the kingdom near its end […]. The Church
smote the kingdom in its weak spot when the Church decided not to reverence the king of
the City as lord of the earth but to strike him with the sword of excommunication as being
 Congar, “Église et Cité de Dieu,” 191: “Dans la seconde moitié du XIIe siècle, on commence
à parler d’Ecclesia militans et d’ Ecclesia triumphans, en un sens tel que la première menait à la
seconde en qui elle avait son terme et son couronnement.”
 Ibid, 194: “Si les moines s’appliquaient à parvenir à la Jérusalem celeste et même l’habi-
taient déjà, une nouvelle forme du meme ideal s’offrait, celle de la conquête de la Jérusalem cel-
este par la conquête de la Jérusalem terrestre, début de celle du ciel.”
 Cf. Otto, Book 5, Prologue (Mierow trans., 323 f.)

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by his human condition made of clay. All can now see to what a mountainous height the
Church, at one time small and lowly, has grown.¹⁰⁹
Gregory VII is presented as a martyr for the cause and the humbling of Emperor
Henry IV at Canossa as paradigmatic. Moreover, if there were any doubt about
Otto’s emphasis on the Providence of God, it should be removed by the strategic
statement in the Prologue to the Seventh Book of the Chronicles:
Therefore from the fact that every wise and good man loves and cherishes his own good
works, we are privileged to understand clearly that God does not neglect His world, as
some claim, but rather that by His omnipotent majesty He created things that were not,
by His all-wise providence guides His creatures, and by His most kindly grace preserves
what He guides and controls.¹¹⁰
Otto believed God to be the author of goodness and the fount of grace, who “per-
mits no evil save that which, however much it may in itself be hurtful, is yet of
advantage to the whole”, as e. g. in the blinding of Jewish “nations” through
which all peoples saw light. The corpus permixtum idea is clearly presented in
the same passage: “For that, as matters now stand, the rest who profess the
Christian faith must be numbered as members of the Church, even if they do
not follow up their professions of faith, no one can doubt who knows that the
net of the Lord contains both bad and good.”¹¹¹
There is also the idea that God withholds judgement at times from the earth
for the sake of a few holy men. The world will be preserved (Eccles 1:4: “But the
earth abideth for ever”; cf. 1 Cor 7:31): the fashion, not the nature of this world
passeth away.¹¹² As Revelation 21 indicates, the City of God, i. e. the inhabitants
of heaven, will be revealed and will hardly touch the earth. Divine Providence,
which on earth allows the church to be a corpus permixtum, is intended for
the ultimate sake of the heavenly city in its purified form.
For Otto one must look to the past in order to guide the present into the fu-
ture. He stresses continuity from epoch to epoch, unlike Honorius of Autun.¹¹³
 Ibid., 400.

 Ibid., 402.
 Ibid., 404. Cf. The Prologue of the Eighth Book: “In brief that the Church, not only when it
reigns with Christ but even while it contains in its present granary both grain and chaff, is called
the Kingdom of Christ, you find set forth in the Gospel where it is said that all things that cause
stumbling are to be removed from his Kingdom” (Ibid., 453).
 Ibid., 464.
 Fabian Schwarzbauer, Geschichtszeit: Über Zeitvorstellungen in den Universalchroniken Fru-
tolfs von Michelsberg, Honorius Augustodunensis und Ottos von Freising, Orbis mediaevalis. Vor-

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One could say that history is less about getting somewhere as it is opening up
connections and possibilities. Whatever transformation there is, the human
race is still “in” history.¹¹⁴ The movement of Christianity from East to West has
become a prevalent theme, and “meaning in history,” more than about just
the preservation of an assembly of the faithful, is rather more “future expecta-
tion”-oriented. Schwarzbauer thinks that history for Otto, was about getting
back to those elements of humanity that are stable and transcend transience.
Meanwhile the instability of history is something we can learn from. Typology
within Christian history cannot help us now; rather, one should look to the
bible and to the world of nature.¹¹⁵
Among medieval historians there was an awareness of human changeability
and as such history felt the tension between itself and its distant and foreign des-
tination, eternity.¹¹⁶ As the imprint of revelation, history could be interpreted; al-
though with the exception of some like Otto of Freising, the theological-herme-
neutical task was left to the reader. Otto was indeed looking to the past as an
ideal from which to gather the better truth and demonstrate this to anyone
who would listen.¹¹⁷ However it is not clear that its meaning was as Hans-Werner
Goetz supposes. Post-biblical history became a matter for exegesis. Nor was it all
about keeping past, present and future in separate compartments. History writ-
ing was like exegesis of facts and a simple explanation of them, as the bible had
been to its “facts.” Then the mysteries were the second dimension (breadth) and
tropology the elevation of these meanings (as in Hugh of St Victor’s De arca Noe
morali 4,9). History is high-level stuff, and very powerful if viewed eschatologi-
stellungswelten des Mittelalters 6 (Berlin: Akademie, 2005), 265: “Seine Mutabilitaslehre ist als
zentrales Moment seines spezifischen Geschichtsdenkens anzusehen. Anders als historische Er-
klärungen, die den verändernden Fluss der irdischen Zeitverläufe aus der Perspektive ihres fak-
tischen Gehaltes heraus thematisieren, löst die Lehre von der Wechselhaftigkeit aller Dinge die
Ereignisse aus ihrer zeitlichen Verortung heraus. Die auf diese Weise entzeitlichten Manifestatio-
nen des Geschichtlichen erhalten ihren höheren, über das Geschichtliche hinausgehenden Sinn
in der geforderten Abwendung des einzelnen Menschen eben vor dieser grundsätzlichen Bedin-
gung des menschlichen Lebens. Überspitzt formuliert, sollte die Geschichtsbetrachtung ihren
Sinn aus der Abkehr von Geschichte beziehen.”
 Ibid., 266: “[E]ine Transformation des historischen Zeitraumes in eine historische Raum-
zeit.”
 Ibid., 280.
 Hans-Werner Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung und Geschichtsbewußtsein im hohen Mittelalter,
Orbis mediaevalis 1, 2. Auflage (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008), 41 f.: “Sie galt als die von
Gott gewollte und gelenkte Entwicklung des Menschen und damit als ‘Offenbarung’.”
 Bernard of Clairvaux, sermo 91,1: “in horto, id est in historia, continetur triplex Trinitatis
operatio: creatio caeli et terrae, reconciliatio caeli et terrae, confirmatio caeli et terrae” (quoted
by Goetz, Geschichtsschreibung, 101.

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cally as a spur to monastic reform and such movements. The historian’s job was
to help to trace these patterns out. The past was seen not as “other” but as teach-
er.¹¹⁸ Arno Borst has observed that while in Bede’s History there is an account of
Heilsgeschichte happening in a small corner of the world, by the time of Otto of
Freising there is world history which is not Heilsgeschichte, since that is confined
to the cloisters, although it may spread out from there. There was yet some way
to go before salvation could be returned to world history.¹¹⁹ By the time of Dante
a Universal History about the race and the individual had become possible.
As already discussed God was believed to be at work as much in every day
life and purposes as in more obvious Heilsgeschichte. This meant that God watch-
ed over the “home front” when the Emperor was away doing mighty Gesta, ex-
posing dishonesty and corruption amongst abbots and builders alike. For Notker
Teutonicus (d. 1022), these divinely caused effects, once perceived, strengthen
faith and are like judgements on the way to the Last Judgement.¹²⁰ Whereas at
the change of the millennium the action of God was understood to be secret
and “from below,” by the end of the Twelfth Century an increased sense of a hi-
erarchical cosmos implied that God directed matters downwards through his em-
ployment of earthly powers. Urban II in his Epistle 93 praised Roger I’s stout de-
fence of God and the Papacy’s interests against Greeks and Arabs in Southern
Italy in the 1190s. God favours his people, and rewards those who trust with heal-
ing, it seemed. Most Chroniclers used the providentialist language when speak-
ing of salvation history; this included protection from invaders but also use of
invaders to punish for sin. Ekkehard of Aura saw it as divinely ordained (divina
dispositione) that Henry IV fled before his son’s insurrection and thus great loss
of life was spared.¹²¹ In Liudprand of Cremona’s report of the battle of Birten in
939, where a victory against the odds was achieved through effective prayer and
 Ibid., 424.

 Arno Borst, “Weltgeschichten im Mittelalter?” in Poetik und Hermeneutik V: Geschichte,
Ereignis und Erzählung, eds. Reinhart Koselleck and Wolf-Dieter Stempel (München: Fink,
1973): 452– 56, 454: “Diese Heilsgeschichte kümmerte sich weder um das Zeitkontinuum noch
um die Einheit des Menschengeschlechts, weil sie das jenseitige Ziel nicht mit dem irdischen
Weg verwechselt. Heilsgeschichte konnte erst ‘Weltgeschichte’ werden, wenn Welt und Ge-
schichte zu Ende waren, wenn Gottesvolk und Menschheit identisch wurden, also gerade
nicht vorderhand.”
 Hans-Werner Goetz, Gott und Die Welt: Religiöse Vorstellungen des frühen und hohen Mittel-
alters, Orbis Mediaevalis. Vorstellungswelten des Mittelalters 13/1 (Berlin: Akademie, 2011), 78:
“Das iudicium Dei wacht auch über das Karlsreich, wenn Karl zu beschäftigt ist, alles selbst ahn-
den zu können, indem es etwa die Machenschaften eines betrügerischen Abtes und Baumeisters
aufdeckt und diesen mit dem Feuertod erschlagen läßt.”
 Ibid., 110.

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the effects of a holy lance being carried by right of being Constantine’s and ar-
guably King David’s successor, God’s effects on the earthly plane are presented
as having eternal significance.¹²² Sometimes signs and wonders were to prepare
people for worse to come. Yet God, as Boethius might have said, knows all things
before in the sense of adapting them to his eternal plan, although nothing is past
or future to him.¹²³
Byzantium and Eastern Christianity
André-Louis Rey has argued that when it came to historiography pagans tended
to look back, but Byzantine Christians wanted also to look forward.¹²⁴ This cor-
responded to the Christian dating system which counts from the year of the In-
carnation, yet whose liturgical year begins with the Festival of Advent which
looks towards the Second Coming. There was arguably also a strong sense that
grace set Christians free to make fresh history and not simply repeat sinful pat-
terns. Hence John of Damascus could claim that human freedom to act (autoex-
ousia) was “proved” by the very existence of human evil-doing!¹²⁵ Providence did
give limits to the range of free choice; the Damascene borrowed from Nemesius
different categories of necessity and chance. It is not without significance that in
his Chronicle the Antiochene historian John Malalas (d.578) rarely mentioned
pronoia, yet tyche (chance) appears twenty-five times, most often when referring
to the foundation of a city. In his work Malalas just gives chain of events without
really discussing causes. Pronoia tended to be used only for direct action of God
– and hence was something rare, possibly an act of judgement. For Agathias (d.
582), tyche seems to take the place of pronoia, yet often as something unstable
which should encourage prudence; even so, Agathias doesn’t use it when relat-
ing the troubled third quarter of the fifth century: those events were ascribed to
individual free choices by kings.
 Ibid., 121.

 Ibid., 172, citing the mid-twelfth century Regensburg-based Honorius of Autun’s Inevitabile
(1204C): “Deus omnia praescivit; et hoc aeternitati eius congruit, qui nihil futurum quasi fien-
dum nec aliquid praeteritum quasi transactum novit; sed omnia fienda et transacta immutabili
intuit praesentia inspicit.”
 André-Louis Rey, “Tychè et Pronoia: notes sur l’emploi de Fortune et Providence dans l’his-
toriographie byzantine ancienne?” in La Fortune: Thèmes, Representations, Discours, eds. Ema-
nuelle Métry and Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, Recherches et Recontres 19 (Geneva: Librairie Droz,
2003): 71– 92, 77 f.
 Expositio Fidei 39,23 – 29; 40,17– 18.

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Procopius (d. 565) commented that even where wrong decisions were made
in battle, God’s will could turn things to the advantage of those for whom the
wind of tyche blows (Wars VII,13,15 – 19). Any discussion of causality beyond
this was rare, unless one counts the mention of a sort of assisting daimon
(VI,29,32). The point is that humans are primary agents, whom God assists.
Tyche became used to explain misfortune and was developed at length into The-
odoros Metochites (1270 – 1352)’s “pessimistic” conception of tyche, although
such tendency toward cosmic dualism and pessimism was resisted by Plethon
of Constantinople a century later. He felt it better to recognise the existence of
tyche (chance) or moira (fate) but to order these under Providence, which
ruled the soul: hence a tendency towards cosmic dualism was replaced with
one towards Platonic dualism. “Providentialist” historians are optimistic ones
(Eusebius, Socrates, or Sozomen each in their own way could be called that).
For Procopius, the Providence of God has a place in The Secret History 28.13
and at Wars VI.1– 18. In Book VIII of The Wars Procopius writes of Bessas’ cap-
ture of Petra in 551: “Thus human affairs are governed not by what men think,
but by the judgment of God, which men are accustomed to call ‘fate’ since
they are unaware why events occur in the way that they seem manifest. For
the name ‘Fate’ is usually applied to whatever seems unreasonable.” It was
fate or God’s will that meant that Belisarius lost to Totila in Italy because he
broke his oath to Photius. But “fate” could be synonymous with the devil – as
in the same story where Belisarius was tricked (Wars VII.19.22).¹²⁶ In the Chroni-
cle of Georgios Monachos (c.870) there is the accusation against Aristotle that
denying the soul’s immortality and dignity is a denial also of Divine Providence.
In other words, divine and human agency do not compete with each other.
As a convinced Aristotelian Patriarch Photius (d. 893) had reservations about
seeking causes outside the empirical order. Yet the next great Byzantine thinker,
the Platonist Psellos included astrology as part of that empiricism: it was a case
of tracing a parallelism between the movements of the stars and those of the
soul.¹²⁷ Perhaps a system of duplex veritas was operating, but it is more likely
that Psellos believed that comets gave warnings of disaster but did not teach
one anything about God. Astrology had some biblical warrant, he thought,
 Warren Treadgold, The Early Byzantine Historians (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007),
223 – 5. But earlier Belisarius had been rewarded for his self-control (Wars III.16).
 Hans-Georg Beck, Das byzantinische Jahrtausend, 2. Auflage (München: C.H. Beck, 1994),
72.

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and Joannes Katrarios observed that tyche seemed to have ruled ancient history,
and possibly had a place in world history even in Christian times.¹²⁸
But astrology reached the zenith of its influence under Manuel I Komnenos,
and that in direct opposition to his own father’s regime, although on his death-
bed Manuel did abjure the power of the stars under the Patriach’s insistence. In
any case Manuel’s nuanced position, like that of Psellos was, that there was both
true and false astrology: the stars could not make anything happen, but only sig-
nify them. Manuel was also interested in wonders in history, which seemed more
reliable guides. Joannes Katrarios went so far as to argue that astrology even en-
couraged free will, because it got people ready to take action to prevent doom.¹²⁹
Gerhard Podskalsky mentions a letter (Poslanie) of the monk Jacob to Count Dmi-
tri from mid-eleventh century Kievan Russia, which asserted that God prefers to
let creatures exercise their agency, and allowing them to find their way back to
him, He will receive them in his judgement and mercy right up to the Day of
Judgement itself.¹³⁰
The Byzantine theologians often had to contend with popular and heretical-
ly inspired views of a world in Satan’s power. Yet in their theologically more re-
sponsible responses, it seems less a question whether one thinks of one or two
determining powers and more about the limits of the divine range. John of Dam-
ascus’s Dialogos kata Manichaôn (PG 96,1505 – 64) and the Ps-Damascene Dialex-
is were similar in content and influenced Theodoros Abu Kurra, who applied the
thinly veiled critique of Muslim determinism, by complaining that Muslims see
God’s will even in divorce.¹³¹ Niketas of Byzantium (d. 873) was engaged with di-
rect polemics against Islam: his Anastropé and two responses to requests by Mi-
chael III include a refutation of Surah 2, and argue from contradictions in the
Koran (Surah 7,188).¹³² For Niketas, Good and Evil cannot come from the same
principle, and the answer to the evil principle lies within human wills. Photius,
although remembered as Aristotelian in his philosophical training, when he
came to write his work “Against the Manichees” (PG 102,16 – 264) showed him-
self to be exegetically precise, probably writing it at leisure during his exile
 Fritz Jürss, “Johannes Katrarios und der Dialog Hermippos oder über die Astrologie,” By-
zantinische Zeitschrift 59 (1966): 275 – 284.
 Ibid., 81, with reference to Ἔρμιππος περὶ ἀστρολογίας (Wilhelm Kroll and Paulus Viereck,
eds. Anonymi Christiani Hermippus de astrologia dialogus. Leipzig: Teubner, 1895).
 Gerhard Podskalsky, Christentum und theologische Literatur in der Kiever Rus (988 – 1237)
(München: Beck, 1982).
 Hildebrand P. Beck, Vorsehung und Vorherbestimmung in der theologischen Literatur der By-
zantiner (Roma: Pontifical Institute Orientalium Studiorum, 1937), 42.
 Ibid., 49.

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from 867 to 877. In his second sermon (PG 102,85 ff.) he argues that the same God
who cares for the soul also cares for the physical body which He made “good.”
People cannot therefore blame their bodies for inclining them towards evil. His
opponents would blame material things like fire for sending evil to other mate-
rial things on the earth.¹³³ A century later Michael Psellos’s polemic was turned
against the Euchites and loss of free will, although again there might well be in
the background resistance to Islamic (Mutazilite) determinism, which viewed
God as involved in the very action. Now Psellos taught astrology in the sense
that he believed that one could read the forces operating on the soul from
what was happening with the planets.¹³⁴ Comets give warnings but could not
teach anyone anything about God and his ways, he argued. Psellos’ natural the-
ology was expressed in a sort of encyclopedia of phenomena with divine mean-
ing, the Didaskalia pantodapé.
Owing to a consistent felt need to oppose Islamic theology including its de-
terministic character, the Byzantine views of Providence tended to limit God’s ac-
tion up to the point governed by human free will, such that Hans-Georg Beck
could claim that it seemed rather a novelty when Gennadios Scholarios, possibly
under the influence of Aquinas, stretched the ordaining (ὀρισμὸς) of God to all
events, including human actions!¹³⁵ In his second main treatise Περὶ θείου
προορισμοῦ δεύτερον of 1467 he rejected the idea attributed to Basil (falsely, al-
leged Gennadios) which had become a motto of his great hitherto patron Mark
Eugenikos, the Metropolitan of Ephesus: that the place of demons was given
by God; hence, Mark was working with an only partly demythologised pagan
view. Supernatural forces could be felt as real and this pressure led to a drive
to personalise them in a hypostasising of experiences. Concomitant with this
went a diminished felt need for theodicy, as a gegenkosmos was mapped
out.¹³⁶ Psellos had long before been very occupied with demonology from an-
cient sources and there were doubts about God’s control of all things expressed
in the early “Question and Answer” literature and in that popular epic from the
end of First Millennium, the Digenis Akritas. One could also hear numerous re-
 Ibid., 89.

 Ibid., 72: “Parallelismus zwischen den Bewegungen des Gestirne und denen der Seele.”
 Ibid., 152 f., with reference to Gennadius, Oeuvres (Oeuvres complètes de Georges (Genna-
dios) Scholarios, eds. Martin Jugie, Louis Petit, and Xenophon A. Sidéridès, [Paris: Maison de
la Bonne Presse, 1928 – 1930], I: 412– 426).
 Hans-Georg Beck, Das byzantinische Jahrtausend, 2. Auflage (München: C.H. Beck, 1994),
264.

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ports of witchcraft in otherwise respectable places.¹³⁷ Patriarch Metochites

(d.1332) accused the Byzantines of only believing in providence when it seemed
favourable to them; but in truth even he seems to have regarded Tyche as more
the regnant force, with providence only operating on the boundaries.¹³⁸ To em-
ploy a theatrical metaphor, this made God seem more like the audience or a critic
than an actor or director.
The Byzantine thinkers did have a strong sense of continuity throughout his-
tory. Beck considers world chronicler Michael Glykas,¹³⁹ known for using the bes-
tiary Physiologus (whose animals embodied virtues and vices) in telling the cre-
ation story in his World Chronicle. He also wrote a catechism of proverbs
(Sprichwörtercatechismus) in the middle of the Twelfth Century, during his im-
prisonment at the pleasure of Manuel I, and in his poetry liked to take on themes
of cosmic ordering and providence.¹⁴⁰ He reported previous cases of courtly for-
giveness to reassure the Emperor’s niece Theodora, who had murdered a rival of
her possible salvation; another letter quietly criticised Manuel’s dabbling in as-
trology. Nikephoros Blemmydes in his Commentary on the Psalms described how
his tradition believed one could reach the start of the knowledge of God through
contemplation of creation, both philosophically and theologically.¹⁴¹ On the
other hand, one sees the likes of Nicolas Cabasilas in the later fourteenth century
complaining that people used the term pronoia in a very worldly way, in order to
give extra weight to claims to assured rewards in return for military service. The
army must be ‘provided for’ went the slogan, which meant properties were often
sequestered from monastic lands, and monasteries then fell to the temptation to
become money-making enterprises. This practice had gone on since the Twelfth
Century whenever armies had to be raised.¹⁴²
A particular question which preoccupied Byzantium for many centuries was
“does God predetermine particular persons to die while they are committing sin
and so predetermine them to hell”, or vice versa, “does he predetermine the hour
of death in such a way that they will go to heaven whether they want to or
 Beck concludes wryly: “Mit einem explizierten Glauben an Gottes gütige Vorsehung aber
haben all diese Dinge nicht zu tun.” (Ibid, 269.)
 Ibid., 272.
 Cf. Karl Krumbacher, Geschichte der Byzantinischen Litteratur: von Justinian bis zum Ende
des Oströmischen Reiches (527– 1453) (München: Beck, 1891) see PG 158.
 Beck, Das byzantinische Jahrtausend, 402.
 Gerhard Podskalsky, Von Photios bis Bessarion. Der Vorrang humanistisch geprägter Theolo-
gie in Byzanz und deren bleibende Bedeutung, Schriften zur Geistesgeschichte im östlichen Euro-
pa 25 (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003), 84.
 Ihor Ševčenko, “Nicolas Cabasilas’ ‘Anti-Zealot’ Discourse: a Reinterpretation,” Dumbarton
Oaks Papers 11 (1957): 81– 171, 157 ff.

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not?”¹⁴³ In the sixth century Anastasius of Sinai in his Questions and Answers
(16&17) had argued against the idea that God fixed in advance for each person
the day of their death. Six centuries later Nikephoros Blemmydes must have
known the like of John of Damascus’ ruling that God foreknew all without deter-
mining all, as well as the opinion of Psellos that God’s eternal knowing would
indeed know such things.¹⁴⁴ Psellos set Providence as over against the laws of
Nature, which to him seemed just too much bound to Necessity.¹⁴⁵ There was
a preference for the a posteriori: one might just spot God’s activity with hind-
sight, but prediction of how he would work was certainly to be avoided. As to
just how God influenced human activity, it was easier to say how he did this
in terms of grace than in the realm of the laws of nature.¹⁴⁶ Wolfgang Lackner
argued that in his treatment of the subject Nikephoros was concerned for free
will and his main target was the Western Dominican theology of divine omnicau-
sality. One could not know that God had determined the day of death, except in
the case of certain holy men who were indeed exceptions.¹⁴⁷ God wants to give
grace to all, but people can choose to squeeze God out.¹⁴⁸ Blemmydes insisted
that the bible related stories of how warnings were given that helped people re-
spond freely: for that was what teaching Providence was all about.
However two centuries later, in his fourth treatise on the question of the pre-
determination of death, Gennadios strongly rejected the earlier treatment by
Anastasios of Sinai, bluntly stating that Anastasios lacked the theological ca-
pacity required for discussing such a problem. As the editor Wolfgang Lackner
observes, there was little balanced discussion in the literature, and the twin
question of Providence and astrological Fate got unhelpfully confused.¹⁴⁹ The
 Joseph Munitiz, “The Predetermination of Death: The Contribution of Anastasios of Sinai
and Nikephoros Blemmydes to a Perennial Byzantine Problem,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 55
(2001): 9 – 20, 9 f.
 For Psellos, God could know possibilities as possibilities, i.e without determining them.
There was a debt to Proclus: see Franz Tinnefeld, “Schicksal und Vorherbestimmung im Denken
der Byzantiner,” in Das Mittelalter: Perspektiven mediävistischer Forschung. Zeitschrift des Mediä-
vistenverbandes I, H 1: Providentia-Fatum-Fortuna, ed. Joerg O. Fichte (Berlin: Akademie Verlag,
1996): 21– 42.
 Wolfgang Lackner, ed., Nikephoros Blemmydes: Gegen die Vorherbestimmung der Todes-
stunde, Corpus Philosophorum Medii Aevi, Philosophi Byzantini, 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1985), LXXII:
“Psellos und ihm folgend Nikolaos von Methone übernehmen von Proklos bzw. Dionysius Are-
opagites den Gedanken, daß Gott Unbestimmtes bestimmt erkenne, d. h. daß die Erkenntnis an
den ontischen Rang des Subjektes, nicht des Objektes gebunden ist.”
 Beck, Vorsehung, 208.
 Lackner, Nikephoros Blemmydes, LXXIV–V.
 Tinnefeld, “Schicksal und Vorherbestimmung,” 38.
 Lackner, Nikephoros Blemmydes, LXXXIV.

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story of Hezekiah was brought forward, perhaps in opposition to Augustine and

Gregory the Great (Moralia 16,10) on the issue.¹⁵⁰ Lackner’s study does show the
Byzantine authors to be fairly evenly split on the matter. There could be some
sort of general providence for human beings as a race, and something more
“watchful” for those who would reach eternal glory.¹⁵¹ So the idea of Predestina-
tion is only used in the realm of grace for the righteous where their free prayers
are taken into account. Everything exists under some order and fixedeness, but
with contingency all the same. Compared with the West, there was a stronger be-
lief in human possibilities, despite the reservations of some like Theodore Meto-
chites and a sense of fatalism among the ordinary people. Despite the influence
of Aquinas’ notion of causation in Byzantium, there seems no echo of this in the
late Byzantine treatment of the question of the divine foreknowledge.
In John of Damascus’ account Providence was viewed more as part of theo-
logical anthropology than as part of the Doctrine of God, especially in the use of
definitions from Nemesius. By the time of Gregory Palamas in his Kεφαλαία,
things had changed, with pronoia not part of God’s being but rather part of
His energies, even as a turning towards the creature.¹⁵² Nicolas Cabasilas in
turn viewed the sacraments as a sure case of the working of divine providence.
It seems to be only those such as Gennadios Scholarios who knew the Western
thinkers who were prepared to call created things instruments or instrumental
causes, and God the αἰτία αἰτιωτάτη.¹⁵³ The enemies of free will were the devil
and human custom, where sinful habits took control in people, so that each
was responsible for letting the bad habit take hold. Georgios Gemistos Plethon
seems to have been one who perhaps uniquely spoke of the complete bondage
of the will, people acting out of unhappiness and God’s punishment a means
of weaning someone off that addictive pattern.¹⁵⁴ For the conservative leader
of the Patriarchal Academy Matthaios Kamariotes (d. 1490), God sees the future
as present, which means He sees everything that is contingent to be necessary,
and all possible as actual. In the divine granting humans free choice humans re-
 Even Haymo of Auxerre in fighting Gottschalk could argue that virtue and sinning could
affect the fixed length of days (PL 116,903B).
 “Gennadios Scholarios teilt […] die Vorsehung in eine πρόνοια im engeren Sinne (für die
unvernünftige Kreatur) und in den προορισμός für die Menschen. Auf diesen προορισμός γενι-
κῶς bezieht sich offenbar seine erste und allgemeinste Definition. Dieser zerfällt aber wieder
in einen προορισμός εὶδικῶς für diejeneigen, welche die ewige Seligkeit erreichen werden,
und in die ὰπιδοκιμασία für diejenigen, welche dieses Ziel nicht erreichen werden.”(Beck, Vor-
sehung, 238)
 Ibid., 160 – 89.
 Ibid., 210.
 Ibid., 215.

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main free: there is nothing of the “futura libera conditionata” of later Western
thought.
The distinction betwen God’s permitting an only apparent evil (συγχώρησις)
and permitting sin (παραχώρησις) was continued by Mark Eugenikos (although it
had been overlooked by Photius).¹⁵⁵ John of Damascus had distinguished appa-
rent evil from real evil of sin. Hence suffering could be very useful. ¹⁵⁶ This dis-
cussion did not deal with the question of the evil of Hell, although Emperor Man-
uel II Palaiologos saw that as a future punishment as having a good use as a
sharp disincentive to sin.¹⁵⁷ This distinction is not far away from that which
would be made by Leibniz. Manuel gave a number of reasons why suffering ex-
isted: the main one was to draw people to God by purifying them in their sins
without any immediate and obvious reward (Vat.gr.1107 fol.181v). Although Man-
uel did add that God knows how to remind the faithful of their reward, he was
clear that it was the sins of the Orthodox people, not the Orthodox religion itself
that stood under judgment.
Byzantine Providentialism could be so strong and was so positive about
where God was leading them, that the Byzantines found it very hard not to
see the end of their Empire as the end of the world. ¹⁵⁸ Oecumemius’ Apoca-
lypse-commentary was much more concerned with the fall of the long gone
pagan Rome, while Andreas of Crete took it to refer to more recent history, up
to his own time (c.600), yet with a positive expectation of a new world within
a generation.¹⁵⁹
 Ibid., 222– 25.

 Kotter II, 221.
 Tinnefeld, “Schicksal und Vorherbestimmung,” 41 f.
 Gerhard Podskalsly, “Répresentation du temps dans l’eschatologie imperial byzantine,” in
Le Temps chrétien de la fin de l’Antiquité au Moyen Age, IIIe–XIIIe siècles, ed. Jean-Marie Leroux,
Colloques Nationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 604 (Paris: Editions du
CNRS, 1984): 439 – 50, 446; “les Byzantins des derniers siècles ont certainement souffert de l’i-
solement dans lequel les enfermait l’identification de la chute de Constantinople à la fin du
monde.” Podskalsky tried to give an account of the less mystical side of Byzantine theology,
one which was concerned with culture, politics and history, while very much interested in the
bible.
 Cyril Mango, “Les Temps dans les commentaires byzantins de l’Apocalypse,” in Le Temps
chrétien de la fin de l’Antiquité au Moyen Age, IIIe–XIIIe siècles, ed. Jean-Marie Leroux, Colloques
Nationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 604 (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1984):
431– 438, 435.

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The Western High Middle Ages
The Boethian emphasis on the unity of God, as One in three persons and who in
some sense is himself the forma mundi, as Gilbert of Poitiers put it, probably lost
out to a more Augustinian account, according to which God’s threeness could be
postulated as reflected only in the higher reaches of creation, such as the human
mind, but only very dimly in the rest of creation. Since bodily disintegration can-
not thwart souls, equipped with human intellect they are able to act to seize their
end. The Goodness of God is inserted into creation only to draw them, not to
make them feel at home in the world. For if every creature has an immanent
telos, then this is in turn open to the transcendent end on which it depends
and which it obeys.¹⁶⁰ This thinking is that upon which Thomas Aquinas
would expand.¹⁶¹ Humans can ordain things to their ends usefully.¹⁶² While tel-
eological in his thinking, Maimonides had no place for a final end since he
agreed with Aristotle on things being contained within the circle of the world.
Creatures exist for themselves, and Satan was considered to be the “first of his
ways.”¹⁶³ God is ascribed a voluntas consequens that wills evil. His version of
Job 36 portrays a God who excels in divine disruption.
In Albert the Great’s commentary on Ps.-Dionysius’ De caelestia hierarchia c.
7 he rejects the idea that God knows only human individual essences, since God
does not “know” as “‘we know,” and declares that God knows the whole of the
human being, even though of course it is only individuals who enjoy the results
of his providence, as Eliphaz in Job had it: only those worthy get providence as
reward.¹⁶⁴ In Albert’s Quaestio 76 de Providentia he divides the question in a way
that is very similar to that of Alexander of Hales. Yet while Alexander dealt with
‘faith in Providence,” Albert keeps the discussion as part of his doctrine of God.
 Stephan Otto, “Augustinus und Boethius im 12. Jahrhundert: Anmerkungen zur Entstehung
des Traktates ‘De Deo uno’,” in Materialen zur Theorie der Geistegeschichte, ed. Stephan Otto,
Die Geistesgeschichte und ihre Methoden 2 (München: Fink, 1979): 94– 105, with reference to
Aquinas, Super Iob 25,3.
 Denis Chardonnens, L’homme Sous Le Regard de La Providence: Providence de Dieu et con-
dition humaine selon l’Exposition littérale sur le livre de Job de Thomas d’Aquin, Bibliothèque Tho-
miste 50 (Paris: Vrin, 1997), 75: “Un agent est la fin de son effet en ce que ce dernier tend a lui
ressembler.”
 Aquinas, Super Iob 38,13.
 Ibid., 40,14a.
 See Caterina Rigo, “Zur Rezeption des Moses Maimonides im Werk des Albertus Magnus,”
in Albertus Magnus? Zum Gedenken nach 800 Jahren: Neue Zugänge, Aspeckte und Perspektiven,
ed. Walter Senner, Quellen und Forschungen zur Geschichte des Dominikanerordens, 10 (Berlin:
Akademie, 2001): 29 – 66.

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He uses the same scriptures (e. g. Wis 6:8; 12:13 which speak of care for noble and
ignoble creatures) as Alexander,¹⁶⁵ but focuses more on God’s character than on
the process as experienced by creatures. Where Alexander, depending on Augus-
tine, Boethius and John Damascene emphasised a definition of Providence as
final and efficient cause, Albert simply uses the term “cause.” God is clever
enough to be acting by way of reaction at every moment and not just as a
final cause.¹⁶⁶ The character of the Providential God in Himself matters. One fur-
ther distinguishing feature of Albert’s treatment is that although (and his invo-
cation of 1 Corinthians 9:9 makes it more clear) God does not concern himself
with dumb beasts, nevertheless he is aware of the value of base things in
God’s sight, for Hebrews 4:13 tells us that all creatures can be seen by God. So
whereas Alexander is clear, not least from Origen on Numbers 22:20 that strictly
speaking evil things are not part of providence, Albert did not draw that infer-
ence.¹⁶⁷ Albert placed Providence between Predestination and Reprobation as
well as making it one of his preferred names for God Himself. His vision was
of God’s care being helped, not hindered, by orders and hierarchies: channels,
not barriers.¹⁶⁸ Peace (pacificus ordo) as it reigns in the universe is the product
of the divine processions. There is certainly a generosity in Albert’s concept of
God,¹⁶⁹ as a source of all things, indebted to nothing and no one. For nothing
causes Providence, since it causes all things; and yet it takes into account all
things in its planning in a simple view of the whole, and it leads each thing ac-
cordingly even in one simple view.¹⁷⁰
 “Die Verwertung aristotelischer Gedanken ist bei Albert intensiver als bei Alexander” (Ibid.,
21).
 Georgen, Des heiligen Albertus Magnus Lehre von der göttlichen Vorsehung und dem Fatum,
31: “Zum Unterschied von Alexander v.H. nehmen Albert wie Thomas in ihre Erörterungen über
die Bestimmung des Vorsehungsbegriffes außer den göttlichen Attributen der Weisheit, Macht
und des Willens noch ein weiteres auf: das der Klugheit.”
 “Ergo mala non sunt sub divina providentia’ after Origen’s ‘sed ea utuntur ad necessarias
causas.”
 Georgen, Des heiligen Albertus Magnus Lehre von der göttlichen Vorsehung und dem Fatum
48: “Als Endziel und Endzweck der zielstrebenden Geschöpfe gilt nach Albert in Anlehnung an
Ps. Dionysius Gott als der höchste Gute und Schöne.”
 Ibid., 65: “Das Wort ‘Deus’ zeigt an, daß der Träger dieses Namens imstande ist, alles mit
dem Lichte seiner Schau (=visio) zu überblicken, allem schnell und nachdrücklich und mit der
Glut seiner Liebe die ihm entsprechende vorsehende und fürsorgliche Leitung angedeihen und
aus seiner Güte und Macht heraus allem Geschöpflichen den ihm entsprechenden zum Dasein
und zum Beharren notwendigen Vollkommenheitsschmuck zufließen zu lassen” (re: 1 Sent D 2.
art 11.ad q2).
 Ibid., 81: “Insofern die göttliche Vorsehung eine ‘Fürsorge’ ist und für die Geschöpfe, so-
weit sie gut sind, gleich dem göttlichen Wille Ursache ist, fällt sie unter den Begriff der ersten

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There is no necessity in all this, for divine foreknowledge has no causative

effect – it knows good as well as evil; and even though logically speaking it
comes before, it is not prevenient as a cause. God’s light fills the necessary
and contingent so that he can see which is which. God’s will is only causal for
all the good things, yet not in a forceful, but in a cooperative way. There is
“pre-determining providence” (providentia praedeterminans) and also “provi-
dence according to concession” (providentia secundum concessionem) which
has space for free willed actions of creatures. Most events are a mixture of
these two. One of the few things which is totally necessary is the hierarchy of
things in the universe and the sequence of orders. One should not rule out the
term fatum since heavenly bodies can play their part in influencing what hap-
pens below.¹⁷¹ Albert was happy to consider the effects of the heavenly cycles
in a way that Thomas and Alexander of Hales would not. Nevertheless Albert
was strict in forbidding any place for Fate in the lives of believers qua believ-
ers.¹⁷² Thomas would avoid the terminology altogether.¹⁷³
Building on the work of his Franciscan master, Alexander, Bonaventura took
Providence to be located less in the divine plan and more in the divine working
of the divine voluntas. Providence is not part of the divine sapientia, which
stands in contrast with Boethius’ “ratio ordinis rerum exemplaris in mente divina
existen.” Nor when Bonaventura is talking about divine will in Distinctiones
44– 48 does he think of Providence as planned wisdom; this even though in Bre-
viloquium 9 he asserts that Providence is the will of God as guided by reason.
When it came to his Sentence Commentary he is happy to address Fatum as hav-
ing a place under God’s overarching control.
In his History of doctrine Reinhold Seeberg complained that Bonaventura
did not really address the issue of Providence.¹⁷⁴ It is true that his treatment
Wirkursache. Insofern die göttliche Vorsehung ‘das höchste Gut’ genannt und damit ausgesagt
wird, daß die das erste quellhafte Gut ist, das allen Geschöpfen das ihnen entsprechende Gute
einströmen läßt, und gleichzeitig auch Endzweck ist, fällt sie unter den Begriff der Endursache
[’…]. Das vornehmste Ziel der göttlichen Regierung bezüglich der Menschen ist nach Albert
deren Heiligung” (re: Albert’s Commentary on Dionysius’ Divine Names: de div nom c 12 No
313.ad 3).
 Albert, In III Ethicorum, Tr I cap 17:7,21: “dicumus, quod fatum negare, est negare totum or-
dinem rerum naturalium” (Georgen, Des heiligen Albertus Magnus Lehre von der göttlichen Vor-
sehung und dem Fatum, 105).
 In evang hom Epiph 10,n4 (PL 76,1112): “absit hoc a fidelium membris, ut fatum esse aliquid
decant.”
 Cf. Thomas Aquinas, Compendium of Theology, 123 – 47.
 Reinhold Seeberg, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 4 volumes (Erlangen: A. Deichert, 1913),
III: 360.

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was pithy rather than expansive. Bonaventura’s taxonomy was a useful rule with
which his Dominican counterparts would not wholly concur, but which can be
seen as a stronger reaction to pagan views than theirs. Praesentia was God’s cog-
nition in its relation to things, when it somehow included the event in it. Provi-
dentia included God’s knowledge of things but especially denoted the wiil to ef-
fect in conservation and governance. In turn, Dispositio is when some
enhancement is added in effecting it for the good of nature, and praedstinatio
stood for a superadded good, and reprobation for a deprivation of good.
However the background noise coming from natural philosophy at this point
sounds less sanguine. If Avicenna’s position was that God could know only
ideas, Maimonides took a significant step forward to argue that God knows spe-
cies and guides those species to their ends. Aristotle could be interpreted to
allow for some sublunar providence. So all things are treated by Providence,
in that God cares for the species. The contribution of Maimonides was indeed sig-
nificant. The relation of providence is not the same to all men. Divine influence
reaches man through the intellect. The greater man’s share in this divine influ-
ence, the greater the effect of divine providence on him. With the Prophets it
could vary according to their prophetic faculty; in the case of pious and good
men, according to their piety and uprightness. Now, the twist is, that if humans
are aiming to be without worry through exercise of their divine-like intellect,
then perhaps God at heart is also “without care” (insouciant).¹⁷⁵ Another distinc-
tive in Maimonides’ account is that, while the Christian doctrine of Providence
had a clear relation to moral activity, and similar ideas could be found in Saadia
Gaon, for example, with Maimonides things were different: “true perfection does
not consist of moral virtue but rather of rational and intellectual excellence. It is
more important to be wise than to be just.” That is, to have “true opinions con-
cerning divine matters.”¹⁷⁶ Job was morally perfect, but he lacked wisdom, such
that he suffered. The more one studies science the more one gains wisdom and
becomes immune to circumstance. Bildad in Job 8:7 might just as well have been
a Mutazilite for believing in Providence and post-mortem reward. Just as natural
actions differ from artificial actions, so do the divine governance of, the divine
providence over, and the divine purpose for those natural things all differ
 Cf. René Lévy, La Divine Insouciance: étude des doctrines de la providence d’après Maïmo-
nide (Paris: Verdier, 2008).
 Jacob S. Levinger, “Maimonides’ Exegesis of the Book of Job,” in Creative Biblical Exegesis:
Christian and Jewish Hermeneutics through the Centuries, eds. Henning Graf Reventlow and Ben-
jamin Uffenheimer, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series 59 (Sheffield:
Sheffield Academic Press, 1988): 81– 87.

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from our governance of, our providence over, and our purpose for whatever we
govern, provide for, and intend.¹⁷⁷
Aquinas preferred to argue that Job was not without sin, hence morally cul-
pable. Whereas Maimonides argues that God’s answer to Job’s question about di-
vine providence implies that Job himself though perfectly just remains unwise,
Aquinas argues on the contrary that Job though perfectly wise is unjust.¹⁷⁸ For
Aquinas the God of Job 9:23 is not amoral, but He destroys all on account of
the universality of original sin. However Thomas’ vision was an optimistic
one. For instance, he interpreted Job 7:1 (sicut dies mercenarii dies eius) in a pos-
itive way. It is not the struggle (as Gregory the Great had it) that should be em-
phasised, but rather the rewards; for as Job 7:17 f. shows, men have special apti-
tude to join this life up to the one they will live eternally and they should be
encouraged to fix their eyes on that goal and the route thereto. In Aquinas’ com-
mentary on Job 28, it becomes clear that wisdom means a full submission of
faith to God’s true providence alone, for this alone is all-knowing and all-caring,
and extends even to corruptible things, the least of which have a share in being
called towards the ultimate end.
As Denis Chardonnens comments, Thomas saw Job’s quest as knowing God
and his providential action in one and the same moment.¹⁷⁹ In Thomas’ system-
atic treatment of the topic in his articles on De Providentia, God is clearly the gov-
ernor of the whole universe, from highest to lowest.¹⁸⁰ There are so many tools in
the artisan’s box that it takes “a Being” like God to understand all their uses and
ultimately gives reward to the conscious component parts which have helpfully
played a role. Nothing ever happens for chance’s sake. As for the permission of
the existence of sin, well, God prefers a larger good to the absence of smaller evil
(art 5, ad 3). In Article 9 Thomas is clear that heavenly bodies, although they rely
on divine power to move and have no part to play in creating, are partners with
God in the movement of lower bodies (“in opere gubernationis, non autem in
opere creationis”).¹⁸¹ Any effect they do have is given to then by God’s power,
so that that their energy is not a physical one, but a divine one in which they
 Martin D. Yaffe, “Providence in Medieval Aristotelianism: Moses Maimonides and Thomas
Aquinas on the Book of Job,” Hebrew Studies 20 – 21 (1979 – 1980): 62– 74.
 Ibid., 62.
 Chardonnens, L’homme Sous Le Regard de La Providence, 293.
 Jean-Pierre Torrell, ed. Thomas d’Aquin La providence; La prédestination Questions disputé
es sur la vérité, question 5-question 6. Bibliothèque des textes philosophiques. (Paris: Vrin, 2011),
95: “sicut peccatum hominis ordinatur a Deo in bonum eius, ut eum post peccatum resurgens
humilior redditur, vel saltem in bonum quod in ipso fit per divinam iustitiam dum pro peccato
punitur.” This special kind of educative providence is suggested to him by Wis XII:18.
 Ibid., 140.

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participate (with thanks to Augustine, De Trinitate XIII). It is the secondary

cause, which introduces any necessity of a causal type into an act. Thomas
also approves John of Damascus’ view that higher bodies such as stars can be
fore-warning signs of judgements which do not in fact come to pass, because
God creates (by grace) a correction of behaviour which then deflects the need
for such divine judgement (art 9,ad 1). The outlook again is a sanguine one. Hu-
mans are already capable of perpetual existence even before this capacity gets
doubled by grace and glory. With the higher soul made in the Trinitarian divine
image humans have intellective knowledge and operative power, free will and an
aptitude for grace, which Aquinas underlines with a citation: Job 14:20.¹⁸² With
terrestrial goods ordered towards the major spiritual felicity, humans may live
under the sign of hope, which is part of God’s providence.
Thomas is able to say along with Avicenna that the final cause is the cause of
all causes. Some things like games contain their ends within themselves or in-
deed they may have an end that is unintended by their protagonists. Preserva-
tion of being clearly aims at the Good (not meant in a narrowly moral
sense).¹⁸³ Reality has to have its effect and bring forth its likeness. Dionysius
seems to expand Aristotle by concluding that all things, not just intentional
agency work towards the Good. God conducts all things towards their end and
this means that Providence extends to all creatures with certitude, though not
necessity.¹⁸⁴ Is providence in God’s knowledge (as Boethius held), omnipotence
(Scripture) or will (John of Damascus)? Thomas opposes the deniers of final cau-
sality and God’s knowledge of singulars. Maimonides had made an exception for
humans as individual creatures to whom God deigns to show providence, and
only as individuals can they merit: but Thomas supplies Matthew 10:29 (“not
one sparrow will fall to the ground”) to confound Maimonides and his emphasis
on Providence as a reward for piety.¹⁸⁵ Providence itself relies on nothing, as Al-
bert had established. Even if Thomas had not managed to read his senior collea-
 “roborasti eum paululum ut in perpetuum pertransiret inmutabis faciem eius et emittes
eum.” (See Chardonnens, L’homme Sous Le Regard de La Providence, 152).
 Rolf Schönberger, ed., Thomas von Aquins ‘Summa Contra Gentiles’ (Darmstadt: WBG,
2001), 120 f.
 Sent I d 39q2a1; Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Saint Thomas et l’histoire: état de la question et pistes
de recherches,” in Nouvelles recherches thomasiennes, Bibliotheque thomiste 61 (Paris: Librairie
philosophique J. Vrin, 2008), 131– 175 (=Revue Thomiste 55 (2005), 355 – 409), 151. Cf. Walter L.
Ysaac, “The Certitude of Providence in St. Thomas,” The Modern Schoolman 38 (1961):
305 – 21. Also, Horton Davies, The Vigilant God: Providence in the Thought of Augustine, Aquinas,
Calvin, and Barth (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1992).
 Summa Contra Gentiles III.93; Summa Theologiae I.q22.a2.

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gue on this, (Ps.)-Dionysius with his theme of divine generosity had inspired him
to reach the same conclusion.
The Dionysian influence on Thomas leads to the view that corruptible things
are also reached by Providence, as Romans 13:1 suggests. In the exitus-reditus
scheme, the end and beginning are one.¹⁸⁶ In the Summa Theologiae Providence
is therefore God’s practical knowledge of us: two slaves meet “by chance” as
they see it; but the master sent both. The universal provider does not however
have to arrange for perfection in every detail. God plans immediately, but in ex-
ecution he utilises intermediaries (STh I,q22.art 3), yet even then, because he is
all-present he works as an agent. Those hardened towards God are not excluded
from His providence, and they are kept in being.¹⁸⁷ The implication of this how-
ever is that this is the total of God’s involvement with them.
Predestination is here presented as a special form of Providence only for spi-
ritual or intellectual creatures. Thomas’s account is very much part of the doc-
trine of God, particularly of his knowledge and will: again, the divine ratio is
like prudence in humans. His action is immediate even while making use of sec-
ondary causes. Thomas did not think of time itself as cyclical. There is indeed a
return (reditus) to God but no endless replaying of a loop.¹⁸⁸ Humanity moves
from creation to fall to redemption to glorification, yet there is no place for a Joa-
chimite fulfillment of history within this world. One might say that Thomas did
not have a theology of the unraveling of history, yet he retained a historical vi-
sion of humanity.¹⁸⁹
In De veritate, Thomas’s major treatment of the subject, the operative anal-
ogy is that of Prudence.¹⁹⁰ For both Prudence in humans and Providence in God
require not only knowledge of ends but also something like desire of them. In the
earlier Commentary on the Sentences, God is presented more as an artisan and
 Torrell, Thomas d’Aquin, La providence, 95: “les traits de la création du monde et des divers-
es creatures parlent de la “sortie” de Dieu, tandis que celui du gouvernement divine – qui vient
immédiatement après et termine la Première partie de la Somme – commence précisément à de-
crier le mouvement du ‘retour” vers Dieu.”
 Cf. Steven A. Long, “Providence, liberté et loi naturelle,” Revue Thomiste 102 (2002):
355 – 406, 383.
 Torrell, “Saint Thomas et l’histoire,” 137: “En réalité, c’est la ‘structure’ de l’évènement, en-
tendue comme sortie-retour, qui est identique partout et toujours.”
 Max Seckler, Das Heil in der Geschichte: Geschichtstheologisches Denken bei Thomas von
Aquin (München: Beck, 1964). cf. Winfried H.J. Schachten, Ordo Salutis, das Gesetz als Weise
der Heilsvermittlung: Zur Kritik des Hl. Thomas von Aquin an Joachim von Fiore, Beiträge zur Ge-
schichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters 20 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1980).
 Michal Paluch, La profondeur de l’amour divin: évolution de la doctrine de la prédestination
dans l’oeuvre de saint Thomas d’Aquin, Bibliothèque Thomiste 55 (Paris: J. Vrin, 2004), 121.

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there is less material about Providence. Of course this might be related to his
source Lombard’s not making much space for the topic in the Sentences. In
the later work, Thomas observes that some creatures are led to their ends for
their own sake, others to their ends for the sake of others; the latter are directed
only for the good of their species, not as individuals, while the spiritual beings
participate in guiding (De ver 5,5). Creatures on earth can also do this guiding of
others – rather imperfectly but in a way that bestows dignity on humans. This
endures so long as humans live as rational creatures.¹⁹¹ Should they however
act like animals, they will be treated like those who exist only for the sake of oth-
ers. One must stay on the right path or one will end up receiving providence only
for the sake of others (propter alios). Thomas, like Albert, follows John of Dam-
ascus distinction between providentia approbationis and providentia concessio-
nis.
Thomas’ own ideas on the matter matured as he came to realise that God
willed things not only to be, but that his will extended to caring for all beings:¹⁹²
“Thomas therefore makes no apology for talking about the life of man uplifted in
grace in the secunda pars before he presents Christ, the one mediator of that
grace.”¹⁹³ In the tertia pars Christ is presented as the exemplary cause of all
that providential return.
However, in the development of Aquinas’ ideas, with Franciscan views act-
ing as a foil, the distinction between providence and predestination seems to
have decrased.¹⁹⁴ The Thomas of Summa Contra Gentiles had already treated
some questions concerning Predestination in the section on Providence. It is
the same power to effect that operates in each. Can prayer really change any-
thing? Yes, because God’s decision (sententia), which is executive as it were, is
 Ibid., 128: “Si la creature rationnelle est fidèle à la direction divine dans l’exercice de sa
providence, tout concourt au bien de ceux qui aiment Dieu. Selon l’Épître aux Romains (8,28):
‘Avec ceux qui l’aiment, Dieu collabore en tout pour leur bien’.”
 Ibid., 181: “[…] découvrant que Dieu ne veut pas uniquement que les choses soient mais
qu’elles soient selon tel ou tel mode, il a pu acceder à une conception de la providence qui em-
brasse tous les êtres de façon certaine.”
 Romanus Cessario, “Is Aquinas’s Summa only about Grace?” in Ordo Sapientiae et Amoris:
image et message de Saint Thomas d’Aquin à travers les récentes études historiques, herméneu-
tiques et doctrinales; hommage au professeur Jean-Pierre Torrell OP à l’occasion de son 65e anni-
versaire, ed. Carlos-Josaphat Pinto de Oliveira, Studia Friburgensia 78 (Fribourg: Editions Univer-
sitaire, 1993): 197– 210, 208. Chenu seems justified in arguing that Thomas learned the exitus-
reditus scheme at Viterbo in 1267.
 Paluch, La profondeur de l’amour divin, 310: “Alors que la providence achemine à leur fin
de façon infaillible les êtres soumis à la nécessité, mais oriente seulement les êtres dotes de lib-
erté, la predestination conduit infailliblement les élus à la fin dernière.”

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not the same thing as his divine counsel which is fixed and unchangeable. So
there exists within God himself a ratio ordinis which Thomas calls “providence”
as such and also his executio ordinis or gubernatio (governance). Both reside in
God, but one is more “inner” and the other is more “outer” (Sent Id.39,q.2a.1ad1).
Predestination belongs more to the latter.
Providence has very much to do with God’s knowledge of his creatures, ac-
cording to the analogy of human prudence (Cicero), although in Thomas knowl-
edge has priority over will, which in turn is a divine quality by which God con-
ducts things. God is like a father guiding the running of the house he built, and
in that sense it does seem that Aquinas gave a bit less room for free will, human
or divine, as everybody knows their place from the beginning.¹⁹⁵ The structure of
the Summa Contra Gentiles seems to witness to a change in Thomas’s thinking,
for there is a link between the Providence at the end of Book 3 and Book 4: the
journey of creatures towards their ends.¹⁹⁶
In De veritate, Thomas seems to leave issue of God’s care for humans to the
question on Predestination. As is noted by Torrell in his notes on this great work,
Providence in the form especially designed for humans seems limited to the
Elect.¹⁹⁷ This should not be viewed as any sort of a retreat from “objectivity”
in face of atheism – such an idea would be anachronistic. In belonging to the
Doctrine of God it is still very much an “objective” account of Providence.¹⁹⁸
Thre is little place for the experience of that care because Thomas wants to
think more about God himself and his action than about human experience
thereof. It could be that with all this “speculation” about God there is not
much Scripture in his argument and that these do appear when other terms
are used for how humans receive providence. Maybe this is why there is little
scripture here: other more “bibical-sounding” terms for providence are more
often used when Aquinas is writing about the experience of Providence by hu-
mans. Nevertheless there is always some connection between these two things,
and Thomas sees this in the effects of God’s execution or operation of his eternal
 Paluch, La profondeur de l’amour divin, 356: “La contingence des decisions du libre arbitre
est soumise à la certitude de la predestination.”
 Bernard McGinn, “The Development of the Thought of Thomas Aquinas on the Reconcilia-
tion of Divine Providence and Contingent Action,” The Thomist 39 (1975): 741– 752.
 Torrell, Introduction to Thomas d’Aquin, La providence, 16: “Au reste, ce genre est aujourd’-
hui franchement devalue et seuls les croyants convaincus peuvent parler de manière credible
d’un signe de la providence dans la déroulement de leur proper vie ou de ‘L’abandon à la divine
providence’.”
 Ibid., 35: “il ne confond pas métaphysique et pyschologie.”

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decisions.¹⁹⁹ Providence itself is something higher, regular, belonging to divine

knowing oriented and disposed, rather than to divine execution of divine will.
Any evil that happens to any animal can only be for sake of another animal
or of the efficacy of secondary human causes: higher bodies can influence lower
bodies (hence angels can, although not stars). Sinners exist at a level lower than
that of animals and need to be brought back from that state if God is going to
grant them good. This vision is more cosmological than personal in its ontology:
yet, epistemologically speaking, for Thomas providence is one of those revealed
things for faith (Summa Theologiae II-II q1,art8,ad1).
As Torrell in his commentary on De Providentia observes, already in De Ver-
itate 6a1 predestination and providence are clearly distinguished, for the latter
implies the idea of universal orientation towards the end of all things, for all
creatures, rational or irrational, bad or good. All human beings are ordained to-
wards blessedness by God’s providence, but not all make it the distance to the
glory, even though all are set on course. The Job commentary has only one men-
tion of the connection between providence and prudence, but it is more clearly
set out in Summa Theologiae I, q22. What is called prudence in humans has its
analogue in God’s Providence. God allows certain defects for the greater good
of the whole (prey for predators, persecution for martyrs) and knows both
sides of any story (as in that of the two servants who meet, they think, by acci-
dent).
Boethius had written (Cons. iv, 6): “Providence is the divine type itself.”
Aquinas had already mentioned Boethius’s O quis perpetua in his Commentary
on Job 2 and in his Prologue to his Sentences commentary.²⁰⁰ Rather than
adopt a Boethian compromise according to which the world is not eternal but
is perpetual,²⁰¹ Thomas separated his discourse into that of faith and reason: ac-
cording to the former the world was temporal. It is clear that this would simplify
an account of creation’s dependency upon its Maker. Thomas develops the idea
of the all-knowing ordering in (STh I, q22) article 2 resp: “And since His knowl-
edge may be compared to the things themselves, as the knowledge of art to the
objects of art, all things must of necessity come under His ordering; as all things
wrought by art are subject to the ordering of that art.”
 Ibid.: “La défaillance meme des êtres inférieurs reste “récupérable” par la providence à un
niveau supérieur.”
 Ibid., 182: “Albert le Grand et Alexandre de Halès incluront aussi le début de cette prière
dans leurs Sommes théologiques”
 Courcelle, ‘La Consolation de philosophie’ dans la tradition littéraire, 343: “La querelle rep-
araît au XIIIe siècle, Presque dans les memes termes.”

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The question of the relationship to Predestination is found best articulated

in article 2’s Reply to Objection 4.
When it is said that God left man to himself, this does not mean that man is exempt from
divine providence; but merely that he has not a prefixed operating force determined to only
the one effect; as in the case of natural things, which are only acted upon as though direct-
ed by another towards an end; and do not act of themselves, as if they directed themselves
towards an end, like rational creatures, through the possession of free will, by which these
are able to take counsel and make a choice. Hence it is significantly said: ‘In the hand of his
own counsel.’ But since the very act of free will is traced to God as to a cause, it necessarily
follows that everything happening from the exercise of free will must be subject to divine
providence. For human providence is included under the providence of God, as a particular
under a universal cause. God, however, extends His providence over the just in a certain
more excellent way than over the wicked; inasmuch as He prevents anything happening
which would impede their final salvation. For ‘to them that love God, all things work to-
gether unto good’ (Romans 8:28). But from the fact that He does not restrain the wicked
from the evil of sin, He is said to abandon them: not that He altogether withdraws His prov-
idence from them; otherwise they would return to nothing, if they were not preserved in
existence by His providence.
It would seem that Predestination is God not allowing a cause to intervene and
divert particular human creatures from the universal end. He had previously
mentioned the example of water stopping fire from burning: God will see to it
that “the just” hold their course.
There is a mixed economy of necessity and contingency. At article 4, ad 3
Thomas writes:
We must remember that properly speaking ‘necessary’ and ‘contingent’ are consequent
upon being, as such. Hence the mode both of necessity and of contingency falls under
the foresight of God, who provides universally for all being; not under the foresight of caus-
es that provide only for some particular order of things […]. And thus it has prepared for
some things necessary causes, so that they happen of necessity; for others contingent caus-
es, that they may happen by contingency, according to the nature of their proximate causes.
(Art 4 resp.)
For Aquinas each creature continues to need God to be kept in existence: so

providence is just a continuation of his created power. Ratzinger argues that Bo-
naventura was less interested in souls relating to God than in establishing that
they found their place by incorporating the higher cosmos in themselves. One
could call this providential-ethical rather than personal-mystical (as in Augus-
tine).²⁰² In any case Providence is about linking creation with the present
 Joseph Ratzinger, “Der Mensch und die Zeit nach Bonaventura,” in L’Homme et Son Destin

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through the sweep of history.²⁰³ At this point we can see how the Dominican and
the Franciscan concur in their cosmic vision of God’s providence.
d’apres les penseurs du moyen age, ed. Marie-Dominique Chenu, Actes du premier Congrès inter-
national de philosophie médiévale, Louvain et Bruxelles, 28 (Louvain-Paris: Nauwelaetrs 1960):
473 – 83, 479: “aristotelisch-kosmisch, nicht augustinisch-personalistisch…entscheidet er [Bona-
ventura] sich für einen körperlichen locus continens, das Empyreum, das als vornehmster Körp-
er den Kosmos abschliesst und begrenzt, sodass es ‘ausserhalb davon schlechterdings nichts
gibt’.”
 Michael Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik II/1. Gott der Schöpfer, 6. Auflage (München:
Huber, 1962), 124: “Falsch ist die deistische Anschauung, daß die Welterhaltung nur eine nega-
tive sei, eine Nichtzerstörung. Aber ebenso unrichtig ist die Meinung, daß die Welterhaltung eine
fortgesetzt erneute Schöpfung sei (Bayle, gest. 1706). Sie ist eine fortgesetzte dauernde
Schöpfung.”

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Chapter Three: Later Medieval Developments
Alternatives to the High Medieval Consensus
It might be illustrative to take the example of what happened to the medieval

phenomenon of the “trial by ordeal” wherein the establishment of guilt or inno-
cence of the accused was left to divine Providence’s reaction to the imposition of
an ordeal (handling a red-hot iron, being tied and thrown in water, etc.). As Rob-
ert Bartlett has demonstrated,¹ the ordeal supposed that God “can change the
natural properties of the physical world” such that hands would be unblistered
and the innocent life preserved through drowning. Peter the Chanter in his Ver-
bum Abbreviatum protested against the practice, as did Aquinas.² The abolition
of the ordeal began with Lateran IV in 1215 and this was established in law by
most nations during the century thereafter. The problem was that the ordeal
looked a bit like a pseudo-sacrament and hence needed theological justification,
which was not forthcoming. By the later Middle Ages the trial by ordeal had dis-
appeared, but not, thinks Bartlett, on the grounds of doubts in God’s immediate
providence or immanent justice.³ The critics argued from Scripture that it was an
illicit tempting of God, not that it was irrational in metaphysical terms of other
beliefs. The providentialism of the Middle Ages was full-blooded and coherent: a
powerful God could and did make His will known.⁴ Hence it is perhaps ill-ad-
vised to see the Enlightenment as delivering the vital blow to Providence
when early modern theologians (e. g. Perkins and contemporary early six-
teenth-century Jesuits) were still viewing ordeals with suspicion owing to their
occult associations as “counter-witchcraft” rather than on the grounds that
“nothing happens.” The very fact that in practice judicial torture towards confes-
sion increasingly took over from ordeal during the period of 1200 – 1700 does
suggest a loss of confidence in the method.⁵ One should note that God was
not seen interfering with his laws, but rather the natures; including the relevant
innocence or guilt would push towards an outcome which would reveal the char-
acter of the secondary cause.
 Robert Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water: the Medieval Judicial Ordeal (Oxford: Clarendon Press;
New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.)
 Aquinas, Summa Theologia II-II 95,8.
 Bartlett, Trial by Fire and Water, 164.
 Ibid., 166.
 Ibid., 142.

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The challenge to “in-built providence” and its subsequent decline as a fixed

idea might well have had philosophical antecedents. In the sixth century, John
Philoponus in his De opificio mundi had combatted the notion, affirmed by Ar-
istotle, that all or “the universe” was naturally in a state of inertia, needing
power from outside for movement or change. Power, as a non-physical entity
could be inherent in the system, and that was part of the high medieval view,
Thomas included.⁶ Up until the time of Franciscus de Marchia (d. 1344), “impe-
tus” could be viewed as something God delegated to creaturely agents. But with
Nicolas of Oresme it was established that there was a constant energy needed to
work to keep the heavens in movement.⁷ The language of anima mundi is not
used, and in any case the power is viewed as something that changes things
rather than just preserves or unites them as God’s power in creation had been
viewed in earlier centuries. Neither was it worked by angelic mediation being
sent out by God, nor is it a force in the air between God and his creation (as Phil-
oponus’ critic, Cosmas Indicopleustes thought),⁸ but it comes from outside into
creation in an active and dynamic way.⁹ Ultimately this world-view is a monistic
one, since all is connected, including the heavens and the earth, and any distinc-
tion that operates is one of “form-matter” rather than of “spirit-matter.”¹⁰
For an Averroist like Siger of Brabant, divine providing meant divine deter-
mining and ordination of causes to effects, which then offers God prudence (as
distinct from eternal wisdom), which considers the future.¹¹ Providence then is
not only prescience, but goes beyond it, to include power, ordaining and direct-
ing, as part of the divine version of practical reasoning. As Siger comments on
Aristotle’s Physics II,18,2, one might wonder whether, since human prudence
considers contingent things, this excludes them from being subject to divine
providence. His answer is: no, divine providence touches contingent things
 Klaus-Jürgen Grün, Vom unbewegten Beweger zur bewegenden Kraft: Der pantheistische Cha-
rakter der Impetustheorie im Mittelalter (Paderborn: Mentis, 1999).
 Ibid. 175: “Der impetus zeigt sich hierbei als Kraft, die zwischen Gott und dem Menschen ver-
mittelt […]. Bei (Nicolas) Oresme nimmt der impetus die Gestalt einer universalen Kraft an, die es
erlaubt, auch die Himmelsbewegungen durch die Impetustheorie zu erklären.”
 Buridan in his Questions on Physics VIII thought that Aristotle’s theory that the air was the
agent for the object was just too complicated.
 Grün, Vom unbewegten Beweger zur bewegenden Kraft, 114. Cf. Richard Sorabji, John Philopo-
nus and the Rejection of Aristotelian Science (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 10, who
terms this “internal impetus.”
 Comm. on Aristotle’s Physics 2,p15: “ἡ φύσις πάντα ἕνεκα του ποιοῦσα.”
 Johannes Josef Duin, La Doctrine de la Providence dans les ecrits de Siger de Brabant, Philo-
sophes medievaux 3 (Louvain: Editions de l’Institut Supérieur de Philosophie, 1954): 303: “Pro-
videre veut dire, selon Siger, préordonner des causes à une fin determine.”

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106 Chapter Three: Later Medieval Developments
too, even if human prudence does not. So even human prudence is included in
divine prudential operation. To truly govern one most know the ends of things,
and God does indeed. There is no doubting providence’s power: nothing it or-
dains can fail. Some contingency in the universe is preserved, yet the keynote
for Latin Averroism is that the Unicity of being carries with it a necessity in itself,
with a kind of relationship that is analogous to that of cause and effect. Whereas
Thomas was interested in demonstrating the existence of God, Siger focused on
God’s universal causality: not that He is, but what He does. Even the intellective
soul although eternal, is caused and known in its essence.¹² As mentioned this
still leaves room for some contingency in what things get up to or are “in them-
selves,” in fulfilling their own nature, but that is a fairly thin account of freedom.
Knowing things “in essence” sounds close to the notion that God knows things
through their species. One might think of a potter who makes many pots and
knows the basic design, although some colouring and shaping might be distinc-
tive. There will be no large surprises for God, nor for his creation. In as much as
God knows his power he can be said to know all things to which that power ex-
tends.¹³
As with Siger, so Thomas had believed in a divine knowledge of particulars
that was extended through a hierarchy of beings, and in that sense there is truly
no praevidentia to God: too much gets in the way of a clear view, as it were. As
with the famous Boethian image (Cons V.6) of seeing all parts of the road from
the mountaintop, all ages and their events were equally known to God. Yet God
can be of course viewed as the first cause of the will’s free action, moving each
will to move freely (as laid out in Summa Theologiae I, q83,a1). But the condition-
al necessity that ensues is that which results from the freedom of the creature.
There is, as it were, plenty of room for God to manoeuvre without impinging
on creaturely freedom. So, in order to give direction to things God must have
knowledge of their ends, but not a fore-knowledge that causatively fixes all
things. John Wippel describes the change thus:
According to Thomas, it is because things are eternally present to the divine mind that God
can know future contingents with certainty as they are in themselves. It is also true, of
course that for such events to be realized in actuality in the course of time, the divine
will must intervene; but this is required to account for their actual existence, not for
God’s knowledge of them. However, according to Henry [of Ghent], it is because God
 Ibid., 323: “En pleine conformité avec saint Thomas, Siger y enseigne que Dieu connaît les
futurs contingents et que cette prescience ne supprime pas leur contingence parce que Dieu ne
les connaît pas en eux-mêmes, mais dans et par sa propre essence.”
 Ibid., 325: “Son essence et son intelligence sont l’ars factiva omnium: comme l’artisan con-
naît son ouvre, de même le Premier connaît tout ce qui derive de lui.”

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knows the eternal decrees of his will that he knows with certainty the things he will pro-
duce and therefore, things that are future to us […] Whether his account will allow for di-
vine foreknowledge of such things as they are in themselves, or only as they are in God,
their productive cause, might well be questioned.¹⁴
In other words, for Henry,¹⁵ a secular master who opposed an Averroist picture of
divine emanation and taking all the initiative in creation in its stage of continu-
ation, God could not ‘blindly” cause something to come into being in time with-
out also fore-knowing it. This however does not mean fixing everything, and
there is a large degree of mutuality in the God-creation nexus. One could
argue that the Franciscan doctrine of the simplicity and infinity of God suits a
view in which God is understood as extended into creation and time by his will.¹⁶
According to Henry creation is one act and the preservation in existence of
creation is another. At creation the creature changed into existence, which sets
up existence as an experience of change. Later Henry would controversially sug-
gest the obvious corollary, that creaturely essences in God’s mind pre-existed
God’s decision to actualise them, which would seem to accord creatureliness
the status of necessary being rather than just a degree of creaturely autonomy.¹⁷
However to stay with the earlier Henry and to emphasise his view of a prov-
idential God: God being Trinity means this: “(t)hat God is absolutely self-con-
scious in terms of knowledge and love, as well as wholly free to create or not,
implies His wholly undivided and responsible awareness of each and every crea-
 John F. Wippel, “Divine Knowledge, Divine Power and Human Freedom in Thomas Aquinas
and Henry of Ghent,” in Divine Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic,
Jewish, and Christian Perspectives, ed. Tamar Rudavsky, Synthese Historical Library, Texts and
Studies in the History of Logic and Philosophy 25 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984): 213 – 241, 230.
 On Henry in general see the useful W. Vanhamel, ed., Henry of Ghent: Proceedings of the In-
ternational Colloquium on the Occasion of the 700th Anniversary of His Death (1293) (Leuven:
Leuven University Press, 1996).
 Zenon Kaluza, Les querelles doctrinales a Paris Nominalistes et Réalistes aux confins du XIVe
et du XVe siècle. Quodlibet. Ricerche e strumenti di filosofia medieval 2 (Bergamo: P. Lubrina,
1988), 62: “Chez Duns Scot et les scotistes la simplicité de l’essence divine et la distinction for-
melle des attributs sont fondées sur la notion de l’ infini.”
 Robert Wielockx, “Henry of Ghent and the events of 1277,” in A Companion to Henry of Ghent,
ed. Gordon A. Wilson, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 23 (Leiden: Brill, 2011):
25 – 62. Cf. Raymond Macken “La temporalité radicale de la creature selon Henri de Gand,”
RTAM 38 (1971): 211– 272.

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ture and act of creation.”¹⁸ This prevents creation being “necessary,” at very least
in its existence here and now. Flores explains this well:
The immanent emanations are necessary, since God is necessary. Creation is not necessary,
since the divine potencies of intellect and will are fully actualized in the personal emana-
tions. No further action is needed for their perfection […] Because of the personal emana-
tions God is a personal Creator […] Because of the production of the Holy Sprit, God‘s will is
wholly free to create among these possible creatures. Accordingly, God is wholly conscious
and responsible for each and every one of His creatures.¹⁹
God is inseparable from all that is created; the universe was the combination of
creator and created, and being has to participate in God in order to be. Divine
freedom is safeguarded by the hypothesis of “possible worlds.”
Considering the extent to which the later medieval thinkers sound so philo-
sophical in their theologies, how might one go about defending the assumption
that the Church’s theology of Providence has been drawn in large measure from
the bible? Or at least how demonstrate that an imaginative understanding of
Christian revelation shaped the definition and employment of metaphysical con-
cepts as much as vice versa?
As Venicio Marcolino has argued, the Franciscan Alexander of Hales wanted
to apply the theological principles of salvation history back on to God and his
work of creation, and to consider the latter only in the light of the former and
in God through his revelation.²⁰ So God’s work of setting things up in creation,
and not just the aspects of salvation, the opus reparationis, to use Hugh’s term
with which Alexander engaged, is the subject of theology; everyday things are
to be regarded in the light of God too, and to do that we need the illumination
provided by revelation. This includes finding conceptions of ontology in Scrip-
ture.²¹ With great respect for the Hebrew Scriptures, Alexander sought to find,
 Juan Carlos Flores, “Henry of Ghent on the Trinity,” in A Companion to Henry of Ghent, ed.
Gordon A. Wilson, Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 23 (Leiden: Brill, 2011): 135 – 150,
145.
 Ibid., 147.
 Venicio Marcolino, Das Alte Testament in der Heilsgeschichte: Untersuchung zum dogmati-
schen Verständnis des alten Testaments als Heilsgeschichtliche Periode nach Alexander von
Hales, BGPTM, NS 2 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970), 24 f.: “Eine scheinbare Metaphysierung der
Theologie ist in diesem geistigen Umbruch die einzige Weise, das Heilsgeschichtliche in ihr
zu retten. Der heilsgeschichtliche Zug der Schöpfung begründet ihre theologische Handlung.”
 “Materia de qua est divina substantia manifestanda per Christum in opera restaurationis,”
Alexander, Summa, 238,185c, cited in Marcolino, Das Alte Testament in der Heilsgeschichte, 29,
where he comments: “Alexander entwickelt eine biblische Theologie, welche keine reine Exe-
gese mehr ist, aber aus der Schrift herauswächst und immer von ihr lebt.” Cf. Ludger Honnefeld-

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e. g. the idea of the movement of return to God on the basis of Exodus 3:7– 8 and
14– 15. The Old Testament Law (and much of the Old Testament canon contains
instruction) is an expression of the divine will, which can develop, if not mutate
as such. The law in the context of Israelite history shows humans their power-
lessness without Christ, to whom the Old Testament thus points.²²
Yes, the order of theology should follow a creation-fall-restoration (as per
Hugh and Peter Lombard), but theology aims at beatitude and that should be
central. Hugh had really not known what to do with history between creation
and Christ, but Alexander saw its importance as a mirror of the human state,
needing to move forward to find beatitude. Although divine presence in the
Old Testament’s account of Israel seemed provisional, nevertheless one can
speak of the presence of Christ in the Old Testament through their sacrifices
or sacraments. In New Testament sacraments, there is gratia unionis, while in
the Old Testament believers can benefit from the gratia virtutum which removes
guilt – this distinction was influenced by Albert the Great.²³ Time and Heilsge-
chichte are like medicine, but while it is the universality of Christ’s saving
deed that makes possible the reaching of salvation, still it is the image of God
to which that gratia virtutum attaches.²⁴ Alexander followed Hugh and not Lom-
bard here in arguing that the Old Testament sacraments functioned as means of
salvation. He admits they did not have the same effect as New Testament sacra-
ments; since from the New Testament onwards, gratia virtutum has been predi-
cated not on sin but on the image of God. The Old Testament history therefore
describes the encounter of educative providence and corresponding penitence.
Its sacrifices (as described in Leviticus) are nicely balanced between those
er, “Die Kritik des Johannes Duns Scotus am kosmologischen Nezessitarismus der Araber: An-
sätze zu einem neuen Freiheitsbegriff,” in Die abendländische Freiheit vom 10. zum 14. Jahrhun-
dert: Der Wirkungszusammenhang von Idee und Wirklichkeit im europäischen Vergleich, ed. Jo-
hannes Fried, Konstanzer Arbeitskreis für mittelalterliche Geschichte (Stuttgart: Jan
Thorbecke, 1991): 249 – 263.
 Marcolino, Das Alte Testament in der Heilsgeschichte, 108, with reference to Alexander, Glos-
sa III d40 2 IIIa 542.
 Ibid., 139., Anm. 67. The OT believers are believed to be in limbo, i. e. in the restful bosom of
Abraham for those who do have faith, as beneficiaries of Christ’s hell-descent.
 Ibid., 199: “Das Gesetz bestimmt nicht nur das sittliche Tun des alttestamentliche Menschen,
sondern auch den Kult, in dem er seinen Glauben ausdrückt.” Also, Italo Fornaro, La teologia
dell’immagine nella Glossa di Alessandro di Hales (Vicenza: LIEF, 1985). Also, Walter H. Principe,
Alexander of Hales’ Theology of the Hypostatic Union. Vol. 2 The Theology of the Hypostatic Union
in the Early 13th c. (Toronto: PIMS, 1967).

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which indicate the ongoing and leading grace of God and the need to acknowl-
edge and rue sin.²⁵
An example of the move towards contingency and providence being taken
more seriously from the late thirteenth century onwards can be seen in treat-
ments of the topic of the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22. Following Albert, Tho-
mas was clear that the conditions for God’s operating were quite different from
those binding on humans. There was of course the aspect of the miraculous; as
lawgiver he could have dispensation from his own laws, although this was ex-
ceptional, as if to prove the rule that one could rely on Natural Law as pretty
much fixed. However the Franciscans, Alexander of Hales and Bonaventure
would regard “law” as part of history or Heilsgeschichte and so as subject to de-
velopment.²⁶ By their lights, something evil is in the first instance evil because it
is prohibited (malum quia prohibitum). This led to new insights into the change-
ability of morality: to call morality provisional is to assert, as Ockham would,
that it was part of God’s providence. Natural law then had to correspond to a na-
ture that was liable to evolve, or rather be changed by God in response to the
contingencies of history, including sin.
As has been established, Thomas Aquinas followed the Boethian motto that
all things are equally present to God, and that anything “future” is only so in re-
lation to other things. God can know all things eternally. And while contingency
of creaturely freedom is preserved, ultimately, in God’s view the actions are
fixed: “Although Thomas claimed elsewhere that the domain of God’s causality
also encompasses man’s free acts of will, remarkably enough he did not use
God’s causality in his account of foreknowledge.”²⁷ “Thomas affirmed the neces-
sity of God’s knowledge, including that of future contingents,”²⁸ and that knowl-
 Marcolino, Das Alte Testament in der Heilsgeschichte, 214: “Das Alte Testament selbst äußert
sich über das Sündenbekenntnis in Jos 7,19, über die Reue in Jer 3,14 und Joel 2,13, über die Ge-
nugtuung in Lev 4– 6 (QA 48,5,844) culpa autem actualis peccati deletur virtute contritionis pec-
cati […].” It is not absolution but contrition that matters.
 Isabelle Mandrella, Das Isaak-Opfer: Historisch-systematische Untersuchung zu Rationalität
und Wandelbarkeit des Naturrechtes in der mittelalterlichen Lehre vom natürlichen Gesetz,
BGPTMNF 62 (Münster: Aschendorff, 2002), 174: “Thomas hingegen stellt die Dekaloggebote
als solche nicht der Wandelbarkeit anheim, sondern verlegt diese in die Ebene der jeweiligen
Konkretion eines Gebotes.”
 Maarten J. F. M Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen: Divine Knowledge in Late Medieval Thought,
Studies in the History of Christian Thought 50 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 167, with reference to Thomas,
Sent I d38,q1,a 5c; STh I,q14a,13c—following Boethius.
 Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 172: “Thomas affirmed the necessity of God’s knowledge, in-
cluding that of future contingents.” That is, even if the thing is contingent; his knowledge is im-
mutable.

Authenticated
edge was immutable. Yet Duns Scotus two generations later observed that all that
pagans could manage to demonstrate by reason was the mere existence of a cre-
ator and a conserver. When it comes to divine action, providence of a more “spe-
cial” sort, then Revelation is needed. Just as God’s ubiquity could not be proved,
but was a matter of faith (Rep. Par., d37,q2),²⁹ the fact of divine action in a person
does not prove God is present, for He can do his conserving power without pres-
ence, pace Thomas.³⁰ Creation has an ontological autonomy: any contact with
the Creator has to be “personal” or “relational” and only in that sense at a dis-
tance, since personal-relational preserves distance.³¹
In the case of Aquinas, since contingents are things that are only arrived at
by the intellect through the senses, in God’s case there has to be some indirect-
ness about how God could know contingents, in other words through the secon-
dary cause affecting the event or thing or creature. However, Duns Scotus was
not content with the idea that contingency can be placed in the two-causes theo-
ry, since that would mean that God’s immediacy to the event would be re-
moved.³² Scotus urged “divine immediacy”; if Thomas insisted that God’s action
be tailored to the receiver, then for Duns, God’s coexistence with creation in-
volved a real relation. That is how he understood the God of the Bible and the
Fathers. For Scotus it had nothing to do with any sort of randomness of non-ne-
cessity, but very much to do with freedom, if God is to be the Christian God. Sco-
tus’ outright attack on Averroistic philosophers’ necessitarianism when naming
God the author of things grew from his conviction that there was radical contin-
gency as well as variety in creation. In his Ordinatio I.d.2 and his De primo prin-
cipio c4, Scotus argued that God’s providence reigned in all things, and that He
had the freedom to determine and hence necessitate Himself; but it is a necessity
 Luigi Iammarrone, Giovanni Duns Scoto. Metafisico e Teologo: Le Tematiche Fondamentali

della sua Filosofia e Teologia (Roma: Miscellanea Francescana 1999), 465: “Indubbiamente
Scoto nega che la provvidenza divina speciale con la quale vengono governati gli esseri intelli-
genti, possa essere dimonstrata con la sola ragione. In effetti, tale provvidenza riguarda l’eco-
nomia dell’ordine soprannaturale, la quale, come Scoto afferma in tutto il prologo dell’Ordina-
tio, è conoscibile soltanto per divina rivelazione.”
 Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I,q8,aa; Quodlibet XI,a1; SCG III,68.
 Iammaronne, Giovanni Duns Scoto, 476.
 Fritz Hoffmann, Ockham-Rezeption und Ockham-Kritik im Jahrzehnt nach Wilhelm von Ock-
ham in Oxford 1322 – 1332, BGPTM 50 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1998), 300: “Kontingentes wird
nach der Lehre des Thomas direkt durch den Sinn und nur indirekt durch den Intellekt erkannt.
Da Gottes Wissen unveränderlich ist, muß ihm auch das Kontingente in einer unveränderlichen
Weise gegenwärtig sein. […] Der Kontigenzbegriff ist bei Thomas wesentlich ontologisch geformt
[…]. Ganz anders bei Duns Scotus! Sein Kontingenzbegriff ist wesentlich von der Theologie her
bestimmt.”

Authenticated
of will not of nature. For God’s will is in constant motion in the world and as
such there is some amount of flux in the world, rather than it being the case
that His will might be moving at any moment from potential to actuality.³³ Cor-
respondingly, human free action is always deliberative and reactive. God is so
necessary that all else is contignent, and gives it all potentia executiva. Contin-
gence is not just physical but also metaphysical, as God chooses from various
possible worlds.
Fritz Hoffmann argues that, in turn, Ockham personalised this contingency
even more, and was happy to say that God knew future contingents – against
Aristotle. For again, the biblical God is one who is infinite and roams all over:
that is who God is in himself.³⁴ There is mystery to God: “Lord” and “God” are
names for God, which do not exhaust his essence. Scotus thought that provi-
dence, being a matter of the divine will, could not be well grasped by reason
alone. It was part of God’s supernatural economy as he stated right away in
the Prologue to his Ordinatio. Pagan reason could demonstrate the exsistence
of a Creator and a conserver, but no more. His conserving power did not require
his actual presence but the power of his expressed will.³⁵ Just as God’s ubiquity
could not be proved, but was a matter of faith (Reportatio Parisiensis, d37,q2), so
the fact of divine action being experience by a human person did not prove God
is present. It is just like the Sun and its rays: He can do his conserving power
without presence.³⁶ This wards off any danger of pantheism and there remains
an ontological autonomy, such that any contact with the Creator has to be “per-
sonal.”³⁷
God now seemed to be in the business of making things happen through
touching the affective forces of humans.³⁸ Many Franciscans after 1277 were try-
 See Honnefelder, “Die Kritik des Johannes Duns Scotus,” 249 – 263.
 F. Hoffmann, Ockham-Rezeption und Ockham-Kritik, 305: “Weder das vom göttlichen Willen
determinierte Wissen Gottes (Scotus), noch die Ideen (Bonaventura), noch die alles ungreifende
Allgegenwart Gottes (Boethius, Thomas von Aquin), sondern allein die Unendlichkeit Gottes ist
der Grund dafür, daß Gott alles Zukünftige weiß. Ockham setzt die Unendlichkeit Gottes mit dem
Wesen Gottes gleich” (see Ph. Boehner [ed.], Guillelmi de Ockham opera philosophica et theolog-
ica. Opera theologica [St. Bonaventure, N.Y.: St. Bonaventure University, 1967– 1986, 441]).
 Iammarrone, Giovanni Duns Scoto, 465.
 pace Thomas in his STh I,q8 aa; Quod;XI,a1; SCG III,68.
 Iammarone, Giovanni Duns Scoto, 476.
 Peter Nickl. “‘Libertas proprie non est nisi in voluntate’: Libertà e soggettività in Pietro di
Giovanni Olivi,” in Pierre de Jean Olivi – Philosophe et Théologien: actes du colloque de philos-
ophie médiévale, 24 – 25 octobre 2008, Université de Fribourg, eds. Catherine König-Pralong, Oliv-
er Ribordy, and Tiziana Suarez Nani, Scrinium Friburgense, 29 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010):
355 – 368, 367, on his Lectura super Apocalipsim: “Lo Spirito non si manifesta in modo intellet-

Authenticated
ing to avoid the idea that God’s will was just the executive organ of the intel-
lect.³⁹ Reading the Scriptures in a literal sense, they looked for typological cor-
respondences, which like skimming stones would leap beyond the New Testa-
ment into the history of the Church and, more importantly the beginnings of a
history of a new Humanity.⁴⁰ Theology was called back by Peter John Olivi
from its philosophical pretence to embrace biblical exegesis: to be scriptural re-
quires an eye for scriptural symbolism. Olivi whose two main authorities were
the bible and Ps-Dionysius, found it significant that the book of Revelation
came last. Only at the end of History would God’s plan be fully revealed. Spiri-
tual understanding of the text was not about allegory but about understanding
the letter of the text in its providential disposition, its context within the whole
of the text as a reflection of the divine intention, carefully and precisely as well
as richly reflected in Scripture.⁴¹ Therefore Olivi did not employ a schema of four
scriptural senses; with Bonaventura he held that poverty was the key to scrip-
tures, or, one might add, a looking-up to Christ from a lowly position, trusting
in his spiritual providence and timing. Christian history included the progressive
unveiling of the sense of Scripture and its symbolism in which the impression of
the Spirit’s new interpretations would be harmonised with the tradition of the
Church’s understanding.⁴²
Olivi was perhaps the first to sustain the modern idea of freedom as a par-
ticular capacity of the will. Bonaventura had already written (II Sent
d25p1a,un.,q6) that free will resided between reason and will as its start and
tuale, ma affettivo, cioè come ‘fiamma e forno dell’amore divino,’ come ‘camera dell’ebbrezza
spirituale.’ Come ‘farmacia di aroma divini e unzioni spirituali […] per cui tutta la verità del
Verbo Incarnato e della Potenza di Dio Padre non si manifeserà solo tramite la semplice conis-
cenza, ma anche tramite l’esperienza gustative e palpabile’.” Affect is what penetrates more
deeply than intellect into reality.
 Bonaventura, In II Sent d25,p1a,q6: “arbitrii libertas residet penes rationem et voluntatem,
ita, quod in una illarum potentiarum inchoatur et in alia consummator.”
 Sylvain Piron, “Le metier de théologien selon Olivi,” in Pierre de Jean Olivi – Pholosophe et
Théologien: actes du colloque de philosophie médiévale, 24 – 25 octobre 2008, Université de Fri-
bourg, eds. Catherine König-Pralong, Oliver Ribordy, and Tiziana Suarez Nani, Scrinium Fribur-
gense, 29 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010): 17– 85, 82: “Ce dévoilement progressif ne peut lui-même pro-
venir de nouvelles interventions incomprehensibles de l’Esprit dans l’histoire. Il doit au
contraire trouver son resort dans l’histoire de l’Église, au sein d’un processus qu’Olivi comprend
sur une mode conflictuel.”
 Ibid., 62: “Il s’agit à la fois de saisir la letter dans son sens littéral. Étant place là où elle l’est,
et de l’éclairer en la rapportant à l’ensemble du texte don’t la structure reflète le plan divin […]
comprendre cette disposition providentielle de la lettre indique que rien n’a été écrit par hazard
ou par erreur.”
 Ibid., 82.

Authenticated
completion.⁴³ However for Olivi it was the will alone which in entertaining syn-
chronic contingency (the ability to act the opposite at the same moment) was
truly free. Very much unlike Thomas, but in accordance with Scotus, reflection
was for the will alone, thus dethroning the Intellect.⁴⁴ This might appear to be
a matter of anthropology rather than having anything to do with Divine Will
and Providence, until we read that the Spirit does not show himself in an intel-
lectual way, but in a flame of love, ecstatically,⁴⁵ with the result that God can
guide creation from within, by getting in between its cracks, as it were. To
work on affect is to penetrate more deeply than simply to work on conscience.
Accordingly Olivi opposed the Aristotelian idée fixe that God could not be
directly effective at a distance, as though his ideas for the world had to be exe-
cuted by himself in the world by a two-step movement. Relying on Roger Bacon’s
theory of light-emanation, by which the species of light turned divine idea into
action, Olivi held the world to be in perpetual motion, but teleologically, not me-
chanically (equal and opposite reactions were excluded), although impetus-
theory could make room for God’s effective presence. In a sense God’s touching
the world at a tangent is a way of explaining how God could be close in act to the
work, as He gives over his power into the universe. God is not close in the sense
of Being.
Hans Blumenberg has called this development the theory of transferred cau-
sality (übertragene Kausalität), like the energy that the stone-throwing hand
gives to the stone. The cosmos takes on something of that energy. Grün traces
the late-thirteenth-fourteenth-century development of this idea from Peter John
Olivi to Nicolas Oresme and on to John Buridan, with all this happening in the
context of a condemnation of “pan-dynamism” at the Council of Vienne in
1311,⁴⁶ because it seemed to be associated with the idea of God revealing Himself
within the world in present epochs, a form of Joachimite heresy. As for Oresme
he was clear that one should not be considering impetus here as a physical cause
 “arbitrii libertas residet penes rationem et voluntatem, ita, quod in una illarum potentiarum
inchoatur et in alia consummator.” It is a case of “both-and.”
 “Duns Scoto, dal canto suo, giungerà addirittura a caratterizzare la volontà come unica fa-
coltà razionale dell’uomo, lasciando l’intelletto in disparate in quanto facoltà ‘irrazionale’.”
(Nickl, “Libertas proprie non est nisi in voluntate,” 358).
 Cf. Pierre de Jean Olivi, De septem sentimentis Christ Iesu, ed. Marco Bartoli. Archivum Fran-
ciscanum Historicum 91 (1998): 533 – 549, 535: “summus et supremus gradus elevationis mentis in
Deum est per experimentales et medullares sensus et gustus amoris.”
 Grün, Vom unbewegten Beweger zur bewegenden Kraft, 162: “Olivis Konzeption von Bewe-
gung und bewegender Kraft der Seele nimmt streckenweise den Charakter eines Pandynamis-
mus an, wie er für seine Epoche unüblich ist und teilweise auch Gegenstand der Verurteilung
von Vienne in Jahre 1311 gewesen sein dürfte.”

Authenticated
but as something higher or metaphysical.⁴⁷ God was very much involved in nat-
ural processes, as he argued in his Livre du ciel et monde, even though He was
not part of them. In the 1360s Oresme had translated Aristotle’s Poetics and his
thinking verged on the kind of thing condemned in 1277. Annelise Meier has ar-
gued that in the fourteenth century causality came to mean efficient causality
‘from beyond’, such that the things which received (formal and material causes)
were not seen as making much of a contribution, or were making just as much as
the “prior” thing operating causally on them. ⁴⁸ Oresme’s distinctive was to re-
gard acceleration as the true cause of movement, although this would not be in-
fluential, since Jean Buridan’s version would be accepted in the following two
centuries. Yet for Orseme there was an acceptance of mechanism in the acknowl-
edgement of a pendulum, in the days when watches were first being made: the
point is that energy is passed on and saved – but it ultimately has to come from
outside, although not remotely, since Oreseme was aware that natural chains of
causation would weaken owing to resistance. God came very close. Grün notes
the similarities to Schelling, who contested Goethe’s and Hegel’s notion that en-
ergy was intrinsic to matter.⁴⁹ Oresme’s Optik stressed the need for prophecy in
negotiating a world that was neither eternal (Averroism) nor about to end immi-
nently (Joachimite apocalypticism).⁵⁰ In the sense that hypotheses work like
prognostications, the advance of natural science owed something to Joachimite
prophecy, but really as tempered by Oresme’s more sober concerns for the pres-
ent world. Likewise it would be Newton’s penchant to bring the kingdom of God
forward into “present-future” history, where it could be “tamed,” lose its terrors,
and become “postmillennial,” a view of Eschatology that stood at the end of this
early modern development. This was a progression from within medieval Escha-
tology, although Fried argues that this would only make the demons which rea-
son could not quite drive out return later with more force.⁵¹
Dante, the great poet of that time (early fourteenth century), stands out as
exceptional in his equating a lower-level Fortuna with Providence, for it was
 Ibid., 185: “Bezüglich der Impetustheorie vertritt Oresme die Ansicht, daß der impetus nicht
in das Gebiet der Naturwissenschaft oder Naturphilosophie gehört, sondern in die Metaphysik.”
 Annalies Maier, Metaphysische Hintergründe der spätscholastischen Naturphilosophie, Stu-
dien zur Naturphilosophie der Spätscholastik 4 (Roma, Ed. di Storia e Letteratura, 1955), 150.
 Grün, Vom unbewegten Beweger zur bewegenden Kraft, 203.
 Johannes Fried, Aufstieg aus dem Untergang. Apokalyptisches Denken und die Entstehung der
modernen Naturwissenschaft im Mittelalter (München: Beck, 2009), 169 f. Cf. at 181: “Der Auf-
bruch der exakten Naturwissenschaften war eingehüllt in Eschatologie.”
 Ibid., 188 ff.

Authenticated
Providence indeed that was bringing about the restoration of the Empire.⁵² As
Alcuin once had, Dante too called Providentia the “daughter of God” when he
spoke of her as the general ministra of God (Inferno vii,78). In Book 2 of the
Roman de Fauvel by Dante’s contemporary Gervais de Bus, Fortuna tells us
that she applies the decrees of Providence in the sub-lunar sphere; she is sister
of Wisdom and is suspicious of the category of “good luck.”⁵³ Fortune seems also
to play a role in helping eternal wisdom to be taught to those temporal creatures,
particularly as the world possibly entered into an awareness of insecurity. If For-
tune had carved out an area for itself in the earlier Middle Ages, it was now
closely identified with God’s wisdom and providence, and very much part of ful-
filling God’s purposes in the later part of that period.
Consequently I think Matthias Vollmer is probably right:
Fortuna, fatum und providentia werden hier abermals zusammengebracht und dennoch ge-
trennt gehalten. Fortuna mit ihrem Rad zieht zuerst den Blick des Betrachters auf sich, sie
ermahnt und erinnert den Menschen an den Lauf alles Irdischen; ähnlich wie bei den bes-
chriebenen Kirchenfassaden gleitet der Blick zur nächsten Seite und sieht vor sich ausge-
breitet die kosmische Ordung, das Jüngste Gericht ist allenfalls durch den Abyssus reprä-
sentiert. Der Fokus hier liegt jedoch auf der Ordnung des Kosmos, die von Gott
installiert worden ist. Die Erfahrungen des täglichen Lebens sollen einerseits Teil des göt-
tlichen Gesamtplanens, der providentia dei sein, andererseits jedoch soll der Bereich indi-
vidueller Erfahrung des irdischen Wandels der Fortuna zugeeignet werden. Würde man
auch die persönliche Erfahrung von Leid an Gott herantragen, dann stünde die Güte Gottes
zur Disposition. Der Fortuna mangelt es an Einsicht in den göttlichen Gesamtplan, der dis-
pensatio divina, die zur providentia gehört.⁵⁴
There was thus the idea of fusion or at least an overlap of divine energetic pur-
pose with the circle of everyday life, with the former allowing the latter to keep
rolling when in danger of getting stuck, as it were. Everyday life seemed cyclical,
but therein it contained a certain order and dynamism, every bit as much as the
church calendar did.
In the Franciscan Matthew of Aquasparta’s account of Providence in his
Question 1: De providentia, he insists that not everything happens from necessi-
 Courcelle, ‘La Consolation de philosophie’ dans la tradition littéraire, 184: “On ne s’étonnera
pas, avec de tells antécedents, de voir Dante placer son Paradis sous le signe du Te cernere finis
boécien; il semble s’être assimilé très intimement cette Prière et n’hésite pas à mettre le vers de
Boèce sur le meme plan que le verset de saint Jean relative à la vie éternelle.”
 Ibid, 181: “Déesse païenne à l’origine, Fortune deviant la porte-parole d’un savoir encyclo-
pédique par lequel elle combat l’aveuglement spirituale des hommes.”
 Vollmer, Fortuna Diagrammatica, 239.

Authenticated
ty.⁵⁵ Voluntary things as well as natural things are cared for by God in that peo-
ple are punished or rewarded according to the laws of providence. Rom 11:36
with its message of all things being “from and through and in Him” became
an important verse for him here, as well as Apoc 1:8 where Christ says he is
“alpha and omega,” watching over the whole field of time. At Question 4 Mat-
thew adds that God administers according to the works of grace and mercy,
but also according to the works of justice (“quantum ad opera iustitiae”) through
which spiritual creatures exercise God’s punishment on His behalf.⁵⁶ For God has
always been seeking to draw people back to him. The spiritual creatures or an-
gels are used to overcome the temporal-causal barrier in the working of this
providence, yet the power that is given them is divine power such that God
can also be said to be present immediately. Human wills which are incorporeal
cannot be moved by heavenly bodies (Qu. 5), yet as distinctively human actions
are free (Qu. 6).⁵⁷ In an abnormally long response he argues that for God to act in
a compelling way (“per modum impellentis vel compellentis”) would be incompat-
ible with freedom, and other such modes. Yet it would seem fine to think of di-
vine action as chivvying, leading, helping, propping up and ministering to,⁵⁸ not
pouring in knowledge but arousing the hearer to work with the “seminales ra-
tiones omnium intelligibilium,” communicating through senses (rare), through
the imagination (most rare), or through the intellect (extremely rare). Here the
debt to Augustine and Gregory is palpable, but Matthew seems clear that prov-
idence as distinct from grace takes less the form of a “head-on” encounter, but
has more to do with God’s creating the conditions for creaturely motivation to
respond to His grace more deeply. God rules corporeal things through spiritual
creatures: this is stated with a nod to Dionysius (Divine Names 4.6 – 7). Joined
to this notion is “the principle that the Church is the interpreter of, as well as
an expression of, divine providence.”⁵⁹
In a sense, God became understood as dependent on creation, to the degree
that God was unthinkable without creation. With William of Ockham the view
that God was continually creating by rolling out a pre-made plan became in-
 Quaestiones disputatae de production rerum et de providentia, ed. P. Gedeon Gal (Florence:

Quaracchi, 1956), 288. These questions were probably given for the most between 1279 and
1287, in Rome.
 Ibid., 319.
 Ibid., 374.
 Ibid., 377: “per modum excitantis, manducentiis, adiuvantis sive adminiculantis et minis-
trantis; et hoc consonat legi caritatis et ordini providentiae gubernantis.”
 David Andersen, “Fra Paolino’s ‘De Providentia et Fortuna’,” Das Mittalter 1 (1996): 51– 73, 68.

Authenticated
creasingly unthinkable.⁶⁰ One cannot really speak of a seamless whole of Heils-

geschichte, then rolled out like a magnificent carpet. For every intervention God
makes to change things accords with his potentia absoluta, which is not pre-
fixed. Yet God can and wills to act so as to make sure that what he does is in
continuity with before.⁶¹ God’s freedom for Ockham is not independence from
creation and its laws, but rather the power to do things new and differently: Ock-
ham was at pains to argue that God is by no means arbitrary in his action. He
gives grace because he chooses to, not because he has to. As for particulars
God does not know the parts through the whole as Scotus thought, for every in-
dividual being is dependent on His Creating power, and therefore that is how we
too are to know them, just as He does. Here epistemology gets grounded on a
view of providence even though one might refrain from claiming that Ockham’s
epistemology drove his doctrine of God’s providential action. God’s sharing pru-
dential insight with creatures is part of his great providence. One can speak of a
contingency and hence a “made to measure” sense of how God’s plans and his
Heilsgeschichte came to be understood, even if God’s own existence as Creator
seems a necessary postulate. One cannot quite be sure that one can foretell
the next thing on the basis of knowledge of the recent past and the present,
on the specious ground of species or from “what one would expect from past
form”: yet that does not mean God’s new action has to be arbitrary and unintel-
ligible. God can exceptionally make knowledge intuitive, as with Saul on the
Damascus Road, where the convert was given knowledge of non-present things,
but God did not and would not act to deceive. What is the Christian testimony,
empirically speaking, of his continued faithfulness? That is worth more than
the establishment of God as in principle “predictable.” For Ockham, the divine
will did have qualities distinct from intellect, but of course the two work together
and the former is a reflection of divine love. In all this talk of the immediacy of
God to creation and the bypassing of heavenly and metaphysical hierarchies,
perhaps the church too could be by-passed on occasions. Ockhamist Providence
in that sense is “worldly,” going out to draw in towards the place of salvation.
Joachim Söder argues that the Scotist doctrine of the will inaugurated the
late medieval and Renaissance quest for self-determination, in that humans
 Klaus Bannach, Die Lehre von der doppelten Macht Gottes bei Wilhelm von Ockham. Problem-
geschichtliche Voraussetzungen und Bedeutung (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1975), 255: “Die Un-
mittelbarkeit von Gottes schöpferischem Handeln verbietet es Ockham, sich den Ablauf der
Heilsgeschichte als sukzessive Verwirklichung eines in Gott notwendig präexistierenden Planes
zu erklären.”
 Ibid., 261.

Authenticated
truly were free to choose in the most important of matters.⁶² This is all very well,
and to that degree the Blumenberg thesis holds water, but it was not a case of the
human will replacing the divine will. Divine Providence was not excluded by
Scotism, Ockhamism or the Renaissance. As we shall see, it was its guarantor.
Indeed, Ockham claimed that not only is God immediate to the world, He is
an immediate and not indirect cause. As for miracles, in the lions’ den of Daniel
6 the fire did not hurt the three friends, because God did not immediately co-op-
erate with the fire to produce heat.⁶³ It is not that God has to have a more power-
ful causality; unlike Aquinas it is not that the secondary cause needs the working
of the stronger primary cause on it in order to act, for as secondary it simply re-
lies on its built-in rationes seminales for doing “what comes naturally.” Scotus
still thought that the first cause had an influence on the second even when act-
ing simultaneously, as in a hand with a hammer delivering the blow. Ockham
abandoned a hierarchical chain of causation altogether and promoted a more
truly “co-operative” arrangement between primary and secondary causes. In
theory a first cause could act without a second, yet normally it is a case of not
so much “acting through” (Scotus) but “acting with.” God is “moved” closer to
the events, yet secondary causes are freer.
If one confesses that God is the cause of everything, then in what sense
could this include sin? (Quodlibet, aiii,q3). Well, God is the immediate cause of
everything without “Nature” intervening. God causes “nothing” in fact. More-
over, since all propositions are from God then (even) an “impossibility” qua
term is from God. And anything that is factual is from God anyway as both its
mediate and immediate cause. So one can conclude that God wills sin, in the
sense that he wills giving alms even when this is done vaingloriously, and he
wills sin justly.
Ockham was quite clear that potentia, whether absoluta or ordinata, is one
and the same power, just that ordinata is God’s power considered from the stand-
point of his decrees, his revealed will.⁶⁴ Biblical miracles are cases of potential
 Joachim R. Söder, “Notwendigkeit-Kontingenz-Freiheit,” in Zwischen Weisheit und Wissen-

schaft: Johannes Duns Scotus im Gespräch, ed. Franz Lackner, Franziskanische Forschungen
45 (Kevelaer: Butzon & Bercker, 2003): 170 – 178, 177: “Neu und wegweisend ist auch der scoti-
sche Willensbegriff. Der Wille, der in einem Augenblick zwischen verschiedenen Alternativen
wählt, wird hier erstmals in der Geistesgeschichte philosophisch konsequent als Vermögen ur-
sprünglicher Selbstbestimmung gedacht.”
 Egbert P. Bos, “Ockham on the First Proposition of the Liber de Causis,” in On Proclus and
His Influence in Medieval Philosophy, eds. Egbert P. Bos and Pieter A. Meijer, Philosophia Antiqua
LIII (Leiden: Brill, 1992): 171– 189, 174.
 William Courtenay, Ockham and Ockhamism: Studies in the Dissemination and Impact of His
Thought, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters 99 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 254.

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ordinata specialis, not of potentia absoluta. After Ockham the famous distinction
became all about “possible worlds” and adopted an ecclesio-political applica-
tion when the absolute/ordained distinction was then used for Papacy in
Henry VIII’s argument that the Pope can dispense with church law: “Most theo-
logians in the fourteenth century were careful not to allow their discussion of
God’s power considered absolutely to become a discussion of God’s acting abso-
lutely. As long as the concept was being applied in the traditional manner, exces-
sive use could never undermine the present order of things or produce uncertain-
ty.”⁶⁵
Amos Funkenstein quotes Montaigne to the effect that for late medieval
elites the natural beliefs of people seemed “monstrous” and in need of revela-
tion and training. With creation no longer hierarchical the problem became
the mode of God’s presence to creation. It would seem that Revealed theology
was indeed slowly shaping philosophy. It would be too crassly triumphalistic
to say that all the traffic was one way, but univocity and the importance of Rev-
elation for theology, while sailing close to the rocks of anthropocentric and an-
thropomorphic at times, worked together in a harmony of Biblicism and philos-
ophy. But since Aristotelian mathematics did not work for a universe that
included things that were liable to change,⁶⁶ a Neo-stoic paradigm became pre-
dominant. Stoics believed in the overall homogeneity of things, but they looked
to “forces” to explain them. “The Stoics always took the whole to be more than
the sum of its parts,”⁶⁷ partly because of the role of language in integrating. “Pur-
pose, in part and in the whole, governed the Stoic universe, which was indeed
thoroughly teleological. In opposition to this stood the atomistic universe, domi-
nated entirely by chance.”⁶⁸ However, as it became clear in the Renaissance, de-
spite having a doctrine of Providence, Stoicism was too close to Pantheism to be
easily Christianised. Even though God was believed to be omnipresent, for Stoics
“the most natural way to perceive God’s presence in the world was symbolical.”⁶⁹
In Funkenstein’s view, if Scotus’ reputation can be rescued, then the same
cannot be said of Ockham. Scotus held that absolute power and ordained
power were not two types of power but simply aspects of the same divine
power resulting in the same range of acts. The distinction had only to do with
jurisdiction. God could be present at a distance, thus having “ubiquity by
 Ibid., 257.
 Aristotle argued (Physics B8.193b22– 194a6) that mathematization “worked for static struc-
tures, but not for change” (Funkenstein, Heilsplan und natürliche Entwicklung, 30)
 Ibid., 39.
 Ibid., 41.
 Ibid., 49. My italics.

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power.” Scotus here had perhaps “paved the way toward the covenantal under-
standing of the orders of nature and grace,” i. e. Ockhamist primacy of will over
wisdom.⁷⁰ God was regarded as everywhere and nowhere in particular and hence
somewhat indifferent: “The radical change in the perception of the world that
occurred between the generation of Thomas and that of Ockham is embodied
in the latter’s principle of annihilation.”⁷¹ For Thomas things are held in place
by others which are hence necessary and necessitating, but for Ockham, one
could be taken and another left behind. All things are immediate of God and
in theory could continue even if the whole world were destroyed. And yet
there is something even in the “taken…left behind,” which, if bad news for a
sense of a morality founded on a providential sustaining of a united whole,
could be reassuring for those who thought that morality was essentially some-
thing that moved forward or discouraged complacency. Yet the impersonalism,
which may be ascribed to the scholastic way of discourse, might well be part
of the legacy. André de Halleux saw already in Aquinas “almightiness” becom-
ing more a power than providence and detached from creation in a way the
Greeks never did.⁷² However Ockham’s doctrine of God seemed much more se-
vere.
Describing Ockham’s position, Marilyn McCord Adams observes:
To sin is to act contrary to one’s obligations. But according to Ockham’s ethics, God does
not have any obligations to anyone and so cannot act contrary to His obligations no matter
what He does […] As Ockham sees it, the fact that God cannot will anything maliciously or
command anything unjustly – like the fact that He cannot sin – is merely a reflection of the
fact that God has no moral obligations to anyone […].⁷³
Matthew Levering accepts Adams’ analysis, as do many, including Batut for

whom the idea of God as all-powerful and all-determining was a pernicious in-
vention of the Middle Ages, especially when it reached its apotheosis with Ock-
ham.⁷⁴
Funkenstein has also argued that a salvation-historical view of time came to
dominate in the high Middle Ages, and that in a denial of Augustine.⁷⁵ The lines
between the City of God as church history and those of universal history were
 Ibid. 133.
 Ibid., 135.
 Batut, Pantocrator, 88.
 Matthew Levering, “Providence and Predestination in Al-Ghazali,” New Blackfriars 92 (2010):
55 – 70, 69 f., n. 58.
 Batut, Pantocrator, 484.
 Funkenstein, Heilsplan und natürliche Entwicklung.

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smudged. History had significance only in terms of what it symbolized: it was

not necessarily going anywhere, certainly not ‘progressing’, and yet one can
speak of development, or rather ‘unfolding’ (Entwicklung) of a series of contin-
gencies.⁷⁶ In part due to the demise of the Holy Roman Empire after 1300 and
more importantly of the Imperial ‘idea’, people turned to write local histories
and universal history became encyclopedic.⁷⁷
To illustrate that this was as much an issue in philosophy and not just the
epiphenomenal result of ecclesiastical politics, within the history of Jewish Phi-
losophy one finds Saadia Gaon (d. 942), who had insisted God’s knowledge
would not cause what He knew. But for Gersonides (d. 1334) there was a genuine
test. ‘Hence God doesn’t know what Abraham will do.’⁷⁸ In his ‘Super-Commen-
tary’ on Averroes’ Commentary on De Interpretatione Gersonides came down
clearly on the question of what can be known of the outcome of the sea-battle,
as imagined by Aristotle: God can know no outcome, for there is nothing yet to
know. Gersonides believed that God could fix only the universals of things but
not their particulars. It was up to the prophet and his special revelation who
then tries to particularise these by foretelling things in detail.
Thomas’ denial of real divine fore-knowledge of particulars was criticised,
for surely even the prophets knew human wills with certainty. Scotists argued,
as Bañez would in the sixteenth century argue, that surely divine foreknowledge
implies causality. Scotus himself had taken issue with Thomas’s Boethian view:
instead, he argued, God knows the contingent through the infallible causality of
his will.⁷⁹ Henry of Ghent too had argued that God does not know things through
ideas, but “God knows all future contingents by knowing what his will is going
 Funkenstein, Heilsplan und natürliche Entwicklung, 116: “[…] neuer Weg sowohl zur Einbezie-
hung der Profangeschichte in die Heilsgeschichte als auch zur heilsgeschichtlichen Gegenwarts-
bestimmung gefunden wurde.”
 Ibid.: “Für die Hochscholastik hingegen fielen historische Vorgänge und historisches Detail
eher in den Bereich des Kontingenten und ließen sich höchstens in eine systematische Lehre als
exempla einfügen.” He claims this with reference to Arno Borst, Der Turmbau von Babel: Ge-
schichte der Meinungen über Ursprung und Vielfalt der Sprachen und Völker, 6 volumes (Stuttgart:
A. Hierseman, 1957), IV. Ernst Benz, “Die Kategorien der religiösen Geschichtsdeutung Joa-
chims,” ZKG 50 (1931): 24– 111.
 Seymour Feldman, “The Binding of Isaac: A Test-Case of Divine Foreknowledge,” in Divine
Omniscience and Omnipotence in Medieval Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish, and Christian Perspec-
tives, ed. Tamar Rudavsky, Synthese Historical Library, Texts and Studies in the History of
Logic and Philosophy 25 (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1984): 105 – 133, 128.
 Funkenstein, Heilsplan, 175.

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to produce,”⁸⁰ and he chooses between two or more alternatives. As John of Ripa

contended, all these future contingents are known by God – divine freedom is
not ruled out by human freedom.⁸¹ God’s knowledge of contingents is itself con-
tingent; the divine intellect knows what has been determined by creaturely will,
hence causing it. Here Henry was in agreement with Bonaventura and Grosse-
teste.⁸² Marsilius followed Henry here and agreed on the radical contingency
of things: the moment something is, it can still not be.
Ockham’s criticism of this position was: how can something be known if it
does not yet exist? God can only know contingently actions which are the actual
results of creaturely free will; for there is nothing for God to know before they
things happen. “According to Ockham, God’s will determines the truth of contin-
gents but not God’s knowledge of them.”⁸³ In any case, God does not know
things via his will, but his intellect. The events he knows are contingent and
so his knowledge is too, although this does not mean that God in himself is sub-
ject to change. Yet the emphasis was on divine contingency ad extra and even his
“vulnerability” to events, such that God is as much one who plays “black” as
“white” in the great “game of chess.” Gregory of Rimini got round this problem
by supposing that all creaturely actions have something of God’s action in them:
God can have certain knowledge of things he wills, including things willed to-
gether with a human being.
With its firm belief in creaturely contingency, the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries with a few exceptions were suspicious of Thomist “necessitas absolu-
ta” as articulated especially in the Summa Contra Gentiles. The idea of divine-
creaturely cooperation was exquisitely Scotist. With the exclusion of any condign
merit among such a soteriology, it can hardly be accused of being Pelagian.⁸⁴
Marsilius of Inghen (d. 1396) was perhaps the best known of Nominalists, al-
though of a moderate, hence successful sort, worked at Heidelberg where he
 Ibid., 177. See Henry of Ghent, Opus sapientiae Dei in disponendo huius ornatus productionem
115 (Lectura Ordinaria = Opera omnia Leuven 1980, vol. 36).
 Hermann Schwamm, Magistri Joannis de Ripa doctrina de praescientia divina, Analecta Gre-
goriana 1 (Roma: Pontifica Universitate Gregoriana, 1930), 222: “Deum cognoscere futura contin-
gentia, etiam actus liberos creaturae, cognoscendo praedeterminationes voluntatis divinae.”
 Cf Hermann Schwamm, Das göttliche Vorherwissen bei Dun Scotus und seinen ersten Anhän-
gern, Philosophie und Grenzwissenschaften Bd. 5, Heft 1/4 (Innsbruck: F. Rauch, 1931).
 Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 186.
 Manfred Schulze, “Marsilius von Ighen und die vorreformatorische Theologie: Augustinre-
zeption, Willensfreiheit und Gnadenlehre,” in Philosophie und Theologie des ausgehenden Mitte-
laters. Marsilius von Inghen und das Denken seiner Zeit, eds. Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen & Paul J.J.M.
Bakker (Leiden: Brill, 2010): 67– 87, 83, who takes issue with Alister McGrath’s view that Augus-
tinianism was waning among Scotists.

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gave his famous lectures on Lombard’s Sentences (between 1392 and 1394). His
work eventually became popular among Paris nominalists who in 1474 gave a re-
sponse to his work wherein “it is stated that according to nominalists (nomi-
nales), deity and wisdom are one, whereas according to the realists (reales), di-
vine wisdom is distinct from the deity.”⁸⁵ For Gregory of Rimini it was not enough
for God to have knowledge of the species in order to know individuals, as Tho-
mas had suggested was how divine knowledge worked. Marsilius agreed with
Gregory. From around 1310 the role of humans in determining divine foreknowl-
edge became a serious question.⁸⁶ God and humans could share a wisdom that
seemed quasi-prophetic, and wisdom joined humans to God himself.
“With regard to God’s knowledge of future contingents, however, the situa-
tion was quite different. Here Marsilius primarily based himself of Scripture in-
stead of natural reason.”⁸⁷ God has knowledge of states of affairs as can be ex-
pressed in propositions. Thomas Bradwardine represented the other,
necessitarian side of the argument, defending the idea of the necessity of future
things in his De Causa Dei. To Marsilius, Bradwardine was destroying liberty,
even while radical Ockhamists were overemphasising liberty,⁸⁸ but the main-
stream thinkers were trying to reconcile Boethius and Augustine.
For Marsilius, God is only the cause of the act of will, not of its movement
away from the good (as Holcot would came close to saying in his Sentences Com-
mentary, which would make God into a cause of evil). Marsilius added a Neopla-
tonist influence into his thinking, drawn especially from John of Ripa who was
being read in Paris in the 1360s. God knows the contingent in virtue of his im-
mensitas (Ripa), and obviously His knowledge is very different to ours. One
could summarise the position this way: “On the one hand, God is the universal
cause of all things, while on the other hand, he is not the cause of his knowledge
of things. What God foreknows depends on future events, and not on his act of
will.”⁸⁹ But Marsilius avoids saying that divine foreknowledge is dependent on
man as such, unlike Wodeham and Rimini. What can be caused, for Marsilius,
is the proposition “God knows…x,” such that while human freedom is preserved,
the outcome is known by God, not the human action. The truth is necessary but
does not necessitate the activity to which it refers.
 Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 13. Marsilius was not totally modernus; in fact in his opening
lectures on the Sentences he defended the “antiqui.”
 Ibid., 28 – 32.
 Ibid., 215.
 Is man really able to change God’s knowledge? Such radical contingency could be counte-
nanced by Adam Wodeham, In Sent I d38c1.
 Hoenen, Marsilius of Inghen, 227.

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To take an example of stronger “nominalist” thinking,⁹⁰ Robert Holcot was

born around 1290 near Northampton, England, dying in 1349, possibly from
the plague. He effectively lost his job as teaching regent in Oxford in 1334,
and it is unclear whether Cambridge ever benefited from his talents. As a Dom-
inican he interpreted Thomas’ teaching to mean that God was a cause of human
action. Holcot was famous in academic circles for Quodlibetal Questions, whose
influence on Chaucer’s Nun Priest’s Tale⁹¹ was through his Moralitates (sermon
illustrations), and also because “[…] the evocative ‘verbal’ pictures of Holcot’s
Wisdom commentary brought philosophical issues into court company.”⁹² Holcot
felt free to say that there were some future contingents not precisely known by
God, the crucifixion for instance. Prophecy of the crucifixion in the Old Testa-
ment was somewhat vague. Better to say then, with Boethius and Anselm that
God’s knowledge is not fore-knowledge, nor fore-seeing (praevidentia) but
over-seeing (providentia).⁹³ It was not the case that on account of the world to
come God knew that he would create this one. Unlike Thomas, for whom
God’s indirect demonstration of love in his creation was enough to instill in crea-
tures a sense of reciprocal love, for the “personalist” fourteenth and fifteenth
century theologians God can be described as “reaching out”: God’s acceptatio
is the main thing that distinguishes Scotus, Ockham and Holcot from Thomas.
For Holcot, God can even be named acceptatio, even while absolute and tran-
scendent and free. And the secrets of the faith can be irrational not just supra-
rational (Thomas).
 On Nominalist theology see Sigrid Müller, “Nominalismus in der Spätmittelalterichen Theo-

logie,” in Philosophie und Theologie des ausgehenden Mittelaters. Marsilius von Inghen und das
Denken seiner Zeit, eds. Maarten J.F.M. Hoenen and Paul J.J.M. Bakker (Leiden: Brill, 2000):
47– 65.
 See, e. g., Sabine Volk-Birke, Chaucer and Medieval Preaching: Rhetoric for Listeners in Ser-
mons and Poetry (Tübingen: Günter-Narr, 1991), 276. More fully, Robert A. Pratt, “Some Latin
Sources of the Nonnes Freest on Dreams,” Speculum 52 (1977): 538 – 570.
 Robert Holcot, Seeing the Future Clearly: Questions on Future Contingents, eds. Paul A. Strev-
eler and Katherine H. Tachau (Toronto: PIMS, 1995), 2. See also see Beryl Smalley, “Robert Holcot
O.P.,” Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 26 (1956): 5 – 97. At p. 63: “The Wisdom-Commentary in
particular shows him impressed by the need to warn students against superstition and magic.”
Yet, “He took the whole of life as his library” (65). He made use of Nicolas Trevet’s commentary
on Boethius with notions such as: the shiny things of the world are as lasting as brittle ice; God
reveals himself to true seekers; his existence cannot be proved by reason. The Wisdom and
Twelve Prophets Commentaries should be dated to around 1333 (Smalley).
 In IIII Libros Sententiarum Q2, Lib II p123 – 4, re. Anselm De casu diaboli cap xxi. “‘Breviter,’
inquit Anselmus ‘hoc respondeo/ Praescientia Dei non proprie dicitur ‘praescientia’; cui enim
omnia semper sunt praesentia; non habet futurorum praescientiam sed praesentiam scien-
tiam” – and Boethius too 5.6.15 – 18: “non praevidentia sed providentia potius dicitur.”

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For Holcot, whose position was often one of fideism in the sense of starting
all theological reflecton with Revelation, God’s being above human reason
meant he transcended any human evaluation of what is consistent in his behav-
iour. Scripture tells us that prophecy can change its referent and its message.
Hence even God’s truth is flexible and God can say false things, even though
he cannot lie. God can reveal something but then stop it happening. Ockham
hadn’t gone quite that far, but Holcot appealed to Ps 131:12, Jonah 3:4 and similar
Scriptures.⁹⁴ As Scotus had argued, the decrees of Predestination could be al-
tered without touching God’s essence, since all moments are present to God.⁹⁵
(Whereas Thomas had said no, the divine will was not the immediate cause of
contingent effects and once God had set a chain of secondary causes in motion
it was hard to interrupt it.) Holcot was aware of the need for God’s continuous
involvement, as if the secondary causes could not be trusted to deliver.⁹⁶ As
with Ockham, predestination is not something in God but something in between
God and creation, hence allowing for variation, without infringing on God’s tran-
scendent changelessness. There is a necessity in Nature and in God, but this met-
aphysical motion “in-between” was non-necessary.
Augustine had portrayed Christian philosophy as a human response to God.
Bonaventura viewed wisdom as mediating between the speculative and the prac-
tical. According to Aquinas, Wisdom attains to God more intimately and is able to
lead to action as well as contemplation; it is twofold, arising out of both virtue
and learning. Into this tradition we might want to place Holcot, as one who took
Sapientia (the deuterocanonical Book of Wisdom) and perhaps Wisdom seriously
enough to devote a commentary or series of lectures to it.
To take one example from Holcot’s commentary on Sapientia: Chapter 14
seems to look back to Noah as the righteous non-Jew, yet one who enjoys
some sort of covenantal relationship with God; if anyone crosses the sea trusting
in an idol on the ship’s prow, he is forgetting that the Lord was providential to
Noah in and after disaster. The wood of verse 7, as verse 6 makes clear, is that
which God provides for the ark of Noah, even though it is refereed to in v 5 as
a “raft” (σχεδία). It is just as clear from v 3 that προνοία is not just “foresight”
or “overseeing” (as per the Boethian way which wants to emphasise God’s
non-responsibility for events) but is active, intereventionist and salvific.
 Fritz Hoffman, Die Theologische Methode des Oxforder Dominikanerlehrers Robert Holcot,
BGPTM 5 (Münster: Aschendorff, 1971), 311. Cf. Holcot, In IISent q2a8.
 Hoffmann, Die Theologische Methode, 316.
 Ibid., 330: “Gottes Schöpfung ist jedoch so sehr in seine Hand gegeben, daß sie nicht einen
Augenblick ohne die erhaltende Kraft des Schöpfers bestehen kann.”

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Having mocked those who trust in the same wood that forms their ships and
their false gods, Holcot sees God here represented as the father of all who gov-
erns by providence, “providing a way and route, a most firm path in the sea, to
save from all dangers even the one who is at sea without reason or plan. But so
that the works of your wisdom be not devoid of wisdom, for this reason men
trust in the smallest wood and heading forward are freed by a raft.”⁹⁷
Yet the first theological point Holcot makes is that God intervenes by means
of secondary causes: the making of a boat involved divine-human co-operation.
So he writes, “But the ship was made by divine wisdom in consultation with
human since it was fitting that salvation was a common effort, as was said to
Noah” (sed navis fabricata est a sapientia divina consulente hominibus quod com-
mue congruebat saluti sicut dictum est noe).“⁹⁸
In his modern (1999) commentary, Hans Hübner comments that at v. 2b it is
merely the human wisdom of the shipbuilder that is meant,⁹⁹ and not the wis-
dom of God. The modern Catholic commentator Helmut Engel disagrees, judging
that a Wisdom from on high is meant here: “wisdom who inspires the craftsman”
alludes to Exod 31:3, where, Engel argues, divine Wisdom is meant.¹⁰⁰ In
Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus, the Paternal God is seen as the father who steers all
according to law. This means, for Engel, that just as passengers don’t need to
know how to construct or steer a ship, God takes care of the shipbuilding and
the navigating. Yet in Cleanthes’ hymn, the “according to law” is important.
Law means a wisdom that can be to a degree learned by humans, just as in Exo-
dus 31: the heaven-sent wisdom flowed through their natural skills and achieved
something remarkable in the form of the tabernacle. Verse 3 speaks of God him-
self called “providence” who provided a path through the Red Sea and saved
them [διεσώθησαν in v.5 can be understood as a divine passive].
But for Holcot that would be a false opposition. Does anyone really think
that God could save men in the sea without the help of a ship, which demands
human hands to build it? And there is a case of synechdoche or part for the
whole, by which Holcot means the ship’s being jointly made denotes the
whole joint effort which went into “Operation Noah.” Here is a Dominican rejoic-
ing in the harmony of primary and secondary causes. Moreover, the considerable
suitability of a ship is emphasised in the passage, thinks Holcot, since God could
 Robert Holcot, Expositiones in librum Sapientiae Salomonis (Basel 1506), ad loc.

 Ibid.
 Die Weisheit Salomos: Liber Sapientiae Salomonis, Das Alte Testament Deutsch – Apokryphen
Neues Göttinger Bibelwerk 4 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1999), 173 f.
 Helmut Engel, Das Buch der Weisheit, Neuer Stuttgarter Kommentar – Altes Testament 16
(Stuttgart: Verlag katholisches Bibelwerk 1998), 223.

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directly by himself guide a person on the sea. But he wanted to give humans nav-
igational prudence. And that it what is meant by “So that the works would not
lack wisdom”: that they not be unfruitful or unproductive in the learning of wis-
dom in how to sail. Now of course this does not seem to be just what the passage
means: it is so that God’s work of creation in Genesis 1 & 2 would not have been
in vain. But Holcot seems to insist that the main reason humans trust God in
such situations is their sense of the trustworthiness of his wisdom. Wisdom
was becoming a way of talking about God in his ways, after the manner of
those revealed in the bible. For this reason men trust their souls to the small
piece of wood, not as something to pray to as with an idol, but something
that floats, as according to the Divine purpose in the creation of wood. That is
their temporal lives which are kept safe in crossing the sea by a raft, that is
by the ship. Holcot does not think these verses concern salvation as such, but
preservation in this life. It is about guidance, preservation, wisdom for living,
and, if you will, ethics. Holcot demands that it be noted that Christ can be
seen as referred to in a moral sense here: a “small piece of wood” on account
of the humility of his mind. To paraphrase Holcot:
But “wood” also on account of the fertility of his fruit. Hebrews 2 speaks about his small-
ness: We see Jesus who became smaller a little lower than the angels. And in the Psalms he
will be like a tree planted by flowing waters which gives fruit in season. This tree was plant-
ed in the earth, in the blessed incarnation. That is in the glorious virgin of whom it is said
in the psalms: You have blessed o Lord your earth.
We should notice that nothing is made of the “wood” as the Cross of Christ. Ever
since Ambrose this had been a very popular interpretation of this verse. Yet, as
Maurice Gilbert noted, in the twelfth century the idea that “wood” meant the
cross or Christ crucified suddenly dropped out of use, perhaps due to the insist-
ence by the School of St Victor on the priority of the historical sense, a movement
in which Thomas Aquinas was involved. Verse 7 fits too well with the rest of the
passage to be suspect or secondary as modern literary-critical commentators
might suppose. The wisdom that accommodated God to human size for the
sake of salvation is but an outworking of a general wisdom God uses towards
his creation in history, a wisdom that can be detected, and even imitated or
shared in.
More radical traditions
One should probably treat Meister Eckhart (d. 1327) and Nicolas of Cusa (d. 1464)
as exceptions during the later Middle Ages, as thinkers who did not lay so much

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emphasis on the movement of the divine will. For Eckhart, God is pure Being,
and not purity from being, as Gilson wanted to describe Eckhart’s position.
God has the fullness of being precisely as Intellect. As the One who is, God is
negation of negation in a purely positive sense, one might say He is the “affirma-
tion” of being. In the Questiones Parisienses question 1, Eckhart is clear that God
is not distinct from the creation,¹⁰¹ since the Transcendentals (Being, Good, One)
serve to keep God and creation in touch.
If God is intellect, then it is as such that He is moving through creation, and
one can trace the invisible things through the visible, since the former leaves its
stamp on the latter. Whereas for Thomas, the image of God was to be located in
the acts of the soul,¹⁰² Eckhart felt it simpler and more accurate to locate the
image in the human intellect. His hearing of the mystic Margaret Porrete’s con-
demnation at Paris in 1309 acted as a prompt to publish more works in the ver-
nacular, and to insist on the close divine-human connection, with a challenge to
Aristotelian substance ontology and its replacement with his brand of “Intellec-
tualism.” The image of God is born in humans by their becoming aware of that
birthright. Righteousness, which exists in humans by their thinking aright there-
fore is no accident. Eckhart’s burden was to see humans as caught up in God,
rather than just in his will and his ways, as such. In his famous Book of Divine
Consolation, God himself is presented as the consolation.
According to this intellectualist tradition, God moves all by seeing.¹⁰³ Seeing
is what Providence is, after all. Unlike for Jean-Paul Sartre, for whom God seeing
all degrades humans to mere objects, for Nicolas of Cusa, where eyes rest, there
love is and a life-giving power too.¹⁰⁴ Humans, indeed all creatures, need God to
 Jan A. Aertsen, “Ontology and Henology in Medieval Philosophy (Thomas Aquinas, Master
Eckhart and Berthold of Moosburg),” in On Proclus and his Influence in Medieval Philosophy, eds.
Egbert P. Bos and Pieter A. Meijer, Philosophia Antiqua LIII (Leiden: Brill, 1992): 120 – 140, con-
trary to Ruedi Imbach’s emphasis in his Deus est intelligere: Das Verhältnis von Sein und Denken
in seiner Bedeutung für das Gottesverständnis bei Thomas von Aquin und in den Pariser Quaestio-
nen Meister Eckharts, Studia Friburgensia 53 (Freiburg: Universitätsverlag, 1976).
 See Loris Surlese, Homo divinus: Philosophische Projekte in Deutschland zwischen Meister
Eckhart und Heinrich Seuse (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2007), with reference to Proclus, De provi-
dentia, 8. Also, cf. Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. David B. Burrell
(London: Darton Longman and Todd, 1968), 183 – 220.
 Klaus Kremer, “Gottes Vorsehung und die menschliche Freiheit (‘Sis tu tuus, et Ego ero
tuus’),” in Das Sehen Gottes nach Nikolaus von Kues: Akten des Symposions in Trier vom 25.
bis 27. September 1986, ed. Rudolf Haubst (Trier: Paulinus, 1989): 227– 252, 227: “Gegenüber
einer Definition bevorzugt Cusanus die manuductio durch eine Ikone des alles-sehenden
Gottes.”
 Ibid., 229: “Gottes Sehen impliziert Lebendigmachung (vivificare) und Umarmung (amplec-
ti).”

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look at them in order to be and to look back to him. Providentia is only a subset
of visio,¹⁰⁵ but it is very much one of divine respect for each and every individual
creature. The individual is no longer just being given shape as for Aristotle, and
nor, as Blumenberg interpreted Cusa, that humans were “an adventure of God,”
some sort of “vanity project”: no, they are rather a mirror of Him and of the uni-
verse. More generally, Blumenberg’s idea of Cusa as a voluntarist seems misguid-
ed.¹⁰⁶ Cusa’s pastoral message, in Kremer’s view, is that humans only have free-
dom as they cling to God, and that under His influence they do not have to be
victim of less benign forces. God’s power is a persuading, attracting one,¹⁰⁷
and only for animals is it one of compulsion.
Humans are to seek fulfilment in their own nature; 1 Timothy 6:16 speaks of
divine inaccessibility and hence the need for God to give himself to his creatures
so that they are empowered to act at all. We realise ourselves eye to eye with
God;¹⁰⁸ but it needs to be said: one starts with self-love and works towards
the love of God. There is a balance between autonomy and theonomy, and,
pace Blumenberg, one sees one’s own truth in the face of God. With Cusa
there is an unfolding of God’s reconciling of oppositions in which humans can
take part.¹⁰⁹ Opposition is present in the world but not in God, who grants the
world at least stability: here Cusa can be viewed as a forerunner of Leibniz.
The call comes from God for the finite consciously to participate in an Infinity.
Hence, for Cusa, the human mind moves out to be the measure of all things,
but not because it can exhaust all things. God is not other to ourselves, and
so there can be co-operation even if not full understanding, given that even in
his revelation God is less to be known than worshipped.¹¹⁰
 Ibid., 232: “Wenn Gott, wie Cusanus unaufhörlich betont, keine Kreatur und erst recht kei-
nen Menschen verläßt, wenn er die aufmerksamste Fürsorge (diligentissima cura) sogar dem ge-
ringsten Geschöpf gegenüber (minima creatura) hegt, als sei es das größte und das gesamte Welt-
all, dann kommt darin nicht einfach Bejahung, sondern vor allem die hohe Wertung einer jeden
Kreatur und insbesondere des Menschen von seiten Gottes zum Ausdruck.”
 Hans Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, 2. Aufl. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1999), 485.
 Kremer, “Gottes Vorsehung und die menschliche Freiheit,” 238: “Beim Studium der cusa-
nischen Schrift fällt auf, daß Cusanus den Einfluß (influentia) Gottes bzw. seines Wortes auf
den Menschen stets mit attrahere bzw. trahere charakterisiert oder mit excitare und sollicitare.”
 Ibid., 241.
 Thomas Leinkauf, Nicolaus Cusanus: Eine Einführung, Buchereihe der Cusanus-Gesellschaft
15 (Münster: Aschendorff 2006), 178: “Im Hintergrund steht der Grundgedanke, daß Gott, als der
Gegensatz der Gegensätze (oppositio oppositorum/oppositionum), die alles in sich einfaltende ak-
tivische Verneinung des Gegensätzlichen in der Welt ist.”
 Martin Thurner, Gott als das offenbare Geheimnis nach Nikolaus von Kues, Veröffentlichun-
gen des Grabmann-Institutes zur Erforschung der Mittelalterlichen Theologie und Philosophie 45
(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2001), 22: “Jedesmal, wenn ich die Apostelgeschichte lese, staune ich

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Finally, in the Cribatio Alkorani III,7 Cusa tells us that the providentia Dei
does not make things necessary; for God only sees all things, and in De Visione
Dei 10, N. 42, he confirms that God is not “older than” or before the world in a
temporal way: the eye that sees one thing and then another is not omnipotent.¹¹¹
There is no hard necessity of Fate but divine leading and care. Providence calls
out to human morality and wishes humans freely to respond, the very thing Nic-
olai Hartmann was complaining about when he spoke about the Antinomie der
Vorsehung.¹¹² Instead one may speak of a joint teleology of man and God.
By the mid-fifteenth century, when scholars began to look at just what the
ancients had said, Lorenzo Valla’s attack on Boethius was representative.¹¹³
God foreknows the actions of humans because he knows their will: God’s de-
crees are not necessary in the way that Boethius supposed. Boethius’s idea of
God’s considering all things as if present is foolish. Providence as praevidentia
means that God looks ahead to see what humans freely will do.¹¹⁴
So was there here a change, a swerve, a Wende towards a new “pagan” para-
digm, as Stephen Greenblatt has recently claimed? The intellect might well have
lost its access to cosmic realities. Scepticism crept in well and truly just before
1500. Jill Raitt suspects this was already there in the way the Hussites were treat-
ed, not as a heresy to be proved wrong but as force that was a political and moral
threat in terms of its challenge to authority. There was a suspicion of pleasure,
and this reinforced an animus against Epicureanism, going back to Lactantius,
with Peter Damian’s emphasis on flagellation as a high or low point. Pagans
put up with pain; they did not embrace it as a stepping-stone.¹¹⁵ Of course a
hard life freely chosen lent Christians moral authority. Greenblatt points to Flor-
entine Republicanism, and the visit of Chrysoloras in 1397 by Chancellor Salutati
über diese Gedankenführung.” The watchword came from Augustine, De quantitate animae
34,77: “Deus quo nihil […] secretius, nihil praesentius” (CSEL 89,226.) See further, Kurt Flasch, Ni-
kolaus von Kues: Geschichte einer Entwicklung, (Innsbruck: Georg Olms Verlag, 1998).
 Kremer, “Gottes Vorsehung und die menschliche Freiheit,” 248: “Aber jenes, was unmö-
glich erscheint, ist die Notwendigkeit selbst. Denn ‘jetzt’ und ‘damals’” sind nach Deinem Wort.”
 Ibid.: “Die in der göttlichen Vorsehung enthaltene Finalität und Teleologie hat für die Welt
des Menschen nur noch den Sinn des Sollens, sie will daher gerade nicht zwingen, sondern setzt
die Freiheit voraus.” This might serve as a response to the likes of Nicolai Hartmann, Teleolo-
gisches Denken (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1966), 134.
 In his De Libero arbitrio (1439).
 Dario Brancato, “Readers and Interpreters of the Consolatio in Italy, 1300 – 1550,” in A Com-
panion to Boethius in the Middle Ages, eds. Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips,
Brill’s Companions to the Christian Tradition 30 (Leiden: Brill, 2012):, 357– 405, 374 ff.
 Stephen Greenblatt, The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (London: Bodley Head, 2011),
107.

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as marking a new interest in non-Latin scholastic learning. With Nicolo Niccoli’s

library and Poggio as an excellent humanist scriptor, learning became an escape
from Christian certainties, and was expressed in Niccoli’s transcription of Lucre-
tius’ De rerum natura. Poggio’s vision at Baden of a carefree life was typically Ep-
icurean. When a whole copy of Quintilian was found at St Gall, Poggio cared
more about that manuscript than about the misfortunes of the Hussite Jerome
of Prag.¹¹⁶ It was at Fulda that he discovered Lucretius. Of the seasons, only
spring and summer seemed any good in the sense of enjoyable to a red-blooded
human. Poggio wrote of calamities befalling humans, but he also translated the
mordant Lucian for fun.
Greenblatt’s historiography is more suggestive than convincing. Ficino wrote
a commentary on Lucretius then burned it; Macchiavelli copied De Rerum Na-
tura. Valla’s attitude towards Epicurus is not straightforward. Clearly there is
something in the idea that Epicureanism and Renaissance values share a family
resemblance. In Hans Blumenberg’s account, as well, freewill is associated with
the “swerve of randomness.” The picture Lucretius painted of the ideal Epicur-
ean thinking hard about the senses is elitist as well as transcendental in the
sense of believing oneself to have climbed above the forces of fate:
But nothing is more blissful than to occupy the heights effectively fortified by the teaching
of the wise, tranquil sanctuaries from which you look down upon others and see them wan-
dering everywhere in their random search for the way of life, competing for intellectual
eminence, disputing about rank, and striving night and day with prodigious effort to
scale the summit of wealth and to secure power (De rerum natura 2:1– 13).
Blumenberg sees this as about “overcoming delusion of focussing too much on

one thing; atoms, void and nothing else.”¹¹⁷ As with Montaigne (Apologie pour
Raymond Seybond), to be such a voyeur is to stop putting oneself or humanity
at the centre of things.
Nominalism is often portrayed as a sort of Marcionism whereby God is sure
to save some and discard the rest; but since all the natural order is merely con-
tingent, then the world is no longer favourable to men any more than God is.¹¹⁸
Blumenberg’s portrayal of Ockham as some sort of empiricist, who had no place
for “the given,” let alone first principles, ignores too much the theological side to
the Venerable Inceptor, and those under his spell, as those for whom Revelation
must be taken into account. On the one hand, divine immediacy to things was
 Ibid., 179.

 Ibid., 199.
 Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, 240.

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certainly part of Ockham’s animus, and likewise Peter d’Ailly understood engag-
ed and involved divine power as that which is revealed in Scripture. On the other
hand, tracing the covenantal pattern in Scripture and in the world mattered, be-
cause the free will of a covenantal partner mattered. It is in the assenting area of
the covenanted people that grace can paradoxically have its most intense and
powerful effects. How much it was the case that in proto-modernity the mind
tried to raise itself above the cosmos, to interpret and then to lend it meaning,
and became its own transcendental – all leading to a counterproductive search
for certainty – such a thesis needs to be proved and not just accepted on the
basis of learned books by the likes of Louis Dupré.¹¹⁹ Dupre’s idea that Nominal-
ism separated the mind off from the rest of reality because Nominalism opted to
by-pass “species,” and relied on “intuition” so as to avoid abstracting from the
sense of experience, that many a faith felt threatened by Ockham¹²⁰ – all this
seems exaggerated. For, as Susan Schreiner describes it,¹²¹ Ockham if anything
increased reliance on the world and human senses with his intuitive theory of
cognition. Rather than Truth as radically unstable (Greenblatt) one might
speak of the reliability of immediacy of the Providential God. The “God” of
1450 still used mediators like created things and human senses, even if “species”
was given a decreased role in order to allow for a certain amount of immediacy.
This was at issue in Valla’s rejection of transcendentals, as well as of Boethian
Stoicism which claimed too much in offering consolation simply through “know-
ing that one is on God’s side” – and can one ever know that anyway?¹²² Citing
Psalm 36:8 (ex torrente voluptatis potabis eos), Maristella de Panizza Lorch de-
scribes Valla’s account of living out of joy as “an action for God, qualitas for
us: an active flowing of the essence of pure intense pleasure. It is a permanent
state of ebriety to which we are uplifted by God’s generosity.”¹²³ The spirit is one
of delectare in Domino (Ps 37:4).
In the idea that the Christian life experiences pain but moves towards pleas-
ure, Valla certainly offered something which in its day seemed novel. A Christian
honestas (virtue) admits to that and combines intensity with joy – it is voluptas
 Louis Dupré, Passage to Modernity: An Essay in the Hermeneutics of Nature and Culture
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).
 Katherine Tachau, Vision and Certitude in the Age of Ockham: Optics, Epistemology and the
Foundations of Semantics. 1250 – 1345, Studien und Texte zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters
22 (Leiden: Brill, 1988).
 Susan Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise? The Search for Certainty in the Early Modern Era, Ox-
ford Studies in Historical Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 18.
 Maristella de Panizza Lorch, A Defense of Life: Lorenzo Vallas Theory of Pleasure, Humani-
stische Bibliothek/1, 36 (München: Wilhelm Fink, 1985), 268.
 Ibid., 268.

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informed by faith, hope, and love. It is reward that motivates renunciation, not
renunciation that demands reward. In 1461 Valla could write: “On the other hand
we do not find in Holy Writ that God should be loved for himself, but simply that
God should be loved” (De libero arbitrio XIII,3),¹²⁴ “as the Creator of the good
that makes our life possible.”¹²⁵ Other Renaissance Christian writers wrote
against the pagan eccentricities of those whom Greenblatt would view as repre-
sentative, as when the Franciscan scholar Raudense (Antonio da Rho-Francis-
can) revised his De vero falsoque bono in 1433 to counteract the ideas advanced
by Niccoli in his De voluptate of 1431.
Theoretically, God could deceive the senses and might potentia absoluta as
when Saul saw the witch of Endor, but most of the time, potentia ordinata, he
did not. The homo viator might not have the immediate intuition of God but
he could, with grace, grasp the course or shape of God’s providential will. Hu-
manists rallied together, as Susan Schreiner noted, to urge: “trust your
senses.”¹²⁶ Human history could still be very much part of Divine History, even
while human living and ethics seemed to lay a larger part than in previous
eras. Humanists could and did ridicule Nominalist speculation but only in the
way of a younger cousin trying to establish himself over against the family
ties: “So too both the Nominalists and humanists placed a renewed emphasis
on the particular and on experience.”¹²⁷ But even Schreiner’s own argument
for “perspectivism” in that period is lacking in strong evidence: if anything
they identified with Greek and Latin historians in seeking to tell a common, uni-
versal history.
 Lorenzo Valla, Über den freien Willen / De libero arbitrio, ed. Eckhard Kessler, Humani-
stische Bibliothek II,16 (München: W. Fink 1987), 151– 54.
 Ibid., 281.
 Schreiner, Are You Alone Wise?, 26.
 Ibid., 31, discussing Ernesto Grassi, Renaissance Humanism: Studies in Philosophy and Po-
etics. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 51 (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renais-
sance Texts and Studies, 1988) and his anachronistic claim that Renaissance scholars meant
what Heidegger would much later mean by “historicality of being.”

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Chapter Four: Reformation Providence
The impact of Luther
According to a leading historian of philosophy the medieval Ptolemaic world-

view did not lend itself to a serious consideration of providence. Only with
the change to a Copernican worldview did Providence begin to drive a static doc-
trine of Creation from the field or at very least find some Lebensraum. ¹ However,
the tipping point in that process is dated sometime between Melanchthon and
Bartholomaeus Keckermann, thus 1550 – 1600. Melanchthon’s Neoplatonic resist-
ance to inductionist empiricism meant a resistance to leave behind a fixed idea
of fixed cosmic order.² Yet what one can perceive already in the case of Martin
Luther is a conviction that Providence is less a question of God’s orders and
the laws of Nature, and more to do with the action of God towards humans.
In fact, in light of what has been observed in the previous chapter, it needs to
be questioned just how non-medieval an interest in Providence was. What
does seem to be the case with Luther and other Reformers is that providence be-
came understood in covenantal terms that verged on the existential.
As early as his Heidelberg Disputation (1518) Luther had stated:
19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible
things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually
happened. 20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visi-
ble and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.³ Thus, the church
must say with Job, “Though God slay me, yet will I trust in him” (Job 13:15 AV), for
God’s actions contradict his promises, which we know and which have been fed to us.⁴
In his Personal Prayer Book (1522) Luther explained: “Compared with your will
ours is never good but always evil. Your will is at all times the best, to be cher-
 Siegfried Wollgast, Philosophie in Deutschland zwischen Reformation und Aufklärung 1550 –

1650, 2. Aufl. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1993), 71.
 Günther Frank, “Wie modern war eigentlich Melanchthon? Die theologische Philosophie des
Reformators im Kontext neuerer Theorien zur Herkunft der Moderne,” in Der Theologe Melanch-
thon: Schriften zur Melanchthonpreisverleihung 1997, ed. Günther Frank (Stuttgart: Thorbecke,
2000): 67– 82, 76: “Daß Melanchthon gegenüber der Rolle der Erfahrung oder Induktion für
die Begründung des Wissens skeptisch und zurückhaltend bleibt, muß hier nicht weiter verwun-
dern. Es war gerade sein neuplatonischer Vernunftapriorismus.”
 Luther’s Works (LW) 43:220.
 Ibid.
Brought to you by | provisional account

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136 Chapter Four: Reformation Providence
ished and desired above everything else. Therefore have mercy upon us, O dear
Father, and let nothing happen just because it is our own will.”⁵
So for Luther:
everything we do, everything that happens, even if it seems to us to happen mutably and
contingently, happens in fact […] necessarily and immutably, if you have regard to the will
of God. For the will of God is effectual and cannot be hindered, since it is the power of the
divine nature itself; moreover it is wise, so that it cannot be deceived [Confession concerning
Christ’s supper, 1528: LW 37,223 – 28].
Piotr Maylsz has commented: “According to Luther, God – precisely by virtue of

being God – is at work in the realm of creation in an immediate manner. God in
his majesty is always a ‘Deus praesens’.”⁶ Hence, and in keeping with Augustine,
humans have spontaneity in their choices but not freedom. Malysz notes how
this is cognate with a Dionysian (we might say also Eriugenian) exitus-reditus
scheme, which Luther adapted by removing any trace of free will. He also “de-
parts from Dionysius in questioning whether God’s unknowability can be con-
ceptualised at all apart from God’s being God in relation to creation. It is funda-
mentally as praesens that God, for Luther, is unknown and unknowable.”⁷ So,
God can only be known where he promises to reveal himself, not generally
from his effects in the world. Hence humans are, one might add, encouraged
to be listeners. When it comes to examining the world and God’s works, “God
so orders this corporal world in its external affairs that if you respect and follow
the judgment of human reason, you are bound to say either that there is no God
or that God is unjust.”⁸
This impenetrable working can be understood as “Providence,” as distinct
from “guidance,” where the human is conscious of some activity and can
make at least some sense of where God is leading. No sense can be made of Prov-
idence. For Luther, one can have a strong belief that God is at work, not how he
is or who he is in it. This is at least reminiscent of Valla in wanting to escape the
notion of Providence as “something understood.”
Something of this confidence in the power of God irresistibly at work in the
world can be seen in what Luther wrote about the origins of creation:
 LW 43:33, cited by Mary Jane Haemig, “Prayer as Talking Back to God in Luther’s Genesis Lec-
tures,” Lutheran Quarterly 23 (2009): 270 – 95, 289.
 Piotr J. Malysz, “Luther And Dionysius: Beyond Mere Negations,” Modern Theology 24 (2008):
679 – 692, 683.
 Ibid., 684.
 LW 33:291; Weimarer Ausgabe (WA) 18:784 (‘On the Bondage of the Will’).

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Whatever God wanted to create, that He created then when He spoke. Not everything has
come into view at once. Similarly, an arrow or a ball which is shot from a cannon (for it
has greater speed) is sent to its target in a single moment, as it were, and nevertheless it
is shot through a definite space; so God, through His Word, extends His activity from the
beginning of the world to its end.⁹
On this Jonathan Schwanke comments that God remains with his creation, is ef-
fective in it, continually allows new animals and human beings to be born, and
continually grants new beginnings, in this way preserving creation.¹⁰ But what is
even more important here in Luther’s thinking is mediation. Also: “God’s action
as Creator can only be perceived through the mediation of creatures. God does
not act in the abstract, not nudum (without means), as it were, but rather
binds his activity to creaturely events.”¹¹ For example, parents distribute or con-
vey divine parental care. Workers achieve God’s purposes for him. Famously, Lu-
ther could say: “Hence when a maid milks the cows or a hired man hoes the field
– provided that they are believers, namely, that they conclude that this kind of
life is pleasing to God and was instituted by God – they serve God more than all
the monks and nuns […].”¹²
So, recognizing our co-working with God pleases him, although this con-
sciousness is what changes providence into providential vocation. Providential
care that is expressed in political, ecclesial and economical ordering was barely
affected by the Fall.¹³ There was room within them for individuals to progress in
their vocation, and Luther’s account was different to his friend Melanchthon’s
belief, worked out in his Commentary on Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in nat-
ural law as the intermediate origin of the states (Stände). Luther in describing
providence as directly communicated personal vocation which both affirmed
and stretched a person’s position or state emphasized what one’s “providence”
is and might become, not whence it came or being able to give reasons for it.
 WA 42, 57.34– 58,2; LW 1:76 (on Gen 2:2).

 Jonathan Schwanke, “Luther on Creation,” Lutheran Quarterly 16 (2002): 1– 20, 3.
 WA 44,259,34– 37: LW 6:347 (on Gen. 37:12– 14): “Nisi matres parèrent, lactarent, mundarent.
foverent infantes, totum genus humanum interire necesse esset. Cum autem Deus ipse autor sit
horum officiorum, […] esse optima et gratissima exercitia pietatis erga Deum et homines.”
 WA 43,106,2– 6; LW 3:321 (on Gen. 20:2).
 Christopher Voigt-Goy, “Die gesellschaftlichen Stände, die Schöpfung und der Fall. Zur
Ständelehre in Luthers Genesisvorlesung (1535),” in Kontexte: Biografische und forschungsge-
schichtliche Schnittpunkte der alttestamentlichen Wissenschaft: Festschrift für Hans Jochen Bod-
cker zum 80. Geburstag, eds. Thomas Wagner, Dieter Vieweger, and Kurt Erlemann (Neukirch-
en-Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2008): 65 – 80. For more detail, see Ulrich Asendorf, Lectura in
Biblia: Luthers Genesisvorlesung (1535 – 1545), Forschungen zur Systematischen und Ökumeni-
schen Theologie 87 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998).

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Again this seems to be a question of emphasis: Luther supplied the personal and
epistemological account and the communal possibilities, whereas Melanchthon
saw true ethical regeneration as helped by the way God made those institutions
and states operate.
Given Luther’s belief in God’s providence and his unshakable confidence in
the sure promises of God, what place was there for a divine mercy received by
accident? Mickey Mattox reinforces this Lutheran sense of certainty with an ap-
peal to Luther on Ps 90:3: “‘Men do not come into being by accident. They are not
born by accident. They do not suffer by accident. They do not die by accident.’ In
each case, ‘by accident’ is temere.”¹⁴ Yet according to Mattox there is something
of the accidental or the fortuitous in the realm of grace. It is not covenantal and
fixed but applies to those outside that arrangement. This is best shown in the
great Lectures on Genesis which occupied him from 1535 to 1545.¹⁵ Luther
began to use fortuita positively, pairing it as an adjective with misericordia. An
example is God’s promise to Cain in Genesis 4. Mattox comments:
It was a mere promissio legalis, Luther explains, because it depended for its execution not
on the infallible faithfulness of God, but on human obedience to a divine law. As with the
moral law more generally, so also this law constrains human sin, preserves the lives of Cain
and his posterity, and leaves open the possibility of salvation for the elect among them. Ac-
cidental mercy, then, is not a saving but rather a preserving grace, one given in the para-
doxical form of a divine positive law, conditioned on human obedience.¹⁶
As Mattox explains: “However, ‘accidental mercy’ refers not merely to the pres-
ervative effect of a divine positive law, but to the salvific impact of the word of
God as, in God’s own good time, it brings light where once there was only dark-
ness.” Mattox later glosses this otherwise slightly confusing assertion: “that the
accidental mercy of God is at work to preserve the lives and prolong the histories
of outsiders so that they, too, can one day turn to saving faith.”¹⁷
In Luther’s Larger Catechism one could argue that God’s providential care is
at the heart of the explanation of the opening gambit, the First Commandment,
 Mickey Mattox, “‘Fortuita Misericordia’: Martin Luther On The Salvation Of Biblical Outsid-
ers,” Pro Ecclesia XVII (2008): 423 – 443, 429, n.22.re. WA 40.III,518; LW 13.96 – 97.
 Cf. Ulrich Asendorf, “Die ökumenische Bedeutung von Luthers Genesis-Vorlesung (1535 –
1545),” in Caritas Dei: Beiträge zum Verständnis Luthers und der gegenwärtigen Ökumene: Fest-
schrift für Tuomo Mannermaa zum 60. Geburtstag, eds. Oswald Bayer, Robert W. Jenson, and
Simo Knuuttila (Helsinki: Luther-Agricola-Gesellschaft, 1997): 18 – 40.
 Mattox, “‘Fortuita Misericordia’,” 434 re. WA 42.225; LW 1.306.
 Ibid., 435; 439.

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and at the heart of the whole work.¹⁸ Luther was but more profound and truer to
human experience than Leibniz, according to Werner Elert.¹⁹ Yet there was true
hope as well as realism. It is not coincidence that many regard Luther’s great
Genesis commentary as the crowning glory of his theological endeavour, as he
traced the movement of God in the lives of the patriarchs and others. Luther por-
trayed God as a restless mover among all his creatures (inquietus actor in omni-
bus creaturis) (WA 18,711). Salvation history happened where God alone was at
work, but in the realm of the everyday and also in the ethical outworking of
faith there would be room for co-operation and concursus in the sharing of ev-
eryday life and its ambitions and anxieties with God.²⁰ There was a different yet
most real kind of freedom under providence. Wilfried Härle spotted the connec-
tion between the doctrine of Providence and Luther’s Zwei-Regimenten-Lehre:
Providence and Law (Gesetz) go together, perhaps primarily in a Lutheran-Augus-
tinian way²¹ – pushing back decay, with annihilatio mundi as counterpart to cre-
atio ex nihilo. ²² Eschatology seems to demand a teleology of world-history to-
wards the kingdom of God, which one gets to by going through and beyond
 “Gott allein trauen und sich eitel Gutes zu ihm versehen und von ihm gewarten soll, als der
uns gibt Leib, Leben, Essen, Trinken, Nahrung, Gesundheit, Schutz, Friede und alle Notdurft
zeitlicher und ewiger Güter, dazu bewahrt vor Unglück und, so etwas widerfährt, rettet und aus-
hilft; also dass Gott (wie genug gesagt) allein der ist, von dem man alles Gute empfängt und alles
Unglücks los wird. Daher auch, achte ich, nennen wir Deutschen Gott eben mit dem Namen von
alters her (feiner und artiger denn keine andere Sprache) nach dem Wörtlein ‘gut’, als der ein
ewiger Quellbrunn ist, der sich mit eitel Güte übergießt und von dem alles, was gut ist und
heißt, ausfließt.”
 Werner Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums 1: Theologie und Weltanschauung des Luthertums
hauptsächlich im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert (München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung,
1931– 32), 418: “Wer von Luthers Erklärung des 90. Psalms oder von seiner Schrift gegen Erasmus
herkommt, wird keinen Augenblick im Zweifel sein, daß er nicht unnötig schwärzer als Leibniz,
sondern wirklich tiefer.”
 Gottfried Hörnig, “Vorsehungsglaube und Geschichtshandeln: Überlegungen zu einer Neu-
gestaltung der Providentiallehre,” in Unsere Welt – Gottes Schöpfung: Festschrift für Eberhard
Wölfel zum 65. Geburtstag, eds. Wilfried Härle, Manfred Marquardt, Wolfgang Nethöfel (Marburg:
N.G. Elwert, 1992): 223 – 233, 223: “Nach reformatorischer Überzeugung handelt Gott in der Er-
schaffung der Welt sowie in gnadenhaftem Zuspruch der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung
ganz allein, wirkt aber in seinem Geschichtshandeln durch das Handeln des Menschen hin-
durch, so daß von einem ‘Zusammenwirken’ Gottes und des Menschen gesprochen werden
kann.”
 Wilfried Härle, “Luthers Zwei-Regimenten-Lehre als Lehre vom Handeln Gottes,” in Marbur-
ger Jahrbuch Theologie I: Vom Handeln Gottes, eds. Wilfried Härle and Reiner Preul, Marburger
Theologisch Studien, 22 (Marburg: N.G. Elwert, 1987): 12– 32.
 Hornig, “Vorsehungsglaube und Geschichtshandeln,” 233: “Mit dem Vergehen von Himmel
und Erde vollzieht Gott die Aufhebung seiner im Schöpfungsakt erfolgen Selbstbegrenzung.”

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“world history.” Likewise, vocation (Berufung) was not a private matter, but a so-
cial one. Elders watched over it in loco Dei. It was based on love and service, not
just ambition: Luther would see private contracts in some way as morally speak-
ing “public” matters, since they were part of building up society. In theory voca-
tion could break through the “given” of Stand or position in society: in that sense
it was “dynamic.”²³
Now this providential care is something short of sure mercy, which saving
faith alone can grasp, but it is continuous with it, prepares for it, reinforces it
and fufils it. The idea is that God corrects us not to punish us so that we pay
off our debt, but to wake us up, as well as having a mortifying, then sanctifying
effect at a deeper level than our acts. In the Genesis lectures (WA 43&44; LW 1– 8)
Luther tells of Joseph playing a game with his brothers (Gen 42– 44) yet doing
this with tears: this is an allegory of how God treats the saints for their
good.²⁴ God tests them as he tested Abraham: “Those who endure such trial
come to a deeper understanding of God’s mercy and providence. ‘O my heavenly
Father,’ they exclaim, ‘were you so close to me, and I did not know it?’” For Lu-
ther, this is what Scripture means by “seeing the Lord face to face”: to be brought
back from hell into reconfession and reaffirmation.²⁵
Steve J. Munson ends his study by giving two fine quotations about how
providence is grasped, even if not comprehended:
In faith you should offer resistance so that you may conquer and become Israel. How? Not
with the strength or weapons of your flesh and nature but with confidence in the cause that
intervenes between you and God, namely, that he has promised and sworn that he will be
your God. With this confidence you will conquer, inasmuch as it arises not from Nature but
from the promise. If, therefore, he meets you as a wrestler and wants to destroy you or to
hide his name and promise, be strong and hold firmly to the Word, even though you feel
great infirmity, and you will conquer.²⁶ […] Even if [God] hides himself in a room in the
house and does not want access to be given to anyone, do not draw back but follow. If
he does not want to listen, knock at the door of the room; raise a shout! For this is the high-
est sacrifice, not to cease praying and seeking until we conquer him. He has already sur-
rendered himself to us so that we may be certain of victory: ‘[…] he who believes and is
baptized will be saved.’ These promises will never disappoint us unless we refuse to follow
and seek.²⁷
 Werner Elert, Morphologie des Luthertums 2: Sozialehren und Sozialwirkungen des Luthertums
(München: C.H. Beck’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1932), 74.
 Steve J. Munson, “The Divine Game: Faith and the Reconciliation of Opposites in Luther’s
Lectures on Genesis,” CTQ 76 (2012): 89 – 115, 100.
 Ibid., 101 re. WA 44,112.
 Munson, “The Divine Game,” 115, quoting WA 44:115.
 Munson, “The Divine Game,” 108, re. WA 44:104.

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Likewise in connection with the story of Lot: “But God changes this will because
Lot fears God and prays. This is God’s ordered power, not His secret power. For
God does not want to rule us in accordance with His secret will; He wants to do
so in accordance with His will as it has been ordered and revealed by the Word”
(WA 43:82.14– 21; LW 3:289).
Haemig explains that in the Large Catechism (1529) Luther argued:
that this petition [the Lord’s Prayer] prays that God’s will be done rather than the will of the
devil, the world, or our enemies […] He did not place God’s will in opposition to the will of
the one praying […]. In the Genesis lectures Luther went further, making clear that ques-
tioning God and even trying to change what is perceived as God’s will is part of the life
of faith. It was acceptable for Abraham to question God on whether God would really fulfill
his promise. Further, it was not just tolerable but laudable that Abraham tried to influence
God’s actions toward Sodom.²⁸
Calvin and the Swiss-Dutch tradition
There is something in the thesis that just as the “Second Reformation” in terms
of Dogmatics was more about process and action rather than about new begin-
nings and status, its philosophical theology was more about Providence than
Creation.²⁹ In his essay “Calvin on Universal and Particular Providence,” Charles
Partee summarises from Calvin’s Contre la secte phantastique et furieuse des Lib-
ertines qui se nomment spirituelz (Calvini Opera 7.186 – 90). General providence
means the sun, moon and stars in their courses:
The second aspect of God’s work in his creatures is that he extends his hand to help his
servants and to punish the wicked. Thus prosperity and adversity, rain, wind, sleet,
frost, fine weather, abundance, famine, war and peace are works of the hand of God.
The third aspect of the work of God consists in his governance of the faithful, living and
reigning in them by his Holy Spirit.³⁰
Partee explains further: “In [Hermann] Bavinck’s treatment common grace

seems to be the presupposition of special grace. However Calvin does not
 Mary Jane Haemig, ‘’Prayer as talking back to God in Luther’s Genesis lectures’, Lutheran
Quarterly, ns 23 (2009), 270 – 295.
 Wollgast, Philosophie in Deutschland, 71: “Hatte bis zur Reformation das Hauptinteresse der
Theologen Gott dem Schöpfer gegolten, so wurde dieses Interesse während und nach der Refor-
mation teilweise von der Providentia-Lehre verdrängt.”
 Charles Partee, Calvin and Classical Philosophy, Studies in the History of Christian Thought
15 (Leiden: Brill, 1977), 126 – 45.

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make special grace depend on common grace, nor special providence depend on
universal providence.”³¹ Special providence – that which concerns believers in
their Christian lives – takes precedence in Calvin’s scheme. God can withhold
sun and rain (universal providence) for the sake of special concerns. Providence
should really be understood in the first place as special providence: “Since God’s
providence is a ‘rampart of defense,’ Calvin objects to the idea of separating cre-
ation from providence and understanding the latter as the provision of a kind of
neutral context for life rather than as God’s special care for all that he had cre-
ated” (Com Ps 35,22; Calvini Opera 31,356).³² Thus the basic understanding of
God’s Providence is not a neutral common grace, but the conviction that God
has the power to protect the faithful. Partee ascribes providentia specialissima
to the Holy Spirit, and he makes it amount the same thing as predestination
in Calvin’s scheme. “The third stage in the development of the doctrines of prov-
idence and predestination is reached in the final edition of the Institutes. Here
the main exposition of providence precedes the treatment of predestination (con-
trast the 1539 Institutes), although Calvin does not explain why.”³³
However, against what Partee and Kusche maintain, Book I of the final edi-
tion of his famous Institutio treated providence as part of the doctrine of God,
giving it nearly the same position it had in the scheme of Thomas Aquinas,
while predestination was placed in an altogether different position, as part of
the section on soteriology (III.xxiff.), immediately preceding the discussion of
the resurrection. In the edition of 1541, this emphasis had been even more strik-
ing, when the early section on providence was lacking and that doctrine was dis-
cussed only after the section on Predestination, which is part of soteriology. The
arrangement of the edition of 1541suggests that providence also may be best un-
derstood as a work of grace (However in the 1559 edition, “Providence is sepa-
rated from predestination and finds full expression as a part of the knowledge
of God the Creator.”³⁴ Indeed, “God’s government of worldly affairs seemed to
be one thing, and involved one set of rules; his action for a person’s eternal wel-
fare was another, governed by rules of an altogether different order.”³⁵
 Ibid., 129.
 Ibid., 130.
 Ibid., 139.
 Susan Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory: Nature and the Natural Order in the Thought of
John Calvin (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2001), 7.
 Heinrich Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, ed. John W. Beardslee III (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1965), 17 f. Cf. Richard Stauffer, Dieu, la creation et la Providence dans la predication de
Calvin, Basler und Berner Studien zur historischen und systematischen Theologie 33 (Bern: P.
Lang, 1978), Ch 6: “La Providence,” 261: “On sait que la doctrine de la Providence qui ne fait

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Christian Link helpfully comments that the treatment of Providence in the

1539 Institues, as in the 1536 edition was grounded in the doctrines of Creation
and of God. Rom 8:30 is attributed to Providence, and it denotes an ordo midser-
icordiae. But the main difference is that whereas Predestination is now (by 1539)
defined as aeternum dei decretum, Providence is now Anordnung (gubernatio).
And yet the language seems interchangeable so that it is hard always to distin-
guish the two. In his treatment of Ephesians 1:3 and 2 Tim 1:9 there is a veritable
intermingling of Providence and Predestination: they donate content to each
other. Special providence only comes into play where Christ and salvation are
operative.³⁶
To be truthful, by 1559 Calvin was not really interested in classifications but
in the pastoral implications of certain views. If anything, his picture of God the
Father (not the Spirit) is one of a pastor with a eudemonistic tone. David in the
Psalms was the model for the rhetoric here, as he praised the general or univer-
sal providence of God the Father.³⁷ On the negative side, he was concerned not to
have something between God and us called “fortuna.” He confesses himself to
be tired of people saying “fortune” when they should say “God” (Inst I,16,5). Cal-
vin followed Guillaume Budé in constructing a total opposition between divine
providence and Fortune: Even to think of historical events as “coincidence” is
not any better: that is to make everything just accidental and meaningless. Calvin
came to see that it was not enough just to draw near to history, to let it instruct
us, as pagans thought it was. Rather, with the Holy Spirit’s help, one was to see
what an event or series of events meant for the whole of history, the present in-
cluded. Scripture contained prophecy after all. Holy Scripture might well relate
special stories but that does not mean that the action of God in them should be
seen as irregular or exceptional.³⁸ The older Calvin was less confident in treating
pas l’objet d’un chapitre particulier dans l’Institution chrestienne de 1536, apparaît, liée à la doc-
trine de la prédestination, dans le chapitre 8 de l’édition de 1539/1541, avant d’être disjointe de la
doctrine d’élection dans l’édition de 1559/1560.”
 Christian Link, Schöpfung, vol. 1, Schöpfungstheologie in reformatischer Tradition, Handbuch
systematischer Theologie 7/1 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus Gerd Mohn, 1991), 177 ff. Cf. 182:
“Der Skopus der Gotteslehre ist die Providenz, sofern sie erst Gott als den Schöpfer recht erken-
nen läßt. Der Skopus der Christologie ist die Prädestination, sofern wir in der Bestimmung des
Menschen zum Heil das Ziel der Sendung Christi erfassen.”
 Inst I.16.5: “[…] generalem Dei providentiam […] Puerile est, ut iam dixi, hoc ad particulares
actus restringere, quum sine exceptione loquitur Christus, nullum ex passerculis nullius pretii
cadere in terram sine Patris voluntate.”
 Inst I.16.7: “Quinetiam particulares eventus testimonia esse dico in genere singularis Dei
providentiae. Excitavit Deus in deserto ventum australem, qui populo adveheret copiam
avium [Exod. 16,c13] Quum Ionam voluit in mare proiici, ventum turbine excitando emisit

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extra-biblical history as providing examples. Calvin seems to envision a general

providence, which is a universal presence rather than an occasional one. One
might expect Calvin to want to protect the Father’s transcendence a bit more.
But the point is that “special providence” is a continuation of the “general,”
or a sharpening of it. God controls generally in order to be ready to adapt the
world for his special ends.
Providence is something God exercises towards all his creatures, but this is
not always for their apparent good since it is directed towards their ultimate
good, which is acknowledgement of Him, rather than guaranteed eternal life
with Him. It is properly not part of soteriology, although as Providence leads
on to saving history so might acknowledgement of it well prepare the way for sal-
vation. There is clearly no hiatus between creation and salvation.
The solution of the difficulty is well known, that God ceased from all his
work, when he desisted from the creation of new kinds of things. But to make
ths sense clearer, understand that the last touch of God had been put, in
order that nothing be wanting to the perfection of the world. And this is the
meaning of the words of Moses, “From all his work which he had made”; for
he points out the actual state of the work as God would have it to be, as if he
had said, then was completed what God had proposed to Himself. On the
whole, this language is intended merely to express the perfection of the fabric
of the world; and therefore we must not infer that God so ceased from this
works so as to desert them, since they only flourish and subsist in him.³⁹
There is no sense that God has delegated any of his agency to any subordi-
nate.⁴⁰ Calvin wanted to bury any idea of Fortuna to which people ascribe good
and bad events. The sun, for all its glory, is a mere instrument. Just like one hold-
ing a key God moderates all events, as he puts it in Institutes I, 16,4 (“sed veluti
clavum tenens, eventus omnes moderatur”), while the French version of the fol-
lowing year (1560) has: “he is like a ship’s owner who takes over the rudder”
(“il est comme un patron de navire, qui tient le gouvernail”).
Only believers can really see this, since whereas nature manifests, history
often obscures providence, which can be recognised only by the sensus fidei:
for how he meant this the Commentary on the Psalms is the key witness.⁴¹ But
[Ionae 1.B4] Dicent quid not putant Deum mundi gubernacula tenet, hoc fuisse praeter com-
mune usum. Atqui idne colligo nullum unquam ventum oriri, vel surgere, nisi speciali Dei
iussu.”
 Commentary on Genesis (http://www.ccel.org/ccel/calvin/calcom01.html) Vol 1, 104.
 Calvin I.16,2: “Quo melius pateat hoc discrimen, sciendum est, providentiam Dei, quails tra-
ditur in Scriptura, fortunae et casibus fortuitis opponi.”
 “De aeterna praedestinatione dei” (Calvini Opera [CO] 8:347– 9).

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that does not mean that God in his providence is only providing for or interested
in believers. As Richard Stauffer points out, the hand-holding (manutentia) is not
reserved for believers (Sermon 33 on 1 Tim 1): God here also guarantees nonbe-
lievers from danger.⁴² For that protection is a demonstration of how God feels pa-
ternally towards all people (“une manifestation, dans l’ordre de la création, de
l’amour paternal de Dieu envers toute l’humanité”).⁴³ Deuteronomy 8:3 and Mat-
thew 4:4 are both about physical bread, yet Calvin defines this as special provi-
dence – because bread is not a product of the earth naturally – and God has to
arrange things, with rain and creatures (farmers and millers) required. God is in-
terested in more than souls. Stauffer declares that for Calvin (on Deuteronomy)
God’s care for bodies is evidence, a sign that he cares for souls.⁴⁴
In Institutes I,16,9 Calvin admits that, in the story he relates of the merchant
who gets separated from friends in the forest and is killed, it seems an unlucky
turn of events, rather than something decreed by God. But Job 14:5 (“a person’s
days are numbered”) would suggest that it was divinely intended, and of course
it is easier to see such things in scripture as God-planned. Of course we should
note also Calvin’s love for examples, which he learned from his classical and
rhetorical training. As Ganoczy and Scheld note: Seneca’s De luxu was relevant
for Calvin’s own brand of Stoicism, as was the De Clementia on which he wrote a
commentary. Also Senecan Tragedies and Lucan’s Pharsalia on the Roman Civil
War are echoed in Calvin’s praise of rusticitas, and his approval of an ethos of
sober living, an eschewing of fortuna and a determination to help for the
poor. The encomium of all things rustic would have seemed like backwardness
to many Genevans. Moreover, civil war was a reality during the time of writing
On the Secret Providence of God. His interpretation of Psalms 114 & 124 is set
against a background of religious armed conflict in Germany. The Stoic paradox
of seeking life through death accorded with Calvin’s theology of the cross. Like-
wise, Calvin saw God’s slowness to judge as allowing the sins of persecutors to
add up (“comble des péchés”), although there was always a chance for repent-
ance, unlike Agrippa d’Aubigné, according to whom, more under the influence
of Bullinger, they had lost their chance.⁴⁵ One might want to say that although
 CO 53, p400, on 1 Tim 4:10.

 Stauffer, Dieu, la creation et la Providence, 267.
 Ibid., 270: “Oublier qu’il veille sur notre existence temporelle, c’est oublier à coup sûr qu’il
s’intéresse à notre vie éternelle. Ne pas voir en lui la Providence, c’est immanquablement se con-
demner à ne pas reconnoitre en lui le Sauveur” (On Deut; CO 26, 94.).
 Elliott Forsyth, La Justice de Dieu: Les Tragiques d’Agrippa d’Aubigne et la Reforme protes-
tante en France au XVIe siecle, Etudes et Essais sur la Renaissance 5 (Paris Honore Champion
2005), 234: “Pour Calvin, Dieu exerce sa patience afin de permettre au pécheur de se repentir

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not dominant, apocalypticism, with the idea of imminent judgement, was the
world-view of a sizeable minority in the Reformed movement of the later six-
teenth century. Its rhetoric and conception of God as avenger would continue
to be influential, even if the vengeance lay more in the world to come than in
this. Bullinger and Calvin at the very least encouraged the view that what was
needed was not merely the renewal of the Church, but of the whole world.
The other side of the coin is that Calvin and his “God” mistrusted human
agency. There was a sin of looking to dominate and control all things, as Seneca
did.⁴⁶ Susan Schreiner observes that for Calvin, creation is now too far fallen into
corruption for God to entrust acts to secondary causes. Providence is more a “bri-
dle” (Job 1:6), and it might be better to think of secondary causes as instrumental
rather than efficient causes.⁴⁷ Calvin forbids any notion of God’s being caught up
in secondary causes, for all that He is immanent to creation to act on it. There is
something about the divine will in relation to creation that continues in his
teaching on Providence. Calvin’s dislike of Ecclesiasticus 18:1 is apparent when
he insists “the Greek text cannot be used to mean ‘He who lived forever created
all things at one and the same time’.” No, God took successive periods to unroll
creation (Comm Gen 1:5; CO 23:17). As Schreiner notes the Psalms commentary
and three Psalms in particular should be noticed (Ps 104, Ps 107 and Ps 115).⁴⁸
Also in the famous Preface to that work, Calvin famously wrote that God with
the hidden rein of his divine providence turned his course aside.⁴⁹ It is interest-
ing that if there is a biblical book that provides much of Calvin’s food for thought
on this subject it is not Job, but the Psalms.⁵⁰ The Book of Jonah shows Calvin at
et de recevoir son pardon. Pour d’Aubigné, cependant, l’oppresseur du peuple de Dieu n’a au-
cune possibilité de se repentir, aucune possibilité de pardon.”
 Ganoczy-Scheld, Herrschaft, Tugend, Vorsehung: Hermeneutische Deutung und Veröffentli-
chung handschriftlicher Annotationen Calvins zu sieben Senecatragödien und der Pharsalia Lu-
cans (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1992), 22. In his Pentateuch-harmony Calvin would come to speak
out strongly against Stoicism (CO 25,90) (ibid., 27).
 Schreiner, The Theater of His Glory, 36.
 He pitted himself against Averroist Italians: God is not just a force, but one who determines
(Ps 115:3); cf. Ps 107:43. Aristotelians try to tie God up in secondary causality. The order of nature
is not a hierarchy but a stability that nevertheless requires God’s constant attention (Ps 104:29),
including the waters above the earth (CO 37:631– 2).
 CO 31.21: “Deus tamen arcano providentiae suae fraeno cursum meum alio tandem reflexit.”
 Pieter C. Potgieter, “Providence in Calvin: Calvin’s View of God’s Use of Means (media) in his
Acts of Providence,” in Calvinus Evangelii Propugnator: Calvin, Champion of the Gospel: Papers
Presented at the Interntaional Congress on Calvin Research, Seoul, 1998, eds. David F. Wright, An-
thony N. S. Lane, and Jon Balserak (Grand Rapids: Calvin Studies Society, 2006): 175 – 190. On Ps
104:30 Calvin wrote: “Gradatim vero describit animalium interitum, ubi arcanum suum vigorem
retrahit Deus, quo melius ex opposite continuam inspirationem commendet, qua vegetantur”

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his most resistant to Christological interpretation for the message of that small
book was to affirm the divine control over nature for the sake of history. Calvin
consulted Guilelmus Rondelet’s work Libri de piscibus marinis and concluded
that what swallowed Jonah was not a whale but a man-eating shark (lamia),
which in turn was a symbol of providential conservation.⁵¹
According to John Hesselink:
the abundant references in Calvin’s writings to the governing and guiding work of the Spirit
suggest that although the concrete truths and injunctions of Scripture may be implied or
understood and although Christ is always the model (exemplar) for our lives, Calvin sub-
mits that we are given not only faith and assurance by the Holy Spirit but also both general
and specific wisdom and direction for our lives quite apart from any explicit instruction in
the Scriptures or preaching of the gospel. In short, the Spirit at times gives seemingly inde-
pendent and secret guidance.⁵²
The Spirit gives a sort of suprarational insight and understanding, and this is
very much connected to sanctification and mortification, as in the Geneva Cae-
chis, question 173. Hesselink further argues: “But Providence supplies a kind of a
guidance when we cannot see,” and Calvin gives the example of the cripple at
Lystra finding his way to Paul.⁵³ There arises a veritable terminus technicus in
Calvin’s writings, particularly the commentaries and sermons, viz., “by a secret
impulse of the Spirit/God” (arcano spiritus/ Dei instinctu).⁵⁴ Hesselink points
here to the work of scholars who have researched Calvin’s pneumatology and ec-
clesiology.⁵⁵
(Calvin, Comm Ps 104.30; CO 32:95). Here Calvin rejects Servetus’s claim that creatures partake in
the Holy Spirit simply by being created. Cf. CO 8:606: “nihil in coelo est vel in terra, quod non
sua praesentia arcanoque influx vegetet Dei spiritus” (Refutatio errorum Michaelis Serveti).
 Jens Wolff, “Providenz und Meeresforschung: Auslegungsgeschichtliche Beobachtungen zu
Johannes-Calvins Jona-Kommentar,” in Der problematische Prophet: Die biblische Jona-Figur in
Exegese, Theologie, Literatur und bildender Kunst, eds. Johann Anselm Steiger and Wilhelm Kühl-
mann, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, 118 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2011), 139 – 58: Jonah himself was
not a type of Christ but his three-day underground sojourn was a type of Christ’s triduum.
 I. John Hesselink, “Governed and Guided by the Spirit: A Key Issue in Calvin’s Doctrine of
the Holy Spirit,” in Reformiertes Erbe, Festschrift für Gottfried W. Locher zu seinem 80. Geburtstag:
Band 2, eds. Heiko A. Oberman, Ernst Saxer, Alfred Schindler, and Heinzpeter Stuckim, Zwingli-
ana (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 1992): 161– 171, 163.
 Commentary in Acts 14:9 (CO 48,321).
 Hesselink, “Governed and Guided by the Spirit”, 169.
 Ibid., 161: cf. Werner Krusche, Das Wirken des Heiligen Geistes nach Calvin FKDG 7 (Götting-
en: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1957); see also the appendix to Benjamin Charles Milner Jr., Cal-
vin’s Doctrine of the Church, SHCT 5 (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 197 ff.

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Hence there is merit in what Cornelis van Sliedregt says: as one moves from
Calvin to Beza, one moves from omnicausality and care into omnicausality
alone. There seems a true loss of the experiential side: Beza wanted to make
theological corrections of philosophy, and to provide respectable Christian apol-
ogetics.⁵⁶ J. Dantine saw the Zwinglian influence in Beza’s liking for God as sum-
mum bonum in his tying Providence to the Doctrine of God. That which Bohatec
ascribed to Calvin, viz. the view that Providence was the Stammlehre, or the start-
ing-place (“proscenium arch”) with Predestination as the central dogma – seems
to fit Beza. All that happened was tied to God’s original decree which is the sub-
stance of his eternal providence.⁵⁷ Providence is the overarching concept for the
decree and execution – and it serves the doctrine of Election, with the Trinity as
the “place of refuge” theme. For Beza, Predestination and Providence went hand
in hand, and hence he went his own way from Calvin, notwithstanding the pro-
testations of Richard Muller not to make too much of this. Calvin makes the dis-
tinction of divine willing and divine permission in Predestination, but not in
Providence. As Jeremy Mallinson observes, as early as 1569 Beza used the term
“Deist” (coined by Guillaume Farel) – “qui se Deistas vocant” – and so it was
never enough for him just to prove God’s existence.⁵⁸ God was an Actor, in
fact the Hero of the Play.
We find a nice summary of Beza’s view in his Aphorisms: ⁵⁹
30. For the Sophisters set will against permission, or sufferance: whereof doth follow that
God suffers the things which he suffers, either against his will, or at leastwise being idle, &
not caring for them. But contrariwise, lest we should either take from God his endless and
unmeasurable power, or after the opinion of the Epicures, say as the thing indeed is, that
God neither works anything by instruments, but willingly, nor yet suffers the instruments to
work, but willingly, yet in such sort that whatsoever he works, he works most justly, and
whatsoever he permitts or suffers, he most justly suffers.
31. And God works in respect of his own work: and permits or suffers in respect of the
work that the evil instruments do of their own accord work, or insofar as they are active and
not passive instruments, that we may keep the terms used in the schools. Yet doth God just-
 Cornelis van Sliedregt, Calvijns Opvolger Theodorus Beza: Zijn Verkiezingsleer en zijn belijde-
nis van de drieënige God, Kerkhistorische Monografieën 4 (Leiden: Groen, 1988), 271. On p. 272
one reads in his conclusion concerning Beza’s Confessio: “via de voorzienigheid de predestinatie
vooronderstelt.”
 Johannes Dantine, Die Prädestinationslehre bei Calvin und Beza (Göttingen: Georg August-
Universität, 1965), 55 f.
 Jeremy Mallinson, Faith, Reason, and Revelation in Theodore Beza: 1519 – 1605, Oxford The-
ology and Religion Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 109.
 Theodore Beza’s Thirty-Eight Aphorisms against Castalio, translated by Iohn Stockwood
(http://www.truecovenanter.com/supralapsarian/beza_against_castalion.html).

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ly suffer the thing that these instruments unjustly work, for because that sins, insofar as
they are suffered by God that wills, are not sins: but punishments of sin. For with GOD
it is a just thing to punish sins with sins. But these selfsame actions insofar as they
come from Satan, and evil men provoked by Satan and their own concupiscence or lust,
are so far sins, which the Lord in his time doth justly punish. For the Lord doth never suffer
sins so far as they are sins, nay he doth always forbid them.
32. Neither is this consequence or reason good: God wills all things, therefore he al-
lows all things. For he wills many things, and therefore suffers them, not because he simply
allows of them, but after a certain sort, for he allows them, so far as he suffers them, even
so far as they are no sins, as we said even now: But he disallows & punishes them, so far as
he hath respect or looks unto the evil instruments, whose actions they are.
Here Providence seems to be very much about divine judgment and about the
doctrine of God and his reputation.
The Heidelberg Catechism and Bullinger
Emidio Campi has this to say about Peter Martyr Vermigli:
Moreover he sided unequivocally with Augustine, Luther and Calvin in highlighting God’s
continual presence in creation (creatio continua). He did not take the statement that “God
finished his creation the seventh day” (Gen 2:3) to mean that God no longer creates. It
would be more accurate to say, and Vermigli is explicit about this, that God is at every mo-
ment creating, for the creation would cease to exist altogether if God were to withdraw his
sustaining power.⁶⁰
Vermigli was of course the teacher of Ursinus, the chief theologian of the hugely
influential Heidelberg Catechism of 1563. The word that rings out at the very be-
ginning of that Catechism is “Trost”. This should not mean that we take the spi-
rituality of the Heidelberg Catechism to be a passive one. As Thorsten Latzel ob-
serves,⁶¹ the tone is one of encouraging Lebensmut through a consideration of
 Emidio Campi, “Genesis Commentary: Interpreting Creation,” in A Companion to Peter Mar-

tyr Vermigli, eds. Torrance Kirby, Emidio Campi, and Frank James III, Brill’s Companions to the
Christian Tradition, 16 (Leiden: Brill, 2009): 209 – 229, 220.
 Thorsten Latzel, Theologische Grundzüge des Heidelberger Katechimsus: Eine fundamental-
theologische Untersuchung seines Ansatzes zur Glaubenskommunikation, MThSt 83 (Marburg:
N.G. Elwert, 2004): 45: “Das nächstliegende Missverständnis besteht in der semantischen Bestim-
mung des Begriffes von dem Verb ‘trösten’ her. ‘Trost’ wird so negativ definiert als Verarbeiten
von Trauer und bleibt am Vergangenen orientiert […]. Das intendierte Trostverständnis leitet
sich dagegen von ‘getrost sein’ bzw. ‘sich trauen’ ab […] ein Sich-Trauen, das positive bestimmt
und zukunftsbezogen ist.”

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providence in the whole of life, not just for its difficult moments: it is all impor-
tant that “Trost” is understood not as mere consolation, but com-fort in the sense
of strengthening for action: “gerade in der Befähigung zur Selbsthingabe beste-
hen.” The Christian life is one turned around and turned outwards. The assoca-
tions are therefore ethical not mystical: there is some indirect connection to so-
teriology, even the soteriological relevance of the doctrine of Creation.
Hartogh contends that the Providence teaching of the Heidelberg Catechism
is not about theodicy any more than that was Calvin’s emphasis.⁶² If anything, it
is about humans being put to the test, in the way that Abraham was.⁶³ The truth
is that voorzienigheid is not indifferent (Zondag 3, Vraag 8). In his discussion of
Zondag 1, the neo-Calvinist Klaas Schilder makes much of the biographical sense
of the consolation of faith as that which looks to God’s past faithfulness (so,
Alexander Comrie), rather than the mystical feeling of sense or any amount of
deliberation in which consolation might become a thing in itself (so, the Armi-
nian Episcopius). Schilder warns his reader: the mystical way of co-operative
presence seems to offer reassurance of God’s friendly presence but really this
kind of universal, general concursus is not typically scriptural: ⁶⁴ the Jesuit Les-
sius liked simultaneity after all! There is a need to continue to struggle against
Molinism. Schilder wishes rid of cooperation as Romantic and panentheist.⁶⁵
There is enough cooperation already in the term “preservation” (onderhouding);
and here he name-checks Bavinck.
On the other hand, when we look at the theologian who tried to explain his
own catechism (Ursinus, Explicationies catecheticae 1564) and then a theologian
whose teaching nicely concurs with it, we see something a little bit more optimis-
tic: first, Ursinus tells us that grace and mercy lead us to flee sin and divine
wrath against it, while all torments and troubles lead us to salvation by teaching
 Gerrit den Hartogh, Voorzienigheid in donker licht: Herkomst en gebruik van het begrip ‘pro-
videntia Dei’ in De reformatorische theologie, in het bijzonder bij Zacharias Ursinus (Heerenveen:
Groen, 1999).
 Klaas Schilder, Heidelbergsche Katechismus, (Goes: Oosterbaan & Le Cointre, 1947– 51) I: 448,
“Men bedenkt niet, dat God altijd een oordeel heft over den konkreten mensch.”
 Ibid., IV,215 (Z 10,Vr 27) 20: “Wannerr men nu sprekt van Gods ‘concursus’, dan heft men dus
weer het oog op een zekeren vorm van tegenwoordigheid Gods […]. Der z.g. concursus (de samen-
gang’) van God met de kreaturen is dus in ieder geval een bepaalde vorm-van-tegenwoordigheid:
en waar ze zich tot alle schepselen uitstrekt, daarin natuurlijk elke kreatuur in haar door God
zelf gestelde wezen erkennende (terese, zie S 67), daar wordt ze wel genoemd generale concur-
sus, of universeele concursus.”
 Ibid., II:255.

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us to be patient ⁶⁶ Yet even if it is not easy, it is at least easier to see Providence in

an optimistic way if it is the cases of believers which we are discussing.⁶⁷ Second,
when we turn to Bullinger, that theologian famous for his reservations about
preaching Predestination, we see a very positive appreciation for Providence in
its own right.
The providence of God does not upset the order of things or the offices of life, and it does
not discard the just economy and obedience but through these it works for the salvation of
those who accommodate themselves religiously by divine help to his decrees or institution
and divine operation, and who offer acceptance to Him of whatever good that can be done
against human corruption […] and against whatever evil we do.⁶⁸
Bullinger continues: We should be encouraged of God’s good will towards us and

not discouraged by the devil; God is a good and powerful creator, as Psalm 99
and 148:5 tell us. This is so far from the question of theodicy that comes up
post-Enlightenment. Can God be all-powerful and all-good? Yes, since for Bullin-
ger those two qualities reinforce each other. As he comes to the end of this sec-
tion on Providence, he writes that God’s wisest governance of all things is always
just and most equitable. Worthy of praise are his works towards us. Bullinger
then recites the ways in which natural forces do his bidding before narrowing
down to the human realm: God gives commands and rulings against wrong,
Noah the most righteous he delivered from the perils of the flood, Enoch he
transferred into the society of friendship, and finally since He is generous and
good and will not allow the world to be parched of his rivers of grace, he sent
the apostolic doctors into the whole world to be sent by his son so that the con-
 Explicationum catecheticarum absolutum opus (Neostadium Palatinorum [Neustadt], 1600),

137: “Ut suae gratiae et singularis misericordiae ad effugiendum peccatum, necessitate, et
suam adversus peccatum iram, suamque iustititiam, er potentiam in eo puniendo patefaciait’
Loci comm 587 (88); 1. In adversis nunquam erimus patientes, nisi sciamus a Deo patre nostro
ea nobis immitti. 2. Nunquam erimus pro beneficiis grati, nisi agnoscamus ea divinitus nobis
dari. 3. Nunquam habebimus spem bonam et certam de futuris, nisi faciamus voluntatem Dei
praesentem, eamque de nobis et omnibus electis servandis immutabilem esse persuasi simus.”
 Contra Carl Heinz Ratschow, “Das Heilshandeln und das Welthandeln Gottes: Gedanken zur
Lehrgestaltung des Providentia-Glaubens in der evangelischen Dogmatik,” Neue Zeitschrift für
systematische Theologie 1 (1959): 25 – 80, who would reserve providence for Heilshandeln but
not for Welthandeln.
 H. Bullinger, Dekaden (1552), 4.4., (Heinrich Bullinger Werke, 3. Abt. Theologische Werke (ed. P.
Opitz, Zürich: TVZ, 2007), 595: “Nam providentia dei ordinem rerum non turbat, officia vitae, la-
borem et industriam non abrogat nec tollit e medio iustam oeconomiam ac obedientiam, sed per
haec operatur salute hominum accomodantium se religiose per auxilium divinum decretis seu
instituto et operationi divinae cui merito acceptum ferunt, quicquid bene fit, contra corruptio-
nem humanae et nostrae inscitiae ac peccatis, quicquid male fit.”

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dition of the human race would have an instructor who says ‘father” to God in
his prayers. So this providence is not only running alongside world history,
but it runs through cities and states as it does its work.⁶⁹
Having delicately treated the question of Predestination along the way, Bul-
linger ends by emphasising God’s fairness in providence, hence in his predesti-
nation, just as both things are meant for his glory. He then paints a picture of the
richness and diversity of life: by God’s command all things are moved, springs
gush forth, streams flow, waves rise up, all give birth to their young, storms ar-
rive, seas surge, all things everywhere diffuse their fertility which he planted the
garden of our happiness for our forebears and gave the command and establish-
ed a statute against wrongdoing. God delivered the most righteous Noah from the
dangers of the flood and transferred Enoch into the society of his friendship. And
since he is more generous, lest the whole world be lost to his rivers of grace and
dry up, he wishes the apostolic teachers to be sent into the whole world through
his Son.
In Decades IV,4 then, Bullinger seems to deal with Predestination and Prov-
idence as two parallel topics, rather than subordinating one to the other. So
Providence stands in relation to Creation of course, but more fundamentally it
stands also in relation to the Decree: (see Wollebius, 29; Heidanus, 347). If Prov-
 Ibid., 601: “Adiecimus paucula de gubernatione rerum omnium sapientssima et optima per
divinam eius providentiam semper iustam aequissimamque; Item de bona dei erga nos volun-
tate, de praedestinatione et aliis quibusdam his agnatis Omnia vero haec recitavimus ad ornan-
dam gloriam cognitionemque dei creatoris nostri. Cui testimonium reddit tam invisibilium quam
etiam visibilium, et semper et tota natura. Quem angeli adorant, astra mirantur, mari benedi-
cunt, terrae verentur, inferna quaeque suscipiunt. Quem mens omnis humana sentit, etiamsi
non exprimit: cuius imperio omnia commoventur, fontes scaturiunt, amnes labuntur, fluctus as-
surgunt, foetus suos cuncta parturient, venti spirare conantur, imbres veniunt, maria commo-
ventur, foecunditates suas cuncta ubique diffundunt, qui peculiarem protoplastis nostris foeli-
citatis hortum plantavit, mandatum dedit sententiamque contra delictum statuit. Noe
iustimmsimum de diluvi periculis libertavit, Enoch transtulit in amicitiae societatem […]. Et
quia ultro largus et bonus est, ne totus orbis aversus gratiae eius fluminibus aresceret, apostolos
doctores in totum orbem per filim suum mitti voluit, ut conditio generis humani institutorem et,
siquidem sequeretur, haberet, quem pro deo in suis iam postulationibus patrem diceret. Cuius
modo providentia non tantum sigillatim per homines cucurrit aut currit, sed etiam per ipsas
urbes et civitates, quarum exitus prophetarum vocibus cecinit, imo etiam per totum orbem
Cuius propter incredulitatem exitus,plagas, 602 deminutiones poenasque descripsit. Et ne
quis non etiam ad minima quaeque dei putaret istam infatigabilem providentiam pervenire –
Mt 10,29. Cuius etiam cura et providentia Israelitarum non finit nec vestes consume nec vilissima
in pedibus calceamenta deteri. Nec immerito (Dt 29,5). Nam si hic omnia complexus est conti-
nens, omnia autem et totum ex singulis constant, pertinget consequenter eius as usque singulae
quaeque cura, cuius ad totum, quicquid est, pervenit providenti. Huic soli Gloria.”

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idence is related to an eternal decree, then it is not subject to Creation but al-
ready exists alongside it, and not just to preserve it, but to correct and guide.
This does not mean continuing to create as such, for Providence does not derive
its marching orders from creation but from the covenant and the Lord of the cov-
enant. The writings on Providence, which have wanted to focus on theodicy and
God and creation, from Beza onwards up into our present day, are by definition
works of defence and apologetics. Gijsbert van den Brink and Cornelis van der
Kooi have observed, the Early Modern Protestants were well aware of the ques-
tion of God and evil, although it is evil as sin that they focused on.⁷⁰ Yet for Bul-
linger and the Heidelberg Catechism, Providence was that which prepared peo-
ple for the gospel, before and after Christian conversion.
One can detect between 1550 and 1580 a shift from seeing persecution as
due to God’s chastisting for sins (Calvin) to a later view (after St Bartholomew’s
Day, 1571) that the apocalyptic answer might the right one. The succession of
these stages is reflected in the work of Agrippa d’Aubigne: God seemed to be in-
active in Agrippa’s La Chambre dorée, but in fact he has become a character on
earth observing the atrocities. The message is that martyrs are not meant to trust
in arms, and are being reduced in number by massacres to become the “remnant
of Israel.” When Apoc 6:10 asks “how much longer?”, Calvin saw this as letting
the persecutors’ sins add up to a “comble des péchés.”⁷¹ Bullinger reinforced this
and sharpened things and the Cent sermons sur l’Apocalypse was in French a
year after it was published in Zürich in 1557– 58, followed by the 1577 translation
of his De Persecutionibus Ecclesiae Christianae of 1573: the end of the world was
close, in a way that Calvin had resisted in his lifetime. Attention now switched to
the final judgement of the persecutors.
By the turn of the century (i. e. c. 1600) for a theologian like William Bucan
at Lausanne, what Providence meant for “God” in himself seems to have mat-
 Gijsbert van den Brink and Cornleis van der Kooi, Christelijke dogmatiek (Zoetermeer: Meine-
ma, 2012), 221: “De sporen daarvan zien we terug tot in de zeventiende eeuw, een bloeiperiode
van optimistisch getoonzette verhandelingen over de voorzienigheidsleer. In de daaraan vooraf-
gaande eeuw van de Reformatie treffen we weliswaar veel meer bijbelse spanning en dynamiek
aan rond de voorzienigheid van God. De filosofische invloeden werden echter niet geheel uitge-
zuiverd. Ze werden veeleer nog versterkt door nieuwe theologische motieven die opkwamen uit
de strijd tegen het laatmiddeleeuwse coöperatiedenken, waarin God en mens geacht werden
samen te werken met het oog op het heil. In hun afkeer van elke leer van ‘goede werken’ spraken
Luther, Ulrich Zwingli en Calvijn krachtige taal over het alomvattende karakter van Gods voor-
zienigheid en ‘alleenwerkzaamheid’.”
 Forsyth, La Justice de Dieu, 210: “Pour Calvin, Dieu exerce sa patience afin de permettre au
pécheur de se repentir et de recevoir son pardon. Pour d’Aubigné. Cependant, l’oppresseur du
peuple de Dieu n’a aucune possibilité de se repentir, aucune possibilité de pardon.”

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tered the most. Providence had two parts: an eternal unchangeable disposition
and an actual and temporal administration. The latter can be further divided
into three: it is triplex: universalis, specialis, particularis, with the second of
these God’s governing of all human activities.⁷² But it is all about activities.
God is perceived in act and as act, with his paternal qualities reserved for
those within a covenantal relationship. As Partee has argued, this seems to be
not so much special providence driving everything, but a separation of universal
and special providence from a more personal providentia specialissima operating
within the covenantal boundaries. A similar emphasis on “large-scale” everyday
special providence (providentia that is merely specialis) is obvious in Wollebius
and Heidegger and most of the other Protestant scholastics.⁷³ One finds a reac-
tion against this in Romantic Reformed theology, where with Schleiermacher all
providence is providentia specialissima. But for the early Seventeenth Century,
providentia specialissima was a step-up, where God worked through believers
and churches to make history. Yet it is interesting that so much attention was
paid to merely “everyday” “special providence.”
Bucan gave a fairly standard reply to the old question of whether God stop-
ped working on the seventh day with reference to John 5:17 and Wisdom 1:7. The
three types of providence are also rehearsed, with “special” pertaining to all hu-
mans, although this in turn is supposed to be perceived in order to strengthen
the faith of those who enjoy the particular providence of Election (Locus XI).⁷⁴
There are causes which are contingent. We should not add in divine causation
as another cause because that would make for necessity. In fact in the case of
 “Specialis – inter homines vero, nulli concipiantur, nascantur, vivant, conserventur, move-
antur, agant quidquam, mortem obeant, nisi ex nutu & voluntate dei,” Bucanus, Institio theolo-
gica (Lausanne, 1605), 151.
 The secondary causes God uses could have been otherwise. So Heinrich Heppe, Die Dogma-
tik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, ed. Ernst Bizer (Neukirchen: Neukirchener, 1958), 202
“Indem somit die kontingenten Dinge bezüglich der causae secundae zugleich wirklich kontin-
gent, und zwar in der Weise, daß die Kontingenz durch die causa prima begründet und erhalten
wird. Daher leuchtet gerade in der finalen Ordnung, welche die kontingenten Dinge durchdringt,
die Wirksamkeit der göttlichen Providenz am hellsten hervor.”
 Bucanus, Inst, 115: “Ego accipio causas tantum interiores & proprias cuiusque rei, quarum
effectu, quia ab illis & produci & non produci potuerunt, sunt contingentia. Providentiam
autem non addo, quod ea causa si extrinseca. Quae si additute, evitari non potest, quin ex hy-
pothesi necessitas aliqua consequatur. Exempli causa, Saul occurrit viris portantibus hodeos,
panem & vinum. Voluntas illorum natura sua infinita erat, ut vel darent illi aliquid, vel non
darent: Sed eam voluntatem, Deus providentia sua, in alteram partem terminavit. Ibant ad Be-
thel, ut sacrum facerent. Occurrebant Saulo lasso de via & enecto fame, humanum videbatur
illum reficere, Ista Deus mentibus illorum obtulit, & si qua errant, quae hanc voluntatem imped-
ire possent. Et fraenavit.”

Unauthenticated
Saul, the men who brought him wine and bread were quite free under God’s
providence, but God used these means to get Saul to change his heart.
On the other hand, the Zürich-based Johann Heidegger (d. 1698), the chief
architect of the Formula Consenus Helvetica of 1675, emphasised that Special
Providence is that which preserves each creature’s essence and directs its ac-
tions,⁷⁵ although, again, it seems from what the Psalm says in its contrast of
right-acting believers and wicked unbelievers that God’s guidance of the moral
life is for those who are earmarked for a particular providence. Just as important
is his insistence that creation did not stop at one moment in time and conserva-
tion take over. That would be absurd.⁷⁶ Creation and conservation are the same
command, so that the thing before it exists exists by order. The proof text seems
to have been Psalm 104:30 (“you send your spirit, they are created”). Coopera-
tion in providence goes back causally to the creature’s dependence on God for
existence. The purpose of it all, however, is the peculiar providence that is
that of Election. One cannot say how a life has been at the point of death, but
one would need to know how it fared after death.⁷⁷ In Joseph’s case God wanted
Joseph to be sold and the brothers to seek him; He would not prevent the broth-
ers’ sin, but would use their sin for His predestined end. It was the same with
Christ. Lastly, unbelievers are given an extraordinary grace to be distinguished
from that given to the church, which is what Adam had. God withdrew help
from them so that they might need to seek it.⁷⁸ This kind of grace moves them
to grasp certain things and to make some progress in the moral life and to aid
their internal efforts by the means of external aids and circumstances.
 Heidegger, De providentia Dei 239” ‘quae cuiusque creaturae essentiam conservet, & ac-
tiones dirigat, comprobetur Ps 33,13 f.”
 Ibid., 251: “Sicut ergo creatio est aeterna & efficax Dei jussio, ut res existat: ita conservatio
eadem Deiu jussio est, ut res pro eis etiam existere jussa porro existat.”
 Ibid, 255 – 58.
 Ibid., 273: “ita Deus subtrahendo gratiam Spriitus sui, non per accidens & negative, sed per
se & positive […] non tantum gratiam subtrahit, sed etiam, ut viam iis aperiat […] nec speciale &
supernaturale ad opus supernaturale, idque vel extraordinariam & miraculosum, quid nascente
Ecclesia etiam reprobis communicari poterat, vel ordinarium, electis proprium, quo Deus eos or-
dinarie ad fidem & vitae sanctimoniam juvat. Quod cum nunquam impii habuerint, iis subduci
non potuit, sed minus commune quo certos himines, etiam irregenitos prae aliis adjuvat, vel ad
rerum cognitionem & peritiam, vel ad virtutes morales, vel ad certa opera & negotia in rebus nat-
uralibus, vel spiritualibus etiam, quantum homini naturali in iis procedere datur, perficienda; &
praeter internam operationem, dotesque, tum animi tum corporis, externa etiam media, admi-
nicula & instrumenta suppeditat”.

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Heinrich Heppe summed up the Reformed view in its mature development

by the likes of Heidegger:⁷⁹ God’s will ad extra is his own essence and as such
immutable. There is no reason for a distinction between inner decree and
outer execution.⁸⁰ It does seem, however, that Heppe is reading this into Heideg-
ger’s texts. If the Reformed believed in the eternal, unchangeable precence of
God expressed in creation, as Heppe insists, one would expect this to be
made a bit more explicit. Likewise, when he cites Braun to make the claim
that for the Reformed Orthodox providence was about God’s extending his pur-
pose in creation to its fulfilment.⁸¹ But the quote from Johannes Braun (c. 1668)
doesn’t quite say that.⁸² One might agree with Heppe that the Reformed believed
in some sort of praemotio physica within Providence,⁸³ in that God grounds all
action, except for its morality: he is part of sinful deeds’ ontology but not
their morality. What they do seem to grasp is that action means that will is
the essence of it as it were, and essence belongs to the will.
 Heppe, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, 100: “[…] und da der Wille Gotes
das göttliche Wesen selbst in seiner nach außen hin gerichteten Aktuosität ist. So ist es auch
eben das eigene Wesen Gottes (nicht aber einer von diesem unterschiedene Kraft oder Tätigkeit),
durch welches Gott seine Providenz ausübt, weshalb die providentielle Wirksamkeit Gottes in
Kraft der göttlichen Wesenheit absolut independent, allmächtig, heilig, weise, usw. sein muß.”
 With reference to Heidegger’s summary statement at VII,3: “Providentia Dei est externum ei-
sudem opus, quo res omnes verbo suas creatas, – maximas, minimas eodem verbo suo conser-
vat, earum motus, actiones et passiones regit, cuncta ad suos fines sapienter ita dirigit, ut bona
omnia efficaciter et clementer promoveat, male vel severe cohibeat vel sancte permittat, sapient-
er ordinet, iuste puniat, cuncta denique ad nominis sui gloriam et fidelium salute moderetur.”
 Heppe, Die Dogmatik der evangelisch-reformierten Kirche, 207: “Die reformierte Auffassung
der Lehre von der Providenz charakterisiert sich zunächst dadurch, daß in ihr der Begriff der
Providenz als ein Moment im Begriff der Schöpfung oder als die andere Seite desselben geltend
gemacht wird. Schöpfung und Regierung der Welt sind eine Tätigkeit Gottes, welche zunächst
erschaffend und sodann erhaltend und regierend hervortritt. Die Regierung der Welt ist der ei-
gentliche Zweck ihrer Erschaffung.”
 Braun in Heppe (Ibid.): “Providentia dei nihi aliud est quam efficacissima ista Dei volitio,
per quam ab aeterno voluit, ut res talis sit, tam diu existante et hoc modo operetur; quae êfficax
volitio est ipsissima Dei creatio, si res consideratur in sua existentia; et conservatio sive provi-
dentia si consideratur in sua duratio et operatione.”
 “Deus cum humana voluntate non concurrit tantum influx generali et indifferente, sed spe-
ciali et determinante.” (J.H. Hottinger, quoted by Heppe, 205).

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And the Lutherans?
As is well known, the Lutheran Reformation gave a Christological dimension to

metaphysics: God is everywhere as Christ, according to Johannes Brenz.⁸⁴ How is
one to distinguish God’s omnipresence from his providence?⁸⁵ One might consid-
er the answers of theologians like Hollaz and Gerhard who insisted on setting a
“dynamic” divine presence over against creation, as something not contained
within it. Already Melanchthon in his lectures on Physics in 1549,⁸⁶and later Ger-
hard too, were clear that the three parts of Providence – preserving, concurring
and direction – are all active as divine. Freedom of divine will was the basis of
contingency, with appeal to Ps 104:28 (“when you open your hand, they are filled
with good things”). Abraham Calov, in part out of his own life-experience of vi-
cissitude, could write that concursus is God’s spontaneous influxus. ⁸⁷ As such the
action is teleological working according to a number of modes of causality.⁸⁸
Providence is often seen as distinctive to early Lutheranism in its hymns.⁸⁹
Such an approach to theology through spirituality would tie everything that hap-
pened in creation to the necessitating commands of the divine will, not least
with reference to Hebrews 1:3, that God bears all things by his Word.⁹⁰ Theology
begins and ends with wonder at creation, which is part of the experience of faith.
This seemed in keeping with much of the founder, Luther’s ideas and was fine
for a rough and ready piety, but not for responsible theology, so that, a century
later, Johann Gerhard would conceive it differently and return to something more
scholastic. Surely things in themselves as creaturely should be viewed as remain-
ing contingent and kept in their proper place. God’s presence lends things some
 Ulrich Beuttler, Gott und Raum – Theologie der Weltgegenwart Gottes, Forschungen zur syste-
matischen und ökumenischen Theologie 127 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010).
 Ibid., 41: “Die Allgegenwart ist daher nicht nur anenergetisches Attribut der ruhenden ades-
sentia, sondern auch der energetischen omnipraesentia […] nicht intrinsisch den Dingen selbst
als solchen innewohnend, sondern aktuell und per effectus providentiae. Die operationale Wirk-
präsenz Gottes ist auch Wesenpräsenz, durch die Gott immediate wirkt.”
 Ibid., 57: “Entsprechend deutet er die göttliche Eigenschaft der adessentia im Sinne der sus-
tentatio, moderatio und gubernatio und versteht diese dezidiert als actio Dei generalis.”
 A. Calov, Systema. Locorum theologicorum III,vi, c.2 (Wittenburg, 1661), 1204.
 Beuttler, Gott und Raum, 63: “Es handelt sich um eine Personalpräsenz im umfassenden
Sinne, die sowohl essentiell als auch operativ und dabei kausal, kommunikativ und final ist.”
 Jutta Zimmermann, Lutherischer Vorsehungsglaube in Paul Gerhardts geistlicher Dichtung
(Diss. Halle, 1955).
 Cf. Luther, WA 18,726,1; on the Father God working in creation. “Die providentia Dei ist für
Luther wirkende Gegenwart Gottes.” (Cf. U. Krolzik, Säkularisierung der Natur: Providentia-Dei-
Lehre und Naturverständnis der Frühaufklärung (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1988), 22, re. WA 18,753).

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necessity but not absolute: so the old scholastic distinction returned, that be-
tween necessitas absoluta and necessitas consequentiae. That things exist at all
is absolutely necessary, but they are still free to will their consequences, and
God’s foreknowledge thereof doesn’t remove that capacity.⁹¹ Melanchthon and
Chemnitz had already embraced such a position but only in the early seven-
teenth century, not least in reaction to Calvinism, did this distinction become
the majority view.⁹² For most Lutherans, in any case, there was no chance of
sola providentia. By the eighteenth century Providentia became a name for
God who was beneficent in being willing to afford the goods of creation to be
constantly available, but not a gift of Himself at all times and places.
What made Melanchthon distinctive was his lack of interest in looking to the
past for examples of providence, in the way that Calvin did and as Zwingli had
done before him.⁹³ Geographical examples are adduced by the Praeceptor Ger-
maniae to illustrate how God rules the present world now. His teacher Johannes
Stoeffler had been Professor of Mathematics-Astronomy at Tübingen, and offered
an account of providence from below – then back again – to prove a providential
God, and also show how God worked in the world. Melanchthon made sure to
keep Creator and creation separated by “divine action.”
Here Melanchthon contrasts with his foil Zwingli in the progressive sounding
belief that one could not derive clear knowledge of God’s present gubernatio
from simply proving him to be a powerful creator.⁹⁴ In fact Melanchthon wanted
to distinguish providentia as what God knows from gubernatio, as what God did
with this knowledge. An awareness of the ordered teleology of the cosmos help-
ed Melanchthon to develop this.⁹⁵ Zwingli seemed to concentrate on biblical pas-
sages and get stuck on creation. What Manfred Büttner really objects to is the
 Bengt Hägglund, “De providentia: Zur Gotteslehre im frühen Luthertum,” ZThK 83 (1986):
356– 369.
 Ibid., 365 f.; Gerhard had 7 forms of God’s Mitwirkung here; but sometimes to Gerhard God’s
ways were also inexplicable (See his use of Augustine, Contra Iulianum V,3 in his Loci IV,100).
 Manfred Büttner, Regiert Gott die Welt? Vorsehung Gottes und Geographie. Studien zur Provi-
dentialehre bei Zwingli und Melanchthon, Calwer Theologische Monographien 3 (Stuttgart: Calw-
er Verlag, 1977), 10: “Melanchthon ist dagegen praktisch nicht am Damals interessiert. Die Re-
formierten müssen ihre geographischen Beispiele aus Bibel und Natur schöpfen, während die
Lutheraner ohne die Schrift auskommen.”
 “Die providentia ist über den Kraftbegriff nur ‘ontologisch’ und damit in stärkster Koppelung
an das Damals der Schöpfung aussagbar,” (Büttner, Regiert Gott die Welt?, 29). “Zwingli gelangt
nicht zum (jetzigen) Regierer-Gott, sondern nur zum (damaligen) Schöpfergott” (Büttner, Regiert
Gott die Welt?, 33).
 Günther Frank, Die theologische Philosophie Philipp Melanchthons (1497 – 1560), Erfurter
Theologische Studien 67 (Leipzig: Benno, 1995).

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Zwinglian suspicion of gubernatio: since for Zwingli, providence is conservative,

about preserving the orders of creation.⁹⁶ In the Zürich reformer’s book, Heilsge-
schichte is something quite different, sealed off from the rest of world history and
other events. For Zwingli, conceivably the creation could stand on is own, with
no need for divine guiding (Lenkung), a position favoured by J.A. Comenius as
late as 1633. If God removes his backing, the world would collapse, so what
God supplies is conservation. The point is that even if Melanchthon was encour-
aged by his cosmological knowledge in countering this conservatism, it was the
experience of Christians qua humans that meant that he could inductively point
towards the existence of the God of Jesus Christ.⁹⁷ In some ways it is remarkable
that Melanchthon treated the topic of Providence in his Physics (first part). Bütt-
ner presents Melanchthon as making a remarkable change with a natural theol-
ogy which was rooted not only in natural science, but also in the existential
character of pristine Lutheran theology.⁹⁸ However, one has to be careful not
to be anachronistic concerning lines of demarcation. Melanchthon had his
own conservatism after all when it came to the institutions of family and govern-
ment as the backbone of providential ordering, yet even then these institutions
were posited as having a teleology, even a vocational dynamism.
The examples from Scripture Melanchthon gives in his Loci Communes of
1555 are not meant to serve as proof texts. The point of a distinct locus of Prov-
idence is that individuals should be aware of divine Presence at work. Provi-
dence is the first proof of a knowable God, even though this is an additional
way to God, over and above Scripture and presupposing it. Providence can
only corroborate the path that Scripture has set out. Further, for all his
ground-breaking qualities, Melanchthon’s geography is arguably more classical,
Aristotelian even. Yet the contingency of the natural order requires a guide as
well as a sustainer. From the example of the friends in the furnace in Daniel 3,
one could draw a distinction between providentia ordinaria/extraordinaria but
all providence was directed for the good of creation and actively preserving it.
 Büttner, Regiert Gott die Welt?, 38: “Die ‘Fehler’ Zwinglis: Aus der Seinsvermittlung folgt
nicht notwendig die Seinserhaltung.”
 Ibid., 289: “Melanchthon greift mit seinen Argumenten ausdrücklich nicht auf die Bibel und
die Schöpfungstheologie zurück. Ausgangspunkt der Providenzbeweise ist vielmehr – genau wie
ihre Quellen in der stoischen Philosophie Ciceros – die alltägliche Erfahrung, die, sofern sich in
ihr eine Zielgerichtetheit und Vernünftigkeit aller Ereignisse in der Welt manifestiert, einen ziel-
setzenden Intellekt postuliert, der in der Vorsehung die Ziele der Geschöpfe durchsetzt und sich
in besonderer Weise um den Menschen sorgt.”
 Ibid., 56: “Luther öffnet ihm den Blick für das Jetzt des gnädigen und tätigen Gottes.”

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Ultimately, Melanchthon understood divine activity sweeping through crea-

tion as a consoling force for souls, whatever bodily limitations and pains afflict-
ed people.⁹⁹ “God anticipates us, calls, moves, aids; but we must see to it that we
do not resist.”¹⁰⁰ As Christian Link observes, gubernator and moderator are “die
wichtigsten und häufigsten der von ihm verwendeten Gottesprädikate.” His Initia
Doctrinae Physicae offers a bipartite definition of providence: knowledge and
governance.¹⁰¹
Melanchthon’s mature position seems to have been that the heavens could
foretell and give warnings of impending doom, but the stars did not themselves
fix events on earth. Some amount of astrologia divinatrix came with his seeking a
proptitious day for the founding of the Leucorea Academy at Wittenberg. As Wil-
helm Maurer summarises, Melanchthon was wary of astrological prediction:
even less that stars determine events, but they could show how God rules. As
early as his Genesis Commentary of 1523, Melanchthon commented that stars
are signs of events which God had ordained, but that Scripture is required to
know for what these signs are intended.¹⁰² Scripture offers a grammar of natural
signs. Geyer sums up Melanchthon’s version of Providence under five heads: 1.
All other creation works for humans; 2. All humans have moral capacity; and
know what God requires; 3. God ensures misdeeds do not go unpunished; 4
God sends heroic deeds in times of crisis; 5. God gives warnings, not least by
means of the stars.¹⁰³
 Link, Schöpfung, I:85: “Der Mensch in der Mitte der Welt ist das Telos der geschaffenen
Welt.”
 1543 Loci, quoted Richard A. Muller, “Scimus enim quod lex spiritualis est: Melanchthon and
Calvin on the Interpretation of Romans 7:14– 23,” in Phillip Melanchthon (1497 – 1560) and the
Commentary, eds. Timothy Wengert and M. Patrick Graham (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 1997): 216 – 237, 237.
 Corpus Reformatorum 13,203, as discussed by Link, Schöpfung, I:83: “Usitatum est vocare
providentiam, et cognitionem, qua Deus omnia cernit et prospicit, et gubernationem, qua natur-
am universam servat, id est, ordinem motuum, vices temporum, foecunditatem terrae et animan-
tium, et curat et servat genus humanum, custodit politicam societatem, imperia, iudicia, iusti-
tiam, punit atrocia scelera pugnantia cum lege naturae, in qua voluntatem suam nobis ostendit,
et tandem iniuste oppressos liberat.”
 Wilhelm Maurer, “Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaftler seiner Zeit,” in Melanchthon
Studien, Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte 181 (Gütersloh: Mohn, 1964), 45, n. 13:
“sunt ergo stellae non autores, sed signa, et signa non omnium eventuum, sed eorum ad quae
Deus ordinavit; et quorsum ordinavit haec signa, sciri non potest nisi e scripturis.”
 Melanchthon, Initia Doctrinae Physicae (Corpus Reformatorum XIII,204– 5); cf. Hans-Georg
Geyer, Welt und Mensch. Zur Frage des Aristotelismus bei Melanchthon (Diss.: Bonn, 1959), 150 –
152.

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Arguably more important for the fate of Christian astrology were those who
came in Melanchthon’s wake.¹⁰⁴ In 1579 Jacob Andreae criticised those (Phillip-
pists) who would count Astrology among the artes, but his opponents could say
that for all Luther’s dislike of superstition, he had called for a “new astrology”
(Tischreden 4638). The influence of Melanchthon’s Physics (“heiliger Physik”)
on his son-in-law Caspar Peucer’s Commentarius could be seen in what the latter
wrote about the Saturn-Mars conjunction and related diseases. Peucer himself
added in much more detail about the devil. Illness often resulted through loss
of the soul’s harmony, when men gave themselves to lower desires, and not to
God. Correspondingly believers could let healing flow, and sickness could be
pushed back by God revealing healing remedies. The will plays a greater role
than nature in sickness, as Galen had written. Like his father-in-law, Peucer un-
derstood sickness to have theological causes, although he was hardly a theolo-
gian. In fact Peucer would be accused of crypto-Calvinism and in 1575 dismissed
from the chair in Medicine he had held since 1559 at Wittenberg’s Leucorea.
Peucer does seem to have been quite flexible in his views. By the end of his
life, no doubt “encouraged” by years of incarceration, he seemed clear that
much was mystery, just as in the case of the presence of Christ’s divinity in
the bread (a Gnesio-Lutheran view) and, as he explained in a Letter to Tycho
Brahe of 10. 5.1589, stars do not move themselves, but as to how they move,
well, one should just ascribe it to God’s power. Likewise he admitted that
when he simply believed God, and stopped trusting in astrology, as when in pris-
on, he was eventually freed (Letters to J. Camerarius of 28 Aug 1584/ 26 April
1586).
Claudia Brosseder has observed that for Melancthon and Peucer, Daniel’s
prophecy was still the key text for grasping the large shape of history, and for
giving what one should be looking for when it came to details. There were actual-
ly three cases of comets recorded in sixteenth-century Germany – 1531, 1572 and
1577 – as signs for particular troubles to come.¹⁰⁵ The insistence by Melanchthon
and Peucer on prophecy as well as astrology – connected in Daniel itself – shows
their distance from Jean Bodin’s secularising of world history, as related by Rein-
 Martin Roebel, “Caspar Peucer als Humanist und Mediziner,” in Caspar Peucer 1525 – 1602:
Wissenschaft, Glaube und Politik im konfessionellen Zeitalter, eds. Hans-Peter Hasse, Günther
Wartenberg (Leipzig: Evang. Verlagsanstalt, 2004): 51– 73, 62.
 Claudia Brosseder, Im Bann der Sterne: Caspar Peucer, Philipp Melanchthon und andere Wit-
tenberger Astrologen (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004), 98, refers to: “der Komet als hermeneu-
tisches Instrument des Wandels im Kleinen.”

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hart Koselleck,¹⁰⁶ where there was no place for a biblical prophecy which could
not be about opening new possibilities to an individual “today.”¹⁰⁷ Hence the
comet of 1572 was regarded not a new star (for all of those were created on
the fourth day) – but a sign – to be taken along with Saint Bartholomew’s
Day murders. The heavens could never be changed, except when God intimated
the end of the world.¹⁰⁸
Against any allegations of cosmic determinism, Peucer insited that humans
are free in ethical action.¹⁰⁹ One could feasibly argue that it is a Melanchthonian
axiom that through observation of Natural Laws, moral agency becomes stron-
ger. What comes across is an understanding of Providence as being about “the
big picture” of world events and world history. Perhaps this is a sign of confi-
dence in God’s power. Roughly put, Melanchthon inherited from Nicolas of
Cusa the idea that humanity was the mediator in cosmos, but he would not em-
brace the Renaissance love of Fortuna. Wisdom could be that which God would
share with humans, even if nothing else, in the Melanchthonian account, as his
main means of caring for them.¹¹⁰ Yet one should not over-exalt the place of hu-
 Reinhart Koselleck, Vergangene Zukunft: Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1979.)
 Brosseder, Im Bann der Sterne, 110 – 11: “Die Aussagen eines Horoskops waren jedoch an-
ders als die der Kometen nicht mehr von prophetischem Gehalt […]. Peucer und Melanchthon
definierten den speziellen Erfahrungshorizont eines Individuums mit physikalischen Begriffen,
die sich aus vergangenen (Natur‐)beobachtungen speiste. Sie sprachen mehr von natürlichen
Veranlagungen als von anthropologischen Bedingungen, die sich aus einem Erbsündenverständ-
nis ergaben. In diesem sehr begrenzten Sinne trennten sie mit Hilfe der Astrologie einen zukünf-
tigen Erwartungshorizont von einem primär heilsgeschichtlich verstandenen Erfahrungshorizont
vergangener Individuen.” Cf. Uwe Koch, Zwischen Katheder, Thron und Kerker: Leben und Werk
des Humanisten Caspar Peucer 1525 – 1602: Ausstellung 25. September bis 31. Dezember 2002,
Stadt-Museum Bautzen (Bautzen: Domowina, 2002).
 “Dei opera talia sunt, & ad praedictum pertinent de signis apparituris in Sole, Luna & Stel-
lis, quorum crebriora & stependa magis, sub ultimam mundi aetatem, Christus haud dubie even-
tura denunciat.” (Commentarius de praecipuis divinationum genreibus [Frankfurt 1607]), 596 f.
See M. Weichenhan, “Caspar Peucers Astronomie zwischen christlichen Humanismus und Nico-
laus Copernicus,” in Caspar Peucer (1525 – 1602). Wissenschaft, Glaube und Politik im konfessio-
nellen Zeitalter, eds. Hans-Peter Hasse and Günther Wartenberg (Leipzig, Evangelische Verlags-
anstalt): 91– 110, 108.
 Geyer, Welt und Mensch, 172: “[…] ein Mensch, der mit Hilfe der Astrologie seine charakter-
lichen Neigungen erkannt hatte, konnte entweder seine bösen Neigungen zurückweisen oder
seine guten kultivieren.” Cf. Quirinus Breen, “Melanchthon’s reply to Pico della Mirandola,”
Journal of the History of Ideas 13 (1952): 413 – 426.
 Maurer, “Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaftler seiner Zeit,” 47: “Das Naturgesetz
wird beherrscht von dem gnädig in der Geschichte wirksamen Heilswillen Gottes – denn
diese Weisheit erkennt anbetend Gott als den Herrn über das Naturgesetz und damit über das

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manity as Pico had done, and Copernicus threatened to do (see Melanchthon’s

1543 lectures). The world should be understood as “ensouled” itself. But there
was a heilsgeschichtliche role for Medicine, apparent in Peucer’s Oratio de vita
Galeni: medicine serves to ameliorate the effects of the Fall. This view is similar
to that expressed in the statutes of Helmstedt faculty by David Chyrtraeus. Wern-
er Elert has reminded one that there was no theological conspiracy to stop Co-
pernicus in Wittenberg – and by 1549 Melanchthon admitted growing admira-
tion. (Part of his hesitation had more to do with the fact that strong advocacy
came from his theological opponent, Osiander.) Copernican ideas would in
fact prosper in Lutheran universities such as Tübingen,¹¹¹ until the seventeenth
century when they slipped into a Biblicism, represented by the likes of Leonhard
Hutter (c. 1610).
The Doctrine of Providence was very significant in Lutheran treatments of
the Doctrine of God, to the extent that God’s existence or esse became identified
with his providence.¹¹² The idea of concursus in Lutheranism was well represent-
ed by Abraham Calov, in succession to Melanchthon; God’s action accommo-
dates to move simultaneously with the created movers. Providence does not re-
move freedom, which reflects the creative initiative of God. (That the Reformed
were different can be seen in Francis Turretin’s insistence that the created is sub-
ordinated to the control of Divine [Inst. I,VIqVI].)
Also, just as heilsgeschichtlich in flavour was the philosophy of Reformed
and crypto-Calvinists that God’s providence worked to restore the Image of
God to humans through encylopedic learning. Bartholomäus Keckermann
made Calvinism into a pedagogical force, and more moderate: “the instauration
of the image of God project – underlying the encyclopedic efforts of Keckermann
and Alsted.”¹¹³ Keckermann stood for a natural theology that was independent of
the doctrine of God gained through speculation. The outcome of this ecumenical
project was that through knowing how God operated in the world through causes
and forces one could come to a knowledge of him that produced a wisdom for
life. The bible was the foundation and the touchstone of this, but the project
geschichtliche Verhängnis […]. So setzt sich Melanchthon bewußt in Widerspruch zu einem be-
herrschenden Motiv der Renaissance, das in dem Sprichwort zusammengefaßt wurde: Vitam
regit fortuna, non sapientia.”
 Elert, Morphologie I, 372.
 Carl Heinz Ratschow, Gott existiert: Eine dogmatische Studie, Theologische Bibliothek Tö-
pelmann 12 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1967), 41.
 Howard Hotson, Johann Heinrich Alsted 1588 – 1638: Between Renaissance, Reformation,
and Universal Reform (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 229.

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sought to by-pass confessional differences, which were inessential for faith.¹¹⁴ In

other words, this was a learned pietism in which it seemed that the basic illumi-
nation from Scripture was clear enough and in which reasonable men could join
together to probe more deeply into the natural world. Johann Heinrich Alsted’s
division of fundamental from secondary issues, such as those debated at Dort,
was inessential to salvation. His Theologica polemica (1620) was perhaps the
charter document for those like Comenius in the following generation. The latter
was known for his panentheism, a theology in which divine-creaturely coopera-
tion was to the fore, and in which humans were very much capaces finiti. One
can see this extended by Jacob Boehme for whom the course of Providence
not only belonged to God but affected him and was necessary for who He was
in his becoming.¹¹⁵ Alsted was much more soberly focused on the needs of crea-
tures. He believed that natural theology was insufficient for salvation, but that it
could be used as an introduction which led towards it, as when simple people
could see God working in nature and be disposed towards him. One might
want to call it a sort of “Fundamental Theology”.
Lutheranism of the scholastic sort could be very conservative, as Krolzik
noted. Thus there was a shift of attention amongst Lutherans (just after 1600)
away from the present world-governing function of God in favour of a fixed
order of nature.¹¹⁶ Concursus in Lutheranism is clear in the treatment by
Calov; God’s action accommodates to move simultaneously with the created
movement. The heirs of Calvin in the Seventeenth Century thought otherwise.
So, as just indicated, while the Reformed Francis Turretin (Institutiones
I,VI,qVI) made it very clear that the created is subordinated to the control of Di-
vine in all actions, both in that the latter has temporal priority and in initiating,
the Lutheran position as promoted by Quenstedt was more balanced: Idem effec-
tus non a solo Deo, nec a sola creatura. nec partim a Deo, partim a creatura, sed
una eademque efficientia totali simul a Deo et creatura producatur. ¹¹⁷ In the realm
 Willem Hendrik van Zuylen, Bartholomäus Keckermann – Sein Leben und Wirken (Leipzig:
Borna, 1934), 67: “Die Theologie verhält sich zum Glauben wie das Ganze zum Teil; die Theologie
unfaßt alle geistlichen Tugenden, der Glaube nur eine, wiewohl die wichtigste.” Cf. Manfred
Büttner, “Die Neuausrichtung der Providentiallehre durch B. Keckermann im Zusammenhang
der Emanzipation der Geographie aus der Theologie,” Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesge-
schichte 28 (1976): 123 – 132.
 Cyril O’Regan, The Gnostic Apocalypse: Jacob Boehme’s Haunted Narrative (Albany: SUNY
Press, 2002), 189.
 “[…] von der gegenwärtigen Weltregierung Gottes zugunsten einer von der Schöpfung her
festgelegt Naturordnung verändert” (Krolcik, 81).
 Johann Andreas Quenstedt, Theologia didactico-polemica sive systema theologicum (Witten-
berg, 1685), 531.

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of Providence, as distinct from the realm of salvation, God and creatures are both
ascribed a constant, active and initiating presence.
In Lutheran Pietism’s own Erbauungsliteratur, one finds Johannes Arndt in
his introduction to the fourth book of his Wahres Christentum (1610) sponsoring
the idea that creatures are the hands and messengers of God which lead us to
God. Acts 14:7 is quoted, and his universal Fatherhood emphasised. God is not
perpetually trying to run after his creation in His own scheme, but has set it
up so that it would take care of human needs, and an anthropocentric teleology
was built in.¹¹⁸ God’s working in the world is obvious through the regularities of
creation’s goodness.¹¹⁹ Creatures show, and do not hide God’s Providence. Krol-
cik argues that whereas the Weltbegriff of the first 3 books is a Lutheran Existen-
zbegriff, there is in Book 4 a change to an “ontologische Weltbegriff” such that sin
cannot prevent humans seeing the fatherhood of God. Also, human discoveries
are the gifts of Providence.¹²⁰
Paul Gerhardt’s hymns speak of a world-transcedence enhanced by expect-
ation through finding safety in God’s lordly provision in this life, which gives joy.
He represented a belief in the annihilation of the earth in the imminent Last
Days, rather than any renewal thereof; yet in the meantime, Nature provided a
screen for reflecting God’s love. Arndt was less “apocalyptic,” even while impa-
tient to move on from this world to better things. Spirituality provided evidence
to confirm the doctrine of Providence as of the Last Things.¹²¹
However among the theological schools by 1631 the Lutheran Daniel Clasens
had made Natural theology a special part of Metaphysics.¹²² The doctrines of
both Creation and Providence then were submerged in the consideration of
God’s properties. By the time of the Jesuit M. Martini in 1618 there were common-
ly two main proofs for God’s existence: one from conscience and the other from
the universe as world-machine. The discussion of Aristotelian entelechy seemed
to make providence something redundant. The final cause of divine providence
was the praise and honouring of God, not of some component within the cosmic
 Krolzik, Säkularisierung, 20.

 Ibid., 23: “Im Vergleich mit dem lutherischen Providentiaglauben läßt sich nun klarer die
Eigenart des Arndtschen erkennen. Im Gegensatz zu Luther ist bei Arndt die Vaterliebe nicht mit
der Verborgenheit Gottes verbunden, sondern ist in der Naturordnung jedermann ersichtlich” (4.
Vorrede, 5 f.).
 Johann Arndt, Wahres Christentum 4.I.4.3 f.
 Ibid., 35 f.
 Cf. Robert Spaemann, “Natur,” in Handbuch philosophischer Grundbegriffe, vol. 2: Gesetz –
Relation, eds. Hermann Krings, Hans Michael Baumgartner, and Christoph Wild (München:
Kösel & Pustet, 1973): 659 – 669.

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scheme.¹²³ It could well have been Lutherans who thought of providentia special-
issima as being reserved for the godly, as separate from non human and other
humans. There was a strong emphasis on creatio ex nihilo, possibly in order to
preserve the idea of divine transcendence. However, apart from that, God was
avowedly anthropocentric in the purpose of his works, employing the rest of cre-
ation to that end, as seems clear from Calov (Systema III,art VI,cII).
Although the Lutheran orthodox divine Johannes Gerhard believed in some
sort of “sense of the whole” as leading to knowledge of God, he was clear in his
belief that Scripture would make knowledge from nature clearer (as in Gerhard’s
Loci V,4 p80).¹²⁴ All the same Gerhard underwent a change in position from a
focus on the present world-governance of God to an interest in the order of na-
ture established as creation.¹²⁵ This accorded with Descartes’ idea of the conser-
vation of energy which would develop into a physics without recourse to Divine
action.¹²⁶ This was about created, cosmic certainties in uncertain times, as histo-
ry appeared less and less in the control of the One God.
Catholic voices
History and God’s help to chastise then establish His people on a stronger foot-
ing was felt in Catholic circles too. In her recent monograph Sandra Chapparo
speaks of a felt need in the early modern period to escape from a metaphysical
passivity where all was created and fixed such that history was in some sense
bound to the fixtures of (human) Being.¹²⁷ The outworking of this was (as per
her study) history’s recognition of the conservatively loyal and “ordered” Span-
ish people as the chosen nation – in the work of Juan de Salazar (d 1560). How-
ever, that confidence in fixed order was shaken later, in 1589, that annus horribi-
 Ratschow, Gott existiert, 78: “Causa finalis der providentia ist als finis ultimus die Aner-
kenntnis und Verehrung Gottes.”
 “certior autem et perfectior est illa providentiae divinae cognitio, quae ex scripturae libro
petitur’”(Loci VI, 9), 81.
 Ibid.
 Descartes, Principia philosophiae II,36: “Deum ipsum, qui materiam simul cum motu et qui-
ete in principio creavit, iamque per solum suum concursum ordinarium tantundem motus et
quietis in ea tota quantum tunc posuit conservat.”
 Sandra Chapparo, Providentia: El discurso político providencialista español de los siglos XVI
y XVII, Biblioteca Comillas: Historia de las Ideas 2 (Madrid: Universidad Pontificia Comillas,
2012), 199: “La Providencia irrumpe en el pensiamento occidental en un intento por resolver
la ‘pasividad metafisica’ que surge de la constaración de que la historia debe su existencia a
los hombres pero no es hecha por ellos.”

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Catholic voices 167
lis, when Pedro de Ribadeneira described the destruction of the Armada as being
like that of the armies of Egypt, the result of divine wrath. Humans were taken to
be free to co-operate with God, and tribulation was like a medicine or simply a
balancing of a covenant as per Leviticus 26 (“If you obey my laws…”). The Holy
War in South America was not to preserve order but to change it.¹²⁸ In this prov-
idential history as theorized by Salazar and John of Nuremberg,¹²⁹ there was
much room for delegation of action to a chosen people, as guided by Scripture:
Charles V was David; Philip II Solomon, and Spain was the Fifth Empire of Dan-
iel.¹³⁰
Catholic spiritual writers operated with a long tradition of depicting Provi-
dence as the presupposition of a deepening spiritual life. Both the fact of Prov-
idence and trust in it as a given meant that one could accept Ignatius’ teaching:
“trust yourself to God as thought all came from you, but work as though all from
him and not vice versa.” Catherine of Siena’s major work had borne the title Di-
alogo della divina provvidenza (1378). Prior to this, she besought the Divine Prov-
idence to provide for things in general, and in particular, for a certain case with
which she was concerned. In other words, her request was that God punish her
for her sins rather than take it out on the poor. Providence is about providing
means of purgation and suffering done gladly, of testing and proving and form-
ing virtues in charity. In the early modern period the theologian Leonardus Les-
sius (d.1623) could now describe God’s providence as the working of a sort of nu-
minous power. His majesty means he sees more details in creaturely existence
than creatures do themselves. God does concern himself with details: Qualis
enim esset ille Deus qui ignoraret etiam ea quae nobis sunt perspicua? ¹³¹ Hence
Augustine was right in The City of God V,9 to refute Cicero: if God is to be
God, then it cannot be just any power by which world is ruled.¹³²
Lessius continues (to paraphrase):
Now while we see that the wicked and unjust prosper and that Machiavelli was possibly
right, the true answer is to see ourselves as finite, and in that days and seasons run
their courses this is a sign that everything is governed by the force of nature: no other
 Ibid., 185.

 Ibid., 129 f.: John of Nuremberg in 1643 wrote that Spain had received laws and institutions
from God and now must defend them and propagate them in the providential battle against evil.
 Ibid., 185. Bossuet would draw on these in his 1679 work on sacred politics.
 Leonardus Lessius, De providentia numinis et animi immortalitate libri duo adversus atheos
& politicos (Antverpi: Ex Officina Plantiniana, 1613).
 Ibid., 5: “Si esset aliquod Numen quo mundus regeretur, non sic invalesceret improbitas,
non tam prosperos haberet successus, nec ita posset opprimere virtutis & innocentiae cultores;
sicut omnibus saeculis factum videmus.”

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power is to be postulated, and even humans go through stages. There are many reasons
quite apart from those given by revelation for thinking that the supreme Power does
care. All civilisations seem to believe this, as do their best philosophers. For example,
the second reason is demonstrated by the course of the heavenly orbs, which move too
fast for this to be unaided.
He then goes on to appeal to an uncaused cause, designer, that which keeps

them all in their places, and one who donates the structure and arrangement
of parts of the world in order to their end.¹³³ Where does the sea’s saltiness
come from? It is ridiculous to postulate that the sun burns the sea bed and pro-
duces salt: no, it was there in the first place since it was meant to sustain fish,
not plants. All these things were done for the sake of humans. There is a moral
dimension to this and hence a personal one.¹³⁴ Just like a ruler violently puts
down rebellion, so too there is strong governance and subjugation of anything
that would cause trouble. All things visible and invisible are set up nicely so
that man will love the Numen. He alone can appreciate it all. And all is for
him. Providence can be supremely detected in the disposition of mediums to
their end¹³⁵ – to make them so they can do what they do. The vis formatix
works to shape creatures.¹³⁶ Humans don’t act from instinct as animals, such
that humans are thus much more able to adapt. Humans are equipped not
only with reason but with a universal providence by which he is able to rule him-
self, to set himself a goal in each work and is able to dispose the means to that
opportunity.¹³⁷ A human can retreat from his work, but God doesn’t know how to
do this and is always among his works. Things cannot stand without God in
them. For all things have a tendency towards nothing. All depends on God
much more than on their immediate cause, since He is greater.
Lessius continues by stating that Providence can be discerned in the variety
of voices and faces, such that we we do not confuse people. Poverty is also pre-
sented as a good thing. For it is clear how salutary poverty can be for the human
race and it cuts out the tinder of evil and occupies the mind with innocent con-
 He quotes Psalm 93(94):9: “qui plantavit aurem, non audiet? Qui finxit oculum, non con-
siderat?”
 Ibid., 82: “Numen etsi caelos & elementa in commodum hominum instituerit, tamen ita
regit omna ut subinde incommode & damna per ea irroget, ad ipsorum peccata vel maiora,
vel minora, sine quibus non vivitur, castiganda.”
 Ibid., 85: “Providentia enim in nulla re magis cernitur, quam in apta mediorum ad finem
dispositio.”
 Ibid., 87.
 Ibid., 105: “Homo quia ratione & providentia quadam universali praeditus est. qua seipsum
regere, sibi finem in singulis operibus statuere, & media ad illum opportune disponere potest.”

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Catholic voices 169
cerns. He then goes on to discuss miracles, but from this point onwards he uses
scriptural revelation in tracing the theme through the Old Testament then the
New Testament. In the following century “occasionalists” like Malebranche, Ber-
keley or Leibniz would write of the reality of divine agency working in and
through creation. This differed from the more traditional “efficient causality,” ac-
cording to which a distinct heat rises in the heated body itself (Aquinas, Summa
Contra Gentiles III,69), and there is no real transfer of accidents though a com-
munication of esse. The case of creatio ex nihilo was a clear case of this: there
was no transfer involved in the change of affairs, yet the thing gets bumped
into more fullness of being by means of a communication of esse. Conservation,
however, requires less explanation, for it is more about removing agents whose
actions would diminish it (conservatio per accidens). Although there is both a per
se and also mediate conservation: without this, the way things are, things could
not continue to exist, as well as be what they are. God can annihilate so surely he
can also preserve.¹³⁸
The idea of concurrence did not much feature in the early modern Aristote-
lians since it was first missing in Aristotle, for whom God was not directly need-
ed, e.g in procreation, or in the other ordinary causes of nature. Suarez was not
an occasionalist (since he has already targeted occasionalists in Disp. Met. 18),
but came close to arguing this in his attack on Durandus, who gave over too
much to secondary causes and made God a remote cause. In the case of the
three men in the furnace (Daniel 3), God was able to change the fire from within
it. But the secondary agent can resist it or act without it. “Broadly speaking,
Suarez’s account of God’s general concurrence runs parallel to the account pub-
lished by Luis de Molina a few years before the appearance of the Disputationes
Metaphysicae.”¹³⁹ God can permit a sinful act because he leaves the choice to the
agent. So there is conditional foreknowledge of how possible free agents would
act.
And so because he does not know exactly how free creatures will act just on
the basis of his own intention to concur with their actions, God needs middle
knowledge antecedently in order for his providential plan to be complete—that
is, in order to be able knowingly to intend or permit free acts as particulars.¹⁴⁰
In the same way God also wills to give sufficient grace to those he foreknows
 Freddoso, xcv.

 Francisco Suarez, On Efficient Causality: Metaphysical Disputations 17 – 19, trans. Alfred J.
Freddoso (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), cxv.
 Suarez, Disputationes Metaphysicae (1597), 22.4.38 – 9.

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will not make good use of such grace, in order than they might be absolutely ca-
pable of making good use of such grace. ¹⁴¹
One can also detect a change in how mystical spirituality relates to provi-
dence in the world.¹⁴² For Teresa of Avila, her mystical union allows God’s
plans to become hers. It is very much about Grace – and yet that grace is
about being caught up in divine plan. And although there are only six uses of
the noun providencia in Teresa’s work, the verb proveer is used seventy-one
times and always seems as part of a relationship of union.¹⁴³ Indeed it very
much involves God’s re-arranging of the material circumstances around each
union. In her trato de Amistad the need for Fiduzialglaube and security in God
through a dialectic of justification in that relationship is affirmed. Furthermore,
in her autobiography (Vita 18,15) she wrote: “I did not believe the untrained who
said: he is only present through grace but a great scholar [Bañez or Barrón] from
the Dominicans delivered me from the doubt he truly would be there.” It is the
experience of God in all things that seems to have been a novum in the Siglo
d’Oro. ¹⁴⁴
Suarez in his De legibus asked whether the ratio aeterna agendorum should
be considered to be the same thing as Providence? If Providence is something
“added later in time,” then it can be considered to be a law materialiter but
not formaliter: the status of the law is in time even if in thought of the lawmaker
it is eternal. Armogathe adds: “Later on, in the work of a Louvainist commenta-
tor on Aquinas, one finds the expression lex aeterna like to gubernatio rerum, in a
formula which further clarifies the thinking of the angelic doctor: ‘eternal law is
the order to govern things with the will of binding them to this mode of opera-
 Ibid., 237.

 Klaus Kleffner, Vorsehung und Zumutung: Skizzen zu einer Theologie der Vorsehung aus dem
Werk Teresas von Ávila, Theologie der Spiritualität: Quellen und Studien 4 (St. Ottilien: Eos Ver-
lag, 2012), 434: “Die Vorsehung ist unter dem Aspekt der Willenseinung eine Beziehungsweise, in
der der Mut, das Vertrauen in Gott und das befreite Engagement des Menschen für die Welt
fruchtbar werden. Die Zumutungen als Ausdruck der Liebe im Hinblick auf die immer tiefere Ei-
nung, d. h. auf die freundschaftliche Beziehung mit Gott […] haben mehr als einen Vorberei-
tungscharakter […].”
 Ibid., 495. Since relational, “(w)ie Vorsehungsglaube im Sinne des Glaubens an die heil-
bringende Freundschaft Gottes […].” (ibid., 503).
 According to Bañez humans are free to decide, in that there is partnership but power is one
way, and general grace is enough to have free choice. Ibid., 610: “Der Lebenslauf des Menschen
ist mit Teresa insofern nicht in allen Details von Gott vorherbestimmt, sondern als ein dialo-
gisches persönliches Antworten auf Gottes Gaben zu verstehen.” It is not goal-driven – God ac-
companies, but draws us in whatever we do; the leading of God only comes in after that decision
by special grace.

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Catholic voices 171
tion’ (lex aeterna est ordo rerum gubernandarum cum voluntate adstringendi ad
illum operandi modum).”¹⁴⁵ Providence then was not so much a law as an action
to order things. There emerged a new interest in History, Poltics, and “technique”
or logic, which was in common to God and man. There was a unity in intelli-
gence.¹⁴⁶ Acts 17:32 seems to have come to be the text.
Luther’s claim that the invading Turks were executing God’s will was one
reason why the Bull threatening Excommunication of 1520 (Exsurge Domine) ac-
cused him of being in league with the enemy who, Leo X said, were acting very
much against God’s will. For South German Catholics the decisive victory at Mo-
hacs in 1526 was very significant for this question. Martin Hille describes how a
defeatism among Catholic Chroniclers at that time was not necessarily shared by
townspeople who trusted in a more continuing providence. Thus from the 1540s
onwards a new confidence for this world and the Roman Church swept through
the Empire.¹⁴⁷ If the Emperor could not make the Turks go away, perhaps the Jes-
uit-led mission could have an effect. When the Turks returned again in force
– and even Lepanto (1571) did not really stop them – the discourse became
more eschatological or “apocalyptic” (rediscovered works like 4 Ezra were ap-
pealed to). Whereas the grounds for misfortune earlier in the century were
held to be divine judgement, now God was on the side of his people as they re-
sisted. In the Austrian chronicles of 1592, Michael Aitzinger of Köln had no time
for any nuancing of fault. The more official church histories like Baronius’ An-
nales Ecclesiastici and Petavius’ Chronology were quite different, and more inter-
ested in the sacred past, for reasons to do with winning the fight against Protes-
tants over the right interpretation of church history, even while bringing it up to
date.¹⁴⁸ Precisely in works of this genre, whether Catholic or Protestant, one fo-
cused on the history before the Reformation period in order to trace God’s Prov-
idence, and refused to evaluate the events of that century.¹⁴⁹ This could have
 Jean-Robert Armogathe, “Deus legislator,” in Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Mod-
ern Europe, eds. Lorraine Daston and Michael Stolleis (Farnham: Ashgate, 2008): 265 – 77, 267.
 Jean-Robert Armogathe, La Nature du Monde: Science Nouvelle et Exégèse au XVIIe Siècle
(Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2007), 77.
 Martin Hille, Providentia Dei, Reich und Kirche: Weltbild und Stimmungsprofil altgläubiger
Christen 1517 – 1618, Schriftenreihe der Historischen Kommission bei der Bayerischen Akademie
der Wissenschaften 81 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2010), 318: “Das Phänomen des
nachlassenden Providentialismus zeichnet sich verstärkt seit der 1540er Dekade ab, speziell
in den städtischen und private Annalen.”
 Ibid., 390.
 Ibid., 391: “So selten sich die Zeitbuchschreiber einer eschatologischen Bewertung der Re-
formation anschließen, so häufig suchen sie Selbstvergewisserung über ihre kirchengeschichtli-
che Vertiefung. Kirchengeschichte und Heilsgeschichte lösen sich in diesem Säkulum vo-

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been because up until at least the middle of the century there was hope there
might be resolution and when this did not arrive the recent past just seemed
hard to comprehend. Scholars started to look to knowledge mediated through
nature and speculation. Avoidance of religious controversy by those who
would rather not do confessional church history led to some amount of interest
in history in itself, quite apart from Gottfried Arnold’s later pro-dissenting ac-
count (Unparteyische Kirchen- und Ketzer-historie) of 1700. Time itself was
given a role alongside God, with the motto: Deus et tempus revelat omnia, as if
perhaps God could not be held responsible for all that happened, but indeed
only shared that responsibility with “Time.” In the metaphor of the hour-glass,
which was popular in the early seventeenth century this process of secularising
of Providence was demonstrated.¹⁵⁰
neinander, gleichwohl fügt sich das historische Schicksal der Ecclesia weiter in den weiteren
Rahmen der Providenta Dei.”
 “Was daraus werden, wird die zeit offenbaren” (Johannes Mechtel, Limburger Chronik
[1612], 139). Hille comments (Ibid.): “Eine säkulare, an die Zeit gebundene Auffassung vom
Strom des Geschehens schiebt sich vor die Providentia Dei, ja macht ihr Konkurrenz, ohne sie
wirklich zu verdrängen.”

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Chapter Five:
The Doctrine’s Fortunes in the Early Modern Era
Protestant and Catholic perceptions
The majority of Reformed theologians seemed to be clear that Providence and

Predestination as part of Soteriology were to be distinguished. However, what
seemed all important to the heterodox Jacob Arminius (d. 1609) was that
grace was part of providence and vice versa. That was because providence
was twofold: it preserved the goodness of creatures according to their nature,
and also according to grace through the communication of supernatural gifts.
Grace is thus administered to all creatures. “Grace, therefore, belongs to the cre-
ated order as part of tis fundamental relation to God – and is not merely a divine
gift later and only to some as a means to the correction of a problem […] it is in
fact, a direct counter to Junius’ distinction between universal and particular
providence.”¹ Providence then was not reserved for “the elect” but for each in-
dividual human: predestination comes in by God’s providential prescience or
wisdom, but this does not take anything away from a universal, guiding pres-
ence. God’s preservation guides essences, and divine government guides actions
and passions. As Richard Muller explains, whereas most Roman Catholics like
Suarez saw preservation as the same thing as creatio continua, Arminius, signif-
icantly, differs on this last point. His basic definition of providence as a tempo-
ral, not an eternal act of God – as “‘continued through […] the duration of things’
and not ‘completed in a moment’ – allows no room for the Reformed and Luther-
an argument for the essential identity of creation.”² Distinct “temporal divine ac-
tivity” is asserted, and here the link with creation could be loosened, as Leo
Scheffczyk lamented, for, as with Peter Aureole, in such a view there is a future
to God in his knowledge. To quote Muller once more:
Here again Arminius moves away from the Thomist position, as represented in his own day
by Suarez, and adopts a view that accords more freedom to the creature. Things are not
fixed as by an anchor to creation and the nature of things. In this line, Suarez had thought
the divine concurrence flows into the creatures’ actions not just into effects. […] he adds to
Durandus that God concurs with the creaturely action: so into the action of the cause (not
 Richard A. Muller, God, Creation, and Providence in the Thought of Jacob Arminius: Sources
and Directions of Scholastic Protestantism in the Era of Early Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids: Baker,
1991), 245.
 Ibid., 248.

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174 Chapter Five: The Doctrine’s Fortunes in the Early Modern Era
into the cause nor into the effect) […]. In other words, Arminius has adopted a fairly con-
sistent Molinism.³
God could hinder sin without necessitating that it ceases its activity, by making
sin seem unpleasant, or by making the person ill, so they have little strength
with which to sin. Or, as in Arminius’s Disputatio publica V,vii: “Even so, God
hindered the plan of Joseph’s brothers to commit murder, intervening more
against the act than against the sinfulness of Joseph’s brothers; but God permit-
ted the sale of Joseph, allowing the transgression and then using the act itself for
his own ends.”
In the next generation Gisbertus Voetius insisted that any necessity is only
necessitas consequentiae.⁴ He explained permission as God’s non-interference
with evil, and thus as an absence of a positive willed action. And in his work
De termino vitae 118 he cited Augustine (City of God VII,10) and Aquinas (SCG
III,67&69), in order to conclude: “It is necessary that a particular person dies
at a particular hour, in the sense that it is infallibly known by God and immuta-
bly decreed by Him.”⁵ That was not a case of absolute necessity, but was contin-
gent with respect to its created cause. That way, God’s providence could be
termed a fatum mobile, in contradistinction to neo-Stoics like Spinoza.
There is something similar in the work of William Twisse who in 1632 (Vin-
diciae Gratiae, Potestatis, Et Providentiae Dei), against Arminius, saw the one de-
cree as fixing creation, permission of sin and damnation all at once. There is a
necessity of consequence between God’s permission of evil and its reality. One
can see this spelled out even more clearly with reference to Providence in Sa-
muel Rutherford. In his inaugural lecture at St Andrews in 1651, Rutherford an-
swers that of course God’s decrees do not influence secondary causes, since any
concurrence of God does not diminish the essence of things but preserves them.
Hence it does not remove their pure potency, but rather removes the modal po-
tency with regard to the event and outworking of the thing. For God himself is
the “uncreated Angel.”⁶
 Ibid., 254 f.
 Andreas J. Beck, Gisbertus Voetius (1589 – 1676): Sein Theologieverständnis und seine Gottes-
lehre, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 92 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ru-
precht, 2007), 343.
 Aza Goudriaan, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 1625 – 1750: Gisbertus Voetius, Petrus van
Mastricht, and Anthonius Driessen, Brill’s Series in Church History and Religious Culture 26 (Lei-
den: Brill, 2006), 149, n. 26.
 Samuel Rutherford, Disputatio scholastica de divina providentia (Edinburgh, 1650), 7. (p. 586)
“An decretum DEI positum tollat aliquam potentiam a creatis agentibus? Respondeo non tollit

Authenticated
With these details from Genesis 19:22 Rutherford seems to deviate from what
Calvin established, that it was not God Himself who appeared, but a created
angel: this “divine immediacy” was a position more identifiable with Lutheran
theology. Freedom can be reconciled with the Lord of Lord’s antecedent will:
on the one hand the power of God cannot be stopped, but on the other hand
it is not an absolute necessity flooding in, but in such a way that his will is
the model and character of a free cause without any force, i. e. consequential.
There is influence, but nothing stronger.⁷ In Linda Munk’s book about Puritan
providentialism, The Devil’s Mousetrap, the title relies on the detail that on ac-
count of the Greek pagis of Ps 124:7 (“we have escaped like a bird out of the
snare”) the Vetus Latina and hence Augustine read muscipula (“flytrap” rather
than “mousetrap”).⁸ The idea of Providence as really placed in a cosmic battle-
field where great loss is to be expected, and hostile spiritual powers are located
more “in the air” than “on the ground,” squares with the growing preference in
the Augustinian tradition for theophanies in the Old Testamen as involving an-
gels, not the quieter manifest presence of the Lord himself. (Calvin had thought
of any forces as natural types of secondary cause.)⁹
Rutherford disagreed with those Jesuits who believed that it was God who
pre-moves secondary causes to act. No, God is involved in all actions at the
point of the activity.¹⁰ He would distinguish the twofold natural providence of
God, which is reckoned to God as the Creator viewing the ends of his creation,
and the supernatural, that is reckoned to God as regards the absolute final
potentiam aliqua, creatam vel physicam, neque partem ejus ullam, 1. Quia decreta DEI qua de-
creta non influent realiter in causas secundas. Quia prima causa neque concurrendo, neque con-
stituendo concurrere, minuit rerum entitates, sed conservat potius, ideoque puram potentiam
non tollit decretum Dei, at vero potentiam modalem quae eventum & efficaciam rei respicit, toll-
it. 1. Quia ipse Deus Angelus increatus, Gen 19.22.”
 Ibid., 12. (p. 589) “An libertas stare qua cum necessitate antecedente? Respondeo affirmative,
alioqui providentiam dominatricem, & principatum, Dominus Dominorum in omnes actiones
creaturarum haud exercebit.” 13 (p. 589): “[…] Respondeo negative, quia voluntas DEI cum
sua invicta & infrustrabili necessitate non agit influx absolute necessario, sed ad modum, gen-
iam, & indolem causae liberae citra omnem vim. Et quails est influxus primae causae in secun-
dam, talis est consequentia. Nam collectio logicalis sequitur modum essendi & operandi: at in-
fluxus non est absolute necessarius. Ergo neque consequentia est absolute necessaria.”
 Linda Munk, The Devil’s Mousetrap: Redemption and Colonial American Literature (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997), 22.
 D. Stephen Long, Hebrews, Belief: a Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville: WJK,
2011), 11, with reference to Calvin on Hebrews 1:7 and Ps 104:4.
 Rutherford, Disputatio scholastica, 18 (p. 592): “An creatura posset operari sine prima causa
concurrente? Respondeo negative, quia actio illa facta a creatura citra DEUM, esset actio conser-
vata sine DEO.”

Authenticated
end and directs all things to God. Augustine and Prosper are right to say about
the former providence that no-one was created by God that they would perish.
But with respect to supernatural providence, and the end of God above all,
God grants that natural being to be, and allows sin by his inscrutable dispensa-
tion that the Glory of his justice might shine forth in the most just death and de-
struction of a human person.¹¹ So Bellarmine is obtuse, he thinks, to say that it is
the condition of matter that ordains it to shame, but it is rather the case that
creatures ordain themselves to their death, and it is their sin that draws their
punishment. But the question is not whether the creatures by sinning ordain
themselves dispositionally to damnation by committing those things which
incur actual damnation.¹² No, it is rather a question of the predestinating ordi-
nation of God. And here he acknowledges the work of the Heidelberg Reformed
divine, David Pareus.
In the Dutch Reformed setting around the middle of the Seventeenth Centu-
ry, Providence could be distinguished from matters of predestination to the point
that both doctrines had more room to breathe. For Cocceius the sabbath was a
type of, or a sign pointing towards, the eschatological Sabbath and not to be in-
stituted in this life. It was something given in the early days of creation and not
really to do with covenants of law and grace:¹³ “God gave rest to people as peo-
ple, as part of his providential care.” In the meantime, with regard to Col 2:17, one
was to cease from moral misdeeds. As Ernestin van der Wall has explained, Coc-
 Ibid., 6 (p. 228): “Distingui etiam hic velim, duplicem DEI providentiam, naturalem, quae
competit DEO qua Creator respiciens fines creationis, & supernaturalem, quae competit DEO
quatenus finem absolute ultimum respicit, & ad eum Omnia dirigit. Prioris providentiae respec-
tu Augustin & Prosper recte dixerunt, neminem a DEO creatum esse, ut periret; quae finis crea-
tionis & Creatoris est ut communicaret esse creaturis, quod est bonum creaturae. At vero repsec-
tu providentiae supernaturalis, et finis DEI eminenter supreme, DEUS dat esse naturale &
permittit peccatum ex inscrutabili dispensatione, ut patefiat Gloria justitiae in interitu homininis
justissimo.”
 Ibid. “Dilute igitur & insulse Belliarminus ait, vasa facta in contumelia, habere a DEO, quod
sint vasa, sed quod in contumeilam, habere non a DEO, sed a conditione materiae: Quia Creaturae
non se ordinant ad interitum sine demeritorie, puta, peccando, At non est quaestio an Creatura
peccando dispositive se ordinent ad damnationnem committendo ea quae actualem damnatio-
nem, incurrunt; at quaestio de ordinatione DEI praedestinativa.”
 Silke-Petra Bergjan, “Verus narrator extiti, non callidus disputator: Johannes Coccejus’ Lek-
türe der Kirchenväter im niederländischen Sabbatstreit,” in Patristic Tradition and Intellectual
Paradigms in the 17th Century, eds. Silke-Petra Bergjan and Karla Pollmann, Spätmittelalter, Hu-
manismus, Reformation: Studies in the Late Middle Ages, Humanism, and the Reformation 52
(Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010): 73 – 104, 81: “Die Ruhe gehört nicht dem Bund der Werke an,
und Sabbatpflichten entsprechen nicht dem Bund der Gnade’ see Indagatio Naturae sabbati
(1658); Opera omnia 9,2.”

Authenticated
ceians only held to Cartesianism in natural theology, not in revealed theology,

and separated these. This division prepared the way for Moderate Dutch theolo-
gy.¹⁴ This did not stop Protestant biblical interpretation from seeming very ra-
tionalistic even among French Jansenists who looked to the tradition of the
church’s interpretation to ascribe the bible mystery as well as clarity and for
which the biblical story provided an exemplar for providence in the present age.
With burning concern to resist the Cartesian “static” view of creation with
God shut out from it, and a tendency to restrict God’s action to the order of re-
demption, Voetius’ follower Petrus van Mastricht sounded the criticism that a
number of Cartesians “transfer to omnipresence the definition that properly be-
longs to Providence […] and in particular their inclination to identify creation
and conservation.”¹⁵ What however was fairly novel in van Mastricht’s thinking,
at least in the final part of his Theoeretico-practica theologia, was seeing a uni-
veralising of providence that guided Israel ever since the New Testament becom-
ing the driving force of history, working through the church into secular history,
in the operation of the covenant of grace. As Goudriaan interprets the evidence
from Dutch Church Historiography towards the end of the Seventeenth Century:
“Occurrences of events that can be called miraculous in these various meanings
can make up a cumulative case concerning God’s guidance of Dutch history.”¹⁶
Providence was seen as divine testimony to right religion, and it flowed from a
source of grace to include all creatures.
Beza’s Abraham sacrifiant is deemed to be the first tragedy written in French.
In turn Racine appears like an accident in that he seems unclassical.¹⁷ This is
only the case if one sees a gradual secularisation and “progression” with its
apotheosis in Voltaire’s dramas. What was rich throughout the long seventeenth
century was a concern to think of providence in “theatrical” terms and vice
versa. Admittedly tragedy with its disproportionate punishment for minor
flaws found it hard to survive as the Enlightenment began to take hold. Yet up
to that point the radical moralism of Racine, which pinned the blame for the
world’s disorder on deluded love, represented the forces once represented by
 Ernestine van der Wall, “Cartesianism and Coccesianism: A Natural Alliance?” in De l’Huma-
nisme aux Lumières, Bayle et le protestantisme: Mélanges en l’honneur d’Elisabeth Labrousse, ed.
Michelle Magdelaine (Paris: Universitas, 1996), 455.
 Ibid., 155.
 Goudriaan, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 216.
 Jean-Pierre Perchellet, L’Héritage classique: La tragédie entre 1680 et 1814, Les Dix-hui-
tieÌmes sieÌcles 85 (Paris Honoré Champion 2004), 350. Also Anna Louise Kromsigt, Le Théatre
biblique à la veille du romantisme (Zutphen: Nauta, 1931).

Authenticated
the classical gods as part of the psychological make-up of the protagonists and
liable to moral approval or disapproval:
Racine’s approach […] is to attack the idea that there are small or moderate moral faults. In
the tragic world of Phèdre, so often considered a projection of a Jansenist worldview into an
ancient pagan framework, human intentionality is so emphasised there is no significant
difference between thought and action (‘la seule pensée du crime y est regardée avec autant
d’horreur que le crime meme’).¹⁸
So there is not really much room for luck even though it appeared to people in
shock as chance (hasard), but the world of sin is an irregular one. In Le Cid Cor-
neille presents the tragedy of indecision. (Only in Rosemonde by Nicolas Chres-
tien des Croix does revenge lead to moral degradation.) Vengeance in this life is a
duty, where human agents take on the role of God.
Keith Thomas in Religion and the Decline of Magic¹⁹ observed that in the late
Middle Ages divine judgment and reward were deferred. Protestants objected
that this seemed to imply that the Christian God was unable to touch anyone,
for better or for worse, in this life. Prayer, not some apotropaic ritual, could
link one to a sense of what God was very soon to bring about in the immediate
future. Thomas Beard’s The Theatre of God’s Judgment (1597) forecast punish-
ment on the evildoers and mighty, but also warned Epicureans and Atheists
that God’s Providence was very real. Conversely, Seneca was deemed to have
been a bit too quiet about divine justice in the final reckoning, although was ad-
mired for the intensity of the “here and now” natural retribution.²⁰ For Le Cid it
was a sacred duty to play the role of avenging hero, taking on the requirement of
re-establishing God’s honour in accordance with the “vengeance is mine” prin-
ciple. About this Montaigne had written: “God, wishing to teach us that the good
have something else to hope for, and the wicked something else to fear than the
fortunes and misfortunes of this world, handles and allots these according to his
occult disposition, and deprives us of the means of foolishly making a profit out
of them.”²¹ On this John Lyons comments: “In other words, the world is governed
as far as appearances go, by chance. If we insist on finding a deeper explanation,
we can simply say that puzzling things that happen from the intentions of a deity
 John D. Lyons, Kingdom of Disorder: The Theory of Tragedy in Classical France, Studies in
Romance Literatures 17 (West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1999), 135.
 Thomas Keith, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth and
Seventeenth-Century England (London: Penguin, 2003).
 Elliott Forsyth, La Tragédie française de Jodelle à Corneille (1553 – 1640): Le Thème de la
vengeance (Paris: A. G. Nizet, 1962), 104.
 Montaigne, Works I.32, 216/161.

Authenticated
whose designs are the equivalent of chance – that is, unknown, incomprehensi-
ble, unpredictable and entirely beyond human power to influence.”²² In Mon-
taigne’s Apology for Raymond Sebond the world is presented as disordered and
unpredictable.²³
Certainly Corneille seems to have seen Fortune as a purposeful even if cruel
mistress of events. For Corneille unpredictable exceptions were more interesting.
Clitandre is all about chance combinations and plots crossing, while Le Cid is a
tragedy because things are out of the hero’s control.²⁴ Montaigne, although a
century earlier, can be seen as standing behind the conviction that even chance
is more like Fortune than it is purely accidental.²⁵ Within early modern Cathol-
icism lay contingency, argues John Lyons, but this seems too simple: “Racine’s
great achievement in Athalie is to reconcile the French Catholic providentialist
outlook with neo-Aristotelian poetics by discerning the principal point of conver-
gence: suspense.”²⁶ Meanwhile, human beings carry out God plans unwittingly.
“The seventeenth century marked the decline of a totalising, centralising, per-
sonalising, spectacular and didactic view of chance, or Boethian ‘Fortune’ – in
favour of a punctual, decentred, impersonal, imperceptible and amoral form
of contingency, often designated by the term hazard.”²⁷
Providence was seen to account for the whole nexus of events and not just
individual fortunes or misfortunes. Liberty is qualified by dependence on other
created causes and it is always dependent on divine providence, God’s power.²⁸
As Stephen A. Long puts it in relation to Molina: “But the doctrine of the creation
and God’s Providence over contingent singular effects is not only received in
faith but is demonstrable by reason […]. Molina, whose implicit removal of
 John D. Lyons, The Phantom of Chance: From Fortune to Randomness in Seventeenth-Century

French Literature, Edinburgh Critical Studies in Renaissance Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh Uni-
versity Press, 2012), 24.
 See Daniel Martin, Montaigne et la fortune: Essai sur le hasard et le langage, Bibliothèque
littéraire de la Renaissance; 3. sér., 4 (Paris: Champion, 1977).
 Lyons, The Phantom of Chance, 62: “Only for a Catholic hero – and not for a Huguenot, Cal-
vinist one – would time contain the possibility of a significant accident, an encounter that could
alter the hero’s relationship to God.”
 Philippe Desan, Dieu à nostre commerce et socieìteì: Montaigne et la theìologie, Travaux d’hu-
manisme et Renaissance (Genève: Librairie Droz, 2008.)
 Lyons, The Phantom of Chance, 169.
 Ibid., 196.
 As per Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I,q22,a2 ad4.

Authenticated
will and human agency from Divine Providence evacuated the scholastic theol-
ogy of its profound thocentricity and destroyed natural order as theonomic.”²⁹
Pierre Bayle related how Pascal’s necessitarianism led that great natural phi-
losopher to be considered posthumously by his fellow Jansenists as a Calvinist,
at the time of La Paix de l’eglise in 1669 when most Jansenists identified with the
Catholic Church. Pierre Nicole would attack Calvinists in 1673. Bayle’s own dis-
like for the ideas about L’Ame du Monde which he found in Stoicism, and which
he criticised for failing to postulate conditional necessity about the future, can
be traced to the influence of Nicole.³⁰ The world of humans and history is con-
tingent.³¹ The Stoic belief in the gods as physical is a problem, and implies that
ultimately they trace all deities back to Jupiter. Granted, at least the Stoics were
interested in the question of divine purpose in the world and how it related to
human purposes and “accidents.”³² Nevertheless, there was a need for revelation
if humans were to understand anything of divine working, and the benighted
Stoics did not manage to sustain liberty as part of the equation.
A more pious voice and representative of French Catholicism of a serious but
not Jansenist mode, Jean-Jacques Olier urged Louise de Marillac: “Follow the
order of Providence! Oh! How good it is to let ourselves be guided by it!”³³
“What great treasures there are in holy providence, […] and how marvelously
Our Lord is honored by those who follow it and do not tread on its heels (qui
n’enjambent pas sur elle)!”³⁴ It seems that “the Spirit” and “Providence” were
used interchangeably such that the note of caution in Galatians 5:22 (“keep in
 Steven A. Long, Natura Pura: On the Recovery of Nature in the Doctrine of Grace (New York:
Fordham University Press, 2010), 209, n. 3. See also Steven A. Long, “Providence, Liberty and
Natural Law,” Nova et Vetera 4 (2006): 557– 606.
 Jacqueline Lagrée, “Le critique du stoicisme dans le ‘Dictionnaire’ de Bayle,” in De l’Huma-
nisme aux Lumières, Bayle et le protestantisme, eds. Michelle Magdelaine, Marina-Cristina Pitras-
si, Ruth Whelan and Anthony McKenna (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation,1996): 581– 93. See also
Claude-Gilbert Dubois, “David et Saül: L’onction et le droit dans la tragédie biblique française
(1563 – 1601),” Revue de théologie et de philosophie 133 (2001): 401– 420. Elsewhere, “Juste Lipse:
Destins et Providence: in Le Stoicisme au XVIe e au XVIIe siècle, ed. Pierre-François Moreau
(Paris: Albin Michel, 1999): 77– 92, Lagrée has pointed to Justus Lipsius (c. 1600) as a neo-
Stoic forerunner of Spinozan naturalism.
 “Il est également vrai que cette proposition le grand Mongol ira demain à la chasse ou n’ira
pas est vrai ou fausse’” (Bayle, art. ‘Epicure’: cf. Leibniz, Theodicy, 169).
 Lagrée, “Le critique du stoicisme,” 590: “Bref, le seul mérite de la théologie stoïcienne c’est
d’avoir conçu Dieu comme provident et son seul intérêt present est de bien montrer qu’il y a un
lien entre providence, destin, liberté humaine et responsabilité.”
 Raymond Deville, L’ecole française de spiritualité, Bibliothèque d’histoire du christianisme,
11 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1987), 17.
 Ibid., 54.

Authenticated
step with the Spirit”) could be glossed as meaning not getting ahead of Provi-
dence. “Vincent uses precisely the same expression [ne pas Ie devancer] on
two occasions when writing about providence,”³⁵ as when he writes to Mère
Catherine de Beaumont: “We try in everything to follow the adorable providence
of God and not to get ahead of it” (ne La pas devancer); or to Bernard Codoin:
“Grace has its moments. Let us abandon ourselves to God’s providence and be
very careful not to get ahead of it.”³⁶
In the middle of the seventeenth century, Bishop Bossuet of Paris stood fast
for all things conservative. Although “(s)urprisingly, Bossuet’s argument requires
a heightened perception that the historical world operates randomly,”³⁷ still here
one can see the contrast with Pierre Bayle: God does not leave history to contin-
gency, but as with Molina, Bossuet would insist that God actuated things so as to
get the results He wanted. Bearing in mind what human agents would do, Molina
meant this in the realm of salvation and election, but it characterizes Bossuet’s
approach to Providence.
In his History, Bossuet gives a list of figures in world-history: Adam – Noah –
Abraham – Moses – fall of Troy – Solomon – Romulus – fall of Jerusalem –
Medes & Persians – and in all cases dates are given! There is hardly anything
about Athens or even Alexander en route to Maccabean history. He discusses
the Dixième Epoque as the time of the Birth of Jésus-Christ inaugurating the
“Septième et dernier âge du monde.” The “Onzième Epoque” is that of Constan-
tine, or that of “la paix de L’Eglise” and the “Douzieme Epoque”, that of Char-
lemagne, or “l’établissement du nouvel empire’” Precise dates, and the question
as to whether the LXX or the Hebrew bible is right in its computations are not
that important. It is just that the main events can be given a date, so that it
was all about using the time gaps to link the stories and put them in order.³⁸ Is-
rael was an object lesson in Providence.³⁹ From the antiquity of the one religion
through the New Testament there was an ongoing flow of a divine history, on
 Ibid., 55.
 Ibid., 57.
 Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Discours sur l’histoire universelle (Paris: Mabre-Cramoisy, 1681), xv.
 Ibid., 117: “l’ordre des temps, quoiqu’il soit absolument néessaire pur lieer toutes les histo-
ires, et en montrer le rapport.” This all serves to show “la suite du peuple de Dieu et celles des
grands empires.”
 Ibid., 119 f: “on ne peut rien concevoir qui soit plus digne de Dieu, que de s’être première-
ment choisi un peuple qui fût un exemple palpable de son éternelle providence; un peuple
dont la bonne ou la mauvaise fortune dépendit de la piété, et dont l’état rendît témoignage à
la sagesse et à la justice de celui qui le gouvernoit.’ This was proof: ‘que lui seul conduit à
sa volonté tous les événements de la vie présente.”

Authenticated
into the history of the church, with also a continuing providence accompanying
it, just as in the times of biblical salvation history.⁴⁰
Providential design in history was viewed as operating within Politics too. In
Jakob Bidermann’s Belisarius (1607) there is the statement of such confident be-
lief.⁴¹ Drews thinks that by the middle of the Seventeenth century (with the Thir-
ty Years War and the British Civil Wars just over), Providence was beginning to
disappear as a category that concerned public life and history.⁴² This applies to
Paradise Lost and to Gryphius’ Carolus Stuardus (c. 1650). Hobbes’ conclusion in
the 1660s that Providence would come through the godly Prince was probably a
harbinger of this development. So, Drews argues, Providence became relegated
to the private sphere and after Vico and Herder it would even be pushed out of
there, with “fortune” again a more popular term for what went on in the realm of
History (as in the Middle Ages, yet this time without a higher wisdom to check on
it). This argument (by Drews) seems to date these developments too early. Well
into the Hanoverian period, and a century later in the USA, national public
fasts were being called as a response to the vicissitudes of Providence. The
mid-seventeenth century saw expectation of the Providential God at their high-
est. Oliver Cromwell’s reaction to the disaster of the expedition to Hispaniola in
1655 can be described as “providential paralysis.” Like the Jamestown massacre
in 1622 this was hard to accept. In Massachussetts in late 1620s the Johns Win-
throp & Cotton felt they were getting out of the way of God’s wrath, escaping to a
place where nothing happened, where there was no history. Cotton advised that
attacking Spain would precipitate Christ’s return. Cromwell was “crippled by
doubts about the course of providence in the two years before his death in
1658.”⁴³ One of his supporters, Stephen Charnock aimed to simplify the doctrine:
1. There is a providence exercised by God in the world.
2. All God’s providences in the world are in order to the good of his people.
3. Sincerity in God’s way gives a man an interest in all God’s providences, and
the good of them.
 Ibid., “[…] sa suite, continuée sans interruption et sans alteration durant tant de siècles, et
malgré tant d’obstacles survenus, fait voir manifestement que la main de Dieu la soutient.”
 See Gottfried Kirchner, Fortuna in Dichtung und Emblematik des Barock: Tradition und Bedeu-
tungswandel eines Motivs (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1970). Also John Barclay’s Argenis of 1622; tr. 1626.
Francis Bacon’s 1622 History of Henry VIII.
 Drews, Menschliche Willensfreiheit, 2:194.
 Nicholas Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 1607 – 1876 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), 41.

Authenticated
This was rather because God looked at the details and could see every little oc-
currence, with an interest that preferred small things to glorious empires.
Prophecy proves that God arranges history and so nothing, not the least thing
down to the care of cattle is by chance. His key text was: “For the eyes of the
Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf
of them whose heart is perfect towards him” (2 Chron. 16:9).⁴⁴ The Old Testament
royal characters are presented as individual believers who also happen to be
kings. When he writes: “God’s special providence is over his people, but his gen-
eral providence over all kingdoms and countries,” it seems clear from the con-
text that it is each of his people that is meant or at most families.⁴⁵
Like Rutherford before him, the future Bishop of Dunblane then Glasgow in
Charles II’s Scotland, Robert Leighton held forth on Providence during his pro-
fessorial inauguration:
These are the great things of faith and godliness, and what the whole religion hinges on.
[…] Those who approach God must remember he Must be believed in and that he rewards
those who diligently seek him (Heb 1:6; 1 Reg 7,21) Whereas those who design ships and
buildings finish with their works and allow fate or chance by having no more care. For
in his grasp is that other Providence, that is the constant sustaining and governing of all
things seen and unseen […]. God who is not just the high architect but also the all-wise
craftsman never leaves his work but concerns himself in the conservation and is there
for its ruling and correcting and is closely present to complete it wholly.⁴⁶
This is a rather minimal account of God’s intervention, by comparison with Ruth-

erford, however. Leighton is happy to mix Epictetus Chapter 12, book 1 with
Psalm 139:6: all things work by his counsel (which is picked up by Paul and
notes that even Aeschylus and Euripides admitted that human affairs were guid-
ed by a peculiar intelligence).⁴⁷ Seneca, Plutarch and 2 Peter 3.8 were all agreed
that God treats his own sons more roughly for the purpose of training. Yet the
Stoics are to be rebuked for subjecting even God to Fate. He quotes Augustine
 Stephen Charnock, “A Discourse of Divine Providence,” in The Works of Stephen Charnock

(Edinburgh: James Nichol, 1864), 7.
 Ibid., 14.
 Robert Leighton, De Providentia: “Haec sunt (85) magna fidei ac pietatis, atque adeo totius
religionis, fulcra; […] Nam et alia suo ambitu complectitur Providentia, rerum scilicet omnium
visibilium ac invisibilium, in coelo et in terra, sustentationem ADIALEIPTON et gubernationem.
Fabri quidem domos naesque et reliqua sua opificia ubi absolverunt, suis ut plurimum permit-
tunt fatis, seu casibus, nihil ultra de iis solliciti. At supremus certe hic Architectus, KAI PANSO-
PHOS DHMIOURGOS, opus suum nunquam deserit; sed circumdat usque conservando, eique re-
gendo et moderando praeest, et intim inest totum complendo.”
 Ibid., 88.

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on the Psalms to argue how it is the duty of humans to bend their will to that of
God’s.⁴⁸
Certainly, as late as the end of the Seventeenth Century, public providence
was a commonplace. Gilbert Burnet, in welcoming William of Orange to the Brit-
ish Throne, spoke of a:
Work about which Providence has watched in so peculiar a manner that a Mind must be far
gone into Atheism, that can resist so full a Conviction as this offers us in favour of that
truth: ’It is the Lord’s doing’, not as the Heavens and the Earth, as the Revolutions of
Day and Night, and the whole Chain of Second Causes are his Work. All Signal and eminent
things are by the common Phrase of Scripture ascribed to God; and therefore every Event
that is great in itself, and may become much greater in its Consequences, ought to be im-
puted to an immediate Hand of Heaven. Those Things in which God’s Honour is most par-
ticularly concerned, may well be reckoned His doing.⁴⁹
Here we see a test of whether events contribute to “God’s Honour”.

John Flavel (d. 1691) insisted that Providence can be viewed in actions which
fulfil God’s word, and none other. There needs to have been some prophecy or
preaching beforehand if one is to be sure an action is providential. Providence
brings heaven into souls on the way to heaven. The fullness of seeing how
God’s design worked for us will only be tasted in heaven. The way it works
can be easily summed up: “This Providence raised a dismal cloud, and that dis-
pelled it again.”⁵⁰ The treatise proper starts with Ps 47:2; it continues with Ps
138:8 where he appeals to the LXX: “The Lord will perfect by who profiteth
me.” The address is very much to individuals, which the doctrine seems to con-
cern. It is about providence at work in personal lives. It could be argued that spe-
cial Divine Providence was the Protestant equivalent to the continuing Roman
Catholic interest in miracles. Perhaps the accent was placed on the negative:
Physicians and reformers rejected claims that medivinal waters derived their therapeutic
powers frm their celestial guaridans, insiting instead that this was attributable to their
chemical content or their frigid qualities. Nevertheless they and others still acknowledged
them as the ‘largess of heaven’ as gracious gifts from God that might be taken away if the
communities to which they were vouchsafed proved themselves unworthy of retaining
 Cf. Ibid., 94: “Si providentiam hanc ponimus sapientissimam atque optimam, necesse est
per omnia velimus quod ipsa vult; alioquin libitum monstrum ei anteferimus, quod prodigii sim-
ile est.”
 Gilbert Burnet, Sermon preached in chapel of St James before his Highness Prince of Orange,
23 December, 1688 (London, 1689.)
 John Flavel, Divine conduct; or The mystery of Providence, Preface, vii; in Works, Vol. II (Lon-
don: D. Midwinter, 1740), 135.

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them. Evidence of His beneficence to the poor in particular, the cures they effected were
undestrood to be dependent on divine will and humble repentance.⁵¹
It seemed mostly about conveying terror or at best thankfulness for being spared
disaster, rather than the receiving of any positive improvement, such as a miracle
might bring.
Details such as changes in the colour of standing water, such as the strange
crimson scum on the lake at Newington Green in Middlesex in 1662, were regard-
ed as the work of God. There was a red-hued lake at Loughall, Co. Armagh in
1641, although Thomas Fuller in his History of worthies in England (1662) attrib-
uted such reports to superstitions conjured by the devil. However as time went
on, a more positive register was sounded, and a less punitive voice was heard.
Odd events demonstrated God’s benevolence through the wonders of creation,
causing one to marvel at creation itself – despite Boyle’s continuing to focus
on unusual phenomena as token of God’s intervention. Thomas Burnet in 1684
had published The sacred theory of the earth, arguing that after the fall the
earth was a ruin from which God had withdrawn.⁵² To this the naturalist John
Woodward reacted in his 1695 work Essay toward a Natural History of the
Earth (1695), that after the flood plenty of proofs of his Goodness could be
seen, both in wondrous creation and in civilisation. John Ray, Fellow of Trinity,
Cambridge, although disagreeing with Woodward on the role of the biblical flood
was in general agreement with this “positive” direction, seeing through Provi-
dence to the certain fixities of creation Wisdom of God (1691) ‘explicitly struc-
tured as an extended commentary on Psalm 102.⁵³ Richard Bentley’s 1692
Boyle lectures confounded deism but also Robert Boyle’s view of the universe
as mechanical. Rather, “gravity” should be seen as coming from the right
hand of God as a means of holding everything together.
The rise of the modern novel in this context is not really so surprising. In
early modern story-writing in England, most popular were “the apparition
tale, the criminal biography and the sea deliverance story.” The job of the author
 Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion in Early Modern Britain and
Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 469. Cf. idem, “The Reformation and the Disen-
chantment of the World Reassessed,” HJ 51 (2008): 497– 528.
 Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape, 480.
 Scott Mandelbrote, “Early Modern Natural Theologies,” in The Oxford Handbook of Natural
Theology, ed. Russel Re Manning, Oxford Handbooks in Religion and Theology (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2013): 75 – 99, 87.

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was to separate “the factual from the merely historical.”⁵⁴ The principle was that
a story was “‘strange therefore true.” Travel narratives across boundaries were a
form of science writing by explorers, but with high value in religious terms. When
one looks across to the situation in New England, as Hartman observes, the prov-
idential story arises “whenever God’s agency is factored in to a tale of the bi-
zarre.”⁵⁵ There was an empirical approach with a love for detail, yet with a
moral that held it all together, which also served as a “proof” that God existed
and meant business. Even everyday life was dramatized as that of a struggle
with doubt and sin. This made almost anything qualify for narration, and that
which seemed special was made to seem highly sensational. Everything was
placed in heightened relief, e. g. in 1681’s Captivity Narrative by Martin Rowland.
A famous example of this style of writing on a grand scale was Cotton Mather’s
Magnalia Christi Americana of 1702. The work includes a selection of captivity
narratives, especially Book 6, which emphasized the value of affliction as one
trusted in deliverance to arrive at the very last minute. He had already written
Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possession (1689), and in
his still earlier Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684) wrote:
“Sometimes the Great and Good Holy God hath permitted, and by His Providence
ordered such Apparitions, to the end that Atheists might therefore be astonish-
ed.”⁵⁶ His A brand plucked out of the burning (1693) concerns Mercy S. Short,
whose deliverance from “Indians” and then from a wicked French spell provided
cause for thanksgiving and pious entertainment.⁵⁷
“Preachers commonly distinguished between the domains of Providence and
Grace, with the former roughly applying to the supernatural manipulation of a
person’s external life, and the later (sic) the manipulation of a person’s internal
process of salvation. But on occasion, they ignored the distinctions entirely, mak-
ing the term ‘Providence’ cover all those operations.”⁵⁸ There was something al-
most Aristotelian in the definition of Providence as “Ordered contingency be-
tween Fate and Chance.” “Signs of Providence were used to reassure about
Election: Even Laud shivered when his portrait fell.”⁵⁹ “Public signal judge-
 Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel 1600 – 1740 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1987), 267.
 James D. Hartman, Providence Tales and the Birth of American Literature (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins, 1999).
 Ibid., 109.
 His Wonders of the Invisible World (1694) was an account of Salem witch trials, whose sen-
sibilities were far from sceptical.
 Michael Winship, Seers of God: Puritan Providentialism in the Restoration and Early Enlight-
enment, Early America: History, Context, Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1996), 7.
 Ibid., 31.

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ments” such as fires, were where God was showing sins of all mankind, not par-
ticular ones. Active providence in history bridged the conceptual gap between
natural and revealed religion. Detecting the work of God in the most mundane
of circumstances served “to correct the common error touching cosmological
decay, by which most men and women flattered themselves that disasters
were not divine scourges for their sins, but merely symptoms of the world’s ad-
vancing infirmity and age.”⁶⁰ Alexandra Walsham’s research highlights those
like Dr Thomas Beard, The Theatre of God’s Judgements (1597) which contained
anecdotes of providential punishments inflicted upon shameless sinners, a “rel-
atively limited repertoire of untimely and exemplary ends.”⁶¹ Beard could be cre-
ative, with for example, the story of the Antwerp youth preserved by God while
hanging at Bonn, where the original imprecation to Mary for aid was omitted.
There was a whole chapter in The Theatre on rash “devil take me” utterances.
“God chastised communities like an affectionate father, declared Thomas Wilcox
in the aftermath of the Woburn fire, to win them away from the vicious and de-
praved habits to which they were addicted.”⁶² The liturgies for fasting looked like
corporate Roman Catholic contrition: “they re-conceptualized sacramental rites
in terms of representation, as forms of communion rather than procedures
through which the divine and the diabolical were made manifest.”⁶³ Collective
immorality got the blame for plagues and for the poor harvest of May 1674 by
Henry Newcombe.
There was less of a discernible distinction between the individual and the
corporate than would be the case a century or so later.⁶⁴ Diaries began to be
kept by many for the sake of witnessing to others of the active “providences”
of God.⁶⁵ These could be called autobiographies of divine presence, and an ac-
 Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1999), 23 re. George Hakewill, Apology of the Power and Providence of God (1627).
 Ibid., 78
 Ibid., 122.
 Ibid., 149.
 Ibid., 155: “the extent to which the language of corporal repentance and temporal deliver-
ance overlaps with the language of individual redemption and eternal salvation.” Thodore D.
Bozeman “Federal Theology and the ‘National Covenant’: An Elizabethan Presbyterian Case
Study,” Church History 61 (1992): 394– 407, observes that through personification eternal salva-
tion was thought to be attributable to cities.
 “[…] weniger ein säkularer Individualismus als ein religiöser Subjektivismus,” Kaspar von
Greyerz, Vorsehungsglaube und Kosmologie: Studien zu englischen Selbstzeugnissen des 17. Jahr-
hunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1990), 26). Cf. Wolfgang Brueckner, “Erneuerung
als selektive Tradition,” in Der Übergang zur Neuzeit und die Wirkung der Traditionen: Vorträge
gehalten auf der Tagung der Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften Hamburg am 13.

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tive presence at that. Von Greyerz views the interest of Providence in England
from the time of Thomas Beard’s work to have ridden an “Arminian” wave of
“providence as divine-human synergyism,” which would surface in John Wilkins
Discourse concerning the beauty of Providence (1649). Providence was like a
watch of which one can see only two or three of its many wheels.⁶⁶ However
this does not really advance Von Greyerz’s “Arminianism [with its view of cove-
nantalism as relativizing divine determinism] as secularising force” thesis. If
early modern English people looked for blessing in the world as a sign of
their election, as many certainly seemed inclined to do, this should not be
seen as shaking off the fear of not being elect in the next life in favour of a cer-
tain accentuating of immanent blessing in this life.⁶⁷ Even if Daniel Defoe was
doing this in Robinson Crusoe, one has to ask just how typical he (or Samuel
Pepys for that matter) was in so doing. In the examples of Elias Pledger and Oliv-
er Heywood,⁶⁸ both writing in 1689, it seems clear that their being led through
physical misfortunes and difficulties both shaped and was shaped by an inward
reality, namely that of the sanctification of God’s very own. And yet they could
see (in that heady year) that the outward political situation as the condition or
context of their spiritual growth and work was all part of God’s special Provi-
dence and most worthy of that name.
For Romans 1:20 (“God’s invisible power visible through things He made”) to
make sense to the Seventeenth-Century mind, the natural man required to have
been endowed with quite a lot, which made his rejection of God in Christ seem
without excuse. The Sabbath therefore has to be seen as a pre-Mosaic command,
binding on all – a moral law – to last. Reventlow instances Herbert of Cherbury⁶⁹
und 14. Oktober 1977, Veröffentlichung der Joachim Jungius-Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften
Hamburg 32 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1978).
 von Greyerz, Vorsehungsglaube und Kosmologie, 79: “[…] den in der Prädestinationslehre als
Mysterium verstandenen Heilsplan zu entmystifizieren, in dem er die ständige göttliche Präsenz
im Alltag, in der eigenen Biographie und in der kollektiven Geschichte sichtbar und erfahrbar zu
machen suchte.”
 Ibid., 183: “Vor dem Hintergund der oben geschilderten Wandlungen des Providentialismus
im späten 17. Jahrhundert ist es vielmehr bezeichnend, daß die Vorsehung immer mehr nur noch
als “positive”, erfolgbringende Kraft erscheint. Die Sündenbewußtsein scheint beim älteren Rob-
inson völlig verflogen zu sein.”
 See ibid., 108 – 14. Cf. Blair Worden, “Providence and Politics in Presbyterian England,” Past
& Present 109 (1985): 55 – 99.
 Henning Graf Reventlow, Bibelautorität und Geist der Moderne: Die Bedeutung des Bibelver-
ständnisses für die geistesgeschichtliche und politische Entwicklung in England von der Reforma-
tion bis zur Aufklärung, Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte 30 (Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980), 215.

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to make the point that grace is just as universal as nature and the two should not
be set in mutual opposition.⁷⁰ The key feature of Universal Providence is that it
holds the two together, showing the gracious loving care for the whole human
race by One who is as much Common Father as he is Highest God. Recent re-
search has suggested that while most deists believed that Revelation did not con-
tinue past creation and that even the New Testament dispensation was more just
a reminder than anything new in terms of information, not all deists disbelieved
that God was actively at work in the world.
Calvin had seen Providence as actuosa procuratio, which was in fact quite
the opposite of determination. God was always in the business of mixing things
up, and one could find comfort in knowing his care rather than in a universe of
tight laws of cause and effect.⁷¹ Calvin highlighted a strong creator/creature dis-
tinction, resisting the patristic-medieval consensus. There was an Entzauberung
in that Jesus is the Lord of creation and left no space for other forces to roam
with unaccountability and impunity. But now, increasingly in the modern
world, wonder switched its gaze to the details of Nature; the world itself pos-
sessed awe from having energy of its own. Had not God in fact rested from his
works? God became interpreted as the ground of possibility of what is the
case. God worked in events but not among them.
Philosophical Moves
For Descartes, things were as they were because God willed them to be. Despite
this clear-cut endorsement of voluntarism, however, Descartes tended to be a ra-
tionalist about God’s supervision of the natural order. Simply put, orderliness
 Ibid., 317: “Quod igitur inomnium est ore, tanquam verum accipimus, neque enim sine Prov-
identia illa Universali momenta actionum disponente fieri potest quod ubique fit… impie igitur
dicitur, Naturam sive Providentiam rerum commune, & Gratiam sive Providentiam rerum partic-
ularem in Antithesi positas esse, velinter se pugnare, cum utraque a Deo Op. Max. profiscantur
An alius verus, ac idem Optimus Maximusque Deus, aut Pater Communis ab omni humano gen-
ere recte vocari possit quam qui Providentia Universali utens. Cunctis hominibus ita consulit, ut
una cun appetitione status beatioris, quam illorum animis indidit. Media poro quaedam commu-
nia, commode. Efficicaciaque ad statum illum consequendum subministret?” (Herbert of Cher-
bury, De veritate, p. 122).
 “Neque enim humano modo vel naturae sensu in nostris miseriis agnoscimus, Deo nostri
esse curam: sed fide invisibilem eius providentiam apprehendimus.” (CR 31,132: On Ps 13:2);
Or “providentiam Dei […] sic moderatricem esse rerum omnium, ut nunc mediis interpositos op-
eretur, nunc sine mediis, nunc contra Omnia media” (Inst I.17.1).

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was more fitting than confusion, so providence would be orderly.⁷² “The me-
chanical conception of nature – promoted, among others, by Descartes –, left
more room for God’s acts at creation than afterwards in conservation (although
Descartes defined God’s conservation of things as a continued creation).”⁷³
However, the God of Baruch Spinoza was definitely material whatever else
he was. The Amsterdam philosopher manifested hostility towards Maimonides
for whom intellect (hence the divine) was higher. For Maimonides, “God has
no history and is outside history,” but for Spinoza, overcoming such dichotomy
leads to overcoming morality: “Man and fishes are divine in equal measure.”⁷⁴
Following Machiavelli whom he praised, he argued that the masses are more
knowing and more constant than the Prince, even without any “nous.” Male-
branche and Spinoza were of a common view that only in grace does God inter-
vene: the rest of time He stands as remote prima causa, and Providence is all
about upholding the order of things⁷⁵ Malebranche opposed particularism; he
mocked duelling as a way that might reveal God’s vindication of the party in
the right. God works simply and generally, even uniformly. Only exceptionally
will God choose to intervene for a reason. Malebranche reintroduced Augustine’s
rationes seminales which had suffered considerable neglect. In his Telluris The-
oria Sacra (1681) he argued that the laws of nature could account for what was
amazing, and would in themselves lead to the end of the world as well.⁷⁶ Review-
ing the contributions of John Ray, and then George Hakewill in his Examination
and Censure of the Common Errour touching Natures perpetuall and Universal
Decay (1627), Malebranche would promote a naturalism that had already been
approved by John Spencer and other early Enlightenment English thinkers.
“By the end of the seventeenth century, many natural philosophers had begun
to argue that change ought to be thought of not in terms of degeneration, but
of fluctuation or even progress.”⁷⁷ William King in his De origine mali (1702)
 Stuart Brown, “The Regularization of Providence in Post-Cartesian Philosophy,” in Religion,

Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe, ed. Robert Crocker, International Archives of the His-
tory of Ideas 180 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001): 1– 16.
 Goudriaan, Reformed Orthodoxy and Philosophy, 144.
 Aryeh L. Motzkin, “Maimonides and Spinoza on Good and Evil,” Daat 24 (1990): v–xxiii, xx.
 Ulrich Lehner, Kants Vorsehungskonzept auf dem Hintergrund der deutschen Schulphilosophie
und -theologie, Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 149 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 13: “Für Spinoza
war die Vorsehung sogar ganz mit der Naturordnung identisch, nicht aber mit dem Geschicht-
slauf.”
 Peter Harrison, “Theology and Early Theories of Evolution,” in Religion, Reason and Nature
in Early Modern Europe, ed. Robert Crocker, International Archives of the History of Ideas 180
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001): 199 – 224, 205.
 Ibid.

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wrote that God alone is perfection, so that humans must expect imperfection
from themselves as natural. One could speak of a translation of theological dog-
mas into natural scientific ones: from resurrection one could infer “transmuta-
tion” (cf. Charles Bonnet, Contemplation de la nature [1764]/ Plaingenesie philos-
ophique [1770]).
Already with Francis Bacon one could argue for a scientific vision of all cre-
ation moving under God’s instruction. For both Calvin and Bacon, God is active
in all parts of creation. For both Calvin and Bacon, there is nothing which hap-
pens which God has not ordained beforehand, and thus God’s omnipotence is
preserved. Beyond this, the similarities between the two end. They differ signifi-
cantly with regard to the way in which God’s omnipotence is exercised. For
Bacon, God could ordain something beforehand without it being God’s active de-
cree. It could be approved because God had already woven it into a “bigger pic-
ture.”⁷⁸
It is God’s eternal arrangement with the goal of renewal of the whole human
race that interested Bacon, as he mutated that which he had received from his
Calvinist heritage. “The kingdom of God cometh not with observation, so it is
in all the greater works of Divine Providence; everything glides on smoothly
and noiselessly, and the work is fairly going on before men are aware that it
has begun.”⁷⁹ This “work” embraced the restoration of fallen humanity, or
what he preferred to call an instauration within history.⁸⁰ It was all part of divine
providence that humans should come to understand nature’s laws through ex-
perimentation: we are to look for the Creator’s stamp on creatures and the
works of God as the work of his hands; humans are not to proceed by domineer-
ing or impressing our own stamp.
A God who moves things around is a God whose will is valued. This insist-
ence with Herbert of Cherbury was lost by the time of Shaftesbury. For Cherbury
the interesting question was not “whether God exists,” but whether God is one
who can be worshipped and obeyed. Knowing to ask this question at least
was contained within basic human knowledge (notitita communis), which to
that degree was itself naturally religious. As a forerunner of the Enlightenment,
 Steven Matthews, Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2011), 34.
 Ibid., 78.
 With reference to Ps 104:30 (Emittes spiritu tuo et creabuntur; et instaurabis faciem terrae),
although the more common reading of the Vulgate here has “renovabis in place of “instaurabis”.
Also, cf, Ps 90:13 – 17. Matthews, Theology and Science, 83 comments: “Bacon commonly used the
metaphor of a fruitful plant to describe the providential development of an age in which knowl-
edge would flourish, and to explain the reason why it had not done before.”

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however, Shaftesbury denied voluntarism any place: God is to be judged by what

is just and good;⁸¹ and hence he showed a fair degree of scepticism towards Rev-
elation. “The Good” is defined as that which makes people more sociable.⁸² It
could be argued that Newton steered a middle course here. Newton was no
deist, since he accorded God the role of “mover” in a way that echoed with
More, Cudworth and the Cambridge Platonists. Clarke would defend this position
against Leibniz’s static world view: “For Clarke and Newton, undoubtedly, the
created universe is ultimately and completely a manifestation of total provi-
dence.”⁸³ If Being includes the possibility to exist, then ongoing change in the
creation is natural or essential. The “static” view could be found not only
among natural scientists and philosophers, but also with Jacob Böhme, for
whom metaphors such as theatre were unfitting in his meditation on creation
as “book,” and for whom the dynamic energies had to be harmonised.⁸⁴
Newtonianism was criticized by Leibniz as “materialist.” “Nevertheless,
eighteenth-century natural thelogy had the opportunity to base itself on a differ-
ent kind of lawfulness than that which its predecessors had found in nature. At
the same time, it was able to advance a far wider range of evidences for divine
creation, design, and superintendence than had been available to earlier philos-
ophers.”⁸⁵ In that sense Physics – perhaps guided by Scripture – was helping to
reveal the world as set in a mysterious universe and dependent on laws which
were not obvious to those on the planet. The magnitude of God and the Universe
put the known world, for all its size “in its place.” Yet all the while lawyers were
beginning to locate the origin of moral and societal laws within human societies;
the laws of Physics were viewed as higher and more glorious than those of
human society. The larger the number of known species the higher the Intelli-
gence that took care of them, to paraphrase John Ray’s The Wisdom of God Man-
ifested in the Works of Creation (1691). “The Protestant obsession with Providence
 Reventlow, Bibelautorität und Geist der Moderne, 510.

 Ibid.: “Gott wird auch genannt, der Name ‘Gott’ ist ein Verhältnisbegriff, der sich auf Diener
Gottes bezieht, und wenn das Verhältnis von Menschen zu Gott mit Wortverbindungen wie ‘Mein
Gott, euer Gott, Gott Israels’ usw. ausgedrückt wird, zeigt sich darin, daß es sich um einen per-
sönlichen, nicht um einen metaphysischen Gott handelt” (Opera IV, 171=Principia (ed Koyre-
Cohen II, 760 f.).
 Francies E. L. Priestley, “The Clarke-Leibniz Controversy,” in The Methodological Heritage of
Newton, eds. Robert E. Butts and John W. Davis (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1970): 24– 56, 52.
 Stefan Laube, “Wissenswelten sinnlicher Frömmigkeit: Theatrale Antriebsmomente in der
Naturanschauung von Bernard Palissy und Jacob Böhme,”, in Religion und Naturwissenschaft
im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, eds. Kaspar von Greyerz et al., Schriften des Vereins für Reformations-
geschichte 210 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2010): 217– 36, esp. 232 ff.
 Mandelbrote, “Early Modern Natural Theologies,” 91.

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led to an increasing emphasis on the regularity of nature within the Aristotelian

tradition,”⁸⁶ for it was something above the sphere of secondary and creaturely
causes.⁸⁷ Newton’s connection between the two realms, whereby “laws” could
mean both axiomatic principles and empirical regularities was beginning to
come apart. In Ray’s Wisdom there is little mention of history or human action,
just the given “integrity and perfection of bodies” (at p. 223), to which one is to
respond by allowing the soul to govern them. It fitted a semi-Augustinian theol-
ogy that: “The Stoic God rules, but not by imposing laws.”⁸⁸ “The image of Deus
legislator, reinforced by biblical exgesis, remained powerful throughout the sev-
enteenth century, as did the assumption that natural laws must somehow be
promulgated.”⁸⁹ The regularity of God’s laws rather than the welfare of his crea-
tures seemed to take priority. The laws were explicit, knowable as the expressed
content of the divine mind. The irony was, that something that began with an
interest in divine action could end by promoting deism: “the Protestant obses-
sion with Providence led to an increasing emphasis on the regularity of nature
within the Aristotelian tradition […] the Protestant focus on Providence led to
a relatively greate emphasis on the regularity of nature.’’⁹⁰ Johannes Rist was
one of the last Lutherans to believe in God’s strong guidance of the events of
world-history as Europe convulsed itself.⁹¹
 Sachiko Kusukawa, “Nature’s Regularity in Some Protestant Natural Philosophy Textbooks

1530 – 1630,” in Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe: Jurisprudence, Theology,
Moral and Natural Philosophy, eds. Lorraine Daston and Michael Stolleis (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2009): 105 – 122, 106.
 Ibid., 122.
 Catherine Wilson, “From Limits to Laws: The Construction of the Nomological Image of Na-
ture in Early Modern Philosophy,” in Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe:
Jurisprudence, Theology, Moral and Natural Philosophy, eds. Lorraine Daston and Michael Stolleis
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009): 13 – 28, 20.
 Mandelbrote, “Early Modern Natural Theologies,” 90.
 Kusukawa, “Natural Laws and Laws of Nature,” 106, 120.
 Anne-Charlotte Trepp, “Natural Order and Divine Salvation: Protestant Conceptions in Early
Modern Germany (1550 – 1750),” in Natural Law and Laws of Nature in Early Modern Europe: Ju-
risprudence, Theology, Moral and Natural Philosophy, eds. Lorraine Daston and Michael Stolleis
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009): 123 – 42: 131 f.: “Beyond the alternatives of transcendence and imma-
nence, he was omnipresent in his actions, both as an absolute ruler who acted freel according to
his will and as an admonishing, punitive and benevolent father.”

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Theological responses in the Early Enlightenment
The whole insistence on the Law of Nature in the seventeenth century did much
to encourage Providentialism as something which involved even those who had
departed from or had never known the Christian faith and church. The move to
secure divine freedom then implied (for Ockham and others) an insistence on
human freedom through a metaphysical common concept of “Freedom” (as
with “Being”).⁹² We find this in the early modern Protestant tradition up to
and including Schleiermacher. Brian Gerrish claims: “It is, I think, a mistake
(phenomenologically speaking) when in one place Calvin makes such faith con-
tingent on prior acceptance of divine truth, as though one had first to be con-
vinced of the authority of God’s word before one could recognize God’s parental
will (Inst 3.2.6).”⁹³ One can discern in the Reformed tradition a gradually growing
challenge to Calvin’s position (even though Calvin’s own position is more
nuanced than Gerrish describes it). However, what Gerrish does here is to con-
fuse those who believe in Providence with those who are its objects. All people,
even non-human creation, have been affected by the Fall, so all require and re-
ceive care. As we have seen, Peter Harrison has argued that natural science – in
the figure of Francis Bacon – came into its own as a way of mitigating the Fall, of
halting the slide, even.⁹⁴ Even Calvin could have considered that as part of divine
care and a sign of the parental will, although only believers would appreciate it
enough to try to shape their lives in accordance with it. In the middle part of the
Seventeenth Century it was the project to many from the great pietist Philipp
Jakob Spener (“life in the here and now”) to the likes of the dramatist Johann
Rist (d. 1667) to react to misfortune and civil war: Rist saw comets as fascinating
 Tilman Ramelow, Gott, Freiheit, Weltenwahl: Der Ursprung des Begriffes der besten aller mög-
lichen Welten in der Metaphysik der Willensfreiheit zwischen Antonio Perez S.J. (1599 – 1649) und
G.W. Leibniz (1646 – 1716), Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 72 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 470:
“Steht die Freiheit in der Folgezeit im Zentrum der Aufmerksamkeit, so ist sie doch später gewis-
sermaßen subjektzentriert […]. Die frühe Neuzeit entwickelt eine wahrhafte Metaphysik der Wil-
lensfreiheit – und dies nicht zuletzt deshalb, weil sie das göttliche Subjekt aus ihren Überlegun-
gen noch nicht ausklammert.”
 Brian Gerrish, Secular and Saving Faith. An invitation to Systematic Theology (Philadelphia:
Fortress, 1999), 16. Cf. B.A. Gerrish, ‘To the unknown God”: Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness
of God’, Journal of Religion. 53 (1973): 263 – 92: Schleiermacher then Barth delivered theology
from thinking that there was a real metaphysical God of properties that lay hidden (absconditus)
behind his self-revelation in Christ: there was mystery within the revealed but not one to be
afraid of, but rather one to whom we flee.
 Peter Harrison, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2007).

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rather than doom-laden.⁹⁵ In that sense Rist was a “modern,” believing in “prog-
ress.” It could be said that the Thirty Years War freed many from end-time ex-
pectations, switching eschatology in a more post-millennial direction. As Harri-
son observed, without John Amos Comenius’ peregrinations forced by religious
war and his attempts to halt that, there might have been – counter-providentially
– no Royal Society. As doyen of that very society, Isaac Newton would be inter-
ested less in re-establishing a lost dominion over nature than in uncovering
some underlying uniformity and intelligibility that would in turn point to the
power and wisdom of God.⁹⁶ What we might see developing here is a growing
confidence in the heavens and physics as a safer path to wisdom than that of
observing humans and their history. Rather than Pietistic interest in the applica-
tion of Redemption to souls, the Puritans emphasised the visible side of things
for the sake of assurance.⁹⁷ The Great Fire of London in 1666 was seen as a sign
by Increase Mather, a sign planted by God. Providence could seal salvation as
well as be a harbinger of it.
The great Puritan pastor Richard Baxter’s last work The Certainty of the
World of Spirits (1691) was encyclopedic in a way which was in keeping with
the ethos of the Cambridge Platonists. Henry More, in 1651 in his Antidote to
Atheism (largely, Descartes’ rationalism and Baconian scepticism) had demand-
ed a place in science for the spirit world, which accorded with a (seemingly un-
controversial) belief in witchcraft as well as in God’s power. ’The reaction of the
Cambridge Platonists such as More against Descartes was to assert that space
was absolute and infinite, and that spirits too had dimensionality, being able
to permeate bodies. Yet God as Spirit was absolute and could not expand or con-
tract: all spirits emanate from Him. Meanwhile the occasionalism propounded
by Malebranche meant: “‘The intelligible world demands, for its reification, a
continuous act of God’s will,’ but ideas in themselves don’t need this valida-
tion.”⁹⁸ Extension, unlike for Spinoza, was something ideal rather than physical.
 Anne-Charlotte Trepp, “Wissenschaft und Religion im Luthertum zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhun-
derts: Das ‘Glück der eigenen Zeit’ als Forschungsstimulans,” in Religion und Naturwissenschaft
im 16. und 17. Jahrhundert, eds. Kaspar von Greyerz et al., Schriften des Vereins für Reformations-
geschichte 210 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 2010): 276 – 305, 298. Trepp tends to over-
state the contrast with “Reformed” England of that time by drawing most of her examples
from the headier times of the early C17th, rather than the conditions that were more favourable
for science of the Restoration and Glorious Revolution.
 Harrison, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science, 239.
 Jonathan Edwards, History of the Work of Redemption; ed. John F. Wilson, The Works of Jon-
athan Edwards 9 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
 Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Sev-
enteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 88.

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And the idea of infinity was indeed an argument for God’s existence. Occasion-
alism meant that created spirit could not cause things in the world, but could
only provide an occasion, and so God had to be involved each time for change
to occur.⁹⁹ Moreover, through seeing ideas in God himself humans are able to be
guided by Providence in a mediated way.
Newton’s philosophy too was a fusion of theology and science. He regarded
“force as a sequence of impulses that can increase or diminish or stay the same.
He did not need a conservation law for forces, while Leibniz could not do with-
out it.”¹⁰⁰ Force unlike motion does not depend on spatial relations: there could
be elasticity in bodies and hence internal causation. If the mind can influence
the body, then God can the world. Metaphysically speaking, there is individua-
tion and separation, but in real terms there is homogeneity through interaction.
Descartes had preserved God’s transcendence by arguing that he relates to the
world only by causality. Between Descartes’ extreme voluntarism and Spinoza’s
determinism, Leibniz wanted to establish that God was bound only by the law of
non-contradiction. In a sense this was very freeing for “God:” “Not only can God
not create logical contradictions; he cannot even conceive of what is logically
possible […] as impossible. Reason inclines God without necessity.”¹⁰¹
In the account of the Cambridge Platonists, as represented by Henry More:
some spiritual substance gets derived from divine wisdom itself. Or in the
words of Ralph Cudworth: “it may well be concluded, there is a Plastick Nature
under him, which is an Inferior and Subordinate Instrument, doth Drudgingly
Execute that Part of his Providence which doth consist in the Regular and Order-
ly motion of matter.”¹⁰² Divine space could be conceived as God’s extension via
some world-soul. This in turn had influence on Newton’s “absolute space”: re-
garding space as God’s sensorium, as Newton’s disciple Samuel Clarke put it,
riled Leibniz. Newton’s idea of the working of a fine, electric, elastic spiritus
reigned well into the nineteenth century, until Einstein and others proved that
light and power needed no carriers of a material sort. God continually allows
for laws of nature, which he can correct. Leibniz, who like Suarez would tie prov-
 Jan Rohls, Protestantische Theologie der Neuzeit (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), I:101 f.: “Ok-
kasionalismus, der die Auffassung vertritt, daß eine geistige Bewegung niemals die Wirkursache
einer körperlichen Bewegung, sondern nur der Anlaß (occasio) dafür sein könne, daß Gott als
alleinige Wirkursache eine bestimmte Körperbewegung bewirkt.”
 Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, 93.
 Ibid., 119. Cf at p. 114: “The ‘being in things’ of God, his omnipresence, has, of course, no
spatial connotations: it means his operation in things, which again means his giving possibles
existence.”
 Ralph Cudworth, The True Intellectual System (London Richard Royson, 1678), I,3,s36; cf. H.
More, Immortalitas animae, III, cXIII, §1.

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idence to creation saw no such need for so much emphasis on the contingent:
no, the present has the future in its womb, so Leibniz thought. Against Des-
cartes, Newton argued that God is present not only per potentiam but also sub-
stantially per essentiam. So, for Newton God is there not just in a mediated
sense, via the world soul but is actually there to constitute space, and not just
come into it. (See his use of Acts 17:28 in Principia III,172; Ps 90:1). This is
God’s sensorium. Since for Leibniz God’s action was creatio continua,¹⁰³ the ra-
tionality of a pre-established Harmony reflected that of God himself.¹⁰⁴
Writing on typology and the relationship of type and antitype in the bible,
Eric Auerbach gave an illuminating thesis: “Both occurrences are […] linked to
Divine Providence, which is able to devise such a plan of history and supply
the key to its understanding […]. The temporal and causal […] connection of oc-
currences is dissolved.”¹⁰⁵ Auerbach thereby saw the figural reading as a spiritu-
alising one which, in fact, seems a little unfair to the rather concrete eschatolo-
gies and concerns in this world of the Puritans. This typological reading would
carry on through to the time of the American Revolution at least. The eschatol-
ogy, as Bebbington and Noll have shown was more post- than pre-millennial.
One finds the idea in Nathaniel Hatch that the young republic could set the
scene for a Return of Christ as the Roman Republic had for the First Advent: a
“civil millenarianism.” In his famous book on the mentality of the early North
American settlers, as culminating in the thought of Jonathan Edwards, Perry
Miller spoke of “the unity of history.”¹⁰⁶ However, Peter Gay’s version of the Pu-
ritan view of divinely guided history is as one of “a distinct succession of tran-
scendent moments.”¹⁰⁷ Gay sees nothing new or modern in that account. Despite
the continued “majority view” of Limited Atonement, “redemption would recon-
 Beutler, Gott und Raum, 226: “Während für Leibniz Gott die Dinge in sich selbst wahr-
nimmt – der Raum sei der Ort der Dinge und nicht der göttlichen Vorstellungen – und sie da-
durch erkennt, dass er sie immerwährend hervorbringt, kann Gott für Clarke und Newton nur
dann allwirksam sein, wenn er zuvor allen Dingen wesentlich und substantiell am Ort gegenwär-
tig ist, denn eine Kraft kann ohne Substanz nicht bestehen.”
 Ibid., 228.
 Eric Auerbach, Mimesis: Dargestellte Wirklichkeit in der abendländischen Literatur, 10. Aufl.
(Tübingen-Basel: Francke, 2001), 75.
 Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
sity Press, 1954), 98.
 Peter Gay, A Loss of Mastery: Puritan Historians in Colonial America (Berkeley and Los An-
geles: University of California Press, 1966), 94.

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cile the whole creation to God as the means of his glorification,” with a concom-
itant growth in morality until the Lord’s Return.¹⁰⁸
In a series of sermons dealing with Providence, Edwards showed a clear
grasp of its function: “Thus I have briefly considered the principal events of
providence that concern the success of the gospel of Christ from Constantine
to the rise of Antichrist.”¹⁰⁹ He next says that God suffered Satan to overreach
himself through the (Papal) Antichrist and the Mohammedan: “Tis certain that
the 1260 days – years […] did not commence before the year of Christ 479. Be-
cause if they did, they would have ended and Antichrist would have fallen by
now.”¹¹⁰
So the start date was probably AD 606, when the Pope received temporal
powers. Church was like the woman in the desert, fleeing in the form of the
Waldensians and others. Now since the Reformation – as he takes up the
story in Sermon 24 – God’s Providence has scored some success; “the religion
professed and practised as in Muscovy is much nearer to that of the Protes-
tants than formerly it used to be.”¹¹¹ The “heathen Indians” are converting;
pietism in Germany looks encouraging. In Sermon 29 it seems clear that Prov-
idence is that which lays the ground for the salvation of individuals, groups
and nations.
It appears plainly from what has been said, that this work is the principal of all God’s works
of providence, and that all other works of providence are reducible hither; they are all sub-
ordinate to the great affair of redemption. We see that all revolutions in the world are to
subserve to this grand design […], so that the Work of Redemption is, as it were, the
sum of God’s works of providence This shows us how much greater the Work of Redemp-
tion is than the work of creation […] as the use of an house in the end of the building of an
house. And so all the decrees of God do some way or other belong to that eternal covenant
of redemption that was between the Father and the Son before the foundation of the world;
every decree of God is some way or together reducible to that covenant.¹¹²
The covenant is none other than the (in)famous pactum salutis or “Covenant of
Redemption,” such that there is more than a sniff of Eriugena-style monism (for
all that Perry Miller would wish to detect synergism) in the climax of his series of
sermons.
 Edward William Grinfield, The Nature and Extent of the Christian Dispensation with Refer-
ence to the Salvability of the Heathen (London: C & J Rivington, 1827).
 Jonathan Edwards, Sermon 22; Works I, 409.
 Ibid., 412.
 Ibid., 433.
 Ibid., 513.

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Providence begins and ends in God as an:
infinite ocean into which it empties itself. Providence is like a mighty wheel whose ring or
circumference is so high that it is dreadful with the glory of the God of Israel upon it, as ‘tis
represented in Ezekiel’s vision […] The wheels of providence are not turned round by blind
chance, but they are full of eyes round about, as Ezekiel represents; and they are guided by
the Spirit of God.¹¹³
Richard Kingston’s Discourse on Divine Providence which was replete with refer-
ences to God’s protection of the Protestant nation in 1702 followed close on the
heels of the work A Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence by William Sher-
lock in 1694, who as a non-juror (and unable to take an oath of allegiance to an-
other king) did not see history working in quite the same way. In keeping with
this caution he reserved explicit treatment of the perception of Providence to
the ninth and last chapter of his work. This accordingly displays a neo-Stoic fa-
talism, yet makes the worthwhile observation in passing: “All such Acts of Prov-
idence are lost, as far as our taking no notice of them can lose them.”¹¹⁴ This
seems a curious idea: that providence is only valuable in the lessons it can
teach, rather than something objectively fashioned in history. This apparent an-
thropocentrism could also be read as an insistence on nothing God intends being
wasted, in a way analogous to the arguments for Limited Atonement: the divine
economy is economical.
A strong belief in America’s unbroken divine favour carried the day, such
that “historical providence” prevailed over “judicial providence”; in other
words, God guided America for good, not that he simply corrected her through
painful circumstances.¹¹⁵ Nicholas Guyatt agrees, and he adds that even Tom
Paine saw destiny at hand such that he predicted that America would become
a mighty empire, and Britain’s role was to give birth to America. Wesley insisted
that for that reason God still had a role for Britain, but that was early on in the
conflict when he argued that America would want to return and forsake “Inde-
pendency”.¹¹⁶ Adam Ferguson had his doubts too as to whether God could favour
one nation above others, as he has once done with Israel. Indeed as the Amer-
ican Civil War approached in the following century, judicial providentialism took
 Serm 30; Ibid., 517– 19.

 William Sherlock, A Discourse Concerning the Divine Providence (London: William Rogers,
1694).
 Richard Sher, “Witherspoon’s Dominion of Providence and the Scottish Jeremiad Tradition,”
in Scotland and America in the Age of Enlightenment, eds. Richard Sher and Jeffrey R. Smitten,
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990): 46 – 64.
 Guyatt, Providence and the Invention of the United States, 123.

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over, and with it a sharp dent in American belief in historical providence. God
was seen more to punish moral failure than advance moral possibilities.
“With an important exception in the aftermath of the English Civil War,
many Britons and Americans came to regard personal providentialism as super-
stitious and backward even as they continued to believe that God directed the
fates of nations.”¹¹⁷ One might say that this was the “Moderate” version of Prov-
idence: the course of history, including the Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith’s
book of that title does not use the term “invisible hand” often, but it caught
the imagination of subsequent interpreters: this was an ersatz providence. Dur-
ing the Scottish Enlightenment, it was recognised that Revelation would suggest
that God was indeed a God of history, against the radical deism of Collins. It is
partly experience to which Reid and Campbell appeal: a sense of the structure of
cause and effect combined with the argument from design, as in Ferguson’s
Analysis of Pneumatics and Moral Philosophy (1766).¹¹⁸ The historian William
Robertson could insist on a teleology of civility and freedom: other passions con-
tributed no less towards the downfall of Popery, and the establishment of reli-
gious freedom in the nation.¹¹⁹ Ferguson was more subtle, arguing that material
prosperity did not mean an advance in morals.¹²⁰
Yet, during Europe’s early eighteenth century, just as in the time of the
dreadful Thirty Years War a century before, Providence did not disappear: it
re-emerged both in institutions with the sanction of a God of peace and prosper-
ity, and in a sort of inward-looking piety after the storm, accompanied by a pre-
millennialist mood. (It would take Romanticism to encourage a more postmillen-
nialist mood, optimistic about human possibilities of ushering in the Kingdom.)
It was a piety that looked at the world not away from it, in contrast to the intro-
version of Böhme and radical Pietism, and was the forerunner of Enlightenment
Christian sobriety.¹²¹ The follower of Leibniz, Christian Wolff argued that meta-
 Ibid., 5.
 M. Alexander Stewart, “Religion and rational theology,” in The Cambridge Companion to
the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Alexander Broadie, Cambridge Companions to Philosophy (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006): 31– 59.
 William Robertson, The History of Scotland during the Reigns of Queen Mary and of King
James VI (Edinburgh, 1759), I:97.
 Murray Pittock, “Historiography,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Scottish Enlighten-
ment, ed. Alexander Broadie, Cambridge Companions to Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2006): 258 – 279, 271.
 Hans Emil Weber, Reformation, Orthodoxie und Rationalismus, Beiträge zur Förderung
christlicher Theologie (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1937– 1951), 306: “In der Theologie ist das un-
übersehbare Vordringen des Vorsehungsglaubens als der Weltbezogenheit der Gottesgewissheit
die Spiegelung.” (Cf. A. Ritschl) “In dieser Zeit gibt er freilich den Anstößen von Leid, Verfol-

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physical evil or created imperfection could not make moral and even physical
evil a necessity,¹²² but Buddeus opposed this with a doctrine of fatalis necessitas.
Kant wouldn’t be convinced either, for evil was too radical; however, Pierre Bayle
had already thought the same.
gung, Kreuz noch vom eschatologischen Ziel her ihren Sinn; aber in der Aufhellung des Kreuzes
beginnt das Verlangen nach Rationalität auch schon hinwegzugleiten über die Unergründlich-
keit des schweigenden Gottes. Und die Welt kann den Beweis der Vorsehung liefern.”(307)
 Ibid., 180, with reference to Christian Wolff, Bedenken über die Wolffianische Philosophie
(Frankfurt: J. B. Andreä, 1724).

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Chapter Six: The Enlightenment’s ongoing
Challenge to the Doctrine of Providence
Later Enlightenment voices
Looking back four centuries,¹ Wolfhart Pannenberg represents the thesis that the
cause of theological (and therefore true) science was sold out firstly by Des-
cartes’ principle of inertia, which was subsequently turned by Leibniz and Spi-
noza into grounds for denying the necessity of God’s involvement in the uni-
verse. There then came “Evolution” in a form which used to try to argue for
physical bodies containing the seeds of their own perfection or complexity,
but which had to give way – in a post-secular philosophy of science – to an ac-
count of reality, analogous to Genesis 1, in which all the parts are brought con-
tinually into order by a spirit-field (drawing on Polanyi).
It is true that the attempt to go back behind “providence” to “creation” in the
Seventeenth Century put the former out of focus. In the famous Newton (with
Clarke)-Leibniz debate in which the latter refused to accept that space could
be a property of God, but was its own subject as something which was filled;
Kant followed this and thus “banished” God from intervention. Whereas, for
Newton and his disciple Samuel Clarke, space was the medium for God to
move his creation, and Clarke even explained God’s need to correct his creation
as due to the Fall, Leibniz preferred to deny any such dualism of spirit and mat-
ter at work in the system, and so in consequence left all to the mechanics of the
things in themselves. Christian Wolff’s version of this was that perfection was in
accord with Nature to the point that humans should be able to see something of
God’s glory. However teleology should not mean fatalism; and here he distanced
himself from Leibniz’s controlling monads. Leibniz reacted against the imma-
nentism of his time. Eternal verities were put in place in the world, and God con-
nects to the world through these: but these ideas do not bind God. Likewise for
Kant there was no built in Providence – just nature – and providence only ap-
plies in the moral realm. In Troeltsch’s view of history,² all action ends within
this world of the senses. There is nothing transcendent; instead, for us, small
things seem to belong to something larger, a whole. Leibniz too could not sub-
 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Toward a Theology of Nature: Essays on Science and Faith (Louisville:
Westminster John Knox, 1993).
 Lehner, Kants Vorsehungskonzept, 702: “‘Der Vorsehungsglaube deutet und empfindet den Ge-
samtzusammenhang alles Geschehens auf einen göttlichen Gesamtzweck hin, auf einen absolut-
en Sinn und das Heil der Gottesgemeinschaft.”

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scribe to an actualising concept of Providence, but what has been called a sapi-
ential one, preferring to tie Providence to creation and not to history.³
Clarke would later inspire Kant‘s belief that Providence was indispensable
for morals, since one did well to believe that all rational creatures would be rec-
ompensed according to their judgements. Leibniz was clear that providence lim-
ited itself to ordering the world including giving it enough energy, which does the
work of divine conservation. This is a benevolent providence in which even a
miracle is part of God’s general will, since the general rules to which these
events were exceptions were part of the divine will. There is not much place
for God to act contingently, since this is already the best of all possible worlds:
hence here is not much place for Providence in an active sense. God has seen all
prayers and vows from all time before. Only law-accorded action is truly rational,
and hence there is no room for special providence. Driven out of Halle for “Spi-
nozism” in 1723, Wolff was accused of having no place for providence and won-
der, just fatalistic necessity. Yet in arguing that God establishes laws that are not
absolutely necessary, Wolff could assert contingency and distance himself from
Spinoza. Contingency is the mirror of God’s freedom.⁴ Already in the mid-seven-
teenth century, David Hollaz was typical of those for whom Providence got de-
tached from Creation. Topics such as secondary causes being “the root of all
evil” and the question of Order returned to be discussed here under the head
of “Providence.” Although the reactionary Buddeus in his 1724 Institutiones the-
ologiae dogmaticae thought that Providence should no longer be tied to Creation,
Buddeus was very much fighting a rearguard action. The Wolffian philosophical
theology very much wanted to focus on inner-worldly matters and gained the as-
cendancy during the eighteenth century.
The great Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus described “the Greek goddess
personifying the final and effective interweaving of fate and Providence, the ac-
tual meting out of justice in accordance with talion” (Intro, 4), with a collection
of instances. The Uppsala manuscript of 1758/9 ends with theological implica-
tions. He did not share the Leibnizian view of “metaphysical evil as simple im-
perfection,” for all physical suffering was to be traced back somehow to a moral
fault.⁵ Reviewing the case of the Swedish warrior king Charles XII, he wrote:
“When on the strength of his military successes he forced the German Emperor
 Ingolf Dalferth, “Übel als Schatten der Kontingenz”, in Vernunft, Kontingenz und Gott: Konstel-
lationen eines offenen Problems, eds. Phillip Stoellger and Ingolf Dalferth (Tübingen: Mohr Sie-
beck, 2000), 117– 169, 163, quoting Ratschow, Gott Existiert, 231.
 Lehner, Kants Vorsehungskonzept, 82.
 Carolus Linnaeus [Carl von Linné], Nemesis divina, ed. and trans. Michael J. Petry, Internation-
al Archives of the History of Ideas 177 (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2001), 31.

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204 Chapter Six: The Enlightenment’s ongoing Challenge
to grant religious toleration in Silesia, he was hailed throughout Protestant Eu-

rope as the agent of Providence.”⁶ Providence arranged for the increase of free-
dom, for the sake of individuals who matter.
Just as with Newton,
(f)or Linnaeus too, God is both inherent and transcendent, Wholly and completely Sense.
Wholly and completely Sight, wholly and completely Hearing and yet also “solely Himself”.
He is an essence, only to be seen in thought […]. We therefore revere Him as Providence.
Although to say that He is Fate is not to be mistaken, for everything hangs upon his finger;
nor is it wrong to say that He is Nature, for all things are born of Him.⁷
One can also discern a fatalism which arose from Swedish military toughness,
just as when at Nemesis Divina IV.iv.1.3 he asserted: “no musket-ball can hit a
man except God wills it, whether he walks straight or crooked.”⁸ God the Father
is like Fate, who fixes things that happen; but the Spirit is the One who enables
humans to come to terms with their prescribed lot, which includes living irre-
proachably. The influence of the Lutheran theologian Matthias Hafenreffer
(Loci Theologici 1603) is to be felt. Linnaeus had corresponded with Kepler on
Christ’s ubiquity via his teacher Flachsen.
In his De legibus hebraeorum ritualibus (Cambridge, 1685) John Spencer had
already provided an account that resembled archaeology of religion: “Where the
deists saw a degeneration from the original pure and natural religion of earliest
humankind through the devilish imposture of the priests of all nations, Spencer
saw a long but constant progress from the earliest stages of history thanks to a
God who has no objection to aping the devil in order to free men from the latter’s
clutches.”⁹ In other words religion progresses as it trusts in the God of the future.
Likewise, Vico in his 1725 Scienza Nuova was one of the few who held on to
the notion that God’s Providence meant God moving history in its course.¹⁰ Prov-
idence that is immanent within man’s history was operating primarily through
man’s freedom but also through social phenomena and institutions such as
 Ibid., 35.
 Ibid., 63.
 “It may be significant, for example, that when he refers to fate in the Nemesis Divina he never
uses the ordinary Swedish word ‘skepnad’, possibly because he was uneasy about its being so
closely associated with initiation,” i. e. superstition. (trans. Petry, Nemesis divina, 75). That did
not stop him giving some credence to the idea of each person having a wraith of virtue and a
wraith of fortune, as in his obituary for Andreas Neander (1765).
 Guy Stroumsa, A New Science: The Discovery of Religion in the Age of Reason (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 99.
 Maeve Edith Albano, Vico and Providence, Emory Vico Studies 1 (Bern: P Lang, 1986).

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shame, honor, utility, authority, religion, family, and language.¹¹ The biblical
story of Joseph could be at very least inculcating the truth that human lives
are mysteriously interwoven, and that conscience, guilt, trade and government –
all as institutions of divine provision – contribute to the outcome. In this “imma-
nent providence,” grace is perhaps not explicit.¹²
A rational civil theology of divine providence is a “demythologization” of
non-rational divine theology. It demonstrates that the stories about the gods
are really histories of men. For it is “a truth beyond all question: that the
world of civil society has certainly been made by men, and that its principles
are therefore to be found within the modifications of our own human mind.”¹³
James Morrison comments: “This truth is that what men by their actions intend
to do is not what in fact results from them […]. The idea of divine providence is
for Vico simply a metaphor for the irony of history.”¹⁴
This seems a slightly skewed view of Vico. In fact it is the reductionist inter-
pretation given by Benedetto Croce, whereas Vico’s account is much more con-
structive even if religious metaphor is just a metaphor. Morrison knows this,
and he knows that the philosophic-genetic content of the original metaphor of
providence is the “religious way of thinking” according to which “it was the
gods who did whatever men themselves were doing […]. His reduction of the in-
telligible genus of Vico’s ironic metaphor of providence to the heterogeneity of
ends does not, however, do justice to its genetic content.”¹⁵ Vico himself had pro-
vided the philosophic explanation of his assertion that history reflected provi-
dential guidance.¹⁶ If it is up to humans to interpret and even develop institu-
tions, that does not mean they are in Vico’s mind not divinely established in
the first place. The use of the term “divination” for this interpretation is not ac-
cidental.¹⁷
 Emanuel L. Paparella, Hermeneutics in the Philosophy of Giambattista Vico: Vico’s Paradox

Revolutionary Humanistic Vision for the New Age (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1993).
 James C. Morrison, “How to Interpret the Idea of Divine Providence in Vico’s New Science,”
Philosophy & Rhetoric 12 (1979): 256 – 261.
 Vico, Nuova Scienza, para. 331.
 Morrison, “How to Interpret the Idea of Divine Providence,” 258.
 Ibid.
 Paparella, Hermeneutics in the Philosophy of Giambattista Vico, 153.
 “Adunque, non da altri che dalla provvedenza divina deve esser tenuto dentro tali ordini a
celebrare con giustizia la famigliare, la civile e finalmente l’umana societa; per gli quali ordini,
non potendo luomo conseguire ciò che vuole, almeno voglia conseguire ciò che dee dell’utilita:
ch’e quel che dicesi ‘giusto.’ Onde quella che regola tutto il giusto degli uomini e la giustizia
divina, la quale ci e ministrata dalla divina provvedenza per conservare l’umana societa”
(Vico, Nuova Scienza, para. 341).

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Gregory Lucente has a less minimalist account:
Vico’s “New Science” is in part a “reasoned civil theology of divine providence,” in which
the progression of the stages of social organization, the development of human reason, and
the characteristics of human culture (religion, matrimony, and burial, along with such sec-
ondary characteristics as ritual sacrifice and the incest taboo) all testify to the existence of
the guiding force that is teleological without being eschatological, or providence itself (see
2. 5. 5, pars. 629 – 30 passim).¹⁸
It is as Croce put it, a necessity that is not that of Fate.

A near-contemporary Johann Heinrich Zedler (d. 1763), famous for his “Uni-
versal Lexicon” (Leipzig) believed a world of rational creatures better to be guid-
ed than self-guiding. Yet Zedler seems to have though of Providence as the oppo-
site of fate, rather than giving a positive account of what Providence is. And it
must be admitted that Zedler represents something of a rearguard action. As Ul-
rich Lehner concedes, Providence became less about God’s action and more
about human potential: Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten had made God’s part in
the concursus secondary to that of the human agent, and a “progress principle”
was introduced.¹⁹ Newton with his radical Calvinist voluntarism had argued for
contingency in any account of things, but biblical exegesis fell out of theological
consideration. So now Nature was mechanical, even if there was a teleological
dimension.
Christian Wolff had already written of the interconnections of things in Prov-
idence as really the only form creatio continua could take.²⁰ For the best possible
world meant that God had eternally decided his way of Providence, which is in
no way reactive to circumstances and change. God is a watchmaker who can ad-
just it in theory,²¹ even though most of the time the mechanism is perfect and has
purposes of its own. In short the account was deistic. Alexander Gottlieb Baum-
garten reduced providence to conservation and concursus in the sense of calling
the agent to religious-ethical concerns, so that one could perceive some amount
of divine presence in human beings and institutions. His brother (Siegmund
Jakob) would claim that God would complete what humans started and give
 Gregory L. Lucente, “Vico’s Notion of ‘Divine Providence’ and the Limits of Human Knowl-
edge, Freedom, and Will,” MLN 97 (1982): 183 – 191, 186 – 7.
 Johann Heinrich Zedler, “Vorsehung Gottes,” in Zedlers Lexikon (Leipzig-Halle, 1746).
 Lehner, Kants Vorsehungskonzept, 70 ff.
 Ibid., 76, with reference to Theologia Naturalis I.2 § 938. Lehner concludes on Wolff: “Das
Welthandeln Gottes reduziert sich auf die Einstiftung der Naturordnung am Anfang der Welt
und das Wunder ihrer Enthaltung bzw. den Konkurs.” (79)

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them confidence to act.²² Johann Friedrich Stapfer too was able to say that even
if God intervened materially, this did not intrude on human moral freedom.²³
Moses Mendelssohn could speak of an intimacy of “snuggling up” to God’s de-
crees and believed in individual providence: we are free to react to the hand God
has dealt us.²⁴
A closer look at the reactions to the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake shows that these
contained more than just a criticism of philosophical optimism. Certainly a sort
of theology of nature or “physikotheologische Denken” was affected, and quickly
the idea that God could be seen at hand in his creation had to become more flex-
ible. Physico-theology sprang from the desire to find God in all things but Reima-
rus’ interest in the laws of animal nature with the divine or religious set as a
limit, not in the middle of the treatment,²⁵ reduced the influence of Physico-the-
ology by it being shown how in fact nature is wasteful, if not quite meaningless.
It was then suggested that the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755 could be seen as God
speaking through nature. It also released eschatological or apocalyptic expecta-
tion. At first it was seen as a call to penance – e. g. by Pastor Johann Melchior
Goeze of Hamburg, who held up Lisbon as a chastisement for a city that embod-
ied human pride.²⁶ It could not just be explained as a natural disaster, at least
not until a generation later, when Kant would do just that, stipulating that phys-
ics and theology were quite separate jurisdictions. Christian Gottlieb Lieber-
kuhn’s response at the time was one of extreme sympathy and a “man-centred”
compassion. With Kant, for ethical reasons it could not be God acting, and theo-
logical support came from Friedrich Christoph Oetinger who ascribed the Earth-
quake no theological significance, except perhaps as an eschatological reminder
for some.²⁷
Lehner’s remarkable and useful work sets the scene for his exposition of
Kant on Providence. The pre-critical Kant had little room for Providence and it
 Ibid., 179 ff.

 Ibid., 215.
 Ibid., 123 ff
 Ludwig Weimer, “Wodurch kam das Sprechen von Vorsehung und Handeln Gottes in die
Krise?” in Vorsehung und Handeln Gottes, eds. Theodor Schneider and Lothar Ullrich, Quaestio-
nes Disputate 115 (Freiburg i.Br.: Herder, 1988): 17– 71., 34: “Mit Reimarus in Hamburgs Physiko-
theologie – er schrieb 1762 seine ‘Betrachtungen über die Triebe der Thiere’ – kommt eine Ve-
ränderung. Gott bildet fast nur noch eine Schutzklausel, eigentlich ist es das erste Werk einer
Verhaltensforschung, die direkt in den Selektonismus überführt werden kann.”
 Ulrich Löffler, Lissabons Fall – Europas Schrecken: Die Deutung des Erdbebens von Lissabon
im deutschsprachigen Protestantismus des 18. Jahrhunderts, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 70
(Berlin: de Gruyter, 1999), 623.
 Ibid., 628.

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was in his critical work that he expanded the range of this.²⁸ The theistic God
was a living one, but also an impartial one, such that there could be no talk
of providentia specialissmima. That which makes a human more moral is provi-
dential, as fitting in with a plan for moral development fitted into the universe,
hence deistic after the fashion of Samuel Clarke. Lehner sums it up, that hope in
providence became with Kant a hope in the unfolding of human capacities and
powers,²⁹ with the hope of a “social providence” of common morality in the near
future. There was no such trust in the sweeping course of History and Politics.
Kant believed that human reason had fulfilled Nature’s purposes for the species,
such that one can speak of Reason’s place in an intentional, if not quite “prov-
idential,” progress of humanity. Kant of course did not describe this path to En-
lightenment and the fulfilling of Nature as inevitable. Yet, as Genevieve Lloyd
writes: “The ideal of shaping a life in accordance with necessity is intelligible
even if we don’t believe every detail of our lives to be integrated into a relentless-
ly ordered whole.”³⁰
According to Kant’s Religionsschriften the kingdom of God would take place
in history, and it was already present, yet there would be nothing institutional or
outward about it. Kant resisted any heilsgeschichtliche idea of the human race
being saved. There is no victory here on earth, and all we can hope for is
grace in the afterlife. It was not as though Kant was secularising (pace E. Hirsch),
because the bible does allow for grace to draw us to penultimate ends. He thinks
the community (Gemeinde) can achieve something, although it cannot be de-
fined in political terms. Effectively the kingdom of God has a history but not a
development: it is bounded by the transcendent and offers freedom for each
agent.³¹ In no way does the visible church have outward victory over radical
evil, but success consists of moral commandments being fulfilled internally.³²
 Lehner, Kants Vorsehungskonzept, 184, relying on Josef Bohatec, Die Religionsphilosophe

Kants in der ‘Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft’ (Hamburg: Hoffmann &
Campe, 1938.)
 Ibid., 482.
 Lloyd, Providence Lost, 308.
 Alfred Habichler, Reich Gottes als Thema des Denkens bei Kant: Entwicklungsgeschichtliche
und systematische Studie zur kantischen Reich-Gottes-Idee, Tübinger Studien zur Theologie
und Philosophie 2 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünwald 1991), 260 – 64.
 Kant, Gesammelte Werke VI,100: “Ein moralisches Volk Gottes zu stiften, ist also ein Werk,
dessen Ausführung nicht von Menschen, sondern von Gott selbst erwartet werden kann […]. Des-
wegen ist aber doch dem Menschen nicht erlaubt, in Ansehung dieses Geschäfts unthätig zu
sein und die Vorsehung walten zu lassen, als ob ein jeder nur seiner moralischen Privatangele-
genheit nachgehen, das Ganze der Angelegenheit des menschlichen Geschlechts aber […] einer
höhern Weisheit überlassen dürfte.” (152) “Allein da wir nicht wissen, was Gott unmittelbar

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Humans are to avail themselves of freedom to fit in with the moral order God has
set to work for the greater whole, as God will play his part as we play ours. Or, as
Max Seckler puts it: it is redemption through God and not in him (i. e., Erlösung
durch Gott).³³ Likewise, Kant would not let Nature be left to a mechanism in se.
One could not reduce teleology to causality, since the freedom of reason and the
human being as a rational being were ends in themselves.
An account which would try to offer a more theological version of, or correc-
tive to this “manifest destiny” model was provided by Schleiermacher. According
to Brian Gerrish, Schleiermacher developed Calvin’s “insistence on the dogmatic
priority of redemption” over a knowledge of God as Father prior to the experi-
ence of grace.³⁴ And yet, again, one wonders if that priority of knowing (Provi-
dence is real only for those with saving faith) implies that Providence is secon-
dary. Take for example the earlier account Schleiermacher gives in his 1821/22
version of Der Christliche Glaube. All things depend on God and his salvation.³⁵
An end is dependent on a means which is mirrored at a psychological level as
desire to get there and despair at making it. It is in knowing salvation that
God’s providential ordering for us is remembered.³⁶
Schleiermacher then discusses the traditional accounts of Providence which
are still operative in his day. Conservatio is the dependence of being and all pow-
ers of things; concursus is the dependence of the activity of things; and guberna-
tio is the leading of all activity as the passive disposition of things towards the
thue, um die Idee seines Reichs […] in die Wirklichkeit darzustellen […]. Gott selbst als Stifter der
Urheber der Constitution, Menschen aber doch als Glieder und freie Bürger dieses Reichs […].”
(237).
 Max Seckler, “Theosoterik und Autosoterik,” Theologische Quartalschrift 162 (1982):
289 – 298, 292.
 Gerrish, 72. Cf. Dawn Dvries and B. Gerrish, ‘Providence and grace: Schleiermacher on jus-
tification and election’ in Cambridge Companion to Schleiermacher ed. by Jacqueline Mariña
(Cambridge: CUP, 2005), 189 – 208.
 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Die christliche Glaube 1821/22. Zweites Lehrstück. Von der Erhal-
tung, ed. Hermann Peiter (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1984), § 59; I,168: “Alles was unser Selbstbewußt-
sein bewegt und bestimmt, besteht als solches durch Gott.”
 Ibid.: “[…] In diesem Saz ist von göttlichen Zwekken nichts enthalten, den diese Betrach-
tung, die einen Gegensaz zwischen Zwek und Mittel voraussetzt. Schließen wir deshalb hier,
wo wir es nur mit der Beschreibung des Abhängigkeitsgefühls überhaupt zu thun haben, völlig
aus. Denn mit dem Gegensaz Zwek und Mittel ist auch ein unbestimmtes mehr oder minder von
Zusammenstimmung und Zulänglichkeit gesezt, welches sich im Gefühl als Lust und Unlust ab-
spiegelt. Wiewol darin, daß die Idee der Erlösung den Mittelpunkt alles christlich frommen
Selbstbewußtseins ausdrükt, schon erhalten ist, daß auch die Abhängigkeit aller Dinge von
Gott auf die Erlösung müsse bezogen werden.”

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divine ends or as fitted to the divine decrees.³⁷ Now, thinks Schleiermacher, we

should not separate “doing” and “being done to” any more than “doing” and
“being.” Really concusrus and gubernatio should be taken together.³⁸ So
maybe it is better to see Providence as having only two components instead:
one is about the self-contaiment of each thing and what comes from it, and
the other is about its connection with all other things, and what comes from
that. And what moves us as a part of the world happens only by God’s agency.³⁹
We are preserved even as we are moved in conjunction.
Schleiermacher adds that the smallest and the most insignificant thing has
its place in the total scheme of dependence; yet many refuse the feeling of rela-
tionship, not seeing any hierarchy of causes and think small things affect the
whole, when it is really the other way, as pious feeling (frommes Gefühl)
would teach us. We are too much taken up in small things and factors that
lead to chance outcomes. We like to split God’s providence up into our own little
bits and then we feel able to talk of dependence on God. But really we should
have our eye on the larger picture.⁴⁰ Plans and purposes cannot be carried
through if they are not already part of the being and powers contained within
things. Thus the divine goal must be in all three concepts together or in none.
The co-operative (concursus) and passive (being maintained and led by gover-
nance) in creatures are two sides of the same coin. In his Zweites Lehrstück
von der Erhaltung § 46 he also attacks any idea of mechanism in human move-
ments. There is freedom, if limited over against God. Our life-force gives us power
and God works with us. Moreover, the working of the Holy Spirit in people today
 Ibid.,169: “Die meisten Dogmatiker unserer Periode bezeichnen das ganze Abhängigkeitsver-
hältnis der Dinge in ihrem Fortbestehen durch den Ausdruk göttlicher Vorsehung, providentia
als Uebertragung des griechischen προνοια, und theilen dann diese in Erhaltung conservatio,
welche die Abhängigkeit des Seins und aller Kräfte der Dinge ausdrükken soll, in Mitwirkung
concursus, welche die Abhängigkeit der Thätigkeiten der Dinge, und in Regierung gubernatio,
welche die Leitung aller sowol Thätigen als leidentlichen Zustände der Dinge zu den göttlichen
Zwekken oder in Gemäßheit der göttlichen Ratschlüsse ausdrukken soll.”
 He resists the traditional idea, to be found (e. g.) in Quenstedt, that God’s action in and
through creatures is a two-step process: as if there were divine power to do and then another
power to make it happen actually. So, Erhaltung is Mitwirkung.
 Schleiermacher, Die christliche Glaube, 169: “die eine bezieht sich auf das Fürsichgesetztsein
jedes Dinges und das was daraus hervorgeht; die andere auf dessen Zusammensein mit allen
übrigen, und was daraus hervorgeht” (i. e. subsidiarity and solidarity combine.) “[…] Alles
was uns als ein Theil der Welt bewegt, besteht als solcher nur durch Gott.”
 Ibid., 172: “Denn wenn man die Fälle der ersten Art in ihrem Zusammenhang als einzelnen
Ausdruk allgemeiner Geseze betrachtet, und die letzeren auf die Constitution eines gemeinsa-
men Willens zurükführt.”

Authenticated
makes Revelation complete, in the form of spiritual wisdom.⁴¹ In this respect God
is not so much “God with us” but “God through whom we are.”⁴²
Thus in Der christliche Glaube of 1821/22 Schleiermacher was able to relate
Providence to the feeling of absolute dependence which marked all creaturely
existence as properly religious. This meant, at least in its Christian form, a doc-
trine of Providence that was soteriological, yet not monergistic: even the guber-
natio/concursus distinction is overcome in a inter-relating of passivity and activ-
ity. What mattered was, in a way that would re-shape Leibnizian theory,
solidarity through concursus of individual subsidiarities which are preserved,
and these in a synergistic fashion. By 1831 the section on Providence was now
§46, although there is also a small part of § 59 where Schleiermacher was
keen to extend “dependence” to the non-self-conscious world in as much as pas-
sivity and opportunity are granted it, in order to be the instrument of the Spirit.
In § 46 of the 1831 version Schleiermacher argues that the inner force or im-
manent drives are also to be understood as part of “preservation.” Of course, as
objective consciousness arises, it might seem that the subjective has to with-
draw: but in fact each can inspire the other, especially as we come to realise
the extent of our dependence. There is mutual reinforcement, provided there is
balance struck between the two. To think God has intervened to help us when
we win a bet is a result of excluding too much evidence. He re-iterates that con-
servation means the absolute dependence of all things on God and their mutual
conditioning of each thing on another without separation or fusion. Both these
aspects – the God-relation and the mutuality of all things – are one and the same
thing seen from different angles.⁴³
He then adds that he dislikes the distinction of specialis (besondere) for
providence as species and specialissima (besonderste) for individual providential
things. If that’s the case, then general providence includes all others within it,
since only individual things are perishable. And one must think of lasting or fad-
 “[…] die Welt als die gute immer mehr zur Anerkennung zu bringen” (Glaubenslehre § 169.3,
p. 513).
 Ferenc Herzig, Vorbestimmt und abgesegnet – Schleiermachers Begriff einer göttlichen Vorse-
hung (Leipzig: GRIN Verlag, 2011), 17: “In seinem Vorgehen will Schleiermacher sowohl eine te-
leologische als auch eine protologisch-deterministische Verfahrenweise vermeiden.”
 Ibid., 231: “[…] dass die göttliche Erhaltung als die schlechtinnige Abhängigkeit aller Bege-
benheiten und Veränderungen von Gott, und die Naturursächlichkeit als die vollständige Be-
dingtheit alles dessen, was geschieht durch den allgemeinen Zusammenhang, nicht eine von
der andern gesondert ist, noch auch eine von den andern begrenzt wird, sondern beide dassel-
bige sind, nur aus verschiedenen Gesichtspunkten angesehen, ist schon immer von den strengs-
ten Dogmatikern anerkannt worden.” This with reference to Quenstedt’s 1685 Systematica theo-
logia, p. 761: “a Deo ut causa universali, a creatura ut particulari.”

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ing out as all absolutely depending on God in connection with all other powers
and things which, unlike in the case of creation, God employs in Erhaltung. There
is really no difference between co-operation and preservation, since God’s power
is always in action; and all is mediated. There is no unmediated action by God,
pace Quenstedt. Nor can we make such a distinction between means and ends
that these two are less than gubernatio.⁴⁴ God makes sure that all things are
held as themselves and at the same time brought into connection with the
rest. One should never play off dependence on God and dependence on Nature.
As for miracles, Schleiermacher thought that we should only be interested in
them to the extent that perception of these affects the feeling of absolute de-
pendence. To think of God suddenly having an immediate access to creation is
“disrespectful” to what goes on in Erhaltung, as though it were something merely
mechanical. In truth, a miracle does not interrupt the whole, nor the past and
the future.⁴⁵
Last of all, there is a clear connection between Providence and Ethics, in
which we are to recognise the world as good and to be brought into relationship
with the system of redemption and the perfect loving communion with Christ.
The world can only be grasped as the perfect revelation of divine Wisdom as
the Holy Spirit gives the power to the church to see it that way.⁴⁶
 Ibid., (CG II,233): “Denn da die Erhaltung doch das Sein der Dinge zum Gegenstande hat, in
diesem aber, sofern sie ein Ort für Kräfte sind, der Gegensatz von Selbsttätigkeit und Empfän-
glichkeit enthalten ist, sind auch die leidentlichen Zustände schon mit in die schlechtinnige Ab-
hängigkeit aufgenommen, und besonders, da sie ebenfalls zu den unser Selbstbewußtsein affi-
zierenden gehören, sowohl unter der Form der Wahrnehmung als unter der des Mitgefühls, sind
sie auch in unseren allgemeinen Satz mit eingeschlossen.” So being acted upon is part of Erhal-
ten.
 Cf. Andrew Dole, Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order (New York: Oxford, 2009),
148: “One of his objections to the notion of miracles, traditionally understood, was that the idea
that God might intervene in the natural order invites the thought that events in that order might
unfold otherwise than God had originally ordained. However, Schleiermacher found this
thought to imply a less than absolute dependence of all things upon God: ‘[I]t is difficult to
grasp how omnipotence should be shown to be greater in the interruptions of the Naturzusam-
menhang than in its original, immutable, and indeed also divinely ordained course. […]. [I]f one
wanted to postulate such an encroachment by the highest being as a virtue of the same, one
would first have to assume that there was something which was not ordained by this being,
which could oppose him and thus impinge upon him and his work, whereby our fundamental
feeling would be entirely overturned.”
 §169,3 (CG II, 457): “Wie nun hier erst in der Beziehung auf die göttliche Liebe die im ersten
Teil dargestellten göttlichen Eigenschaften ihre volle Bedeutung erhalten: so führt uns die göt-
tliche Weisheit als Entfaltung der Liebe hier an das Gebiet der christlichen Sittenlehre, indem
uns die Aufgabe entsteht, die Welt als die gute immer mehr zur Anerkennung zu bringen,

Authenticated
Andrew Dole concludes about Schleiermacher’s view of God’s relationship

to creation:
Claims about the divine teleology emerge in various places throughout The Christian Faith
[…] Schleiermacher argued that “when we trace our consciousness of fellowship with God,
restored through the efficacy of redemption, back to the divine causality, we posit the es-
tablishment and broadening of the Christian church as the object of the divine government
of the world,” implying as this does that “the whole arrangement of nature from the begin-
ning would have been different, if redemption through Christ had not been determined for
the human race after sin.” The logical extension of this idea is a claim about the purpose of
the natural order itself: that is, that “the world is the scene (Schauplatz) of redemption.”⁴⁷
One may claim a bit more for Schleiermacher, one might venture. The order of
providence prepares for and is reinforced by the order of redemption, as it were.
Herzig criticises Saxer for saying that Schleiermacher allowed creation to get
lost in Erhaltung. No, the Berlin giant held both together when he described the
original creation not as an act but a process. One might justify a creation/pres-
ervation distinction on the basis of the twofold account in Genesis and of the re-
sultant credo in the Pantokrator.⁴⁸ Yet it is a very small distinction. Each individ-
ual is to be subsumed under created types; nevertheless, every change is a new
beginning. For Schleiermacher, creation had its own energy and its own pur-
pose, as an organism.
Matthias Scheeben’s Handbuch der Katholischen Dogmatik, incomplete at his
death in 1888, is the prime example of a Catholic Dogmatics in the light (or shad-
ow) of the First Vatican I Council. He quotes the council’s definition of natural
providentia.⁴⁹ Then he adds that there is also a supernatural providence which
he glosses as Heilswille (predestinatio et reprobatio). The government of divine
und der ursprünglich der Weltordnung zum Grunde liegenden göttlichen Idee gemäß alles dem
göttlichen Geist als Organ anzubilden, und so mit dem System der Erlösung in Verbindung zu
bringen, auf daß wir in beider Hinsicht zur vollkommenen Lebensgemeinschaft mit Christo ge-
langen […]. Daher den die Welt nur insofern als vollkommene Offenbarung der göttlichen Weis-
heit gefaßt werden kann, als der Heilige Geist von der christlichen Kirche aus sich als die letzte
weltbildende Kraft geltend macht.”
 Dole, Schleiermacher on Religion, 155.
 Herzig, Vorbestimmt und abgesegnet, 9, with reference to Ernst Saxer, Vorsehung und Ver-
heißung: Vier theologische Modelle (Calvin, Schleiermacher, Barth, Sölle) und ein systematischer
Versuch, Studien zur Dogmengsechichte und systematischen Theologie 34 (Zürich: TVZ, 1980),
51.
 Matthias Scheeben, Handbuch der Katholischen Dogmatik, 3. Aufl. (Freiburg; Herder, 1948
[orig. 1882]), III/1,103; Vatican I De fide c1; DS 1784: “Universa vero, quae condidit, Deus provi-
dentia sua tuetur et gubernat, attingens a fine usque ad finem fortiter et disponens omnia sua-
viter.”

Authenticated
providence is thus (unlike in Schleiermacher) further, one step beyond “crea-

tion.” With regard to the relationship between the governing and the governed
providence works immediately, because God has immediate knowledge of
every creature and influences each directly,⁵⁰ all while supervising secondary
causes. In that sense special providence is only involved in the case of “personal
essences,” as yet in such a way that the concept of care in a wider sense can be
used, according to the Scriptures in relation to all living things, and this can be
used as by a fortiori reasoning to show a higher care for all personal essences, as
per Matthew 6 (§ 110). God executes plans in detail, and all for the sake of indi-
vidual good, so much as it accords with the good of the whole: which (§ 134) is
beautifully ordered as a whole, so that the individual is brought into the sphere
of harmony, as all creatures seek the perfection of God in various ways and di-
rections.⁵¹ But providence is not comprehensible to sense, only to faith.
This might as well be a re-iteration of the pre-Enlightenment statement of
the case. In the modern worldview there is an exclusion of the vertical dimen-
sion, but Catholic truth re-iterates that the principles behind the world have to
somehow be in it.⁵² Also, even after Kant one may yet maintain that the world
is contingent, as it implies some necessary existence but not a necessary es-
sence. That essence is the possibility of possibility: and it would be strange if
that were to be a pure Necessity. Kant would in fact go further than Wolff and
reckon that even existence (Dasein) has no necessity.⁵³ But this is only that
which excludes non-being, anti-necessity. Nothing can come from pure “Nichts”
such that God as Necessity is only so in order to counteract Nothingness. The
world does not reflect God as an emanation.⁵⁴ But in its movements all is neces-
sarily dependent, yet with the freedom now to be “pro-creative.”
In the time of the Enlightenment, positive religion, that which has made a
mark and given itself expression in institutions, and which based itself on foun-
 Ibid., 109: “Die Regierung der göttlichen Vorsehung ist demnach ferner hinsichtlich der Be-
ziehung zwischen dem Regierenden und dem Regierten eine unmittelbare, weil Gott unmittelbar
von allen einzelnen kreaturen Kenntnis hat und unmittelbar auf jede einwirkt.”
 Ibid., 123, with reference to Oration 38 of Gregory Nazianzen.
 Josef Schmucker, Das Problem der Kontingenz der Welt, Quaestiones Disputate 43 (Freiburg:
Herder, 1969), 75 f.: “Aber wir betrachten sie nicht unter der Rücksicht der reinen Vollkommen-
heiten des esse und der Transzendentalien als durch ihre Wesenheit begrenzte Partizipationen
der letzteren, sondern, uns wiederum mit Kant annähernd, schlicht und einfach als so und so
geartete Seiende, die als solche untereinander zutiefst ähnlich und verwandt und doch wiede-
rum in ihrem Sein voneinander geschieden und verschieden sind.”
 Ibid., 112: “für alles bedingt Daseiende als letzten Grund ein Unbedingtes geben muß.”
 ibid., 119.

Authenticated
dational Scriptures, found that natural religion became its a critic.⁵⁵ In such a
way Fichte believed that the content of revelation was moral in character.⁵⁶ He
was also convinced that a higher power guides, yet since Spinoza it would
seem that that very power was invested in nature as it guides itself (conatus
sese conservandi est essentia rerum). In such pantheism the loss of freedom is
the price one pays. Also natural disasters have caused people to suppose that
God has withdrawn from the world. Fichte’s axiom was that Freedom should
not be opposed to Providence (as Kant was making it) but should be viewed
as complementary.
Fichte could not conceive of God as anything other than one whose being
was in his effecting. The Absolute as divine Wirken was as such the source of
the ethical, not just its condition. Life was about grasping the plans of God, es-
pecially in the experience of a surprise as part of one’s destiny (Fügung). Kant
would say that one cannot move from the lessons of one’s experience to God.
So Fichte simply posited providence as a necessary a priori.⁵⁷ As for experience,
the place where God could influence was the conscience or the absolute Ich. The
sensory world was, in turn, the place of working out one’s duty (“Außenseite des
Pflichtgebots”). In his Wissenschaftslehre of 1801/2, Fichte argued that freedom
consists in the act of letting loose the will from blind drives of nature. The Ich
does best when it relates back to its source. There must be a source of being
which gives purpose for freedom to be truly ethical. Freedom is not neutral.⁵⁸
Consequently, history is the return of finite freedom to its sources, the freely
chosen uniting as the appearance of the Absolute, meaning that human deci-
sion-making is only part of that.⁵⁹
 See Wilhelm Gräb, Humanität und Christentumsgeschichte: Eine Untersuchung zum Ge-
schichtsbegriff im Spätwerk Schleiermachers, Göttinger theologische Arbeiten 14 (Göttingen: Van-
denhoeck & Ruprecht, 1980).
 Gesamte Arbeit I,5,347– 75: “Ueber den Grund unsers Glaubens an eine göttliche Welt-regier-
ung: Der Glaube an die Vorsehung ist ihm […] die Bejahung des Gesollten.”
 Stefan Gnädinger, Vorsehung: Ein religionsphilosophisches Grundproblem bei Johann Gottlieb
Fichte (Berlin: LIT, 2003), 134: “Gott, genauer, der göttliche Weltplan, ist gerechtfertigt in der a
priori als denknotwendig ausgewiesenen Annahme, daß alles dem einen Zweck des Daseins von
Individuum und Gattung Vernichtung des Eigentums zugunsten der Erscheinung Gottes dienlich
ist.”
 Ibid., 140: “Freiheit besteht vielmehr in der Bestimmung der Haltung zu den durch mich sich
vollziehenden Absichten des Weltplans, ob ich also das mir Aufgegebene aus freien Stücken tue
oder nicht.”
 Ibid., 141: “Geschichte ist nach Fichte die Rückkehr aller endlichen Freiheit zu ihrem Ur-
sprung, die freigewählte Einswerdung aller als Erscheinung des Absoluten, und nur sofern
ein menschlicher Entschluß sich begreifen läßt als Glied dieser Aufgabe, ist er.”

Authenticated
Hermann Lübbe has argued that religion after 1750 or so became all about
managing contingency.⁶⁰ Providence as a doctrine had broken down. For a
time, a moral rule-based theonomy replaced it, yet with that went an either-or
approach and a loss of any sense of concursus: divine providence seemed a lim-
itation on human-led providence. A development to escape this followed the star
of Hegel, for whom the free worldly consciousness was true religion – and not its
opposite. The state became viewed seen as the epitome of providential action, as
that which would care and would be best placed to plan with foresight.⁶¹ This
theology would express itself in literary form in Thomas Mann’s thinly veiled
portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt in his re-telling of the Joseph story. One could
argue that by this point, theology has retreated to abstractions and has become
a theory of transcendence rather than a provocation to concerted action in hand
with the Spirit of God. In the sphere of grace, there was a development away
from grace as something to be received passively towards grace as including
the active response to divine initiative under the internal promptings. God
could act only through individual rational agents, and had no other way of
changing things in the world. The world became to look less like a theatre of di-
vine drama. With the loss of miracles in the sense of divine power clearly dis-
played in public yet sacred locations, the church lost authority.
The proclivity for Enlightenment theologians to try to explain the miraculous
in natural terms was a reaction to the lack of experience of such things, except
through textual accounts.⁶² In other words, stories of wonders are not the won-
ders themselves. Lessing could allow for Christ’s own miracles, as serving a
moral lesson, although Kant would prefer to restrict the evidence to Christ’s nat-
ural, hence ethical deeds. Providence hence stood for the area of the worldly be-
fore and apart from as well as in the Church, whereas predestination meant the
works of God through the faith of people, whom he called into community.⁶³ In
this bifurcation Providence lost its mystery.
 Hermann Lübbe, Religion nach der Aufklärung (Graz: Styria, 1986).

 Weimer, “Wodurch kam das Sprechen von Vorsehung,” 26: “Der Staat hat die Aufgabe der
Vorsehung zu übernehmen, der Glaube wird die Realisierung des Staates.”
 Ibid., 40: “Die natürliche Erklärung der Wunder ist eine Reaktion auf die fehlende Theologie
des ‘mediante’ (der Vermitteltheit durch Natur, Geschichte und Sprache, durch Erkennen und
Glaube) gewesen; und sie entzündete sich an dem fehlenden Moment des Zeitlichen, Gegenwär-
tigen, an der scheinbar fehlenden heutigen Begegnung mit dem Wunder […]. Das Wunder begeg-
net in einer sprachlichen Nachricht. Schon die abstrakte Eigenschaft der behaupteten Allmacht
Gottes ist eine solche gefährliche Nachricht.”
 Ibid., 45 “Ich habe vorgeschlagen, Vorsehung und Prädestination als die zwei “Orte” des In-
eins-Zusammenhandelns von Erst- und Zweitursache anzusehen und auf die Heilsgeschichts-
theologie zu beziehen: Vorsehung steht dann für den Raum des Weltlichen vor und in der Kirche,

Authenticated
Indicative was Lessing’s Die Erziehung des Menschengeschlechts (1780) with

its Leitidee of Revelation received by Reason as the education of the human race.
The Israelite nation made progress despite not quite coming fully to believe in an
afterlife. Jesus took this second step, and the New Testament was the second
textbook for humanity. Neither of these were deduced “downwards” from
human reason’s principles, but built up from them. The last step in enlightened
times was for all people with now purified hearts to embrace the eternal Gospel,
which will not dispense of the first two foundations yet will not pay attention to
them. “Geh deinen unmerklichen Schritt, ewige Vorsehung!”: with this reference to
an invisible providential step forward, the goal can be achieved. It is an aware-
ness that existed in the original unspoiled human consciousness and which
could be retrieved. Mysteries were revealed in order to be grasped by reason,
which plays the receptive mode. God provides the ground and limiting frame-
work for human freedom as well as its completion, something which Hegel
and Marx would later forget. Yet in Lessing there is no cause for considering any-
thing of “this life” to be “tragic,” given divine assistance against negative forces.
Since each generation is instructed by Providence, and mistakes are corrected,
one does not need to defer meaning in history to its end, but rather see past,
present and future as one.⁶⁴ The question, brought into focus by the work of
Arno Schilson, is how much Providence is about God’s presence renewed
every moment through a series of moments, in opposition to a Theology of
Hope that defers God’s activity to another (eschatological) world order, and
makes the present and past traditions less valuable. As serving the purposes
of Salvation History, Providence belongs as much to Grace as to Nature.⁶⁵
As for Herder, according to his Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der
Menschheit (1791) (following on from his 1774 Auch eine Philosophie der Ge-
schichte zur Bildung der Menschheit) the watchwords were variety (versus monot-
ony), the enduring validity of epochs and tradition (versus the idea of progress
reducing them to “provisionality”), and the importance of aesthetics (compared
with ethics). For Herder history could not be plotted from some a priori princi-
ples. One will only be able to make sense of history in the eschaton, but for
now sense will operate through the feeling of love. History does not advance
but wins and loses in equal measure and especially in the modern age one
must take care not to lose one’s particular identity, which is the gift of the
Prädestination für die Werke Gottes durch den Glauben von Menschen, die er zum Gottesvolk
gesammelt hat.”
 Arno Schilson, Geschichte im Horizont der Vorsehung. G.E. Lessings Beitrag zu einer Theologie
der Geschichte, Tübinger theologische Studien 3 (Mainz: Matthias-Grünewald, 1974), 282 f.; 293.
 Ibid., 303.

Authenticated
past.⁶⁶ The new and modern is no more secure, for it does not rest on epochs as
foundations but is challenged by the onrush of time. It is not the emergent forces
but the present visitation of a transcendent God which is required: “Providence
may now be ‘lost’ from our secular consciousness, but it continues to exert an
influence on our thought and on our lives.”⁶⁷ Herder wrote that only when all
particular experiences are added up can one start to speak of “humanity”. Prov-
idence is to be thanked most basically for one’s physical health or the prosperity
of one’s nation. The affirmation of nature in its variety resists tyranny. Language
difficulties are a sign that each has to learn for himself. The only end of Provi-
dence is to lead humans to a kingdom where truth and goodness reign.
In lectures between 1804 and 1806 Friedrich Schelegel claimed that time as
the medium of God’s freedom and the old doctrine of Providence had not been
brought into dialogue. He complained that “Providence for every human” had
been reduced to mere moral and useful education for Lessing. Time as the me-
dium of freedom before God was not yet completely linked with the faith in Prov-
idence, as it should be.⁶⁸ This was a sign of a readiness to move Providence out
of its Enlightenment restrictions. In Fichte and Schelling and Kierkegaard there
was a reception of the Jewish critique of claims to the miraculous, as represented
by Moses Mendelssohn’s Morgenstunden oder Vorlesungen über das Daseyn
Gottes, where he announced that miracle is the recongising of God’s face in
the particular circumstance.
Schelling, who would influence Johann Sebastian Drey and in turn a series
of Catholic theologians, envisioned God’s plan as the drama of Providence by
God’s intervention in the course of history through guiding consciences, albeit
with dynamic effect.⁶⁹ Hence there needs to be human free cooperation for to
be providence. Herder had argued that before his crucifixion Christ tried to pu-
rify disciples, so that they could reach a faith in one God of creation, a sentiment
 Jochen Johannsen, J. G. Herders historische Anthropologie und die ausgeweitete Moderne (Wit-
ten: 2004; http://www.ssoar.info/ssoar/handle/document/25697), 213 – 4: “Die Menschheitsge-
schichte geht in der Individualgeschichte nicht auf, doch wird sie durch diese erst verständlich.
In seinem eigenen Menschsein erfährt das Individuum einen Zugang zur Geschichte seiner Gat-
tung – und das heißt für Herder: nicht nur zu seiner Vergangenheit, sondern auch zu seiner von
der Menschheit selbst zu gestaltenden Zukunft. (Geschichte als Menschheitsbildung).”
 Lloyd, Providence Lost, 1.
 Lübbe, Religion, 37: “Die Zeit als das Medium der Freiheit vor Gott ist noch nicht umfassend
mit dem Vorsehungsglauben verbunden worden.”
 Cf. Ideen zur Geschichte 232; Kurze Einleitung § 114: Although as B. Hinze notes, Drey’s selec-
tion of the idea of the story of the kingdom of God owed more to his teacher Dobmayer than to
Schelling. B. Hinze, Narrating History, Developing Doctrine (AAR 1993), 32. Drey was concerned
for the power lying behind the facts of that history.

Authenticated
that not that far from the English Deist Tindal, whom Herder had read in 1796/7.⁷⁰
This “creation faith” was a pre-Christian one, yet it could and should accompany
a traditional “saving faith.” God creates and reveals himself by expressing the
unconditioned in the conditioned.
In his Auch Eine Philosophie Herder had been clear that it would be wrong
for a human to try for a God’s-eye or even Kantian view of abstraction. Sin
and virtue were the agents of their own recompense, not God by his intervention.
The law of right and wrong worked like other natural forces.⁷¹ God’s substance
must be fixed, but in his activity he must necessarily be subject to develop-
ment.⁷² God as one who becomes is not now a leader, for humans must learn
to drive history forward themselves by learning to unravel the puzzle of history,⁷³
as preparation for the eventual kingdom of God. If Herder saw the formation of
Bildung of persons as more important than the broader Erziehung of the human
race (Lessing), Schelling viewed the church as mediating between, for Christ’s
teaching was the seed of history in an organic way, although Schelling is not un-
aware of corruptions throughout that history.
For Schelling, history, which operates at a certain level of abstraction links
the actual/empirical with the ideal. In his Urfassung der Philosophie der Offen-
barung, in the 21st Vorlesung, in order that the world not be seen as a mere ema-
nation, it is necessary that something has to stand between the Eternal Absolute
and time or creation. This prevents creation being deemed “’necessary”.⁷⁴
In his 16th Lecture, Freedom is understood as nothing less that God’s essence
(Wesen Gottes). Brouwer tells us that this idea was already present in Schelling’s
earlier Freiheitsschrift, although with the Trinity in mind, it is no longer the case
 Claas Cordemann, Herders christlicher Monismus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 148; 180,
n. 101.
 Martin Keßler, “Herders Kirchenamt in Sachsen-Weimar in der öffentlichen Wahrnehmbar-
keit von Stadt- und Hofkirche,” in Johann Gottfried Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, eds.
Martin Keßler and Volker Leppin, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 92 (Berlin: de Gruyter,
2005): 327– 352, 346.
 Rainer Wisbert, “Geschichte und Schule bei Johann Gottfried Herder,” in Johann Gottfried
Herder: Aspekte seines Lebenswerkes, eds. Martin Keßler and Volker Leppin, Arbeiten zur Kir-
chengeschichte 92 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005): 353 – 367, 356: “Als Substanz ist Gott unveränder-
lich, als Kraft kann Gott gar nicht anders, als tätig und lebendig zu sein, als sich ständig weiter
zu entfalten.”
 Ibid., 358: “Nach Herder ist es das Ziel und der Zweck der Menschheit, die göttliche Natur-
ordnung immer weiter zu enträtseln und zur Darstellung zu bringen und damit in Freiheit das
Werden Gottes in der Geschichte fortzusetzen.”
 Werke I, 136 f.: “Die Welt darf also nicht als bloß notwendige Emanation Gottes angesehen
werden. Um dies zu verhindern, ist es notwendig, daß zwischen der absoluten Ewigkeit und
der Zeit etwas in der Mitte sei, wenn man unter ‘Zeit’ die Welt, Schöpfung versteht.”

Authenticated
for Schelling that God needed the world to enforce his decision to love.⁷⁵ God has
the image in him which He then expresses: so there is an inner reflection. There
needs at least to be the possibility of hate for there to be love. This does not mean
the actuality of the Fall, as some like Herder claimed.⁷⁶ God wants to realise the
Good in History, for the sake of an “all in all,” as 1 Corinthians 15:28 has it. And
so in Freiheitschrift 75.11– 14 he writes that the telos of creation consists in the
autonomous existent come back into God, thereby actualising the Good.⁷⁷
Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi had argued that Reason can come to knowledge of
God, given that as object of knowledge God has revealed himself and continues
to,⁷⁸ requiring reason to filter and discern what is indeed Providence from
events, by showing the course of freedom in it. Schelling saw dependence in cre-
ation in its unfolding, yet without it being too one-sided, as God too is involved
in contingency almost as much as creation.⁷⁹ Right from the beginning with the
contingent history of the world going out from the Word, and later with the cross
too as contingent, God himself bears contingency like a characteristic.
Unlike Hegel, for whom “in the beginning” was only the idea, Schelling be-
lieved in a sort of time before the world. The question of God’s freedom in history
was an important one to him,⁸⁰ if God were to be the One who led creation into
freedom.⁸¹ Thus it is important to postulate that Providence is real, even though
one should not try to imagine what its details are. As with Aquinas, there is a
distinction between providence as ordering things to their ends, and as God’s
 Christian Brouwer, Schellings Freiheitsschrift: Studien zu ihrer Interpretation und ihrer Bedeu-
tung für die theologische Diskussion, Religion in Philosophy and Theology 59 (Tübingen: Mohr
Siebeck, 2011), 256.
 Ibid., 263. Cf. Freiheitschrift 68. Also, cf Rüdiger Safranski, Das Böse oder das Drama der Frei-
heit (Frankfurt: Fischer, 1999), 22– 31.
 Freiheitschrift 75.11– 14: “Das Telos der Schöpfung besteht darin, dass die unabhängig Exist-
ierende wieder in Gott seien und so das Gute aktualisiert werde.”
 Jacobi, Werke IV/I,XXI: “[…] menschlicher Erkenntniß gehet aus von Offenbarung, die Ver-
nunft nämlich offenbaret Freyheit, indem sie Vorsehung offenbaret.”
 Brouwer, Schellings Freiheitsschrift, 313: “Schellings Schöpfungstheorie schafft eine Relation
zwischen Gott und Mensch (bzw. Welt), die zwar ein deutliches Abhängigkeitsgefälle beinhaltet,
jedoch ohne einseitig zu sein. Mensch und Gott bestimmen das Weltgeschehen auf je ihre Weise,
so dass dieses sich dem Kausalmechanismus entzieht und Raum für kontingentes Geschehen
schafft.”
 E. Brito, La création selon Schelling (Leuven: Bibliotheca Ephemeridum theologicarum Lov-
aniensium; 80, 1987), 571: “La liberté divine, Schelling veut la reconnaître non seulement par
rapport à la creation mais aussi au ‘gouvernement du monde’” (Weltregierung, XIII 305) .
 Ibid., 572: “Mais Schelling ne se borne pas à repéter la doctrine classique. La conception
‘Ironique’ du ‘government providential’ constitue à notre avis sa contribution proper dans ce do-
maine.”

Authenticated
working out his ideas in history.⁸² Schelling could see that for there to be possi-
bilities in the world, then that meant possibilities for God too in his freedom: the
realm of possibility mediates between eternity and time.⁸³ With reference to Eli-
jah who heard God behind the natural events (1 Kings 19), the key for believers is
to see beyond appearances to God’s plans’ outworking.
The contemporary philosopher Charles Taylor argues that Modernity was not
about throwing things off but putting on new inventions: so it was not a case
that Providence was lost between 1640 and 1740. If anything humans gained con-
fidence in their ability at moral ordering.⁸⁴ The things themselves no longer
needed to contain a moral sense, since that was to be supplied by the mental
interpretation of things. Providence did not disappear but it did change, “natu-
ralisation” rather than the more personal version in which Providence was about
God’s procuring. Against the desacralization thesis he writes: “But to contem-
plate things in the perfection of their natures, although it brackets the work of
grace, doesn’t turn us away from God.”⁸⁵ No, but it did remove Providence
from History and leave a vacuum for other forces to fill.
Hegel and Beyond
Hegel’s contribution to the history of Christian theology of Providence is of

course large. There are however few theologians who regard the positive contri-
bution to theology as direct. Theologians have been provoked, catalysed, even
inspired by Hegel, but more in the way of having to correct dangerous implica-
tions. One thing that is perhaps praiseworthy is in what Cyril O’Regan comments:
“Hegel does not allow Christianity to be determined by the book of Job.”⁸⁶ Even
if his vision reduces to a quasi-Joachimite hope for heaven on earth, gained by
hell on earth, that history is always right in the end (a form of Leibnizian theo-
dicy), that self-reflection is the greatest good, that the actual is rational and that
the whole drives the particular (“Das Wahre ist das Ganze”: Philosophy of Spirit
20), in such a way that God’s particular providence, not least the Incarnation, is
 Ibid., 572. Cf Xavier Tilliette, Schelling: Une philosophie en devenir (Paris: J.Vrin, 1970).
 21. Vorlesung (Urfassung der Philosophie der Offenbarung, (Leipzig: Meiner, 2010), 136 ff.
“Denn Vorsehung ist = Vorstellung […].”
 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 34 f.
 Ibid., 91.
 For a grasp of a vast subject, I am grateful to Cyril O’Regan, “Hegel, Theodicy and the Invis-
ibilty of Waste” in Philip G. Ziegler and Francesca Aran Murphy (London: T&T Clark, 2009):
75 – 108; here, 90.

Authenticated
always merely a clue to what God is about overall; nevertheless, there is some-
thing admirable in the refusal of nihilism. The price paid is not only the apparent
indifference to the experience of involuntary suffering of history’s victims, but
also the idolatry of the objectifying gaze which claims to know God’s will and
hence the Divine Subject through knowledge
Hegel had already accused the Christian doctrine of Providence as overly
limited to individuals, and pious ones at that. A proud belief in human progress
would usher in a strong “defatalisation”: individuals were not to be cowed by
Providence as something akin to a “collective instinct.”⁸⁷ There was to be no be-
lief in mechanism for its own sake but a negation of a negation in the telos or
point of it all, which of course meant Freedom.⁸⁸ The negative experiences in
life drove life forward, in the sense that truth needs to be complemented or test-
ed by an experience, when reality and perception come close together in the eth-
ical action.⁸⁹ Reality is formed by a series of moments of truths, and hence Hegel
was not so blindly optimistic, but rather insisted that there was always quite
some way to go. Any progress takes place in our awareness of increasing free-
dom, or of our being free already, which happens when we act morally and qui-
etly: therein lies true heroism in this, in the convertibility of the actual with the
rational. One starts with the intention of individual actions, but when I regard
my own vision as limited then do I overcome limit, and this comes about through
making use of ideologies, which are bigger than one’s own “interests.”
If the hope for universal truth in and through history reached its zenith with
Hegel, then very soon, against Hegel, contingency struck back in the form of a
localized, self-interested “selbst-Erhaltung”; going back to Spinoza Schopen-
hauer shared this view: Life is suffering (Leben ist Leiden), in which one only
scratches an itch for it to reappear. The spur of suffering is simply to get one
back to where one was, not to progress in any way. History is not a moral exec-
utor, and since Nietzsche, it seems that History is no longer the mistress but at
best the handmaid of Life. For the interpreter is the mistress in charge; ever since
Bernard de Fontenelle in 1688, people have learned to be decreasingly impressed
by the Past. One becomes truly human by being over historical in the sense of
making history, which seems to have been the lesson of Nietzsche’s Vom Nutzen
 Taylor, Secular Age., 51.

 Robert Spaemann and Reinhard Löw, Natürliche Ziele: Geschichte und Wiederentdeckung des
teleologischen Denkens (Stuttgart: Klett, Cotta, 2005), 142, with reference to Hegel’s Logik (Werke
V,210).
 Ibid., 147: “in Bedürfnis und Trieb sind die Zwecke schon da.” This quoting Hegel (Werke
VIII,415): “Der Trieb ist sozusagen die Gewißheit dafür, daß das Subjektive nur einseitig ist
und keine Wahrheit hat, ebensowenig als das Objektive.”

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und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben (1874). There could be no final cause and
no efficient causes, despite Hegel and Napoleon making a God of History. After
all, a Hegelian account of a strong steer of all particulars by History robs people
of responsibility. As Reinhart Koselleck expressed it: History is neither a court of
judgment nor an alibi.⁹⁰ Koselleck, writing in the aftermath of Stalingrad and
Auschwitz, decrees that each piece of history has a number of meanings to a
number of observers. On this account, History is senseless and invites, even
draws into its vacuous state, any sense-making of the whole.
For Schelling’s ungrateful pupil Søren Kierkegaard, a perception of general
providence should be more than enough. Those who demand signs of special
providence and want to understand their lives forward rather than backwards,
do damage to faith, life and God’s honour.⁹¹ Humans have at least psychological
freedom in the sense that they do not know what God is going to do. As Heiko
Schulz describes it,⁹² the Danish philosopher’s Fortyn comes close to that of
Proverbs 19:21 and the motto: “Man proposes, but God disposes.” In a late jour-
nal entry from 1854: “To be a Christian means to believe in a special provi-
dence.”⁹³ By which the idea is that God as “chess-player” plays a powerful
“black” at times to humans as they play “white.” But in that desperate game,
God is to be found.
However a Kantian like Ritschl wanted to avoid metaphysical speculation,
yet in the prologue to his masterwork declared Nature to be none other than
“Gott ist alles in seinen Werken.” He regretted as a great loss that in Lutheran
Orthodoxy Providence had literally fallen from grace and became treated as
part of natural theology and as such ignored.⁹⁴ This had not been the case for
 Reinhart Koselleck, Von Sinn und Unsinn der Geschichte: Aufsätze und Vorträge aus vier Jahr-
zehnten (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2010), 31: “Die Geschichte ist weder ein Gericht noch ein Alibi.”
 See his Edifying Discourses of 1847.
 Heiko Schulz, “Kierkegaard on Providence and Foreknowledge. A Critical Account,” NZSTh
41 (1999): 115 – 131.
 Cited, ibid., 117.
 Albrecht Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre von der Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung (Bonn: A. Mar-
cus, 1870 – 1874), III:173: “Ebenso wird die Erfahrung, die der Einzelne von der Vergebung der
Sünden macht, fast nur in Luthers Katechismen mit der Stellung desselben in der Kirche ver-
knüpft. Und dieser Mangel ist schon in den Schriften der Reformatoren selbst eingetreten, die
den Schaden dadurch verschärft, daß Johann Gerhard den Glauben an Gottes Vorsehung zur na-
türlichen Theologie schlägt […]. So treu ist dieser Theologe der Augsburgischen Confession, daß
er dem natürlichen, also dem sündigen Menschen das Vertrauen auf Gott möglich sein läßt.
Welches in der leitenden Lehrurkunde demselben gerade abgesprochen wird […]. Nur Stephan
Praetorius leitet die Freudigkeit der Lebensanschauung und persönlichen Haltung direct aus
der Rechtfertigung ab.”

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Melanchthon, who had insisted that sinners too could have trust in God. All this
followed on from the basic idea of Justification. The kingdom of God message in
Jesus’ teaching suggests Providence on a wide scale. Harnack’s famous equation
of the gospel with the Fatherhood of God can be seen expressed in terms of the
Father as providing for all his children.⁹⁵ Ritschl could write that in the general
faith in God’s fatherly Providence, religious faith could best be seen as practised,
like that of little children.⁹⁶ For it was when one perceived how the world had
been set up for the good of human beings that one might realise how trials
are intended for our moral good. We should devote attention to making sense
of our own fortune without regarding that of others.
Towards the end of the work, Ritschl offers this: Strauss in Das Leben Jesu
saw Jesus like all others caught up in the nightmarish fanged cogs of the
world machine, but that Paul then announced the palliative (lindernd) divine
presence poured out to soothe. This allows for some amount of consolation, in
that humans are somehow elevated by this knowledge to become like spectators.
Darwinism is pretty much right at one level, but before we start to doubt our own
worth, common sense denies science here, in that it shows how rational it is to
dare to try some stepping out and transcending of the oppressions of life and the
restrictions both nature and society throw up.⁹⁷ Believing in such forces too
much is like believing in the devil. It is a category mistake to think that Provi-
dence starts with “natural humanity.” It is only for those who have been recon-
ciled through such knowledge and world-transcendence to whom “God is not
against us” (Rom 8:32) applies.⁹⁸
For Ritschl, belief in Providence corresponds to the Christian virtue of pa-
tience, which is not apathy. Believers know that God is going to save us but
 Adolf von Harnack, Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1900), 46 (44): “Gott
der Vater, die Vorsehung, die Kindschaft, der unendliche Wert der Menschenseele, spricht sich
das ganze Evangelium aus.”
 Ritschl, Die christliche Lehre, III:583: “Es ist nun im Allgemeinen der Glaube an Gottes Vor-
sehung, in welchem die religiöse Herrschaft über die Welt ausgeübt wird. Denn die einheitliche
Weltanschauung unter dem Gesichtspunkt des überweltlichen Gottes, der als unser Vater durch
Christus uns liebt und uns in seinem Reiche zu der Bestimmung vereinigt, in welcher wir den
Zweck der Welt sehen so wir die Selbstbeurtheilung, welche dem entspricht, sind das Gebiet in-
nerhalb dessen alle Vorstellungen der Art gebildet werden, daß uns alle Dinge und Ereignisse in
der Welt zum Guten dienen, weil man als Kind Gottes ein Gegenstand besonderer Fürsorge und
Hilfe Gottes ist.”
 Ibid., 586.
 Ibid., 590: “An der Unklarheit aber, welche auf diesem Punkte sich lagert, ist gerade die or-
thodoxe Theologie in hervorragender Weise schuldig, sofern sie den Glauben an Gottes Vorse-
hung als ein Stück natürlicher Religion darstellt.”

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not how, for his ways are unsearchable (Rom 11:33). It means undeserved lowli-
ness and self-forgetting, like the eye that sees all but itself. We are badly in need
of help, but sober self-evaluation should not mean self-loathing.⁹⁹ Calvin wid-
ened the concept of Providence from meaning “special connection” to a more
general one to which appreciation of geography, language and culture can incul-
cate thankful wonder at the trouble divine care has taken. Lutherans can be
proud of continuing the medieval spiritual heritage of hymns, which stress
this “humble trust” theme. Pietists relegated the doctrine because rationalists
and deists made so much of it.¹⁰⁰ Ritschl saw the whole as designed to go for-
ward although it took humans to make use of its forces and see therein hope
for the future.¹⁰¹
In fact it was not Science but History and the natural explanation of ancient
wondrous events. Evolution’s provocation was a spur to a more experientially
based theology. The Darwinian account of life was neither tragic nor comic
but was simply about the struggle to survive. It did at the time fit quite well
with the prevalent Romantic theology, for which “order” was to be seen largely
in embracing change and dynamism to overcome despair: “When Darwin wrote
his Descent of Man (1871) he did not intend to proclaim the relativity of moral
values. He wanted to explain how the highest form of moral sensibility (that
we should behave to others as we would have them behave towards us) had de-
veloped naturally.”¹⁰²
 On humility (Demuth), Ibid., 597: “so fällt die ‫ ענוה‬sachlich zusammen mit der Gerechtigkeit
(Ps 45,5; Zephaniah 2,3).” Also, 602: “Die Geduld nämlich ist die religiöse Stimmung als Herr-
schaft über die widerstrebende Welt, welche die Demuth als die Stimmung der Unterordnung
unter Gott ergänzt.”
 Ibid., 618: “Um so bedeutsamer ist es, wie unwillkürlich Calvin, wo er die fiducia als Vol-
lendung des Glaubens beschreibt (Inst III.2.16), die speciellen Beziehungen des dogmatischen
Glaubens zu den allgemeinen Beziehungen der göttlichen Vorsehung erweitert.” 623: “Man
gibt sich in pietistischen Kreisen den Anschein, den Vorsehungsglauben für etwas Untergeord-
netes zu halten, weil auch der Rationalismus darauf lautete, und demselben doch nicht zugege-
ben werden soll, daß er ein gesundes Element des Christentums an sich hat.” Cf. Johannes Zach-
huber, “Albrecht Ritschl and the Tübingen School: A Neglected Link in the History of 19th
century Theology,” ZnTh 18 (2011): 51– 70.
 Dale M. Schlitt, “Albrecht Ritschl on God as Personal and as Loving Will,” Theoforum 42
(2011): 229 – 272.
 John Hedley Brooke, “Darwin and Victorian Christianity,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Darwin, eds. Jonathan Hodge and Gregory Radick, Cambridge Companions to Philosophy (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 192– 213, 194.

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In Darwin’s peroration to the summary Chapter 21 of that work:
Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest
part of man’s nature is concerned there are other agencies more important For the moral
qualities are advanced either directly or indirectly much more through the effects of
habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection;
though to this latter agency the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the develop-
ment of the moral sense, may be safely attributed.
The critic of Victorian literature John Beer’s argument is that while the theme of
Providence appearing large in the works of Richardson and Fielding seems in-
contestable, it was still alive and well in the middle of the nineteenth century,
for instance in Jane Eyre, although perhaps more in the shape of “Nature,” or
“a spirit which is as present in the great energies of Nature as in the moral
law, and as little confined by them.”¹⁰³ Wordsworth had already taken comfort
in his personal fortune with other womenfolk when his own amorous plans
were thwarted (Prelude 1805, xi,199 – 223). Beer admits that in Tennyson’s In Me-
moriam, “Christian faith is maintained, but barely.” And by the time of Brontë’s
Villette the mood is much darker with no grand design. Comfort in that novel is
more of a material or an “Old Testament” sort, whereas in Jane Eyre that theme
was left behind.
In George Eliot’s novels, characters were starting to claim their own design
to be identical with Providence, a development with catastrophic consequences
in the hands of Nazi ideology.¹⁰⁴ However Eliot moralizes against this trend and
reinforced the link between Providence and morality: “If Providence offers you
power and position – especially when unclogged by any conditions that are re-
pugnant to you – your course is one of responsibility, into which caprice must
not enter.”¹⁰⁵ John Ruskin might have written to Elizabeth Barrett Browning:
“God’s laws you can trace, His providence, never,” in his lectures at Oxford in
1870:
But so far as we use the word “Providence’ as an attribute of the Maker and Giver of all
things, it does not mean that in a shipwreck He takes care of the passengers who are to
be saved, and takes none of those who are to be drowned; but it does mean that every
 John Beer, Providence and Love: Studies in Wordsworth, Channing, Myers, George Eliot, and
Ruskin (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1998), 14.
 Ibid., 18: “the thought of Providence assists self-deception (in the case of Casaubon).” “The
beloved was then looked to not only as the provided but the provider” (Ibid., 20).
 In Daniel Deronda (1876) (Beer, Providence and Love, 207). Cf. Thomas Vargish, Providential
Aesthetic in Victorian Fiction (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1985).

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race of creatures is born into the world under circumstances of approximate adaptation to
its necessities […].¹⁰⁶
Frederic Myers saw his contemporary Alfred Tennyson as Prophet of Evolution.¹⁰⁷

If Tennyson could write another famous line from In Memoriam: “Better to have
loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” the late Victorian natural philos-
opher Henry Drummond echoed this for the world of nature: “better to have lived
and been eaten than never to have lived at all.”¹⁰⁸ For both it was not about
whence we have come, but whither we are going – and there was still a long
way for humankind to go. Tennyson in 1864 was invited to become a Fellow of
the Royal Society but declined. His work and thought became increasingly im-
pressionistic, irrational even. But for Tennyson this world was not enough; it
provided merely a form for Spirit which went ahead. One just has to work
away morally and see whether things then change for the better. For, as Carlyle
concluded: “the difficulty in tracing the exact workings of providence should not
be made a reason for doubting its existence as such.”¹⁰⁹ Meanwhile, de Tocque-
ville’s conviction of “the irresistible march of democracy” continued to work ir-
resistibly in the USA: “The gradual development of the equality of conditions is
therefore a providential fact, and it possesses all the characteristics of a divine
decree.”¹¹⁰
In the nineteenth century when faith seemed put on trial, the theme of Prov-
idence sprang up; possibly due to a defeatist passivity which longed to be res-
cued from trials, including the attack on faith. Yet this was an easy target for the-
ologians. James McCosh differed little from the Boston transcendentalist
Theodore Parker when he played down the existence of “special providence,”
and asserted that poverty and illness were not generally the result of judgement
on immorality.¹¹¹ God would work through persuasion of those open to moral in-
 Beer, Providence and Love, 241.

 Frederic Myers, “Tennyson as Prophet,” in Science and a Future Life: With Other Essays
(London-New York : Macmillan, 1893).
 Brooke, “Darwin and Victorian Christianity,” 164.
 Ibid., 305. On Edward Caird’s Idea of ‘Development, see Peter Hinchcliff, Benjamin Jowett
and the Christian Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 212 f.
 Karl Löwith, Meaning in History: The Theological Implications of the Philosophy of History
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 11, quoting Democracy in America, Introduction.
 Charles Cashdollar, “The Social Implications of the Doctrine of Divine Providence: A Nine-
teenth-Century Debate in American Theology,” Harvard Theological Review 71 (1978): 265 – 284,
with reference to James McCosh’s The Method of Divine Government, Physical and Moral (New
York: Carter, 1851) and Horace Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural as together constituting
the one system of God (New York: Scribner, 1895).

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fluence. A strong emphasis on human creativity as enabled by God’s deliverance

from chaos could be developed. Yet radical critics of Providence such as John
Stuart Mill were ready only to see the negative effects of Providentialism on
human initiative. Already Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (d. 1865) was a theologian
of progress, yet as such was also an opponent of “Divine Providence.” Christian-
ity had once served to personalize “fate,” but now fate needed to be wholly re-
moved from Providence through the latter’s becoming the property of human in-
itiative (in his Système des contradictions économiques ou philosophie de la
misère of 1846). In Comte’s version, although with much of a debt to Condorcet’s
The Progress of the Human Mind, this included moral improvement and sociali-
zation, which afforded a more “catholic” and less individualized vision, one
which Hegel had hoped for. As Karl Löwith concluded, Progressive Evolution
with a faculty for planning (prevision rationelle) and risk-assessment now re-
placed Providence. As human advancement happens in the collective, not in
the individual-moral, wars would soon cease and Napoleon would be a distant
memory.¹¹² Löwith argued, if Karl Marx was arguably more typically Judeo-Chris-
tian in that he “maintains the original tension of a transcendent faith over
against the existing world,” Hegel and his “spirit” was more reconciled to the
world as it was. The chapter in Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschichte entitled “For-
tschritt contra Vorsehung” maintains that the modern was not just greater than
the ancient, but also that Christianity itself was outdated, and its eschatology
was already being adapted prior to Vico. Indeed, progress was a feature of Cath-
olic civilization, not Protestant, with its regressive attachment to Hebraic antiq-
uity and sacral kingship over religion.¹¹³ What Comte offered was catholic in the
sense of a communal religion independent of the state – something more spon-
taneous, voluntary and energetic, while collective. The courses of salvation his-
tory and universal history ran parallel; it is, according to Löwith, probably better
to see the two sides of Christianity as the same, only offering different interpre-
tations of the same events, or lives, whether that of a Pontius Pilate or a less fa-
mous figure.¹¹⁴ Unlike Jews, Christians do not have a visibly obvious, narratable
story.¹¹⁵ Originally they believed there was no pattern to history and, thinks Löw-
ith, the Twentieth Century seems to have proved them right. It might then be odd
to suggest that the move to history was a secularizing moment (as Hans Blumen-
 Löwith, Meaning in History, 88.

 Karl Löwith, Weltgeschichte und Heilsgeschichte, in Sämtliche Schriften II (Stuttgart: Metzler,
1983), 7– 239, 89.
 Ibid., 205.
 Ibid., 210 f.: “Die Christen sind kein geschichtliches Volk […]. Die Zeit nach Christus ist nur
insofern christlich, als sie Endzeit ist.”

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berg observed),¹¹⁶ when one realizes that from the beginning eschatology includ-
ed both historical process, although not so much progress – as well as “apoca-
lyptic” intervention from on high.
Charles Taylor’s case is that with late modernity there was a change from Au-
gustine’s model, whereby eternity is not timeless but is the past taken into pres-
ent and projected into the future and can be a place where God and humans
meet. What has replaced that is modern time, which is all about changes, meas-
urements and time as commodity and as an iron cage for reality, with God’s eter-
nity pushed far away. A medieval Cosmos was inherently meaningful, an ex-
panding universe seems less so. Yet Pascal had long before given an account
of God’s care for an infinite and irregular universe.¹¹⁷ If God is to be truly present,
then he also has to be invited in where human incapacity demands it. If God is
everywhere sanctifying, then still He requires faith’s hospitality for that to hap-
pen. Taylor finds this “heroic” Jansenist alternative to be dangerous, for it might
then turn our active response to God’s action into “all or nothing.” Living all of
life for the glory of God with its higher demands risks the danger of “loading or-
dinary flourishing with a burden of renunciation it cannot carry.”¹¹⁸ It might be
better to see God’s glory in the world as one where He works with people to stop
society from becoming wholly vicious, and to build the right inner attitude of
confident humility. I have some sympathy with Taylor’s questioning of whether
“desacralisation” matters for this: “But to contemplate things in the perfection of
their natures, although it brackets the work of grace, doesn’t turn us away from
God.’”¹¹⁹ Indeed. And yet, pace Taylor, it matters that grace takes us beyond na-
ture, for that is what gives nature a shape. And while what Spaemann calls “me-
chanical interpretation” presupposes that all is bound together by a comprehen-
sive connectivity of life (“umgreifenden Lebenszusammenhanges”), that is just
as much a metaphysic of its own, but not really one that explains anything.¹²⁰
If we are striving for sense in life, then that means there is something more.
Spaemann wonders what we are aiming at when we aim to preserve the spe-
cies.¹²¹ The answer could be a circular one of course, and no answer might be
a better response. Yet there is something in his argument that ordinary human
 Blumenberg, Die Legitimität der Neuzeit, 44.

 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, 61.
 Ibid., 82.
 Ibid., 91.
 Spaemann and Löw, Natürliche Ziele, 205: “Als Fazit ergibt sich, daß die Begriffe Ursache
und Wirkung jedenfalls ungeeignet sind, um Ereignisse zu erklären.”
 Ibid., 242 f.: “Er bezieht nicht Treibholz teleologisch auf das Leben der Eskimos, sondern
dieses Stück Holz auf diesen Eskimo in diesem Augenblick.”

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life is marked by moments of meaning, as the eskimo receives the driftwood, (s)
he is in receipt of Providence even if (s)he does not recognise it as Fügung, not
even when instruction for how to work with wood comes along. Teleology means
that the thing includes the goal in its being; providence means that without
some external combinations and re-arrangements the beauty of particular life-
patterns and vocations is missed.
Well before the First World War, Thomas Hardy offered a bleak vision of the
course of life in which horrid coincidence reinforces the meaning that there is no
meaning.¹²² Yet within a few years of that episode of military carnage, a hopeful
account of the filial trusting of God’s fatherly goodness resulting in activating
human creativity according the image, came into view. Yet Maurice Blondel’s
L’homme provident, posited that a providential relation with God should be
viewed as one of dignity equality, such that humans who enjoy it are by no
means trapped by God’s goodness, in some indebted way, and are far from
being objects or pawns of Providence.¹²³ Blondel emphasized provision and fam-
ily-like belonging in the world, behind all its illusions of passion.
 The novels that comes to mind are Jude the Obscure and Tess of the D’Urbevilles; the poem,
The Convergence of the Twain. See Vernon White, “Providence, Irony and Belief: Thomas Hardy –
and an Improbable Comparison with Karl Barth,” Theology 113 (2010): 357– 365. Also, Gillian
Beer, Darwin’s Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century Fic-
tion, 3rd Ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), Part Three: Responses-George Eliot
and Thomas Hardy.
 See Pierre-Jean Labarrière, “Providence,” in Dictionnaire de Spiritualité 12, eds. Marcel Vil-
ler, Ferdinand Cavallera, and Joseph de Guibert (Paris: Beauchesne, 1986), 2464.

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Chapter Seven: Providence in twentieth-century
theological discussion
Providence was perhaps the doctrine that came under close scrutiny in the Mod-
ern Era. Since it seemed to be restricted to the people of God, as per as some-
thing directed towards Israel then and the Church now, the rest of the world’s
population and its philosophers could see no sign of anything being done by
God either to upset creation when reliable, or fix creation when unreliable.
This of course is disputable: e. g., Calvin was bold enough to call the world the
theatre of God’s glory, and the Church is more the “choir” or “orchestra.”¹ How-
ever by the eighteenth century Jansenist claims to miracles in their midst as
signs and portents were disqualified as delusional and subjective, in tandem
with their unpopular doctrines and the occasionalism of Malebranchean philos-
ophy. In other words, Leibniz and Voltaire’s positions were two sides of the same
coin in trying to establish the fixedness of the order of things. One might argue
that it was disbelief in Providence that led to problems for Christology, although
resort could still be made to the idea of a special Apostolic Era in which special
laws of God’s intervening applied. In Theodicy (§249 H,280), although Leibniz
brackets out creation and the Incarnation as unique “mysteries,” he views
most “miracles” in terms of the predictable functioning of more rarefied substan-
ces according to the laws of nature, not without parallel to Augustine’s rationes
seminales (Gn. litt. 8.26, 9.16 – 18).
Michael Beintker observes that after Hegel, History itself took God’s place as
the driving force behind events.² Ernst Moritz Arndt and Emmanuel Hirsch used
this in the 1930s to worrying effect. This helps us realise that what happens on
the surface of history is not everything: God appears in the middle of the histor-
ical, without being identifiable with it. The message of Good Friday and Easter is
that God is to be found moving mysteriously in the dark moments, not in the
high points of world history: the experience of believers in fact of all humans
takes place with eschatological reservation. This caveat was often missing
from the old dogmatic definitions such as that by Polanus [d. 1610], according
to whom Providence just meant extending the doctrine of creation into the expe-
 Comm. I Cor. 1:21, CO 49:326; CTS 39:85. Comm. Heb. 11:3, CO 33:146; CTS 44:266. Cf. Belden
Lane, ‘Spirituality as the Performance of Desire: Calvin on the World as a Theatre of God’s Glory.’
Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 1 (2001), 1– 30.
 Michael Beintker, “Die Frage nach Gottes Wirken im geschichtlichen Leben,” Zeitschrift für
Theologie und Kirche 90 (1993): 442– 461.

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232 Chapter Seven: Providence in twentieth-century theological discussion
rience of the reader, with the assurance that God has not given up on it.³ Along
with that there is a conservative ontology with little sign of eschatological long-
ing for His will to be done on earth as in heaven, with the endpoint drawing the
starting-point and much in-between towards it (so, Gerhard Gloege).⁴ The wars of
that century raised questions for the doctrine which even now threaten to over-
whelm it, in a way perhaps more acutely than did the wars of the early seven-
teenth century, which necessitated a re-working of Polanus’ theology.
In that it was the Modern Age (say, 1650 – 1950) which accentuated the per-
sonal and the private, it is perhaps an irony that personal Providence was per-
haps the doctrine that became vulnerable during that time. If evidence for the
visibly miraculous was an embarrassment, then very soon so too the idea that
God’s hand was invisibly weaving the cat’s cradle of interconnected events.
While not being a topic that can be said to be fashionable, in German circles
over the last half-century the topic has at least received comparatively more at-
tention. German philosophy and theology, at least since its Idealist and Herme-
neutical stamping in the early nineteenth century has considered “meaning in
history” as a subject worthy of attention. This is not to say that the topic, espe-
cially after the Second World War was unproblematic. Hitler even attributed his
survival of an assassination attempt on 21 July 1944 to Providence sparing him in
order to finish his life’s work.⁵ It is tempting and perhaps not altogether illicit to
speculate that if Karl Barth’s 1950s reading of events was one that echoed the
costly victory of God at work through humanity over the powers of evil, the
1960s & 70s German versions were stunned by the impact of coming to realise
the full horrors of the Shoah.
 Ibid., 451: “Die Konzentration auf die Erhaltung (conservatio) des Geschaffenen verleiht der
Providenzlehre einen (im guten Sinne) ‘konservativen’ Grundzug.”
 “Der Rahmen der Weltgeschichte ist jene umgreifende Energetik der Zukunft, die man Heils-
geschehen nennt.” (Ibid., 452, quoting Gerhard Gloege, “Vom Sinn der Weltgeschichte,” in Theo-
logische Traktate I: Heilsgeschehen und Welt (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965): 27– 52,
39.
 “Ich fasse dies als eine Bestätigung des Auftrags der Vorsehung auf, mein Lebensziel weiter zu
verfolgen.” Quoted in Reinhard Feldmeier, “Wenn die Vorsehung ein Gesicht erhält: Theolo-
gische Transformation einer problematischen Kategorie,” in Vorsehung, Schicksal und göttliche
Macht: Antike Stimmen zu einem aktuellen Thema, eds. Reinhard G. Kratz and Hermann Spieck-
ermann (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2008): 147– 170, 147.

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The major contribution of Barth: renewing the tradition
Although Reformed theologians of the late Nineteenth Century like Charles

Hodge disliked the term “concurrence,” Herman Bavinck approved of it. Never-
theless Bavinck was clear that Providence is for believers only as it is received
in and through the cross; one can only know Providence if one knows God. With-
in the Dutch tradition, Gerrit C. Berkouwer seemed to radicalize this: “The rela-
tion between belief in fate, fortune, Schicksal, or Vorsehung and the Christian
faith is not one of relative depth or breadth. There is a radical break, an absolute
difference between them. While the terms used may seem identical, the gulf be-
tween the contents is as high as the heavens”⁶ “Providence is nothing other than
God’s free grace, and God’s free grace in Christ is Providence.”⁷ Berkouwer was
happy to affirm Providence as sustenance, governance and then (with chapter
Five) he introduced “A Third Aspect?” which he explained as; “sinful man
gives form to the God-given matter of act.” He concluded: “By God’s leading is
not meant the actualization in wolrd history of His hidden plan, for the realiza-
tion of His plan embraces the universal scope of things, and this can never be the
normative measure for human action or the standard ‘for the judging of the
course of world History’.”⁸
Barth’s “cautious optimism” was grounded in doctrines of God, Creation,
Election and Christologically driven salvation-history. Hence it could be agreed
that there was some amount of meaning in history, but only that as guaranteed
by the history of Jesus Christ. Barth had for a long time insisted that God is not
revealed in any “process.” Also, this came at the expense of the church’s role in
creating an understanding of Providence through looking at its history to gain
wisdom. Eschewing any notion of providence as “continuous creation,” Barth
prefers to speak of it as divine “overruling,” even contradiction, chipping
away at the carnal qualities of the human race, showing divine patience as un-
ending. So, the main foundation of his doctrine was, perhaps unsurprisingly,
Christological: “Predestination is rather the presupposition, and its fulfilment
in history the constitutive centre, of God’s overruling and the basis and goal
of its realisation.”⁹
 Gerrit C. Berkouwer, The Providence of God, Studies in Dogmatics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans
Publishing, 1952), 45. One might want to compare Karl Barth, Die Christliche Lehre nach dem Hei-
delberger Katechismus (München: Kaiser, 1949), 56 (cited by Berkouwer, 36) for another imme-
diately post-war understanding.
 Ibid., 36.
 Ibid., 167.
 Church Dogmatics (henceforth CD) III/3, 4.

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With these words Barth showed that he did not subscribe to the view that
Predestination was some intensification of Providence, but rather that the former
was the core, itself grounded in the inner-Trinitarian election of the Son by the
Father, then activated as a thin line which gives a shape to world-history and
every individual providence contained within. Right at the start of §48 Barth
made it clear that Providence should be treated as part of the doctrine of creation
rather than part of the doctrine of God (as the medievals did). For it is a work
outside God, an opus ad extra. It is the same creating power (virtus) of God
that continues on in Providence, but in a different way. Yet it is based on the pre-
destinating election of Christ, the Son of God, as it were “within the doctrine of
God.” Barth found this connection between Providence and Christ to be rare in
the Christian tradition and loved to praise the odd exception: “there may still be
seen clearly the Reformation connexion, expressed by Paul Gerhardt, between
‘Commit thou all thy griefs and ways’ and the Christmas hymn ‘All my heart
this night rejoices’.”¹⁰ If only the Heidelberg Catechism had been attended to
and not lost in a mix of pietism and rationalism, which inspired the false confi-
dence that humans had immediate access to God.
So works of Providence can only be viewed by faith; and even when it sees
God at work, faith is aware that this event is only the mask of God. One should
not try to create a philosophy of history on that basis. Properly conceived, the
believer “believes in the divine providence itself, not in an assertion or estima-
tion, however well-founded, of what he thinks is perhaps its previous course, or
present kairoi, or future purpose, in short its plan.”¹¹ Barth uses what he per-
ceives the God of the Old Testament and New Testament to be, and this is not
what Gottfried Arnold or Johann Albrecht Bengel have made of Him with their
claiming to know how he has acted in their own times. Moreover knowing the
times can sometimes get in the way of living in it. The prophets did not get in-
spired by history but spoke words of light into it. Prophecy needed to be open
to self-censure. It is a belief that God is providential on the grounds of biblical
revelation, not how He is to me or us. Our experience of God’s ways do not pro-
vide the material for a doctrine.
According to Barth, a misunderstanding arose early on in the Church with
Eusebius’s representation of Constantine as a Second Moses; the problem was
the great historian did not like the Apocalypse and its theme of a critique of his-
tory. The Fatherly hand and divine power are one and the same, but both work
always for sake of His Son. In all history God remains free, unlike a principle
 CD III/3, 16.
 CD III/3, 22.

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which quickly becomes formless. Barth here seems more concerned with the
Church than with Christ when he tried to counter the mixture of general theism
and personalized subjectivity, which in modern times has meant “at every point
preference being given to a resolute attachment to the views which Jews, Turks,
pagans and finally Christians can have in common concerning the existence and
lordship of a supreme being.”¹² This development, thought Barth. was responsi-
ble for the fact that “providence” became a favourite termon the lips of Adolf Hit-
ler. It is a chief Christian doctrine; and one needs to see it as the work of Christ.
Again however Barth insists that Providence is closely attached to covenantal so-
teriology, as when he comments on Genesis 22: “This divine providere belonged
to this concrete context of the history of salvation.” God integrates creaturely oc-
currence to the covenant ending in the Kingdom.¹³
One might wonder whether Barth is justified in arguing that although 1 Peter
5:6 – as being about Christians (“humble yourself under God’s mighty hand that
he might lift you up; cast all you cares upon Him […]”) concerns something quite
different from Matt 6:26 f (“do not worry […] will He not much more clothe
you”) – as being about general providence, nevertheless, he claims, Ephesians
1:11¹⁴ links them together. Barth does not quote the Ephesians text in full (al-
though he does the other two and even Rom 8:28). He prefers to think of the
first phrase as “we have become an inheritance,” according to a possible textual
variant.¹⁵ Barth does not dwell too long here, for it suggests that election is a
sub-set of the accomplishment of all things. The question of the identity of the
“we” remains unresolved. To argue that Predestination and Providence are co-or-
dinated¹⁶ is to say too little. In fact even Romans and Ephesians here seem to be
 CD III/3, 32.
 CD III/3, 35; or in German (Kirchliche Dogmatik III.3. 44): “Eine wirkliche und eigentliche Be-
ziehung zwischen seiner Geschöpflichkeit und seiner Bestimmung zu Gottes Bundesgenossen
könnte vielmehr erst auf Grund einer anderen neuen Schöpfung in Frage kommen. Unterwegs
zwischen seiner Schöpfung und diesem Ziel würde der Mensch als Geschöpf sich doch nur
an die Identität Gottes und also an die Parallelität seines eigenen Seins als Geschöpf mit seiner
Geschichte im Bunde mit Gott, nicht aber an eine positive Bedeutung seiner geschöpflichen Ge-
schichte für diese andere halten können.”
 “In Christ we have obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose
of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will.”
 KD III/3, 45: “Wie aber wird man unter dieser Voraussetzung in der Auslegung von Eph. 1,11
durchkommen, wo es nun einmal heißt, daß die Christen zu Erben gemacht wurden, vorherbe-
stimmt nach der zuvor getroffenen Entscheidung (nach der πρόθεσις) dessen, der Alles wirkt
nach dem Ratschluß seines Willens?”
 Ibid.: “Es ist dann nicht nur mit einem Parallelismus, sondern mit einer positiven Beziehung
zwischen den beiden Reihen zu rechnen. Die besondere Entscheidung Gottes über seine Auser-
wählten und sein Regiment über das All, ihre Liebe zu Gott und ihre Existenz inmitten dieses

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saying different things. Barth does seem to reduce Providence to that which
helps the Church to be the Church, given that the Church is an inclusive body.
And yet Barth wants to make sure that this is not to give the Church any
glory. The Church should take no credit. “Calvin perhaps had this in view
when he described the totality of the cosmos and cosmic occurrence as the thea-
trum gloriae Dei.”¹⁷ We are called to mirror that salvation history with our own
lives: by an analogia fidei sive revelationis.
Through Providence “we” learn how creation may become God’s instrument,
for we cannot say that it already is. Rather it becomes as He takes it in hand and
gives it qualities and determinations, even its function, telos and character. Thus
as Barth insists at the beginning of §49, the divine preserving means more than
just an owner looking after his goods but that (as per Rom 11:36: “for for him and
through him and to him are all things”) things need preserving if they to have a
share in kingdom. This seems a kind of “forbearance” (Rom 2:4), but when Barth
comes to spell this out he uses the Augsburg Confession (CA VIII: quod una sanc-
ta ecclesia perpetuo mansura sit). By doing this he thinks he is being Christocen-
tric, but the result seems more ecclesiocentric, despite his express intention. The
idea seems to be that as God acts indirectly and directly in salvation history, the
ripples of that action are felt more widely. Barth is critical of Cocceius (in his
Summa theologica 1162 m,28,12) where the latter embraced a doctrine of contin-
uous creation: for such a concept would undermine the priority of Predestina-
tion-Election in the fulfillment of creation.
The connexion between servare and conservare, between saving grace in Jesus Christ and
the gracious preservation of creaturely being by God the Father, emerges most clearly in
the New Testament and especially the Pauline passages in which the verbs τηρειν,
φρουρειν, φυλασσειν, βεβαιουν and στηριζειν are used to describe a specific activity of
God or Christ in relation to Christians.¹⁸
All this is so that the creature may continue to be eternally before Him; it is not a
case of just prolonging existence. This eternal preservation is the foundation of
the temporal.¹⁹
So far it would seem that Barth’s doctrine of Providence is quite “narrow,” or
narrow in that it is ecclesiocentric, even ecclesiomonist. In turning to consider
the divine concursus, he writes that God accompanies creation as its Lord. This
Alls rücken dann offenbar nicht auseinander, sondern zueinander; sie sind dann als sachlich
koordiniert zu verstehen.”
 KD III/3, 47.
 Ibid., 82.
 Ibid., 87.

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does not mean creaturely absolute dependence, which would be a mechanical

relationship, but that God is always a step in advance of the creature in His free-
dom to co-travel.²⁰ Petrus van Mastricht was right that Romans 11:36 means the
operation of God himself in Providence²¹ – and other New Testament verses. Yet
here is Barth possibly guilty of the worst kind of proof-texting? Does “working”
mean the same thing in Philippians 2:13 as it does in 1 Corinthians 12:6?
Barth continues by arguing that concursus can hardly be considered a Lu-
theran distinctive in that many Lutherans ignored it (e. g. Gerhard and Calov),
and only Quenstedt, Hollaz, and Baier treated it. And yet the Reformed were al-
most all aware of it and for many of their scholastics, God affirms creaturely free-
dom, despite Alexander Schweitzer’s misrepresentation (only Zwingli really
backed his case that Reformed were all determinist in interpreting concursus
as praecursus). Most of the Reformed appear quite Melanchthonian on this
point. But some amount of minor gloria creaturis in the form of human dignity
as agents did matter to them. And, on the other hand, Lutherans no less than
the Reformed used the conceptuality of “cause.”²² Indeed “cause” is not foreign
to the bible’s conceptuality, so long as one does not think of Ursache (cause) as a
Sache (thing). Regrettably the schools did not fill the term with Christian content,
and hence they completely missed the relationship between creation and the
covenant of grace. However Barth thinks the term is a useful one.
He insists that as causa prima God is unlike other causes: schools were per-
haps bad at realizing that. “Causa is not a genus, of which the divine and crea-
turely causae can then be described as a species.”²³ Divine and human subjects
in fact cannot be compared, despite the claims of Catholics for analogia entis
(and of some of the Protestant scholastics!). Barth seems to say they are un-
like in their self-grounding, but that does not rule out their similarity qua
actor. Barth rues the fact that “nobody” followed van Mastricht, who saw
 Ibid., 93. Cf. “Ich mache damit Gebrauch von einer Formulierung von J. Coccejus: nutus vo-
luntatis in Deo […] comitatur operationem creaturae (S. theol. 1662, 28, 25). Der Begriff ist sehr
allgemein und darum sehr gefährlich.” (KD III.3, 103)
 CD III/1. 95. In the German original: “Es war hier vor allem die zweite Wendung in dem Satz
Röm. 11, 36 δι’αὐτοῦ τὰ πάντα , an den man sich erinnern wollte, wobei P. van Mastricht (Theor.
Pract. Theol. 1698, III, 10, 1) sicher im Entscheidenden richtig exegesiert hat, wenn er mit dem διὰ
Gott nicht als causa instrumentalis, sondern in der im Werk seiner Vorsehung stattfindenden
ipsa operatio des Vaters, des Sohnes und des Heiligen Geistes bezeichnet sehen wollte” (CD
III/3, 107).
 One of the pithiest definitions was given by the Reformed scholastic Heidegger: “Concursus
s. cooperatio est operatio illa Dei quis cum causis secundis utpote ab eo sicut in esse ita etiam in
operari dependentibus immediate ita cooperator” (Heppe, Reformed Dogmatics, 200).
 CD III/3, 102.

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cause as “the Triune God of biblical revelation,” which Barth takes to mean “the
God revealed in covenant.”
And this same God accepts the creature even apart from the history of the covenant and its
fufilment […] Therefore His causare consists, and consists only, in the fact that He bends
their activity to the execution of His own will which is His will of grace, subordinating
their operations to the specific operation which constitutes the history of the covenant of
grace.²⁴
This works so that “the creation which in some degree approximate to this new
creation” is for the time being “under the promise.” The causa prima is only
known in prayer and causae secundae in gratitude. Barth mentions five condi-
tions for safe and responsible use of the causa concept, yet only lists four. Never-
theless, perhaps most important is that the link between the First Cause and the
particular cause cannot be made into a philosophical principle but something
only to be seen in the light of faith.²⁵ The necessity of his love is of a type
that does not imprison God. So, in any echo of the Christological genus idioma-
ticum Barth issues this elliptical statement: “God concurs with the creature, but
the creature does not ‘concur with God. That is, the activity of the creature does
not impose any conditions upon the activity of God.”
Perhaps freedom works both ways. As Bruce McCormack comments: “Barth
did not follow Thomas or the later Calvinists in making the efficacy of God’s eter-
nal will depend on a work that God does in human beings. He thoroughly revised
the Thomistic/Calvinist understanding of God’s providential activity so that the
autonomy proper to the creature could be fully honored.”²⁶ The figure of Christ
supplies the necessary objectivity. In him we see human will not being overrid-
den but its willed action being directed towards divine goals.
 Ibid., 105.
 Ibid.: “Und der Kausalbegriff hat dann (4) selbstverständlich keinen solchen Inhalt, kraft
dessen er aus dem Element eines Satzes christlichen Bekenntnisses und theologischer Erkennt-
nis zu einem Element eines philosophischen Weltbildes werden könnte. Denn es ist klar, daß die
causa princeps und die causa particularis sowohl je für sich als auch in dem concursus ihres
beiderseitigen causare dann, wenn die beiden Subjekte so verschieden und so vereinigt sind,
nur durch Offenbarung und nur im Glauben erkannt werden können […]. Dies sind die fünf Be-
dingungen, unter denen der für die Concursus-Lehre der alten Dogmatik so bezeichnende Ge-
brauch des Kausalbegriffes gutzuheißen ist. Die Erfüllung der vier ersten Bedingungen hängt
an der der fünften. Gerade von ihr war in der alten Dogmatik leider weit und breit nicht die
Rede. Kein Wunder darum, daß sie auch hinsichtlich der vier ersten Punkte nicht gesichert war.”
 Bruce L. McCormack, “The Actuality of God: Karl Barth in Conversation with Open Theism,”
in Engaging the Doctrine of God: Contemporary Protestant Perspectives, ed. Bruce L. McCormack
(Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008): 185 – 242.

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For Barth, Heidelberg Catechism 26 – 28 is the best of all Reformed state-

ments; but Calvin must be held partly responsible for a move towards fatalism
which affected Protestantism. Whatever denomination, “all of them lay sick in
the same ward, playing with the same concepts without reference to the biblical
centre.”²⁷ Since it is gracious, God’s almightiness doesn’t enslave, and there is
nothing fatalistic about its operation. Yet “the activity of God precedes, praecur-
rit, that of the creature. As we vindicate and follow the older Reformed theology
we must make this proposition first”;²⁸ John 5:17 (“My Father is still working”)
states a claim for divine preceding activity, not just knowledge, pace Calov’s
weak and passive spectator God. God initiates but does not set all in stone.
Laws of nature do not cause events, even while foreordaining the order and
form of creaturely activity, they point towards reality and are approximations
to it. Divine foreordination is much more certain and direct, and without a weak-
ening or constraining of the creature it is a predestinating activity through His
direct presence to the creature: praecursus as concursus.²⁹ “To describe the con-
cursus divinus we cannot use the mathematical picture of two parallel lines. We
have to understand the activity of God and that of the creature as a single ac-
tion.”³⁰ Thomas was wrong to keep them apart and characterise them as causes.
But this does not mean a creaturely concursus with God as per Quenstedt. Divine
action is “not simply a conditioning and determining of what already exists but a
pure and free and absolute positing.”³¹ It belongs to the order of grace and hence
unexpected: there is to be no talk of influence, emanation or force, rather of a
proving of manifold possibilities. To the “how does God do this?” question,
Barth answers: “the operation of God is His utterance to all creatures of the
Word of God which has all the force and wisdom and goodness of the Holy Spirit
[…] objectively, proceeding from God by His Word; and subjectively, moving to-
wards man by His Holy Spirit,”³² such that all of his activity is fatherly: all is set
in train by the divine address. Cocceius was right to speak of iussio, whereas the
Lutheran Quenstedt was guilty of accommodating God to fit himself to creatures.
The Reformed were right to insist in the Leiden Synopsis that creatures were only
free to the extent they participate in uncreated freedom. We find it hard to trust
God for our freedom. This true God is a God who sets free for new possibilities,
saving them from predictable outcomes – just as with the Apostles. Yet by the
 CD III/3, 116.
 CD III/3, 119.
 CD III/3, 130.
 CD III/3, 132 f.
 CD III/3, 135.
 CD III/3, 142.

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end of the sub-section Barth is admitting “that the activity of God follows that of
the creature.” God can accompany our words in a way that we cannot.
If concursus is about the church under God’s direction, then the category of
gubernatio seems to offer a less ecclesiocentric, and a wider and more “worldly”
vision. As for divine governing, well that is predicated on “Divine Kingship” – the
title of §49 in the English translation (the fuller German original is: Gott der Vater
als Herr seines Geschöpfs, which bears quite a different meaning):
We may well describe as the most gifted definition of the gubernatio that of J. Cocceius (S.
theol., 1661, 28, 38), who would not allow that the divine operation has any other goal but
God Himself, and he explains it quite simply as the actio Dei, in qua sapientiam suam in suis
operibus demonstrat […] in which God’s glory and wisdom are revealed for the benefit of all
creation.³³
God is not in the course of all world-historical events as such. Better to say that
he is in their being overruled, miraculously or quietly, but also in his affirming of
the state of things too.
Some of the older Reformed thought one could rightly speak of a fatum
Christianum, but the wiser ones like Johann Heinrich Heidegger thought better
of it. Fixed Fate and random Chance are both equally to be avoided. When
Barth writes that gubernatio is the ordinatio, qua Deus in ordinem redigit, he ad-
mits, “We have here an exact parallel to what we said earlier about the unity of
the divine praecursus and concursus.”³⁴ God controls freedom without taking it
away or robbing the creature of its dignity; it is right for a creature to have free-
dom within limits, otherwise it would be a second god, but this does not mean
ironing out all the creases, nor crushing individuality for some common good;
rather, as they are directed to a common end they are held together and co-ordi-
nated by the King of Israel, to be concrete. It is not so much about a right or
wrong development of the idea of divine governance, “but of the right or
wrong relationship to this reality to which the idea has reference”: “this supra-
mundane being can make itself present in the world only by free grace.”³⁵
Considering the events of the biblical history: “These particular events are
[…] an original and pattern of the general event.”³⁶ Further, “The general events
have their meaning in the particular […] the copy and reflection of the particular
events.”³⁷ This is what Frei and Higton in turn have called “figural history,”³⁸ as
 CD III/3, 159.
 CD III/3, 165.
 CD III/3, 177– 8.
 CD III/3, 183.
 CD III/3, 184.

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the reader moves from the special providence of salvation history to general his-
tory. The former is not the history of the Church, for it no more than world- his-
tory or the story of the Christian is the primary providence. No, that which
grounds all others is the history of the covenant and salvation, as the invisible
God-given weft of history:
World-occurrence […] is no longer the basically uninteresting and even boring universum of
monads all of which in principle have the same status and form, a universum to which our
thinking merely adds the basically uninteresting and even boring truth that both in its to-
tality and in each of those monads which have the same status and form, it is directed only
by God the chief monad.³⁹
The unity is not inherent but is imposed graciously. Governance is not a theoret-
ical but a practical-existential idea: it has a claim on our lives too. Yet there is no
revelation here, but hiddenness for the time being is maintained, and in the
meantime only the bible shows how history and economy are one.
Within world history there are certain events which hint that God has and
will penetrate history with his revelation: 1. the history of the bible as canon
and in its effects. 2. Church history: “we have to confess that Church history ac-
tually does have priority over all other history, that with all its insignificance and
folly and confusion in history generally, it is still the central and decisive history
to which all the rest is as it were only the background or accompaniment.”⁴⁰ In-
deed, one can point to God’s faithfulness and renewal, the persistence of the di-
vine call despite resistance. It has not been allowed to wander too far, receiving
not just corrections but revival. 3. The History of the Jews, in light of their enig-
matical character and their survival. 4. The limitation of human life. This is the
doctrine of the terminus vitae, of those older theologians who were wise to ac-
knowledge death’s proximity, with the Lutheran Hollaz arguing against the Re-
formed that God does not fix, although he foreknows, each one’s terminus, as
in the case of Hezekiah. Barth insists that from the human perspective, both
our beginning and our end are outwith our control howsoever or for whatever
time they are decreed: “Therefore my life consists in the possibilities offered
by this movement.⁴¹ This means each of us “wrestle”⁴²with this twofold move-
 Mike Higton, Christ, Providence, and History: Hans W. Frei’s Public Theology (London: T & T
Clark, 2004).
 CD III/3, 191.
 CD III/3, 207.
 CD III/3, 232.
 CD III/3, 265 f.: “Indem er lebt, das heißt indem er sich selbst erlebt, das heißt indem er sich
mit dem Auftrieb und Gefälle seiner eigenen Lebensbewegung auseinandersetzt, begegnet er ja

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ment so as to act and towards death. Finally, Barth mentions the role of angels
who declare God’s work, appearing on the margin of world-occurrence,⁴³ as
God’s primary witnesses. What is noticeable here is that there is no discussion
with philosophical (e. g. Martin Heidegger’s) thinking on the subject of “limita-
tion.” This is a very thin account of God’s actual direction of events: only in
the world to come will the lines be thick enough for us to be quite sure they
have always been there.
Lastly, in the final part of § 49, for the Christian who can see God’s universal
Lordship, “God the Father as the ruing Creator is obviously not an oppressor,
and Christ as a subject creature is obviously not oppressed.”⁴⁴ The Christian ex-
periences Lordship from within and learns the spirit of adventure in cooperation
with providence. For the freedom of the gospel comes in three forms: faith, obe-
dience, prayer. “In believing, a man becomes a Christian; in obeying, he is a
Christian.”⁴⁵ If the first movement of the Christian life is acknowledging Christ
and his cross, then the second movement is acting in external occurrences, in
selecting some opportunities and rejecting others. As for prayer in the first in-
stance this is about asking, as in the Lord’s Prayer supremely, where one is
even commanded to do so, although one must remember that asking is preceded
by hearing the call to participate in Christ’s threefold office. In taking the gift of
Jesus one takes freedom.⁴⁶ Here Barth brings us back to concursus as the graced
experience and free response to the covenantal God.
Reactions to Barth on Providence
One reason for giving so much space to Barth is that his work was both a sum-
mary of traditional Protestant theology of Providence through the lens of twen-
tieth century post-Enlightenment understanding and the most thorough, detailed
and comprehensive attempt to do that, bar none. It was however, also a rear-
guard action, an attempt to restate something of the spirit of the traditional ver-
auch ihnen, erlebt er auch sie. In seinen offenen oder blinzelnden Augen, in seinen klaren oder
unklaren Gedanken, in seinen entschlossenen oder unentschlossenen Taten sind auch sie für
ihn da, setzt er sich auch mit ihnen auseinander, erfährt er ihre Wirkung auf ihn und wirkt er
selber auch auf sie.”
 KD III/3, 270: “[…] gewissermaßen um dessen leuchtenden Rand gegen das allgemeine Welt-
geschehen hin.”
 CD III/3, 241.
 CD III/3, 253.
 CD III/3, 274.

Authenticated
sions of the doctrine, not least in observing the three sub-categories. Yet if
Barth’s contribution was a watershed moment, then it was a case of: Après lui,
le déluge.
First, there were suspicions that the Barthian account was much more pos-
itive about God’s involvement to help the world than the bible itself was. The
early interactions, such as that of Max Geiger in Barth’s second Festschrift
were friendly, as one would expect from a Festschrift essay.⁴⁷ However by 1976
in the review by Michael Plathow, Barth was allegedly blind to the Old Testament
evidence which makes it clear that divine predetermining worked without medi-
ation, unlike natural laws: so any “biblical” doctrine would have to be quite
strong meat of a determinist sort. Be this as it may, the stronger criticism is
that these sections of Barth’s Dogmatics were all a bit too full of triumphalistic
monism, as Gerrit C. Berkouwer had already noticed.⁴⁸ The Law-Gospel sequen-
tial ordering with the Gospel coming to provide a strong sense of leading for
Christians is too trite. Plathow concludes that “gospel” is something still
ahead of us, who dwell in this dark place.⁴⁹ So the answer is an eschatological
one. Even though the defence: “Barth leaves more room for creaturely participa-
tion than most in the Reformed Tradition,”⁵⁰ due in large part due to his person-
alism,⁵¹ may have merit, a rejoinder could simply be: “that is not saying very
much.” Plathow does not seem to give Barth due credit for his “eschatological
reservation.”
 Max Geiger, “Providentia Dei. Überlegungen zur christichen Vorsehungslehre und dem Prob-
lem der Beziehung Gott-Welt,” in Parrhesia: Festschrift für Karl Barth zum 80. Geburstag, eds.
Eberhard Busch, Jürgen Fangmeier, and Max Geiger (Zürich: EVZ-Verlag, 1966): 673 – 707.
 Gerrit C. Berkouwer, The Triumph of Grace in the Theology of Karl Barth: An Introduction and
Critical Appraisal, 2nd Ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1956).
 Michael Plathow, Das Problem des concursus divinus: Das Zusammenwirken von göttlichem
Schöpferwirken und geschöpflichem Eigenwirken in K. Barths ‘Kirchlicher Dogmatik’, Forschungen
zur systematischen und ökumenischen Theologie 32 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1975),
170: “Nur mittelbar wirken die Naturkräfte und -gesetze auf die Einzelkreaturen; die göttliche
Vorherbestimmung, das eigentlich Gestez, wirkt demgegenüber unmittelbar.”
 Darren M. Kennedy, “Providence and Personalism: Karl Barth in Conversation with Austin
Farrer, John Macmurray and Vincent Brümmer” (Ph.D.Thesis: University of Edinburgh, 2008),
153. Now published as Providence and Personalism: Karl Barth in Conversation with Austin Farrer,
John Macmurray and Vincent Brümmer (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2011).
 Although, thinks Kennedy, (176) Barth unfortunately did not quite rid his theology of causal
concepts. Yet, after starting where Barth ends (human limitation) very quickly we are in the dis-
course of election and reprobation – themes hardly mentioned. The real interest seems to be in
Barth’s idea of Das Nichtige of § 50, which he regards as an Achilles heel, since, he thinks, Barth
is accidentally deficient in eschatological concerns.

Authenticated
Second, Dietrich Ritschl’s account in a sharp and provocative essay publish-

ed in 1994 showed the extent to which Barth on Providence had been left be-
hind. The question about providence and protection is a question about the pro-
tecting grace-filled effects in my life as well as in church and society. But as for
God fore-knowing, acting and directing anything, it was Augustine who subject-
ed governance or gubernatio to prescience. For Calvin, God’s directing the church
was more the emphasis than his direction of the world. Yet surely Calvin was
overly “monistic” to argue that things which happen against God’s command
are somehow willed by Him. Ritschl complains that none of the contemporary
treatments of the subject are of any pastoral use, preoccupied as they are with
questions of absolute power, determinism and the hiddenness of God. As for
Barth’s treatment of the topic, well, it remains at the level of no more than a “crit-
ical new edition” of old Protestant doctrine of Providence, one which amounts to
mere repristination.⁵² Barth is not interested in explaining the world and its
events. Predestination is tied to the doctrine of God and Christology, while Prov-
idence is bound to the doctrine of Creation. So Barth does not actually make all
that much of the relationship between Providence and Christ, and there is an ex-
treme shortage of biblical passages. None of the old terms are explained let
alone defended. Ritschl says he heard Barth give the lectures which made up
§48 – 51 of Kirchliche Dogmatik, but he thinks Otto Weber did a better job around
the same time.⁵³ Barth gives no empirical dimension to his theology, and his
warning against theologies of history seem to have spilled over into his theology
of the present, even though the biblical writers surely encourage us to interpret
our own times, says Ritschl.⁵⁴
By 2004 Ritschl’s criticism of his former teacher had borne fruit. Caroline
Schröder responded to Ritschl’s accusation that Barth’s Doctrine of Providence
was no earthly use and went on to claim that this is because it is too ecclesial,
too pastoral, too cozily smug. She helpfully notes that unlike Predestination,
Providence does not belong with the Doctrine of God and in fact presupposes
creation which establishes the covenantal partnership which in turn shapes
Providence.⁵⁵ Her interest is in Barth’s focus in the final pages of § 49 on the be-
 Dietrich Ritschl, “Sinn und Grenze der theologischen Kategorie der Vorsehung,” ZDT 10
(1994): 117– 133, 122: “Es bleibt bei einer kritischen Neufassung der altprotestantischen Provi-
denzlehre.”
 Otto Weber, Grundlagen der Dogmatik, 7. Aufl (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag,
1995), esp. 560 – 67.
 Ritschl, “Sinn und Grenze,” 125.
 Caroline Schröder, “‘I See Something You Don’t See’: Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Providence,” in
For the Sake of the World: Karl Barth and the Future of Ecclesial Theology, ed. George Hunsinger

Authenticated
liever’s standing under Lordship which (contra Dietrich Ritschl) enables faith in
fatherly providence. Faith is something that holds on to providence as it hap-
pens, not from a distance in order to establish the data on the way to formulating
a Doctrine of Providence. This is important. She thinks Ritschl is unfair to argue
that Barth’s treatment lack a pastoral tone, not least in his treatment of conser-
vation: “The creature is protected from falling back into an apparent (schein) or
substance-less existence.”⁵⁶ Barth favours a God of continuity over a God of sur-
prises. There is a bit of eisegesis when she claims: “Outside the area of influence
common to both Word and Spirit, thus ‘outside’ in the world, there is just – but
still! – the Holy Spirit alone.”⁵⁷ The quote from Barth she gives (n. 33) does not
quite amount to this: “It is only of the Holy Spirit that he can learn to understand
situations, to recognize opportunities, to choose possibilities and to distinguish
them from impossibilities” (CD III/3, 258). Although up to this point quite sym-
pathetic to Barth, however, the more the essay goes on the more it seems that
Schröder finds the strengths of the Barthian approach to be dangerous. She ech-
oes Christian Link’s view that for Barth, providence “no longer stands in service
of explaining the world” and becomes removed from any discussion.⁵⁸ She is
worried about spiritual arrogance in looking at the times and reading them so
as to feel invulnerable, rather than being led to see that God has a plan for
the whole of creation and its people and that he wants to widen our expectations
and jolt our perspectives. She accuses Barth with his pious Christian myopia of
seeing the significance of Jewish history only in its fulfillment by Christ.
Randall Zachman’s “Response to Schröder’s ‘I See Something You Don’t
See’” in the For the Sake of the World volume is illuminating here:
If Schröder’s interpretation is correct – and if I have correctly understood it – then Barth’s

doctrine of providence would have as its purpose the revelation of the horizon and goal of
God’s electing work in Jesus Christ. If this is true, then it is hard to see how Barth could
really distinguish between the doctrine of election and the doctrine of providence. More-
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004): 115 – 135. Cf. Adolf Darlap, “Der Begriffe der Heilsgeschichte,”
in Mysterium Salutis, vol. 1: Die Grundlagen heilsgeschichtlicher Dogmatik, eds. Johannes Feiner
and Magnus Löhrer (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1965): 17– 90, 72: “Die Lehre von der Freiheit der end-
lichen und zeitlichen Schöpfung ist somit eine wesentliche Voraussetzung für die Heilsge-
schichte. In diesem Sinn ist die Schöpfung als Setzung der natürlichen geistigen Welt Vorausset-
zung für den Bund, wenn unter Bund eben die dialogische Partnershaft zwischen Gott und der
geistigen Kreatur verstanden wird, die auf der gnadenlhaften Selbstmitteilung der innersten
Herrlichkeit der dreifaltigen Gottes beruht.”
 Schröder, “‘I See Something You Don’t See’,” 121.
 Ibid., 129.
 This is Link, in his short piece: “Gestalt and theologischer Ort der Vorsehungslehre Karl
Barths,” ZDT 10 (1994): 113 – 115.

Authenticated
over, such an interpretation actually reverses Barth’s own position. Barth claims that elec-
tion reveals the goal and purpose of providence, not vice versa. The self-revelation of God
in Jesus Christ reveals that God has taken on himself the future that sinful humans have
chosen for themselves, in order to give himself to humans as their future.⁵⁹
Yet that is really just the same as saying that the range of election and provi-
dence are one and the same even if one is more visible than the other.⁶⁰ In a re-
cent essay Bruce McCormack has advanced the idea that that in Barth’s Dogmat-
ics as a whole, Providence was somehow sacrificed, even cannibalised or
swallowed in order to create a doctrine of Election and a soteriology that
made room for the idea of concursus in which the Spirit’s job is not to apply
the grace of Christ but to reveal in encounter the One in whom all is made
new.⁶¹ McCormack’s view seems to accord with that of Zachman. One can only
get to a belief in Providence through some awareness of Election. Barth allows
a limited glimpse of providence on a small scale in believer’s own lives (practi-
cal), not to be trumpeted as a theory but as a “comfort” (which is a bit more than
consolation). Yet at the same time Calvin is to be preferred for seeing God re-
vealed through contemplating his wisdom in natural creation, rather than histo-
ry. This shows us how low the stock of “Barth on Providence” has fallen. His doc-
trine of Providence has had the guts taken out of it, and remains as an
interpreted “doctrine of comfort.” In some ways the threefold division of the
topic holds: “The threefold rule over creation, history and the lives of individu-
als, directed especially to the overcoming of evil, constitutes the pattern of prov-
idence in Scripture. It is clear that it lies behind the later scholastic distinction
between general, special and most special providence.”⁶² If for Aquinas both
Providence and Predstination were related parts of God’s knowledge, then
Barth wants to separate them, seeing Providence as part of Predestination (Elec-
tion). Yet in doing that Barth holds the two very close, and does not (in Gorring-
e’s view) anchor it sufficiently to the Incarnation’s message of God’s condescen-
sion.
 Randall C. Zachman, “Response to Schröder’s ‘I See Something You Don’t See’,” in For the
Sake of the World: Karl Barth and the Future of Ecclesial Theology, ed. George Hunsinger (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004): 136 – 42, 138.
 With reference to CD III/3, 196, Zachman, “Response to Schröder,” 139: “The activity of the
one God is thus clearly distinguished by Barth into two distinct spheres, the sphere of God’s re-
vealed activity, the covenant fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and the sphere of God’s hidden activity, the
lordship of the Father of Christ over all creaturely history.”
 McCormack, “The Actuality of God,” 185 – 242.
 Timothy Gorringe, God’s Theatre: A Theology of Providence (London: SCM, 1991), 7.

Authenticated
Providence in post-confessional German theology from 1960 onwards 247
Third, one can speak of new directions away from Barth and Classical The-
ology. This deserves a separate section, as immediately follows.
Providence in post-confessional German theology

from 1960 onwards
Almost immediately after Barth’s great attempt had been published and translat-
ed, yet with hardly a mention of him, a significant note was sounded by Carl
Heinz Ratschow, the Marburg-based opponent of Bultmann, whose article in
the first volume of a new journal sounded something like a death knell for the
doctrine of Providence.⁶³ The traditional view of Providence had supplied a pic-
ture of God which protected believers from the feeling of abandonment by God.
The observation of the rise and fall of the Nazi Reich gave strength to this faith: a
providence-faith, which is often the crystallization-point of the recent Christian
faith, even faith as consolation. But this very general faith, that the world is
being put right, in a law of rendering what is due as in a “caring wisdom” is evi-
dent in the persisting of the faith of the Church, at a time of decline of conviction
about the substance of the Christian faith.
Ratschow was concerned that such a faith is not particularly Christian, but
instead was part of post-primitive societies’ interest in or craving for plans and
purposes, especially at times when the outside world was felt to be dark and
cruel. The God of Providence had been sadly separated from the God of creation
and even the God of salvation. It could be tied to predestination or angelology
(Aquinas) or reconciliation (Albrecht Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versöhnung
III, 167 ff.) in challenging its scholastic pre-modern placement in the doctrine
of Creation. This “no fixed abode” of the doctrine is a tell-tale sign that it is a
pseudo-doctrine. Simply put, Ratschow cheered on Luther’s attempt to let atone-
ment and providence doctrines mix, with the result that the former swallowed
the latter. While Barth wanted to posit Atonement-faith (Ratschow’s language)
as the presupposition of any faith in Providence, the neo-pietist Wilhelm Lütgert
thought just the reverse.⁶⁴ Ratschow agreed with neither side, because if we can-
not verify God’s activity in the world as Providence, we should just give it up. As
Wolf Kröttke explained, with one eye on Ratschow, a less extreme alternative was
 Ratschow, “Das Heilshandeln und das Welthandeln Gottes.”

 Wilhelm Lütgert, Schöpfung und Offenbarung: Eine Theologie des ersten Artikels, Beiträge zur
Förderung christlicher Theologie, II:34 (Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1934).

Authenticated
already there in Werner Elert’s Morphologie, where providence is actually the

trial (Anfechtung) one experiences as a result of God’s hiddenness.
One sees in Elert an extension of Ferdinand Tönnies’ famous Gemeinschaft/
Geselleschaft dichotomy.⁶⁵ For there is a sense that creation, including family and
piety, is preserved from the cruel events of history and society, in this Lutheran
view. Elert approved of Melanchthon’s anti-Stoic system of Natural Law yet
would add to that an eschatological Utopianism which would challenge the sta-
tus quo. God is not a causal agent such as to be ultimately behind the shocking
evils of history, large and small, but He works in and through the “givens” of cre-
ation. For Elert, religion is to allow one to unify and discern between different
ways of looking at the world, even as it tries to comprehend them all.⁶⁶ The king-
dom of God does not run historically, as the kingdom of Christ is not of this
world. World history is that of a world growing old, and Elert contrasts this
with the optimism of Leibniz.⁶⁷ Luther’s joy was in creation not in its perfectibil-
ity, creating good out of evil. Yet Luther’s emotion went deeper than Leibniz’s ex-
citement that his Lutheranism was part of a winning historical movement.
Elert, as appealed to by Scheliha, argued that in post-Enlightenment times
there had been an increase in risky contingency and a correlative increase in
human perception of this. Religion is something that tries to make sense of
the world and encourages “holding oneself together,” in the trust that one has
a destiny with belief in providence as individual self-determination. On those oc-
casions when events disturb routine one learns that fate is one part of life – the
hand one is dealt – but that the other part lies in playing that hand, to encounter
what one is given. God in such faith can be seen as present as ground of the proc-
ess of making meaning for oneself.⁶⁸ One is thereby helped to give a unity to all
the parts (fate – risk – my choice). God becomes the co-presence of all possibil-
ities, helping to arrange fate in a creative way that is productive of sense. The
unity of cross and Resurrection symbolizes that “sense-making self-determina-
 Elert, Morphologie II, 47.

 Arnulf von Scheliha, Der Glaube an die göttliche Vorsehung: Eine religionssoziologische, ge-
schichtsphilosophische und theologiegeschichtliche Untersuchung (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer,
1999), 339: “Religion ist in dieser Hinsicht die Form der Selbstdeutung, in der das notwendige
Bedingtsein der freiheitlichen und sinnhaften Selbstbestimmung durch kontingente Faktizität
durch das Gestelltsein in natürliche, geschichtliche und gesellschaftliche Bezüge durchgeklärt
wird.”
 Elert, Morphologie I, 415: “Leibniz begründet seinen teleologischen Gottesbeweis mit der
Vollkommenheit der Welt und seine Absicht geht auf den Beweis, daß sie die vollkommenste
ist, die denkbar war.”
 Scheliha, Der Glaube an die göttliche Vorsehung, 341: “Gott wird im Vorsehungsglauben als
Grund menschlicher Selbstbestimmung und Sinnproduktion vergegenwärtigt.”

Authenticated
tion” does not end in contingent fate but crosses over beyond it.⁶⁹ Human beings
have limits but they are also created in the divine image.
In all this one touches on human limitation with God as “ultimate limit,”
even while there is freedom in the Image to self-transcend. Moreover, in the mo-
ment of justifying faith, one appropriates as trust the transcendent unity of sense
which is only present to God and is interpreted as a concordance of all particular
images of sense.⁷⁰ This fate, common to all, includes the sense of futility of
meaning – that we need help for this and have to trust that more light will be
given. So there is a call to trust and hope in the face of the confusion of the ag-
gressive technological society.
But Kröttke wanted to correct Elert’s view, that Providence could be reduced
to a sense of transcendence and insisted that such “trial” is not to be viewed as
something positive, but rather it is the darkness before the dawn, when God fi-
nally comes to illuminate people through a “gospel of creation” (“Evangelium der
Schöpfung”).⁷¹ History itself is just darkness or the chaos of chance (“Schicksal-
haft”). Religion had explanatory power only for the past. The best one can hold
on to is the consolation of creation and its light. It took Wolfhart Pannenberg to
give a more upbeat account of this creation theology, as one in which creation
has space for God in the present: “The goal of the Spirit’s dynamic is to give crea-
turely forms duration by a share in eternity and to protect them against the ten-
dency to disintegrate that follows from their independence.”⁷² God occupiess in-
finite space from which He can get at all locations of creaturely activity. Jewish
thought in the 1st century AD often used the term “space” (makom) as a divine
name on the basis of Exod. 33:21 (“Behold, there is a place by me”), Exod. 24:10
(LXX), and statements in the Psalms like Ps 139:5 ff or 90:1.⁷³ God’s infinite space
is what is meant, not space as a receptacle of things. (Yet surely makom means
place – i. e. the temple – not space. That is not a “nit-picking” observation, but a
query as to whether God is ubiquitous to the point of undifferentiated presence.)
As Scheliha comments, Pannenberg tied Providence to the creation-order
and to the idea that creation has a goal. But in the tension between God’s creat-
 Ibid., 343: “Die Einheit von Kreuz und Auferstehung symbolisiert, daß sinnhafte Selbstbe-
stimmung nicht am kontingenten Schicksal endet, sondern über es hinausführt.”
 Ibid., 345: “Im Rechtfertigungsglauben wird die nur Gott gegenwärtige, strikt transzendente
Einheit des Sinns als Vertrauen angeeignet und als Hoffnung auf ein Zusammenstimmen aller
partikularen Sinngebilde ausgelegt (Eschatologie).”
 Wolf Krötke, “Gottes Fürsorge für die Welt: Überlegungen zur Bedeutung der Vorsehungs-
lehre,” Theologische Literaturzeitung 108 (1983): 242– 252.
 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 3 volumes. trans. Geofrey W. Bromiley (Edin-
burgh: T&T Clark, 1991), I:102.
 Ibid., I:85.

Authenticated
ing activity and His fulfilling of it all experiences are religiously equalised, so for
Pannenberg universal suffering’s being overcome by eschatological resolution is
what providence is all about.⁷⁴ Yet there is at least an insistence on meaningful
divine action in biblical salvation-history, as the headings of his early Offenbar-
ung als Geschichte of 1960 suggest.⁷⁵ Yet this does not imply a personal provi-
dence that feeds off interpretation of objective divine action in the history of
one’s own times. And the truth is that Pannenberg’s history is a rather large-
scale one with an interest in cosmic management of the Universe, rather than
on the pattern of human histories. General providence is what God works for so-
cieties; providentia specialissima is his care for “me,” yet this is dependent on a
special providence, which touches the church and Christian institutions as struc-
tures which communicate the religious content and support individuals. That ec-
clesial and communitarian location of Providence is Scheliha’s preference. Sche-
liha has a preference for theologies which describe Christian Providence from
the point of view of human experience (“von der menschlichen Sebsterfah-
rung”).⁷⁶ Hence, to define Providence as “divine world rule” is misleading.
One is once again reminded that Hitler saw God as providence, as a force that
shook and moved things. Divine Providence can be very deterministic and cal-
lous if seen this way. It is much better to consider providence as God’s presence:
Mitsein (Bonhoeffer) or even a care (Fürsorge) of God, and one might even speak
of God’s maternal touch (Mutterhänden). One needs to learn to recognise limits
in our existence and yet somehow to overcome these through an attitude of trust,
as reflected in the message of various hymns (Evangelisches Gesangbuch 326,5;
65,7; 376,3). One has the sure and certain hope of the resurrection but not the ex-
perience of it. The consolation of presence is as good as providence gets. Bon-
hoeffer was notably agnostic about knowing the counsels of God, at a time
when the worst kind of people were all too certain about it.
Another case of the transcendentalist subjectivisation of Providence can be
seen in the Dogmatik of Gerhard Ebeling, who insisted that the eschatological
Providence was not continuous with creation such that one does not have to
try too hard to make sense of the latter as though it were related to the natural
flourishing of a life-course. Meaningful divine planning transcends any such
small stories. Of course, Providence is to some extent about the containing and
maintaining of creation, which after all took place at the beginning of time,
 Scheliha, Der Glaube an die göttliche Vorsehung, 19: “In der Spanne zwischen dem Schöp-
fungs- und dem Vollendungshandeln Gottes werden alle Erfahrungen religiös egalisiert.”
 “Im Unterschied zu besonderen Erscheinungen der Gottheit ist die Geschichtsoffenbarung
jedem, der Augen hat zur sehen, offen. Sie hat universalen Charakter.” (ibid., 98)
 Scheliha, Der Glaube an die göttliche Vorsehung, 23.

Authenticated
not in time at its beginning, such that one might speak of its continuing. The fact
of sin means a containing action is needed. What God does not do is build on
creation. In a sense humans have, through sin, fallen out of the Creator’s
hands, and their world with them. Any new creation is eschatologically in-break-
ing and even threatening, not the fruit of a maturing process.⁷⁷ The idea of Prov-
idence is of Greek origin, while Predestination comes from the bible. The former
is concerned with the smallest of things (Martha-like, one could add). There is no
job too small for God. However thinking about Providence has been pervaded by
the notion of election and its attendant strong sense of “goal”. The matured
Christian belief in Providence is that both bible and philosophy have been
fused together. Hence one can say dogmatically that “Vorsehungsglaube” is the
application of the doctrine of justification to the understanding of all particular-
ities of the experience of the world and of life: The autojustification of God is the
justification of man by God in Christ; and Christianity turns theodicy into a sec-
ond person singular: “why have you abandoned me?”⁷⁸
For Gerhard Ebeling the experience of prayer was theology’s Grundakt from
which the whole doctrine of God emerged.⁷⁹ Ebeling saw the idea of God’s con-
servation of the world a law from which we need the gospel to free us. As Pierre
Bühler following in this tradition put it: providence is grace interrupting people
from standing too close to their lives.⁸⁰ Ebeling comes quite close to saying that
God allows things to be fairly open on the way to their final goal. Dietrich Ritschl
too has appreciated the idea that faith in providence takes shape in contempla-
tive prayer, where freedom is realised (“Die Gestalt des Vorsehungsglaubens als
Andacht”). Through this one can escape the clutches of homo sociologicus.
The problem has been, suggested Christian Link, when one has tried to
transpose faith in providence [small “p”] into a Doctrine of Providence [capital
“P”]. We should proceed cautiously from the order of knowing to make any
claims about what is the case. One also will have more success if one approaches
from the angle of eschatology and the open encounter with the Trinitarian God.
We move not only in the realm of Nature but also here in the realm of Grace. One
 G. Ebeling, Dogmatik des christlichen Glaubens, 3 volumes (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1979),
I:328.
 Ibid., III:519.
 Ibid., I:332.
 Pierre Bühler, Prédestination et Providence, Dossiers de l’Encyclopédie du Protestantisme 43
(Paris-Geneva: Cerf-Labor et Fides, 1999), 63. Cf. 13: “il en va de la priorité de l’initiative de Dieu
dans son action à l’égard des homes. La Providence l’exprime sous l’angle de la creation, du
point de vue du reel donné, en proclamant ce qui le constitue dans ses limites, sa consistance
et sa durée.”

Authenticated
only understands Providence through experiencing it and living it in light of the

coming God and the future as the source place of all providence.⁸¹ Link’s words
from 1991 remind one strongly of Jürgen Moltmann’s work from around that
time.⁸² Yet in the “small print” of p. 559 Link argues that Matt 10:29 (“are not
two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground out-
side your Father’s care”) is to be understood as a reminder of the special rela-
tionship with their heavenly father that believing, fiduciary experience offers.⁸³
It is the self-pouring love of the creator who wants to be close to his creation
and has nothing to do with the Almightiness of God. Link was resolute in his op-
position to the Barthian splitting of creation and providence and hence is happy
to speak of Providence as continuous creation. For the sake of showing respect to
creation’s independence the conservation doctrine has become very, well, con-
servative and ties creation to its original nature and its laws as something
fixed. Instead “conservation is as [Dietrich] Bonhoeffer put it, preparing the
way for the coming of grace.”⁸⁴ If Stoic fatalism influenced the early church,
Link rejoices that in the Leiden Synopsis (of all things!) one finds a very different
voice: (Synopsis purioris Theologiae, Disp. XI,3,6.) “Providence is the present tem-
poral maintenance, ordering and leading of all things and each individual event
to the goal fixed by God for them. It takes place in perfect wisdom and righteous-
ness towards God’s own honour.” The doctrine of Providence is now teleological
in accent, with God himself (not fate) mediating. The lilies and ravens show that
God has laid claim on the world, such that texts like Rom 8:28 bring the confes-
sion of God and his purposes to bear on world experience. There is no law for
providence, because it is for God to surprise us:⁸⁵ we lend our prayers to the com-
ing of the Kingdom. But God is free to respond to prayer, to change course as it
were. We look at Providence from the standpoint of Promise, which aims at cre-
ation’s fulfillment.
 Christian Link, Schöpfung, vol. 2: Schöpfungstheologie angesichts der Herausforderungen des

20. Jahrhunderts, Handbuch Systematische Theologie 7 (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlaghaus Gerd
Mohn, 1991), 554– 58.
 Jürgen Moltmann, Der Geist des Lebens: Eine ganzheitliche Pneumatologie (Munich: Chr. Kai-
ser, 1991); and Das Kommen Gottes: Christliche Eschatologie (Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus
1995).
 “Was Vorsehung, an seiner biblischen Wurzel begriffen, heißt – das wird an dieser Stelle
überscharf deutlich –, ist nichts Geringeres, darum aber auch nichts anderes als das Bekenntnis
Gottes zu dem besonderen Weg eines Menschen in seiner Welt. Als der Schöpfer definiert sich
Gott durch seine Bindung an die sichtbare Welt.” (Link, Schöpfung II, 559).
 Link, Schöpfung, II:562.
 Ibid., 571.

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However in his more recent work Link seems less sure about some of the em-
phases in his earlier contribution. His version seems even more pastoral in tone,
and even less conservative. Providence used to be viewed as a doctrine made to
bridge creation (perceived as a past event) and the present. “In an attempt to fill
that gap (as it was seen), the western theological tradition set alongside the doc-
trine of creation the concept of providence, borrowed from Stoic philosophy […]
in the form of providence it is possible for us to experience the world as creation,
rather than to understand the world only as the object of a doctrinal state-
ment.”⁸⁶ (I’m not sure that gubernatio is God guiding the future [as Link does]:
perhaps it is better to see it as God’s diachronic active work of initiative, past,
present and also future.) Link calls for a concept that “could mediate between
world history and salvation history, as does the ‘plan’ or ‘counsel’ in the book
of Job.”⁸⁷ God does not steer history, but offers new possibilities to people in
it. God is not a shepherd so much as He is a king, “for a king acts among his
people through the use of law, with decrees and proclamations, and not in a di-
rectly causal influence.”⁸⁸ (This seems naïve: kings do quite a lot of causing and
influencing.) The influence of Dietrich Ritschl’s discussion of metaphor seems
strong here.
Link complains that most of the German-speaking theologians have stuck
with connecting Providence to Creation, and with just presuming God’s sover-
eignty and intervention to work in rather abstract a way. Christoph Schwöbel
is praised by Link for seeing God’s action as that which constitutes reality, or
grounds existence, but stops there, and lets the categories of Revelation and In-
spiration take over. “Divine action” was a term taken over into bible and theol-
ogy from outside. Causes do not act, only “persons” do. A king makes laws, but
is not responsible for all that happens. Process theology allows us to think of
God as wounded. It might also be time to move Providence into the area of
the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit, and hence the new creation – in doing just
this both Moltmann and Welker⁸⁹ have moved closer to the Eastern Orthodox
idea of “divine energies.” Link thinks that Kraftfeld’ is appropriate language to
use, given that “king” is only a metaphor for God. There is nothing in the
bible to prevent us saying that the world is shot through with the spirit even if
 Christian Link, “Providence: An Unsolved Problem’ in Creation in Jewish and Christian tradi-
tion, eds. Henning Graf Reventlow and Yair Hoffman, JSOTS 319 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic
Press, 2002): 266 – 276, 267.
 Ibid., 272.
 Ibid., 275.
 Michael Welker, Gottes Geist: Theologie des Heiligen Geistes (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchen-
er, 1992).

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the victory over evil is only partial as God struggles with it. Yet consolation and
protection are available! The Spirit can work without a word having to interpret
its effects, pace the Reformers. God does not create good from evil, but He does
create new from old.
One can see in this rather “scatter-gun” series of objections and arguments,
which is self-consciously pastoral in tone, a provocation to launch the theology
of Providence in a new direction. Link returned to the theme in his Abschiedsvor-
lesung at Bochum, which was published that same year (2005).⁹⁰ To deal with
this doctrine means stepping out from the safe place of the Church. The likes
of the hymn-writer Paul Gerhardt (Barth’s favourite!) were far too ready to attrib-
ute the worst experience to God as ultimate Author. So how then can God expect
us to be ethical? Also, the point of a doctrine of Providence is not to be able to
say what the goal of history is, but to say whether human existence has any
sense at all. The biblical help is slim: Genesis does not contain the concept of
continuous creation, let alone the term. Today, as Ernst Saxer put it, we think
of the gracious God more in terms of Providence than in Atonement.⁹¹ Although
the Old Testament very much conveys the impression that God never abandons
the bridge of the ship one has to move on to the New Testament for a Christian
doctrine. Calvin brought predestination and providence much closer together
such that both were about God’s foreordaining and not just foreknowledge (as
for Augustine and Thomas) of all world events. But to avoid such Determinism,
Link insists that a faith in providence as my experience of God’s guidance is per-
missible whereas a doctrine of Providence that “explains” God neatly is less at-
tractive.⁹² One cannot speak of God’s action in terms of causation any more. It is
better to speak of God opening up ways through that which has been dealt to
people (as Schubert Ogden did in the early 1960s).⁹³ This involvement gets expe-
rienced as the shining of his presence or countenance (cf. Ps 80:4, with reference
to Johannes Fischer).⁹⁴ When God withholds this, then reality falls back into its
past. It is far too bold to speak of God as the all-determining reality as the old
 Christian Link, “Die Krise des Vorsehungsglaubens: Providenz jenseits von Fatalismus,”
Evangelische Theologie 65 (2005): 413 – 28, 415.
 Saxer,Vorsehung und Verheißung Gottes, 43.
 Link, “Die Krise des Vorsehungsglaubens,” 420: “So bleibt ein erkennbarer Zwiespalt zwi-
schen dem Vorsehungsglauben, der sich zu Gottes Führung bekennt, und der Vorsehungslehre,
die auf ein geschlossenes Bild des göttlichen Handelns drängt.”
 Schubert Ogden, Christ without Myth: A Study Based on the Theology of Rudolf Bultmann
(New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961).
 Johannes Fischer, ‘Wie wird Geschichte als Handeln Gottes offenbar? Zur Bedeutung der An-
wesenheit Gottes im Offenbarungsgehehen,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 8 (1991):
211– 231.

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Dogmatics used to: we cannot say that he is actively present in the death of a
starving child. (However, is it better to say that God is not present? Something
more about what is meant by “presence” needs saying.) Link thinks that in
his earlier work (Schöpfung), he was wrong to put Providence as an “appendix”
to Creation: it would be better to follow Dietrich Ritschl and Reinhold Bernhardt
and put it in the horizon of Pneumatology. He then suggests that Providence
works when we move with the laws of nature and history in the power-field
(Kraftfeld) of his Spirit: this keeps things “relational.”⁹⁵ To see God’s face we
must take some steps – providence is not for spectators but those prepared to
act, or move. It means challenging the way things are going with the Word of
God, and hoping to correct or supply a Gegenwind (Dietrich Ritschl).⁹⁶ It gives
new meaning to events through their transformation, and so asks not the why
(warum) question, but “for what purpose” (wozu)? God doesn’t always bring
good out of evil, but he does create new from the old, according to the bible.
(Yet he then immediately quotes Rom 8:35 where the terms “old” and “new”
are not used. John 9:3 [“Neither this man nor his parents sinned […] but so
that the works of God might be displayed”] might have been a more obvious
“go-to” verse.) God is envisaged as a resistance fighter leading willing people
out of enemy territory.
Something similar – i. e. Providence reduced to presence – can be felt in the
work of those theologians who want to speak of a non-oppressive presence of
God the Holy Spirit as a “force-field” or area into which one might move. For in-
stance, Reinhold Bernhardt has called for a transposing of the doctrine into the
article of the Holy Spirit and was critical of Calvin’s splitting of God’s “over-
sight”: dividing God’s left hand of providence from his right hand of salvation
means that the latter gets kept for a very small group of folk. It would be
much better if the former hand could retain some salvific function, so that the
more fundamental distinction is to be drawn between original divine creative ac-
tion (to which “conservation” belongs) and divine creating anew or transforma-
tion.⁹⁷ This is closer to the biblical picture of both testaments, and is not naïvely
 Link, “Die Krise des Vorsehungsglaubens,” 425. Cf. Link, “Gestalt und theologischer Ort”.
 Link, “Die Krise des Vorsehungsglaubens,” 427: “Die alte Theologie sprach von Gottes “nach-
folgendem” Handeln (succursus), modern gesagt: von seiner therapeutischen “Nachsorge”, die
uns in den Folgen schrecklicher Ereignisse nicht allein lässt, sondern sie auf das “österliche”
Ziel hinordnet, dass aus dem Tod – schon heute – ein neues, verwandeltes Leben hervorgehen
soll.” This with reference to Dietrich Ritschl’s “Gott Wiedererkennen,” in Bildersprache und Ar-
gumente: Theologische Aufsätze (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchner, 2008): 3 – 75.
 Reinhold Bernhardt, Was heißt ‘Handeln Gottes’? Eine Rekonstruktion der Lehre von der Vor-
sehung Gottes, (1. Aufl.; Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1999), 451: “Sie tendiert dazu, die

Authenticated
claiming that all is continuity. For there is a resistance (Widerstand) in creation

that has to be overcome through Redemption and the New Testament; it is the
same power however that blesses and that frees. God also works to help the
Cross be seen beneficially; he doesn’t cause the cross’s evil as Unheilstat but
helps to make sense of it, or gives it new sense through his postcuratio.
Again, Günter Klein claims that the New Testament tells us not to believe in
a God who steers history.⁹⁸ Ebeling was right to insist that kingdom of God is not
a rival kingdom in this world; and even believers cannot see his governance.
Klein has problems with Krötke’s distinction of pre-eschatological and eschato-
logical divine action (“voreschatologischem und eschatologischem Handeln
Gottes”). Does God actually fight evil all the time in order to let creatures
“be,” as Krötke suggests, or is it not better to confine that activity to the Cross
alone? Ebeling noted that God cannot be observed but is tied up in our own
self-knowledge (Dogmatik I, 204).
It is noticeable that in the array of New Testament passages that Klein pro-
vides, the book of Acts seems altogether missing from a very selective group. To
argue that “the devil is abroad” should be seen as message of Ephesians 2, or
that Luke teaches that only in church can one find safety seems a very nega-
tive-sounding account of Paul.⁹⁹ The irony is that for all that, this philosophy op-
poses any idea that history has a Reason; it tends to arrest providence in the
freeze-frame of the crucifixion, the Hegelian “speculative Good Friday,” where
theology is reduced to Philosophy that teaches that History, even in its most re-
ligious moments, is about Reason. God’s directing power is kept in eschatologi-
cal reserve.
Similarly Wilfried Härle eschews speaking of God’s action (Handlung) and
prefers to speak of God’s effect (Wirken). The latter denotes activity over a period
Werke der ‘linken Hand’ Gottes zu entsoteriologisieren und die der ‘rechten Hand’ auf die Er-
wählten und Gerechtfertigten zu verengen.” This is to be contrasted with Bernhardt’s preferred
position: “Dadurch wird das Vorsehungswirken Gottes nicht einfach hin zum Heilshandeln, wo
aber ist es (wie das Heilshandeln) auf ein heilshaftes Ziel ausgerichtet.” “Die Unterscheidung
zwischen dem kreativen (productio, formatio), dem ihm zuzuordnenden konservativen (conserva-
tio, stabilisatio) und dem innovativen (transformatio, creatio nova) Wirken Gottes, deren grund-
legende Bedeutung für die Bestimmung dieses Wirkens sich im zurückgelegten Untersuchungs-
gang immer klarer herauskristallisierte, ist dem Dual von Schöpfungs- und Heilshandeln
vorzuziehen.”
 Günter Klein, “‘Über das Weltregiment Gottes’: Zum exegetischen Anhalt eines dogmati-
schen Lehrstücks”, ZThK 90 (1993): 251– 283, 276: we need to renounce mistaken exegetical ma-
noeuvres to reinforce this tottering dogma (“Exegetische Fehlanzeige für den dogmatischen
Topos”).
 Ibid., 271.

Authenticated
of time and is constitutive of existence (“Gottes daseinskonstituierendes Wirken”)

rather than causally operative in it.¹⁰⁰ Divine love does more than excite another
but creates that other, yet in doing so relates to it. Providence as conservation
links this activity to that of God in history. Härle insists on steering a course be-
tween deism and determinism (that, e. g. would argue that Cain’s murder of Abel
was just as much willed by God as the deeds of the Good Samaritan).¹⁰¹ It is God
who works with us in our work, and not vice-versa, that God enables us to work,
as the one who lovingly constitutes existence, not as a cause. He prefers to think
of God’s gubernatio as something that limits evil outwardly, for anything more
requires us to get into the territory of soteriology.
Christoph Schwöbel has contributed across the language divide, but partic-
ularly cogent was his 1987 essay. In its opening lines he implies that God grounds
and determines the existence of believers: it is Church-centred. Providence in
that sense needs to be acknowledged and received in order to be such.¹⁰²
God’s action is constitutive of Christian faith, although Kantians deny it cognitive
content, materialists any connection with reality and logical empiricists deny it
sense, though much the same can be said of human intentionality, at least ac-
cording to the last two. God’s action grounds faith and is its content, and any
discussion of God’s action must be self-involving from the side of the believing
creature. Schwöbel likes the idea of creatio continuata (“continued” as distinct
from “continuous”), for it keeps existence as contingent rather than necessary.
Nature’s laws imply a self-limitation of God. In Jesus there is a God-man relation
established which is a model for our understanding of divine-human relating.
Awareness of this divine freeing gives space for human freedom to be encour-
aged to act. There is (1) God’s creative action as grounding existence, (2) his re-
vealing action concerning his relationship to his graced creation, and (3) God’s
inspiring action as the enabling of confidence in the truth of the constitution of
reality. The eschaton is perhaps the Koextensivität of these three.¹⁰³ God acts in-
 Wilfried Härle, “Gottes Wirken,” in Dogmatik (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2000): 282– 302.
 Ibid., 290.
 Discussing Christian proclamation, see Christoph Schwöbel, “Die Rede vom Handeln
Gottes im Christlichen Glauben: Beiträge zu einem systematisch-theologischen Rekonstruktions-
versuch,” in Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie I: Vom Handeln Gottes, eds. Wilfried Härle and Reiner
Preul, Marburger Theologisch Studien, 22 (Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 1987): 56 – 81, 57: “Und
sie geschieht in der Hoffnung, daß die Wahrheit der Rede vom Handeln Gottes in Israel und in
Jesus Christus so einleuchtet, daß sie als wahre Bestimmung menschlicher Existenz gewiß wird.
Das heißt, daß die in den biblischen Texten als Evangelium bezeugte Erinnerung an das Han-
deln Gottes und die darin begründete Erwartung des Handelns Gottes als Erfahrung in der Exis-
tenz des Glaubenden gewiß wird und so als wahr anerkannt werden kann.”
 Ibid., 71.

Authenticated
tentionally hence personally, and personal intentional action is sufficient ex-

planation. God knows the world as future: these three types bring the Trinitarian
structure of Christian belief to the fore.¹⁰⁴ God works that way immanently to
produce such effects ad extra. Schwöbel seems more positive than his fellow
contributors, such as Härle, but also Reiner Preul, who has trouble with conceiv-
ing of action (Handeln) as attributable to any referent other than a human one.¹⁰⁵
(One might argue that if animals are beneath action of an intentional nature then
it is all the more plausible that it applies to God, even if the how of divine action
remain mysterious. To claim that talk of God acting “rationally” would make him
seem a super-human, seems poor reasoning. God is hardly going to be less ra-
tional than humans.) Preul worries as much about the riskiness of a model of
psychokinesis as the revelatory positivism, which refuses to admit the question:
how does God act? One possibility is that all actions of God are grounded in the
one act of His work in Christ, just as in creation God is better thought of as the
ground of all possible creaturely action. Preul concludes that our concern that
God should act reflects a spirituality that believes in “whole person” and
hence requires that the God who is addressed have complementary, correspond-
ing qualities to “us.” In other words, God as agent is a fiction of religious psy-
chology. (It might not come as a surprise that the follow-up volume from Mar-
burg was entitled “Erfahrungen” [Experiences],¹⁰⁶ as though the question of
divine action had become an unpromising one.)
In the Festschrift for Eberhard Jüngel, Wilhelm Hüffmeier notes that Provi-
dence as Vorsehung (πρόνοια) very quickly became Fürsorge (ἐπιμέλεια) (with
John of Damascus De fide orth. II,29). Günther Klein is one who has overreacted
against traditional Providence doctrine by claiming that the New Testament
knows nothing of this. Yet Luke sees Christ’s coming as an act in history! If
one can see the Creator through the Redeemer, than can one not see the Sustain-
er and Governor of Creation to this very day? There can be no vacuum between
 Ibid., 79: “Damit wird das Handeln Gottes zur Welt als transeuntes Handeln in Schöpfung,
Offenbarung und Inspiration in Gottes trinitarischer Bezogenheit als immanentes Handeln
begründet.”
 Reiner Preul, “Problemskizze zur Rede vom Handeln Gottes” in Marburger Jahrbuch Theo-
logie I: Vom Handeln Gottes, eds. Wilfried Härle and Reiner Preul, Marburger Theologische Stud-
ien, 22 (Marburg: N.G. Elwert Verlag, 1987): 3 – 11.
 Wilfried Härle and Reiner Preul, eds., Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie 2: Theologische Gegen-
wartsdeutung, Marburger theologische Studien 24 (Marburg: Elwert, 1988). And Wilfried Härle
and Reiner Preul, eds., Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie 3: Lebenserfahrung, Marburger theologi-
sche Studien 29 (Marburg: Elwert, 1990).

Authenticated
creation and fulfillment, and Panneneberg and Jüngel are agreed on this.¹⁰⁷ The
power of God is felt within this life, and yet God’s rule is experienced “in the
image of the Lamb” (Jüngel). Part of God’s modus operandi in the world is to
give his creatures strength. It would be wrong to think that the Old Testament
history, or history in general, always goes against God’s will, for even the
story of Ann Frank as it is told today is, in its telling, a victory over evil. At
least there is a nuance, mixed economy of setback and progress, which God
works in and through humans.¹⁰⁸ Reformed piety always had a predisposition
to encourage self-absorption while believing it was enforcing the Lordship of
Christ over each and every “me.”
“‘I believe that God’ “ – and then, her face brightening, briskly finished the sentence: “‘cre-
ated me, together with all living creatures […]. And Clothes and shoes,’” she said, “ ‘meat
and drink, hearth and home, wife and child, acre and cow’.” (Thomas Mann, Budden-
brooks, p.7)
The narrative unravelling of family fortunes in Mann’s famous novel does not get
to the real kernel of Providence in the Heidelberg Catechism, which is preserva-
tion of the soul through all of life’s dangers.¹⁰⁹ For Barth, the Heidelberg Cate-
chism brought the question about God’s action into “my life,” even if any state-
ment about providence must be filtered through Christology.¹¹⁰ Matthew 10:30
(“every hair of your head is counted”) suggests a most special providence to-
wards Christians, given the co-text of Matth 10:32 (confessing), a feature of
which Beintker and Hüffmeier seem oblivious. Barth is on the right lines to
see that Providence works where it is closer to Christ, for Christians qua Christi-
ans.
 Wilhelm Hüffmeier, “Deus providebit? Eine Zwischenbilanz zur Kritik der Lehre von Gottes
Vorsehung,” in Denkwürdiges Geheimnis: Beiträge zur Gotteslehre – Festschrift für Eberhard Jüng-
el zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Ingolf Dalferth (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004): 237– 258, 249: “Doch
die Differenzierung des königlichen Amtes Christi in regnum gratiae, regnum gloriae und re-
gnum potentiae, gelegentlich auch naturae (z. B. bei Johann Gerhard) enthält ähnliche Spannun-
gen wie die der göttlichen Eigenschaftslehre. Wie verhält sich das regnum gratiae zum regnum
potentiae Christi?”
 Hüffmeier, “Deus providebit?,” 255.
 “Daß ich mit Leib und Seele im Leben und im Sterben nicht mein, sondern meines getreuen
Heilands Jesu Christi eigen bin, der mit seinem teuren Blut für alle meine Sünden vollkömmlich
bezahlt und mich aus aller Gewalt des Teufels erlöst hat und also bewahrt, daß ohne den Willen
meines Vaters im Himmel kein Haar von meinem Haupt kann fallen, ja auch mir alles zu meiner
Seligkeit dienen muß.” The Buddenbrooks family motto was “Deus providebit,” as Wilhelm
Hüffmeier “Deus providebit?,” 238, mentions.
 Barth, CD III/3, 461.

Authenticated
We see Schwöbel and Hüffmeier having more constructive versions of the

doctrine, yet they are aware that they are swimming against an anti-providenti-
alist tide, and yet refuse the high road of any special providence, made available
in Christ.
English-speaking discussion
In his famous Journal of Religion article of 1963, Langdon Gilkey started off his
treatment of the doctrine by clarifying that the doctrine of Providence is a re-
vealed one and comes to us in moments of providence also. Admittedly one
does not make great claims for the Mighty Acts of God in History, and God’s
working has been “pushed back” into our hearts, even though at the same
time as modern believers “we insist on moral freedom” in what he traces back
to Arminianism.¹¹¹ Whereas Bultmann and his followers took the gospel to be
about world-transcending faith, or, in Gilkey’s terms, the first two persons
were left in favour of the third alone,¹¹² Barth continued to attempt a providence
of a God of Nature and History. Yet in Gilkey’s mind: “It [Barth’s approach] caus-
es more than a slight uneasiness that all other creatures in existence have only
the telos or end of becoming a ‘theatre’ of the covenant community.”¹¹³ Barth
seems to get lost in personalism of covenantal language. And for Das Nichtige
to be almost a self-determining realm seems to exclude God’s sovereignty. Gilkey
thinks it would better to see this existentially, that each of us suffers from a lack
of subjective meaning that God is required to help us with.
When, therefore, such a structure of meaningful activity vanishes, the things of the self lose
their focus and point, and therefore their continuity, and life becomes merely a matter of
eating, sleeping and brushing one’s teeth. And with this dissipation of the self into a
mere series of disjointed activities and unrelated experiences, bound together by no struc-
ture of personal relations or of vocational purpose, the sense of the reality of the self itself
dissipates and das Nichtige threatens to overwhelm the creature.¹¹⁴
In this sense the old orthodox doctrine of God’s “preservation of the creature
against non-being” means more than the gift of existential being within a mean-
ingful context, and that implies the divine ordering of historical and personal life
 Langdon Gilkey, “The Concept of Providence in Contemporary Theology,” Journal of Reli-
gion 43 (1963): 171– 92, 177.
 Ibid., 185.
 Ibid., 187.
 Ibid., 189.

Authenticated
as well as its objective continuation. (Yet surely that is a task for divine concursus
and gubernatio.) Barth sees clearly the relation of preservation and das Nichtige,
but the relation, as he depicts it, is too theoretical and abstract, for he cannot
imagine das Nichtige experientially to see its real import.¹¹⁵ Barth is trying to
be objective and gets criticised for being theoretical. This was something
which Barth himself was aware of. Although the Incarnation is the most concrete
of events, God himself is “Other” enough that he demands to be thought of in
terms that sound Idealist”.
Gilkey warmed to his task: “The modern consciousness, and we ourselves,
are saturated by the sense of the contingency of events, that they are not neces-
sary or determined from eternity, that they may or may not be, depending on the
other contingent events in their context.”¹¹⁶ One can add contingency to a list of
relativity, transience, autonomy. One might want to add to that creativity. “No
factor is a cause in history until it elicits a human response, and that invariably
involves human interpretation, intentions, norms, judgments and decisions.
Thus history is a process of centered decisions in which there is an unremovable
‘given,’ a destiny, but in which also freedom and spontaneity – and so contin-
gency and purposes – are at work.”¹¹⁷ There is a healthy dialectic between
old, traditional structures and new possibilities, as the Old Testament encourag-
es us; God allows all this contingency to be possible. It is giving the Apollo of
order and the Dionysius of the dynamic each their due. God is not subject to
process but is over transience so as to be creative. Our creative possibility re-
quires something that allows it to become actuality to be present.¹¹⁸ Too often
one sees the transformation of destiny into fate through sin: “Yahweh is, says
Hosea […] the raging lion with which Israel in sin has to deal”: “concrete history
as we experience it has a dialectical, catastrophic, tragic character analogous to
this biblical drama.”¹¹⁹ This means to recognise judgement as ours, even as God
destroys destructiveness, but also to discern God’s sovereignty as creative of
kairos. But for this one needs more than the process: “Providence must, there-
fore, be supplemented by incarnation and atonement and ultimately eschatolo-
gy;” Grace is required – seeping in to the heart of the same history in the new,
purified relation to the depths of one’s being. “The eschatological goal of God,
like the creative work of God, extends far beyond the bounds of that community
 Ibid., 190.

 Langdon Gilkey, Reaping the Whirlwind: A Christian Interpretation of History (New York:
Seabury Press, 1976), 242.
 Ibid., 244.
 Ibid., 251.
 Ibid., 263.

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and its history. However the character and the goal of the universal work of prov-
idence, and so the quality of God’s eschatological future, are revealed here.”¹²⁰
There is in Gilkey a surrender of Providence to Eschatology,
An argument at once milder in tone but stricter in content was provided in
the mid-1980s by Maurice Wiles. For instance, in the petitions of the Lord’s Pray-
er one is: “acknowledging the givenness of the world […] but with that acknowl-
edgment goes also the recognition that it is human creativity that has learnt and
is still in process of learning how best to use those conditions for the growing of
the corn and that it is co-operative human labour that is needed to turn it into
bread.”¹²¹ Human beings then are also involved in the making of God’s will, in
what Wiles calls an “open concept” of Providence, God lures us by the inspiring
figure of Jesus:¹²² “This then is the fashion of God’s acting in the world – making
possible the emergence, both individually and corporately, of a genuinely free
human recognition and response to what is God’s intention in the creation of
the world.”¹²³ Much of what we think is graced action is psychological relaxa-
tion. For Gordon Kaufman, a major influence on Wiles, God acts with and
through others as Solomon did in employing expert stonemasons to build the
temple. Wiles’s God subcontracts.¹²⁴
As for personal lives, it was Herbert Henry Farmer’s concern that there
should be grounds for confidence “that man’s personal life is the concern of a
wisdom and power higher than his own.”¹²⁵ Is it that Christians expect more
than just the sun and the rain (Mt 5:45)? Augustine (De spir et litt 34,60) observed
it is ours to receive God’s grace and grant our consent to it. So Divine Action is
about Friendship rather than competing forces. Yet, Wiles wonders, does God
persuade as David Pailin claims?¹²⁶ Does he do that for all? If God does this
only for the receptive then this avoids Wiles objection: “If God is always offering
the best possibility for the future, there seems little room for particular acts of
grace.”¹²⁷ With Austin Farrer, God gives energy into world at creation: the
whole process is his one intentional action, which he borrows from Gordon Kauf-
 Ibid, 268.

 Maurice Wiles, God’s Action in the World: The Bampton Lectures for 1986 (London: SCM,
1986), 106 f.
 Ibid., 104 f.
 Ibid., 103.
 Ibid., 97.
 Ibid., 71.
 David A. Pailin, “God and Creation – a Process View,” Epworth Review 9 (1982): 72– 86.
 Wiles, God’s Action in the World, 77.

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man.¹²⁸ He asks: “Must the God who is the power of all being also be the power
of all acting?”¹²⁹ Also, to deny the possibility of self-limitation is to limit God,
here echoing Barth. Yet, God is not a person as we are, and divine self-limitation
leaves us to get on with things.¹³⁰ God on this scheme is more Master Planner or
Director than Master Actor.¹³¹
In the early 1980s, Vernon White reviewed the 1960s-70s works by William H.
Vanstone (Love’s Endeavour)¹³² and Peter Baelz¹³³ and argued against them that
although, admittedly, divine love may not and cannot control the beloved, never-
theless it may and can control the circumstances around the beloved.¹³⁴ It is all
too tempting to see God merely “standing with” victims. But God can also inter-
vene, asserts White, at least mediately. He can use x to help y. Whereas Schubert
Ogden’s God was not concerned about particulars, the living God reacts to events
and synthesises them, summing up past and present and setting a set of future
possibilities.¹³⁵ White accuses Wiles of Pelagianism,¹³⁶ somewhat unfairly, at
least on the account that Wiles gave in 1986.
Paul Helm’s belief in a “no risk providence,” is much truer to traditional Re-
formed theology. With Calvin, Helm thinks that God ordains evil without com-
manding it. Yet it is not worth trying to learn anything from the course of events.
Everything is in God’s control. We affirm that God has a plan definitely, not that
we know what it is. Hence: “But providence, as such, is mute, and we should be
 Gordon. Kaufman, “On the Meaning of ‘Act of God’,” in God the Problem (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1972): 119 – 147. Cf. Thomas F. Tracy, “Enacting History: Ogden
and Kaufman on God’s Mighty Acts,” Journal of Religion 64 (1984): 20 – 36. Also, Kaufman,
God the Problem, 146: “It must be admitted that the doctrine of providence here entailied is
more austere than the pietistic views often found in Christian circles God’s subordinate acts
here are governed largely by his overarching purposes and ultimate objectives, not simply by
the immediate needs or the prayerful pleas of his children.”
 Wiles, God’s Action in the World, 20.
 Ibid., 79 f.
 Paul Fiddes, Participating in God: A Pastoral Doctrine of the Trinity (London: DLT, 2000),
127: “God hods out, for example, the possibility of living a full human life to all in an impartial
way, but only some cash their options and take up the offer.” Then, at 134: “God can offer gen-
eral aims to the whole of the world and humanity, and in particular events God can offer a pur-
pose, a special purpose, an ‘elective purpose’, designed to achive something new and decisive.”
 William. H. Vanstone, Love’s Endeavour, Love’s Expense (London: Darton, Longman &
Todd, 1977).
 Peter Baelz, Prayer and Providence: A Background Study (London: S.C.M., 1968).
 Vernon White, The Fall of a Sparrow: A Concept of Special Divine Action (Exeter: Paternoster,
1985), 89.
 Ibid., 75.
 Ibid., 71.

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deaf to any message that we may think it is transmitting to us” –rather we

should be looking to do what he commands, avoid what he forbids.¹³⁷ “Christi-
ans […] have no special insight into the unfolding course of events.”¹³⁸
On the “risky” view, argues Helm, it was largely because people did not pray
hard enough that Auschwitz happened. No, if anyone prays, God has ordained
the prayer. Prayer is certainly often a sufficient condition for God to act, but it
is a request so not necessary that God so act.¹³⁹ This implies of course that
God ordained Auschwitz. God sets something up to happen only if people
pray. In prayer there can be no manipulation of God, as He does not manipulate
us. “Fate” suggests impersonality, as in astrological beliefs; but providence is
personal, the personal activity of God in his creation through which he brings
it to its appointed end or destiny.¹⁴⁰ Returning to “no risk” Providence: “That
view has positive virtues; in particular it makes it possible to ascribe a signifi-
cance to the whole of a human life, to every detail, as to the whole of history.
It is just because God’s providence rules over all, that individual human actions
have significance in contributing to the whole.”¹⁴¹
The open, “risky” view has been more popular in the last two decades. It is
seen to avoid the impersonalist extremes of Process Theology while learning
from that movement. It has been well represented by Paul Fiddes:
A refugee is hungry and cold and desperately needing medical help on Monday; on Wed-
nesday he is given relief by an Oxfam agency. If God is to know the suffering of the man on
Monday as it really is, he cannot at the same time be aware of his experience of relief on
Wednesday. If we were, he would not know the refugee’s condition as the refugee himself
knows it, and so God would not have a complete knowledge of human mentality and would
not know everything [be omniscient].”¹⁴²
“He desires to be united with us in actuality […].”¹⁴³ The actuality has new ele-
ments in it which arise from his grappling with the materials – “the canvas,
brushes, paint.” Ours is the passivity of waiting to see God’s work completed,
a particular color mixed on the palate, as it were. “There is no such thing as a
possible particular,” and the painter ahead of time only knows roughly what
he is going to do. Hence God only sets the general limits of possible worlds.
 Paul Helm, The Providence of God (Leicester: IVP, 1994), 232.
 Ibid., 230.
 Ibid., 156.
 Ibid., 218 f.
 Ibid., 220 f.
 Paul Fiddes, The Creative Suffering of God (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), 91 f.
 Ibid., 94.

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So: “At any one point in time, God knows all the possibilities there are to be
known, but he does not know possibilities which have not yet been creatively
thought of, and which therefore do not exist.”¹⁴⁴
Likewise, Richard Swinburne argues:
Hence, although doing no objectively bad action, on the assumption that God’s knowledge
of the future is limited by the libertarian free will which he gives to humans, even God can-
not know in advance for certain the actual amount of harm one individual will suffer at the
hands of another in a given situation. But since God is also omnipotent, he is able to ensure
that no one remains in such a situation for longer than he (God) chooses; and is able, if he
so chooses, to compensate the sufferer in other ways as and when he chooses.¹⁴⁵
Swinburne declares himself to be inspired by Augustine (City of God XI.21). God

knows and causes all things in a timeless present. He thinks it unfortunate that
Barth could not extend the lowliness of God’ in is account of the Incarnation to
his doctrine of Providence. It could be said that we can know God better from the
history of humans, or the human sciences, than we do from physics. has spoken
very much in terms of the causality of love. God’s relationship to the universe is
personal, and he is outside the universe, so he cannot be spoken of in terms of
causality. “God’s knowledge, then, could best be understood on the analogy of
memory. Just as a person’s remembering something does not make the event
they remember necessary, so neither does God’s foreknowing an event make it
necessary.” Human beings, like subatomic particles, are less predictable, so
any intervention violates less law. God is working with the poor since and as
they put up less resistance, as a locus of his providence, or with actor-like crea-
tive people, as they are drawn to direction.¹⁴⁶
As Kathleen Tanner describes it:
To be free, a person must be master […] of that which conditions choice on the created
level. To be contingent, a created cause must have a non-necessary logical relation with
its created effects. Freedom or contingency of such a sort says nothing about a creature’s
freedom or contingency with respect to the divine agent who creatively founds the whole
of created beings and their effects and their mode of relation.¹⁴⁷
 Ibid., 97.

 Richard Swinburne, Providence and the Problem of Evil (Oxford Oxford University Press,
1999), 231.
 Gorringe, God’s Theatre A Theology of Providence (London: SCM, 1991), 66; 78.
 Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology: Tyranny or Empowerment? (Oxford:
Basil Blackwell, 1988), 90.

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God allows us to take decisions freely but empowers us every step of the way in
doing it: wholly done by both agencies. “Participation” is the password that gets
one through the divine determination/freewill conundrum.
In Tanner’s account, it is almost impossible to see the join, with the creature-
ly taken up in the larger divine activity, but not initiating it (her criticism of Biel
and Bañez is particularly sharp). God creates causes and effects but is neither
one nor the other, being immediate to all things. God does not influence or af-
fect, but instead he effects the actions of creatures.¹⁴⁸ In that sense things are
ontologically dependent, yet one wonders whether that is enough for Providence.
It is the outcome of an event, one might say the ontic or existential result of an
action that has to be up to God. In wanting to deny both creaturely independence
and monism, Tanner’s message comes out sounding confused. Sometimes it
seems about the operation of grace, at other times about some ground of
being. Providence surely is more than grace helping the creaturely response
and much more than mere ‘grounding’. Furthermore, manipulation, which Gor-
ringe wants to avoid, is more likely on weaker accounts of God’s action, wherein
He needs to strike deals and bargains.
In a book whose impact has been felt also outside academic circles, John
Sanders argues: “the Bible can be legitimately read as portraying God as expe-
riencing reciprocal relations, being grieved, and responding to creatures (even
switching to ‘plan B’ when necessary).”¹⁴⁹ God does not know the future, for
the future does not exist for God to know. Hence it is not ruled out a priori
that prayer can make a difference: “The relationship between Yahweh and Israel
is not exactly like that of potter and clay […]. It should not be understood as
teaching total divine control over all things, since the biblical writers do not
make use if this aspect of the metaphor.”¹⁵⁰ This seems like special pleading.
At one level God’s action is influenced by how the pot turns out, yet there is
no sense of the clay or pot having input into God’s decision whether to keep
(glaze/adorn/sell) the pot or to smash it and start again. Or in the New Testa-
ment: “Jesus wrestles with God’s will because he does not believe that every-
thing must happen according to a predetermined plan.”¹⁵¹ Maybe Jesus thought
he could be spared, Isaac-like, Sanders suggests. When it came to the Incarna-
tion, God had been working on things for a very long time. As for favourite Re-
formed verses such as Rev 13:8 (“saints written in the book/ the Lamb slain be-
 Ibid., 95.

 John Sanders, The God Who Risks: A Theology of Divine Providence, 2nd Edition ( Downers
Grove: IVP, 2007), 16.
 Ibid., 91.
 Ibid., 101.

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fore the foundation of the world”), well these last six words mean just “a very
long time,” probably after the fall happened and the already-planned Incarna-
tion had to be adapted to include the cross. God is free to vary his means.
God’s providence is not his arranging things but his care and presence.
In Luke 13:8 Jesus mentions a tower that fell on those who were not especial-
ly sinners. “God did not foreordain their deaths. That God does not intend such
events is made clear in the ministry of Jesus as he stands opposed (in solidarity
with the Father) to human suffering.”¹⁵² Yet the idea of divinely ordained judge-
ment, even if not fore-ordained judgment, does seem strong in this text from the
Gospels. Sanders admits that God’s purposes can be opposed. Divine providence
took the particular path it did in response to the actions of humans. In other
words, God plays black at chess. There is strong criticism of Calvin for whom
“God does not decide what he will do in response to anything the creatures
do.” Sanders comments: This effectively denes any sort of mutual relationship
between God and his creatures. Things would have been better “had Calvin in-
tegrated his doctrine of election with his relational understanding of the Trini-
ty.”¹⁵³ The personal God, as Isaak Dorner saw him, “only foreknows possibili-
ties.” Whereas “eternal truths are unchangeable; an eternal Person is
faithful.”¹⁵⁴ We should not separate his being quoad nos – how he is to us in
his saving and caring – from his being in se. Almightiness should be redefined
as God’s adequacy to the task with which he has charged himself. On the classic
model, God has to exercise meticulous providence, and if Paul Helm is to be be-
lieved, God is not surprised by sin and so can perform no grieving even over it.
The “timeless” God of Sanders does not know anything happening at any time to
be happening then. No, God knows the future as future.¹⁵⁵
Recent Catholic contribution to the Doctrine
In the Catholic major works, the space given to the subject both in Leo Scheffc-
zyk’s contribution to the Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte and in the voluminous
Mysterium Salutis by Walter Kern is rather limited and symptomatic of a wider
problem.¹⁵⁶ The doctrine is very much tied to Erhaltung, or the preservation of
 Ibid., 115.

 Ibid., 158.
 R. E. Pollard, quoted by Sanders, p. 187.
 Sanders, God Who Risks, 198.
 Walter Kern, “Zur theologischen Auslegung des Schöpfungsglaubens,” in Mysterium Salu-
tis, vol. 2: Die Heilsgeschichte vor Christus (Einsiedeln: Benziger, 1967): 464– 544, 532.

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creation. Scheffczyk claimed that the doctrine of Providence was seen in the
bible as “creation in the present.”¹⁵⁷ In fact the experience of providence leads
one to the doctrine of creation. The connection with salvation history is that
those who have been saved out of spiritual danger seem to appreciate creation
more, as in the Psalms, or Genesis 1 written in the exile. If creation stopped
with the Sabbath, God’s care continues: better this than to speak in terms of cre-
atio continua, a theme which, after all, is hardly a big one in the Christian tra-
dition and the scholastics.
It might come as a surpise to find that the book on Providence by the “Mon-
ster of Thomism” Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange,¹⁵⁸ was more about ways of re-
sponding to Providence, although the full title of the French original Providence
et la confiance en Dieu (1937) provides a clear hint of this. Instead of the expected
objective certainties of the ways of God and his Being, one gets something much
more apparently anthropocentric, or at least something that more works back to-
wards God than starts with him. The immensity of God’s presence understood in
a non-material way means “omnipresence,” which in turn means that all things
are known to him as well as His operating on all things by his creative power.¹⁵⁹
The point is that the believer is fully encouraged to embrace a spirituality of self-
abandonment. One might wish to file the book under “Spirituality,” not least
with its references to St John of the Cross and Therese of Lisieux.
An even clearer example of theology of Providence taking its orientation
from spiritual writing is in Michael Schmaus’ use of Romano Guardini a number
of times. Schmaus particularly likes Guardini’s essay “Der Vorsehung” to be
 Leo Scheffczyk, Schöpfung und Vorsehung, Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte II/2a (Frei-
burg: Herder, 1963), 11: “[…] und die Vorsehung nur als eine fortgesetzte Schöpfung verstanden
würde […]. Das Gegenstück der Vorsehung als ewige Gotteswirklichkeit ist die wirksame Erhal-
tung der Welt und alles Weltwirkens durch Gott.”
 Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Providence, trans. Dom Bede Rose (Charlotte: Saint Benedict
Press, 1998); Richard Peddicord, Sacred Monster of Thomism: An Introduction to the Life and Leg-
acy of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange (South Bend: St Augustine’s Press, 2004). Also see Garrigou’s
own article “Providence: La providence selon la Théologie,” in Dictionnaire de Théologie Catho-
lique 13, ed. Emile Amann (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1932): 985 – 1023, 1012: “Par rapport aux fins
particulières, on distingue, la providence naturelle et la providence supernaturelle.” Natural
things are subordinated to “la providence universalissime” and gubernatio executes what Prov-
idence decrees. “La providence s’étend-elle immédiatement de toute éternité à toutes choses si
intimes qu’elles soient , tandis que Dieu gouverne les choses inférieueres par l’intermédiaire des
creatures les plus élevées, ce qui ne se realize que dans le temps” […]. La fin du gouvernement
divine […]. Cette fin est la maniféstation du bonté divin, qui veille à l’exécution du plan provi-
dential.” (1021) One should not give up all hope in self-abandonment to providence by becoming
too quietist.
 Garrigou-Lagrange, Providence, 162.

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found in Der Lebendige Gott. Providence under which one stands is not a cold
system driving me nolens volens, nor does it work like a law of Nature that ma-
nipulates an atom, nor does it use me as a factory uses its workers, but Provi-
dence is a system that looks to me. Not only was it necessary that I was given
my space in the history of the world, but that this was so arranged that it willed
the salvation of my person. Vorsehung means that in what happened there is a
seeing, and I am as I am seen.¹⁶⁰
One assumes right away, as one would do with Garrigou-Lagrange, that
Providence is not a revealed doctrine in the sense of “made manifest to all,”
but is something communicated inwardly to a few who have ears to hear.
Even if Providence includes God’s will and ways towards all, the Catholic theol-
ogy of Providence is something which grows from the experience of an elect
band.
Yet as such it is not a cushioning doctrine to help believers rest more easily
but is much more than that: it is a message, a presence, a power that works to
foster discipleship. It deals with, to paraphrase Schmaus: not only the physical
and psychological laws which are scientifically established, not only the effects
and fate of fundamental powers of existence but that every event happens
through love, or rather through a person, the Person of Love, who comes into
the situation and calls us and draws us.¹⁶¹ Nothing happens that is not for his
Salvation. Or to hear Guardini: the world is open to love and we to his call.¹⁶²
One is to give oneself in order to find this and be active, not passive in suffer-
ing.¹⁶³ Providence is not a functional apparatus but a constant address of divine
 Scheffczyk, Schöpfung und Vorsehung, 29: “Vorsehung wäre, wenn ich überzeugt sein
dürfte: Ich, mit meiner lebendigen Person, stehe nicht nur in einer kalten Ordnung, die mich
zwingt, wie ein Naturgesetz das Atom, oder mich braucht, wie die Fabrik ihre Arbeiter, sondern
es ist eine Ordnung, die auf mich blickt […]. Nicht nur müßte ich mit meinem Wesen Raum
haben im Weltgeschehen, sondern dieses müßte so angelegt sein, daß es das Heil meiner Person
wollte […]. Vorsehung aber meint, daß in allem, was geschieht, ein Sehen sei; und was da gese-
hen werde, sei ich.”
 Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik I,2, 193: “Der Glaube an die Vorsehung ist nicht ein
Schlummerkissen, auf dem es sich bequem ausruhen läßt. Die Lehre von der Vorsehung bedeu-
tet vielmehr: In der Welt waltet nicht bloß die von der Wissenschaft feststellbare und durch-
schaubare Ordnung physischer und psychologischer Gesetze, nicht bloß Sendung und Schicksal
unergründlicher Daseinsmächte. Jedes Geschehen ist vielmehr gewirkt von einer unbegreiflich-
en Liebe oder richtiger von einem Liebenden, ja von der Person-Liebe. Sie blickt aus jedem
Ereignis auf uns her, geht in jedem Ereignis auf uns zu, ruft uns an, zieht uns zu sich hin.”
 Romano Guardini, Vom lebendigen Gott: Geistliches Wort (Würzburg: Echter, 1930), 31.
 Schmaus, Katholische Dogmatik I,2,197.

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love and a fixed encounter with it.¹⁶⁴ We should not say that our life is the best
there was, but that no life is beyond being a spiritual success.
To a degree in the Catholic doctrine as we find it in the twentieth century,
there is already a fair bit of subjectivising underway. Appeal is made to Provi-
dence being a bit like the safety net for the trapeze act, or more critically the
strong arms eternal underling arms. Providence is not so much a relationship
in fact as a living connection in operation. Part of Guardini’s legacy as a “spiri-
tual theologian” is the provision (!) of guidance to Catholic ethicists in our 21st
century. The re-publication of Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal in 1994 was both a
sign and a cause of this new impact.¹⁶⁵ Guardini could write in that book:
“‘Fate’ is that which cannot be removed and is arbitrary. And yet Fate is the
most personal thing, wherein I stand totally alone, unrepresentable and un-
changeable and yet it is that which binds me with everyone.”¹⁶⁶ This seems
the position of the human being without a conscious believing relationship
with God. The medical ethicist from Freiburg, Giovanni Maio is inspired to see
this fate as what we are given, the hand each of us is dealt, and while modern
medicine would like to focus on possibilities, that is not where people need to
start from existentially. And in any case, Disease is not a wholly bad thing, at
least it is not something to be denied, but embraced as part of one’s life story.
Disease is not only to be struggled against but, as we experience its necessity,
we learn what freedom and responsibility are. It requires, as another author in
the same volume puts it, being prepared to see grey as an acceptable colour
in life. This comes through knowing that God is the one that will give eternal
happiness – that is the true sense of happiness over our lives (perhaps the
word “joy” would be appropriate), rather than happiness as compensation for
disappointment.
One does not need to go very far in the popular press to find accounts of how
the prognosis of terminal illness made life seem strangely richer, more focused,
more appreciated. Yet the Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos suggests through
the plot of his best-known work that death should be welcomed as a limit expe-
rience more because a sharp awareness of death makes life more a concentrated
adventure, yes, but what Bernanos describes is the effect of this awareness in at-
tempts to overcome complacency and self-satisfaction or mediocrity. Charles Mo-
 Ibid., 203: “Die Vorsehung ist kein mechanisch funktionierender Apparat, sondern ein
ständiger Anruf der göttllichen Liebe und eine stete Begegnung mit ihr.”
 Romano Guardini, Freiheit, Gnade, Schicksal: Drei Kapitel zur Deutung des Daseins, ed.
Franz Henrich, 7th Ed. (Grünewald: Schöningh, 1994; originally Kösel, 1948).
 Ibid., 155: “Schicksal ist das Persönlichste, worin ich ganz allein, unvertretbar und unver-
änderbar stehe und doch wieder das, was mich mit Allen zusammenbindet.”

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eller observed that the clerical hero of Diary of a Country Priest gave peace to the
Countess, when he did not possess it himself. Such is the miracle of love, as the
Curé says himself, to give what one does not have.¹⁶⁷ I think this is what one
might call a dialogical Providence, where it is not a case of it resting on the acui-
ty of one’s faith or religious self-consciousness, but on a presence, a shared
meaning, and a power that exists where two or three are gathered, even in dis-
agreement.
This key scene from The Diary of a Country Priest perhaps illustrates this:
‘Nothing, either in this world or the next, can separate us from what we’ve loved more than
ourselves, more than life, more than getting into heaven.’
‘Madame,’ I answered, ‘even in this world, the slightest thing, a mere stroke, can make us
cease to know the people whom we’ve loved best of all.’
‘Death isn’t like madness –‘
No, indeed. We know even less about it.’
‘Love is stronger than death – that stands written in your books.’
‘But it isn’t we who invented love. Love has its own order, its own laws.’
‘God is love’s master.’
‘No, not its master. God is love itself […]. If you want to love, don’t place yourself beyond
love’s reach’
‘Resign myself?’ Her gentle voice froze. ‘What do you mean? Don’t you think me resigned
enough?’ […]
She reared like a viper: ‘I’ve ceased to bother about God. When you’ve forced me to admit
that I hate Him, will you be any better off, you idiot?’
‘You no longer hate Him. Hate is indifference and contempt. Now at last you’re face to face
with him.’¹⁶⁸
Now this has the form of an unusual style of catechesis. Yet it is theology that is
living and applied, and in that, both conversation partners make their contribu-
tions.
The Catholic sense for the everyday location of providence is a distinctive
theme. Raphael Schulte has written a very thoughtful piece in the Quaestiones
Disputatae volume on providence from 1988: “Wie ist Gottes Wirken in Welt
und Geschichte theologisch zu verstehen?” He claims that there has been too
much focus on extraordinary working of God. Instead, we should look at every-
day presence of God. Schillebeeckx is brought in to argue that any divine action
 “Déjà le curé d’Ambricourt donne la paix à la comtesse, alors qu’il ne la possède pas lui-
même; tel est le moiracle de l’amour, se dit le curé de campagne, que l’on donne ce don’t on
est privé” (Ch. Moeller, Littérature du XXe siècle et christianisme [Paris: Casterman, 1954], 424).
 Georges Bernanos, Diary of a Country Priest, trans. Pamela Morris (London: The Bodley
Head Ltd, 1975), 129.

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must be thought of as transcendently creative (hence not caught up in history) or

if intervening, doing so only indirectly. If something has extraordinary-looking
significance then that could be called revelation.¹⁶⁹ God can only work through
creaturely causes,¹⁷⁰ although that surely does not answer the question how God
reaches those. Here Weissmahr took leave of Rahner whom he would usually fol-
low: God cannot be a cause among other causes but He could be a “vertical one”
moving a created one “horizontally” through the Word. Inner-worldly and outer-
worldly are terms which are not really suitable for Christian theology since the
outer-worldly One knows no such boundaries. For Rahner,¹⁷¹ God works the
world as its ground, but cannot be said to work in it. Biblical faith confesses
the still working covenantal God before it confesses the God of first creation; pro-
tology is not primary and any statements on concursus come from experience so
that statements about God as Creator also proceed from there.¹⁷² That God and
humans continue to build their shared house and the created world is not so
much dependence (Abhängigkeit) as loving free response or attachment (Anhän-
glichkeit).¹⁷³ God is the giver who is to be approached via the gift of creation as an
expression of Him, so that there is no immediacy of God in the world as process
theology thinks. Schillebeeckx was right to emphasise that history means human
history but the bible gives us the understanding proper to faith (intellectus fidei)
that requires us to say that God comes into history, especially when humans de-
cide to ask him in.¹⁷⁴ Truly, history starts with God as he oversaw pre-history and
human societies’ first faltering steps, and he works alongside humans, not as
added cause. God’s Wirken is not physical, but persuasive, interpersonal in free-
dom. This takes us close to the threshold of ecclesiological questions.
The place of the historical in God’s purposes
Certainly, the fact of Christ (just like the fact of, say, John the Baptist) has priority
over the abstract norm in the Balthasarian scheme. In his 1963 Theology of His-
 Raphael Schulte, “Wie ist Gottes Wirken in Welt und Geschichte theologisch zu verste-
hen?,” in Vorsehung und Handeln Gottes, eds. Theodor Schneider and Lothar Ullrich, Quaes-
tiones Disputatae 115 (Freiburg: Herder, 1988): 116 – 168, 120.
 Following Béla Weissmahr, Gottes Wirken in der Welt. Ein Diskussionsbeitrag zur Frage der
Evolution und des Wunders, Frankfurter theologische Studien 15 (Frankfurt: J. Knecht, 1973).
 Karl Rahner, Grundkurs des Glaubens: Einführung in den Begriff des Christentums (Freiburg:
Herder, 1976), 94.
 Schulte, “Wie ist Gottes Wirken?,” 120.
 Ibid., 137.
 Ibid., 144.

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tory he wrote: “In Jesus Christ, the Logos is no longer the realm of ideas, values
and laws which governs and gives meaning to history, but is himself history.”¹⁷⁵
In other words, this historical life of the Logos is the centre and source of history:
Jesus Christ is the heart and norm of all that is historical. Yet we should note here
that what the Incarnation changes is the world and hence philosophy, not God
and theology. And in any case, there is nothing active in Jesus that is not already
part of his eternal being. Hence Balthasar continues: “the form of his human
self-awareness is the expression, in terms of this world, of his eternal conscious-
ness as Son.”¹⁷⁶ Also, his being as self never becomes a theme or end in itself but
passes into prayer. His consciousness is up to speed with who he is – i. e. Son –,
as the humanity comes to participate in that divine Sonship. As one who was al-
ready open to the Father’s bidding in eternity, Jesus did not sin by breaking out
of time as we tend to do in our rebellion, when we anticipate God, and want to
play the titan or hero. Jesus waits, as he did eternally.
Now of course, there is something of a dialectic between the eternal or ver-
tical and the particular horizontal diversity of the world that features in Baltha-
sar’s thought, as David Schindler has it. Nevertheless Balthasar is clear: The In-
carnation was not the playing out of a drama – but it was original, unscored and
worked out scene by scene: Christ did not know the end in the way that we do.
Indeed, because the Incarnation was unanticipated even by the Old Testament
history, it is that which is uniquely contingent and uniquely placed to give
shape and even set “tramlines” for salvation history in the age of the Church.
It was the Eternal within the temporal that allows the temporal to be taken up
into eternal: “herein lies the solution to the theological problem of universals.
The life of Christ, as was said, is the ‘world of ideas’ for the whole of history.”¹⁷⁷
Because the historical life of Christ was open to eternity so he can influence
things which happen at any point in history. Since Christ, one may speak of a
continuance in an eternity latently present under time which flows toward
and away from it.¹⁷⁸ The transcendentals (Beauty, Goodness, Truth) are also to
be understood as mediating between particularity in creation and in God: they
are not to be seen as abstraction.
Balthasar on more than one occasion refers to “the axial moment” around
the 6 – 5century BC (Karl Jaspers), during which human civilisations turned to-
wards the higher – the god above, away from the horizontal to the vertical. Balth-
 Hans Urs von Balthasar, A Theology of History (London: Sheed & Ward, 1963), 24.
 Ibid., 2.
 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Man in History: A Theological Study (London: Sheed & Ward, 1968),
32.
 Ibid., 108.

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asar acknowledges this, then adds that the biblical experience is the first to
swing the vertical interpretation over so as to coincide with the horizontal. Eter-
nity qualifies, even reduces the march of time. With an anti-Marxist flourish,
Balthasar adds that we have to move forward with Christ to get home, for the
way back to paradise is blocked, as Maximus told us in Quaestio ad Thalassium
59.
Likewise when it comes to the Holy Spirit:
The Holy Spirit in the Church is an historical factor, but it is not something that has devel-
oped in history. It creates history because it is its master. And it is the true master by having
the freedom, not only of hovering over the waters of history, but of pouring forth from its
innermost springs. Church time as the ear of the Holy Spirit is, in contrast to the Old Testa-
ment and the era of Christ, not time in which the unsurpassable fullness of revelation es-
tablishes and expresses itself.¹⁷⁹
Therefore it is impossible to point to all the secret causes behind significant

events (hidden prayers, sufferings), for the stuff of Eternity is mysterious. The
Spirit works through God’s people. In this, salvation history in the Church is
to be distinguished from world history.
A theology of history could be gathered without the burden of a world-his-
torical interpretation of salvation history. More precisely, the salvation story as
the historical revelation of God would have to be distinguished from the general
history of mankind, in order, at a second stage, to be confronted with it.¹⁸⁰ There
is a kind of quality time, a vertical time, (an insight that he ascribes to Bonaven-
tura). Christ has established a ‘vertical time’ measure as norm for all horizontal,
and he is happy to employ the kairos versus chronos opposition, as he already
had done in 1963. Towards the end of the book he describes world history as
the growing of the tares or the weeds, whereas the realm of historical grace is
about being set free to beat a different path: “just as the indifference of freedom
is a necessary creaturely substructure for the free answer of man to the God who
incomprehensibly chooses him.”¹⁸¹
So if anyone is to say that Balthasar was a theologian of history in a way that
most scholastics were not, and point to his contribution in the area of a theology
of salvation-history,¹⁸² this needs to be nuanced: his interest was more in salva-
tion-history and church history as the continuation of that, than in world-history,
 Ibid., 118.

 Ibid., 136
 Ibid., 190.
 See the volume dedicated to him: Mysterium Salutis, vol. 1: Die Grundlagen heilsgeschicht-
licher Dogmatik, eds. Johannes Feiner and Magnus Löhrer (Einsiedeln: Benzinger Verlag, 1965).

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history as such, a sphere within which his 1968 book shows him to be unsure to
tread.
However Balthasar was more lucid and more positive in the third part of the
final part of his Trilogy: Theologik: Der Geist der Wahrheit. Refusing any idea of
new creation that would compromise this creation (as in Joachim of Fiore), at
p. 385 Balthasar teasingly approves of Calvin’s view of the Spirit’s role as that
of sustaining, and giving life, power and movement (Inst I,13,14; similarly Beza
Opera I,6). Then he name-checks Barth, and agrees that the Spirit allows, carries
and is seen in creation so as to offer a foretaste of salvation such that nature is
established and secured in grace.¹⁸³ Without giving an inch to Hegel, perhaps
one may think of the Spirit as world-soul, he muses. If Augustine believed any
such thing, he would fall on the created side of the divide, but the Chartres
school and Abelard were a bit more daring in ascribing this activity to the
Holy Spirit. This might have encouraged Pannenberg to follow through on
Barth’s tentative positing of a Trinitarian presence in the cosmos.¹⁸⁴ But Baltha-
sar fears that Pannenberg’s scheme subordinates the New Testament witness to
the Old. This is to move in the wrong direction, he fears. Again, the New Testa-
ment account of the Spirit is that He is not as such immanent in creation but
comes to transform it. Yet here we have a willingness on the part of Balthasar
to see the Holy Spirit at work in the natural world, but this is not the same as
making a great difference within world-history. There is little here to encourage
a belief that Balthasar believed in the immanent possibilities of history.
The media-friendly Catholic theologian Richard Kocher has preferred to ally
himself with the spirit of a Kantian Enlightenment.¹⁸⁵ There is a need for a the-
onomous overcoming of both autonomy and heteronomy, so that humans can
find their dignified place under their Creator. Thinking in terms of causality is
behind western competitiveness and should be eschewed. Providence came to
be seen in the Enlightenment as a threat to freedom when human observers per-
ceived it to be a quasi-divine immanence. The task of Reason was not to dispel
the miraculous but purify them and make them understandable: that was Less-
ing’s intention, and he allowed room for Christ’s miracles since they were tied to
extraordinary ethical teaching, which was not the case in the resurrection ap-
pearances in the canonical gospels. Miracles without ethical justification got
 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theologik, vol. III: Der Geist der Wahrheit (Einsiedeln: Johannes
Verlag, 1985), 386.
 Ibid., 388: “Wie Barth sieht er hierfür die Kontinuität zwischen der alttestamentlichen
Ruach Jahwe und dem neutestamentlichen Pneuma Theou.”
 Richard Kocher, Herausgeforderter Vorsehungsglaube: Die Lehre von der Vorsehung im Ho-
rizont der gegenwärtigen Theologie (St. Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 1999).

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in the way of, even undermined the sacred natural law, and it was nature mira-
cles that seemed offensive when conversions did not. Kocher offers a way for-
ward.¹⁸⁶ The living Church as the people of God experiencing such wonder in joy-
ful common discourse will listen to the speaking creation rather than look for
God in Heilsgeschichte. Franz Rosenzweig could teach us here. Here we see a re-
nunciation of the possibility of mystery in history being understood by the light
of faith.
Indeed Kocher argues that a belief in Providence only becomes Christian
when it has a “for me” connection and where God is seen to be acting directly.¹⁸⁷
It might have lost respect in learned circles since the Enlightenment, but it is
very much there in the Sermon on the Mount. Despite Voltaire’s having more
a problem with a Christian doctrine of Providence not creation, 55 % of
women and 39 % of men surveyed believe in God’s leading. Often, in Catholic
theologies, it gets lost in the Doctrine of God, or one might say that Creation
takes its place. However Kocher’s conclusion is upbeat: Jesus prayed to One
who is Almighty and Father at the same time. This he thinks is a place to start
with re-evangelisation, by announcing a freedom from fatalism, at least at the
individual level, without imagining God is going to institute a Christian society¹⁸⁸
– despite our sense of larger space to be lost in. We have no right to happiness
and Romano Guardini was right to plead for realism. We don’t have to have an-
swers, or fix things, or create fantasies. One should not exclude miraculous from
our consideration of Providence. It might be better to call this “dynamic creation-
ism,” in which God gives impulses which are completed by the creation. Yet one
should not confine God to having an effect only on the mind; there is mystery
and paradox.¹⁸⁹
The traditional version of typology¹⁹⁰ allows for history to assume some
fixed shape.¹⁹¹ One can know the general shape of events without being sure
 Ibid., 44 with reference to Béla Weissmahr’s Gottes Wirken in der Welt.
 Ibid., 29: “Erst in dem pro-me Bezug wird der Vorsehungsglaube Christlich.” And at 232:
“Das Wunder offenbart in der Tat die tiefste, diese Welt eigentlich schon überschreitende Dimen-
sion der Welt selbst, weil und insofern in ihm die Endherrlichkeit aufleuchtet.”
 Ibid., 352, with a nod to Henri de Lubac: “Die Vorsehungslehre mit ihrer Ausrichtung auf
den einzelnen kann heute ähnlich befreiend wirken wie damals.” “Nur Gott kann in seiner Vor-
sehung Zukunft und Hoffnung schenken (vgl. Jer 29,11). Deshalb drängt die wissenschaftlich vor-
getragene Lehre über die Vorsehung auf die Umsetzung im Leben” (354).
 Kocher, Herausgeforderter Vorsehungsglaube, 334.
 Seckler, Das Heil in der Geschichte, 195: “Im übrigen ist, wie sich noch deutlicher zeigen
wird, die höchste innergeschichtlichte Potenz nicht das Heil, sondern die Eröffnetheit zum
Heil.” Cf. Aquinas, STh I-II 106,4: “Initiavit nobis viam novam.”

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just how everything might turn out.¹⁹² The subjective grasp of Providence is quite
limited; yet by knowing what salvation history is, one can at least know that
there is such a thing as Providence. Christian faith looks to an ultimate redemp-
tion of History (“Erlösung der Geschichte”), not just from history (“Erlösung von
der Geschichte”), according to Seckler, and a cosmic universalizing from the par-
ticular await us.¹⁹³ It might be better to say that history contains its own end
within it because God is present to each point of it.
A serious contribution to the subject has been made by Hans-Christian
Schmidbaur. For God to be active means for God to be personal, such that any
attack on Providence is an attack on the Trinity. Nature and God’s nature are giv-
ens, but God is not trapped in his own eternal blsss. He is not the boundary to all
that is other than himself, but his transcendence and his personhood mean
something mysterious and mobile, such that one cannot read off his nature
from his deeds. Even in the Priestly Writings of the Old Testament, the transcen-
dent God can still act immediately in the world. But he is not present in the way
of men, so he gives much room to them to act, and his involvement is more at
cosmic level. Thomas Aquinas was able to embed Providence in Heilsgeschichte,
rather than vice versa. Any necessity has to do with God’s knowledge of things,
not in things themselves, as he argues on the basis of STh I q24 a3ad2. Although
another way of putting this is that God’s knowledge of things has to be a contin-
gent knowledge of contingent things, yet as eternal has some sort of kinship to
necessity, one which withstood the nominalist over-reaction whereby changea-
bility became inconsistent and capricious.¹⁹⁴ With Aristole’s help Aquinas man-
aged to free providence from Neoplatonic determinism, and combined this with
a trust in spirituality in the future. Schmidbaur is not absolutely clear as to how
Reformation predeterminism and Renaissance “autonomy of creation” went to-
 Ibid., 204: “Gott hat hier in seiner speziellen Providenz das Geschehen gleichsam vorent-
worfen und vorgezeichnet und bringt dank einer Art prästahilierter Harmonie die in Frage ste-
hende Typik, die als ‘prefiguration providentielle’ zu fassen wäre, hervor. Das (definitive)
Ereignis und der (präfigurative) Typus wären in einem Dritten, dem providentiellen Plan, ver-
bunden.”
 Ibid., 207: “[…] das Plangefüge der Zeiten, aber er kennt nicht das Plangefüge der einzelnen
Ereignisse.” Cf. at 209: “die Realisierung der Verknüpfung ebenso wie die Erhellung der
Verknüpftheit übergeschichtlich sein müsse, insofern sie im Plan der Providenz gründe. Das
ist für die thomanische Position jedoch unmöglich, da niemand diesen Plan kennt, selbst
wenn er den Ereignissen tatsächlich zugrunde liegt.”
 Ibid., 251.
 Hans-Christian Schmidbaur, Gottes Handeln in Welt und Geschichte: Eine trinitarische Theo-
logie der Vorsehung, Münchener theologische Studien 2/63 (St. Ottilien: EOS-Verlag, 2003), 711:
“Die Destruktion des thomasischen Vorsehungsbegriffes durch den Nominalismus.”

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gether, but he is clear that things got worse in the separation of worlds of matter
and spirit, not least in Jansenism, according to which grace worked on a passive
nature. Providence went very quiet between Voltaire and Kant but it reappeared
with the Idealists. Yet the Christian difference from Hegel is that God has plans
for the world, but not for himself.¹⁹⁵
Schmidbaur concludes that Karl Rahner and Béla Weissmahr would wrongly
limit God’s action to secondary causes only, which fits a pluralistic theology of
relgions. Although it sounds respectable, the “secondary cause” theory has
not really helped theology and science to talk.¹⁹⁶ And God seems to get kept
at a distance; or he is close but not in creation, only in church. Something of
the Incarantion demands that New Testament faith perceive the nearness of
God to his creation. In God’s mind some things are fixed although he does not
determine all; but in themselves they are open to change.
One should speak of two types of divine action: a natural and a spiritual; in
the latter there is not merely a vague presence available but rather a sharply per-
sonal one.¹⁹⁷ Yet the former borrows glory from the latter, and becomes soterio-
logical. One might say that in the Cross both ways meet, and the Cross reminds
us that there is a difference between the world as it is and the world as it should
be as God’s creation. All God’s actions are particular but not all particular ac-
tions are (providentially) special.¹⁹⁸ The Church is not only the place where
the activity of God is recognized and acknowledged (as Wiles can affirm)¹⁹⁹
but is also the place of God’s special action.
 Ibid., 718: “Im Christentum ist Vorsehung dasjenige, was Gott für seine Welt will, und das,
weswegen er sie erschafft und vollendet, aber sie ist nicht der ewige Plan, wie Gott sich zu sich
selbst vermittelt. Bei Hegel hat Gott eine Vorsehung für sich selbst.”
 Ibid., 759: “Sie hat, wie wir zeigen konnten, eher zu einem berührungslosen Nebeneinander
naturwissenschaftlicher und glaubensbezogener Welt und Wirklichkeitsdeutung geführt.”
 Ibid., 123.
 Ibid.: “Mit dieser Unterscheidung wird nicht die generelle Partikularität des göttlichen Han-
delns bestritten, da alle Handlungen Gottes partikular, aber nicht alle partikularen Handlungen
speziell sind.”
 Maurice Wiles, Faith and the Mystery of God (London: SCM, 1982), 87.

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Chapter Eight:
Coming up to date: works in the last five years
Conservation involves God acting through usual channels to keep promises to
creation, although surprising occurrences might take place; concursus has God
more actively involved. This means that one and the same effect results from
two different acts, which both contribute. Charles Wood calls upon Quenstedt
to affirm that God is not present in creaturely “undoings” (by creaturely conflict,
natural failings and moral fault). The governing or ordering of creaturely activity
towards God’s purposes should abandon Quenstedt’s fourfold division (permis-
sio – impeditio – directio – determinatio) of “fixing limits”, although these four
could be reconceived.¹ Accounts of Providence can still be too much stamped by
the note of (pseudo-Stoic) consolation. The notion of God as Almighty (Pantokra-
tor) can be reclaimed as being the One who holds all together, rather than one
whose purpose always prevails – why else pray “Thy will be done”? Divine gu-
bernatio includes judgment and mercy. Wood dislikes the Calhoun Report for
limiting the Holy Spirit’s empowering presence to those who recognise God.
As for us, we are called to the de-centering of our desires:² “God is providing
in everything that goes on.”³
As for the Doctrine of God, Wood thinks that one can overdo the personalism
in an account of the God of Providence. The doctrine can tend to promote pas-
sivity, smugness and bland theism. Trinitarian accounts by subscribing to the
opera Trinitatis ad extra indivisa sunt tend towards a Unitarian account, with
God, as great subject, “acting on the world.”⁴ The conservatio comes from the Fa-
ther, the concursus in the Spirit, and the directio through the Son.⁵ Each person
gives one of the forms even if all act in one action.
In his book Wirken Gottes Christian Danz offers, at least in the first three-
quarters of his book, a history of the idea of Providence. If one were to quip
that this was the Providence of Providence, such a call would not be all that in-
appropriate. Providence has changed, it seems, but only through its being under-
stood differently. And yet this subjectivisation, unlike the catholic writers above,
will lead to some confusion of categories, as we shall see.
 Charles Wood, The Question of Providence (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008),
90.
 Ibid., 115.
 Ibid., 73.
 Ibid., 78.
 Ibid., 80.

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280 Chapter Eight: Coming up to date: works in the last five years
According to Danz, an internalization of God’s effects as produced in Augus-

tine’s late writings on predestination was reinforced by Luther. Augustine’s over-
all view was that God had established order and confirmed it in the cosmos as a
whole, even when parts seem out of joint (Conf VII.13). Danz approves of Hans
Blumenberg’s view that Augustine regarded all things as even now fixed and or-
dered, so as to reflect God’s stable goodness.⁶ Contrary to Kurt Flasch’s claims, it
is not with Augustine, but more with Ockham that things start to change towards
changeability.⁷ And when it comes to Luther his Ockhamism makes him all too
ready to pounce on Is 28:21 which tells of the Lord’s rising up to do his “strange
work.”⁸ It is necessary for this work to be hidden and not understood when it
happens, as it contains a surprise element (Römerbrief 1515/16; WA 56,376 on Ro-
mans 8:26). Paradoxically, although Danz does not seem aware of it, the teaching
that God alone effects what does happen (Gott als Alleinwirksamkeit) has, as its
upshot, that the human will is about our self-determination.⁹ Of course with Lu-
ther it is the mysticism of abandonment, which gets recast as God’s Alleinwirk-
samkeit. Just as Luther’s teaching on Justification was more “spirituality than
“objective” theology, so too with that on creation: Luther de-objectified God’s ac-
tion. Despite an attempt to re-objectify providence, by the time of Kant with his
separation of religion and natural science, religion has become a catalyst for
morality, or in Fichte’s case a bit more important than that, perhaps even a
cause. Tellingly, Danz seems to lose himself in discussing “Religion” at the ex-
pense of Providence before returning to it with a sort of coda:¹⁰ Schleiermacher
confirms the idea that all and any talk of God’s providence is an expression of a
realisation of limitation. Yet God at the same time is known not metaphysically
but as One who is acting.¹¹ Danz then moves to systematic-theological problems
of the present. Clearly one of these is theodicy, and Hans Jonas’ Gottesbegriff
nach Auschwitz (1984) understandably receives a fair bit of attention. The “theol-
 Christian Danz, Wirken Gottes: Zur Geschichte eines theologischen Grundbegriffs (Neukirchen-
Vluyn: Neukirchener, 2007), 50: “Gott regiert und lenkt den Kosmos durch sein ordnendes Wir-
ken.”
 Ibid., 70: “Zwar handelt Gott auch für Ockham immer in einer Ordnung, aber er ist frei von
jeder bestimmten Ordnung.”
 Danz is reserved as to whether this is the same thing as “truly you are a God who hides him-
self”-type of deus absconditus theology.
 Ibid., 87 f.: “Luthers Deutung des göttlichen Wirkens als Ausdruck der eigenen Glaubensge-
wissheit.”
 Ibid., 124: “Die religiöse Rede vom Wirken Gottes ist vielmehr der Ausdruck eines religiösen
Endlichkeitbewusstseins.”
 Friedrich Schleiermacher in On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers (New York: Harp-
er, 1958), § 130: “Auch Gott kann in der Religion nicht anders vorkommen als handelnd.”

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ogy and natural science endeavours” of Pannenberg and Welker are passed over
fairly quickly. Karl Rahner is approved of for seeing God as a ground of human
freedom, or a condition of such possibility. Barth is described as similar to Bult-
mann for relating providence to the project of the self,¹² although it is not at all
clear that that was what Barth intended. The difference between Barth¹³ and
Schleiermacher was that for the former, claims Danz, faith was about particular
revelation to “me” in concrete situations, not a general sense of the whole, as in
Schleiermacher. One thing we can be clear on, he insists: Barth certainly did not
want to return to a pre-modern, orthodox scholastic account of Providence. Since
the Reformation we cannot properly separate God from faith. Luther was aware
how his doctrine of God was contained within a credo: “I believe” encapsulates
all the rest. This rough consensus of great evangelical theologians makes Danz
feel able to conclude that the reality of God is equal to the event of faith defined
as reflexive knowledge of the self. Knowledge of God presupposes the actual ful-
filment of faith and is the expression for the contingency of this, or God is the
expression of our self-transparency.¹⁴ So, religion (again it seems interchangea-
ble with providence) gives us orientation and maps out our conditions and lim-
itations.¹⁵ Unlike the doctrine of Creation, Providence is not about there being as
a given; but the self-assurance and meaning of human freedom. Providence is a
place where we can take account of all necessity and contingency.¹⁶
 Danz, Wirken Gottes 182, quoting from Kirchliche Dogmatik I/2, 153: “in dieser Beziehung aber
nicht durch sie.”
 Barth, KD I/2, 304– 97. This seems a misreading of Barth who can speak of religion only as it
receives its impression from God and Christ: “Die christliche Religion ist Prädikat an dem Sub-
jekt des Namens Jesus Christus” (381). Or at 364: “Darin sieht er die Kraft Christi bei sich woh-
nen, darin weiß er sich stark, darin rühmt er sich. Und man wird ja gerade an Paulus studieren
können, wie die wahre Sicherheit seines Seins und Wirkens, wie die Kraft seiner Entscheidung,
wie die Festigkeit seiner Position auch nach außen, wie durchaus die Energie seines religiösen
Selbstbewußtseins im Verhältnis zu dem anderer darin wurzelt, daß er das alles, die christliche
Religion, in concreto: seine besonderen ‘Offenbarungen’ durch die Offenbarung, durch den
Herrn Jesus Christus, auf das bestimmteste begrenzt sein ließ: ‘Wenn ich schwach bin, dann
bin ich stark’.”
 Danz, Wirken Gottes, 189: “Die Wirklichkeit Gottes ist gleichsam das Geschehen des Glau-
bens selbst als reflexive Selbsterkenntnis. Gotteserkenntnis entsteht damit erst in dem aktualem
Vollzug des Glaubens und ist der Ausdruck für die Unbedingtheit dieses Vollzugs. […] Gott als
Ausdruck der Selbstdurchsichtigkeit.”
 Ibid., 209.
 Walter Sparn, “‘Die Religion aber ist Leben’. Welchen theologischen Gebrauch kann und sol-
lte man vom ‘Leben überhaupt’ machen?,” in Leben, eds. Wilfried Härle and Reiner Preul, Mar-
burger theologische Studien 45; Marburger Jahrbuch Theologie 9 (Marburg: Elwert, 1997): 15 – 39.

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In moving to consider Klaus Fischer’s recent book Schicksal, what is striking

is the number of different threads unravelled as the book goes on, or the collage-
like effect of the attempt. Near the beginning he concludes that Greek tragedy
tells us that Wisdom can’t avoid all evil: prophecy might help if one pays it
heed, but even then (in the figure of Oedipus going into exile, in Oedipus in Co-
lonus) as those whose insight is at best partial we simply have to trust in divine
care.¹⁷ In the re-arranging of the cosmic metaphysical furniture by Plotinus all
oppositions were gradually being brought towards harmony. The events in the
foreground are (so, Enneads III,2[47]) just a game or a play. With Augustine
one could go further and adopt an attitude where the contemptus mundi was
moderated by a feeling of security in the shepherd’s protection, with Christ
also giving reality to the myths of eternal return: hence Christian flavouring
was added to the Plotinian scheme.¹⁸ For Aquinas, God has created the secon-
dary cause in which there is indeed defect and necessarily so (e. g., the prey suf-
fers for the predator’s good such that one can speak of evil moments as occa-
sions for Good). God does not will the bad but He uses it. Ockham’s God
needs to keep creating out of nothing (Quodlibet VI.q1; Sent Id.2q.4). If Ockham
is arbitrary, Descartes is even more so. Meanwhile with Shakespeare destinies
are more self-sown, as in sowing the whirlwind of Hosea 8:7. Leibniz appears
at the end of this epoch with the message that creation is limited, and so it is
up to humans to be content with the past and creative in the present.¹⁹ Material
and spiritual fortunes would correspond (Monadologie 79 – 90). Kant tells us that
it is only Reason that gives us a realm of grace away from the actual world with
the goal that of blessedness (Glückseligkeit). Karl Jaspers observed that chaos lies
in the foundations of our actual reality. Accordingly Heidegger left behind Exis-
tence for Being, Dasein for Sein, which comes to us like something fated.²⁰
In this quick tour of theologians and philosophers, the recent ones shrug
and admit that the actual world in which we live offers no solutions. Unlike
Danz’s account, there is no joined-up plot to the story of Providence, even as
 See Fischer, Schicksal in Theologie und Philosophie, 29 f. The gods have balanced necessity
with some order of Reason, even of Grace, despite appearances to the contrary. This insight
was shared, with different emphases, by Plato, Aristotle and Epictetus.
 Pannenberg in his defence of Augustine fails, according to Fischer (Schicksal in Theologie
und Philosophie, 53), to realise that the emphasis on human choice as the origin of sin, gave
way to an insistence of the corruption of human nature. (Although surely it was more a case
of the will’s defectiveness.)
 Confessio Philosophi 57,75; Fischer, Schicksal in Theologie und Philosophie, 109.
 Fischer, Schicksal in Theologie und Philosophie, 119: “Nach der ‘Kehre’ denkt Heidegger
Schicksal nicht mehr vom Dasein, sondern vom Sein her […]. Statt von Schicksal, geht Rede
vom ‘Geschick’ des Seins;” whereas before it was of Dasein.

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a concept, let alone as a reality. One can admit that God “backs off” to allow hu-
mans to exercise their stewardly freedom.²¹ When William Hasker contends: “We
have already seen that, if God were to prevent all evils whatsoever, almost all of
our own incentive and motivation to deal constructively with situations condu-
cive to such evils would disappear. But what would be the consequence if, in-
stead, God were known to prevent all gratuitous evils – all evils whose occur-
rence would not lead to any greater good?,”²² we conclude with “absurdity.”
Moreover, individual, personal disappointment is what hurts, not the big ques-
tions. Fischer is intrigued by Max Frisch’s Homo Faber (1957), in which the un-
likely is only the boundary of the likely, such that there is nothing mysterious
about it. Without admitting that life is bound by death, Frisch appears to have
been influenced by Jung’s synchronicity. Fischer ponders whether there can
there be a Jungian correspondence between dreams and outward life. There is
the energy of the Anziehungskraft des Bezüglichen – the power of coincidences
in which the psyche of a person comes into contact with repressed, split and
cast-off parts of its life’s reality in secret contact, which seek the lost unity
and reconciliation, and the psyche now works hard for this.²³ Fate can certainly
shock us into knowing ourselves.
In the sphere of Revelation, that realm where faith is powerful and where the
Father is a co-ordinating thing, there is, assures Fischer, no room for melancholy
(Schwermut). Christ may well have experienced Schicksal “faktisch,” but it was
interpreted within his soul, and hence he was able to transform the experience
of Fate (Schicksal) into freedom and love. This makes Fischer ask the question
with a somewhat clumsy Christological move: was not Jesus’ humanity neverthe-
less a partaker of darkness? Well surely there was at least some ambivalence
about his human state of existence? One can say this without denying the trans-
formation of Fate that has taken place through Christ’s passion, he suggests.²⁴
For us, Christ went through with the cross. Providence has for the believer the
figure and face of Christ (“Die Vorsehung habe für ihn Gestalt und Antlitz Chris-
 Dorothee Sölle, Stellvertretung: Ein Kapitel Theologie nach dem Tode Gottes (Freiburg: Kreuz
Verlag, 1968), 125: “Der Mensch tritt in die Weltverantwortung ein, die früher Gott zugeschrieben
wurde.” However the illusion of moral progress has evaporated. “Es ist nunmehr an der Zeit,
etwas für Gott zu tun.”
 William Hasker, Providence, Evil and the Openness of God, Routledge Studies in the Philos-
ophy of Religion (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 147.
 Fischer, Schicksal in Theologie und Philosophie, 152: “Die Psyche eines Menschen scheint mit
verdrängten, abgespaltenen, ja verstoßenen Teilen seiner Lebenswirklichkeit in geheimem Kon-
takt, sucht die verlorene Einheit und Versöhnung, ja erzwingt diese, in Falle des Homo Faber
geradezu.”
 Ibid., 160.

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ti”). We can behold this, and also be reassured that God will explain our personal
trials at a later date.
Perhaps the theologian who commands most respect from Fischer is Karl
Rahner, for whom suffering was best interpreted as an encounter with the Inac-
cessible (“Leid als Begegnung mit dem Unverfügbaren”),²⁵ thereby taking suffer-
ing as part of the God-relationship. As such it forces me to an ekstasis, as it also
becomes real as something between us and God – and I lose myself in God’s un-
graspability (Unbegreiflichkeit).²⁶ This Rahnerian mysticism, one might say Igna-
tian mysticism, perhaps feels insufficiently dialogical for some tastes. Still, Rah-
ner’s point is that some light enters, even in the ungraspability of his disposal of
us (“der Unbegreiflichkeit seiner Verfügung über uns”).²⁷ Rahner would also in-
sist however that this contributes to the growth of human freedom. We need suf-
fering for training, since it can help point us beyond ourselves to God.
What becomes clear is that modern Catholics receive plaudits. Rahner thinks
that non-believers can grasp God at the end of their natural reason: it is not
enough to say to someone that God has suffered with them. Küng has agreed,
adding that the Psalmist was always calling on God’s power. Fischer also
name-checks Catholic novelists such as Reinhold Schneider.²⁸ In his masterpiece
Winter in Wien, Schneider finds painful the pious certainties of Albrecht von Hal-
ler. Much better is to acknowledge a presence from approaching death and not
fearing it: “numen adest,” as Schneider puts it.²⁹
The Catholic Neutestamentler Klaus Berger is also appreciated by Fischer for
his theology of suffering: the answer is to look ahead to new experiences on the
way to kingdom. The bible won’t tell us why there is evil, but only that God is
dealing with it, bringing Order, and helping us trust him for place of suffering
in our story. Indeed the bible comes in more and more as the book goes on.
Fischer approaches it with a mix of biblical critics, Jewish scholars (Buber)
and choice theological exegetes such that the last word might be given to the
bible. All these are voices that prefer to speak of Providence as that which push-
es through Fate by the power of the Resurrection, not a doctrine to be admired.
 Ibid., 161, quoting Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie XIV: In Sorge um die Kirche (Zürich:
Benziger, 1980), 463: “Die Unbegreiflichkeit des Leides ist ein Stück der Unbegreiflichkeit
Gottes.”
 Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie, 462– 6.
 Text from The Universe: Holy Week, 1984.
 “Genug, es ist ein Gott, es ruft es die Natur, / Der ganze Bau der Welt zeigt seiner Hände
Spur.”
 Reinhold Schneider, Winter in Wien: Aus meinen Notizbüchern 1957/58 (Freiburg: Herder,
1959), 261; Fischer, Schicksal in Theologie und Philosophie, 156.

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For without this technology has become our fate and doom.³⁰ Providence
/Fügung is not a ground for believing in God, but rather vice versa; non-believers
are just going to see it all as pure chance. It is helping each other after a crisis
that Resurrection can be experienced, seeing in the darkness a spur to faithful
action.³¹
There is a problem with this argument thast something has to be seen to be
Providence at the time: it confuses the categories of Provdence and Guidance or
Vocation. Similarly Leo Scheffczyk in an article agreed with Kocher that there
lurks a gnostic danger in considering the Incarnation as a sign of optimism
for humans. Effectively merely symbolic, it is no better than deism of sorts.
His solution is to see creation as including an invitation to fellowship with
God which can only be experienced as word and event of calling. Again there
seems to be this assumption that Providence requires a sense of guidance on
the side of the creature.³²
The late modern Protestant legacy might well be the individual project of the
self, its definition and identity and managing of contingency (Danz).³³ The late-
late modern offers a collage of views of Providence which shelter in the matrix of
a catholic spirituality, overlap and lead to no conclusion except a hope for ener-
gising power (Fischer). Yet a corrective that Christian Link provides is to empha-
sise God’s action is not one of force but a movement of suggesting and leading
the imagination, so that Providence is not to be reduced to subjectivity at the ex-
pense of his will being done. Nor is it simply about a presence or even a power to
be harnessed, but is a will coming to us from beyond us. It leads us back to a
right understanding of creation, by tracing the footprints of God back to the orig-
inating creative purpose (Link).
To come right up to date on the English-speaking side, I shall take two recent
essays from the same collection. First David Bentley Hart claims that Calvin had
no doctrine of providence because he denied the divine will/permission distinc-
 Klaus Fischer, “Schicksal, Fügung, Gott,” ZKTh 133 (2011): 49 – 68, 51.
 Ibid., 68: “[…] ‘das böse Schicksal schafft,’ indem es dieses umschafft, neu schafft, in seinen
Dienst nimmt, in Segen verwandelt, zum Guten – Leben und Menschen zugute – fügt.”
 Leo Scheffczyk, “‘Vorsehung’ als Schlüssel zum Geheimnis von Gottes Welthandeln,” Forum
Katholische Theologie 9 (1993): 299 – 305, 305: “Danach ist Schöpfung, dem biblischen Verständ-
nis entsprechend, die Eröffnung einer Gemeinschaft Gottes mit dem Menschen, eines convivium,
das sich im ganzen Weltverlauf an allen Kreaturen als wirksame Gestalt des Weltbezuges Gottes
aufweisen läßt […]. Schöpfung dagegen bedeutet eine einzigartige Setzung einer Begründungs-
und Mitteilungsrelation (vgl. H.E. Hengstenberg), die angemessen nur als personales Wort- und
Rufgeschehen verstanden werden kann.”
 Lübbe, Religion nach der Aufklärung, 166, who cites Francis Bacon: ‘Tantum possumus quan-
tum scimus’ and asserts “Bewältigte Kontingenz ist anerkannte Kontingenz”.

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tion. In the same era decadence was also apparent in the Dominican Banez’s
doctrine of praemotio physica.³⁴ This is a forceful rather than a moral pre-motion,
for the creature in fact supplies the moral element of any action. On the Domi-
nican account, God’s predetermining the will “vertically” means he does not de-
termine it. He makes it a certain way, and it then acts freely; grace rescues a few.
This seems to suggest that God causes being originally and then causes it again
each time we will/choose, and efficient causality seemed the only kind. Hart la-
ments that this “ontic” causality reduces God to our level as one causal factor
amongst others. Those early moderns loved the language of power, and hence
were obsessed with cause and causation. The Molinist/Arminian variation,
whereby God chooses among worlds to actualize isn’t much better. Even Thomas
by answering an Augustinian false interpretation of Paul was dealing in false
questions in his ST I, q23,a5ad3, resulting in his notorious argument for predilec-
tive predestination ante praevisa merita.³⁵
Hart wants to start with 1Timothy 2:4 and contend that God simply wills uni-
versal salvation. Permissive providence really has to be transcendent as ontolog-
ical cause built into creation. God is near all creatures. The solution is that God
calls all and draws all but gives all the gnomic will to resist. This is closer to
Christian revelation, he believes, in that it is more Christ-like, i. e. it is analogous
to the way Jesus operated. “Simply said, if God required evil to accomplish his
good ends the revelation of his nature to finite minds – then not only would
evil possess a real existence over against the good, but God himself would be
dependent on evil.”³⁶ The voluntarist God of the Absolute is an imposter and
leads us into nihilism. We need to listen to Heidegger in his Die Onto-Theo-Logi-
sche Verfassung der Metaphysik.³⁷ One might point out that in Hart’s previous
monograph there was a theology of presence or kabod, which did not always
seem to affirm God’s acting in the concrete particular. The idea of musical coun-
terpoint was as close to analogy for providence as he got.³⁸
 David Bentley Hart, “Providence and Causality: On Divine Innocence,” in The Providence of
God: Deus Habet Consilium, eds. Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler (New York: Con-
tinuum, 2009): 34– 56.
 Ibid., 55, n. 33
 Ibid., 49.
 Martin Heidegger, Identität und Differenz (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 2006), 64– 5.
 David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Grand Rap-
ids: Eerdmans, 2003).

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In the same volume John Webster provides a more balanced approach.³⁹ All
Christian doctrines are functions of the doctrine of the Trinity (“Providence is an
aspect of the wonder of the overflow of God’s abundant life”). “Moreover, distrib-
uted in this way, providence is informed by other tracts of Christian teaching –
most of all the doctrine of God, but also, for example, creation, soteriology and
anthropology.”⁴⁰ This helps to keep the doctrine’s Christian flavour. Also, it
should always be linked to the doctrine of God, or else it gets too subjectivised,
as with Schleiermacher who was rather unbalanced when he insisted: “for a
Christian consciousness, all the things have existence only as they are related
to the efficacy of redemption.”⁴¹
Getting into philosophical debates about causality and agency is secondary,
as belonging to the task of disputation, one that comes only after exposition.
Hence one must not start from “the universe needs a ruler and God must be
he who fitted that job description.” One starts with Christian faith:
Only in that movement of disappointment and trust is providence known. This is simply to
say that the knowledge of providence is knowledge of faith […]. Providence is knowledge of
God, and known as God is known, in the act of faith. The creaturely act of faith is the work
of the Holy Spirit, a point at which reason is caught up in an antecedent gracious causality
which enables the intellect to see God and all things in God by locating its operations
coram Deo. This is why faith in Providence is only derivatively ‘subjective’, an interpretation
of and attitude towards the world. Primarily and strictly it is objective, generated and sus-
tained by a movement from outside reason.⁴²
In other words a moment of revelation, or derived from revelation, leading to

conviction is needed. Believing that our time is under God’s hand, we can
have confidence to attempt to make sense of it. There is comfort not tragedy
and a freedom from anxiety that Calvin remarked on (Institutes I 17.11), which
in turn is creative. Providence anticipates the missions of the Trinity: “provi-
dence is the love of God which, corresponding to creativity, superintends the his-
torical order of created being so that its relation to the creator may flourish (love
as fidelity).”⁴³ This is an engaged involvement which is much more than mere
foreknowledge. “The Spirit causes creaturely causes; The Son intervenes to
 John Webster, “On the Theology of Providence,” in The Providence of God: Deus Habet Con-
silium, eds. Francesca Aran Murphy and Philip G. Ziegler (New York: Continuum, 2009): 158 – 75,
159.
 Ibid., 166.
 Friedrich D.E. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, ed. Hugh R. Mackintosh and James
S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1963), 723, quoted in Webster, “Theology of Providence,” 161.
 Webster, “Theology of Providence,” 163, after Zwingli.
 Ibid., 167.

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draw creation back from ruin so that it may attain its end.” God’s action amounts
to a ministerial cause not a principial one – though as final and efficient cause.
Creation is thus relatively independent “but still needs sustaining, yet not as on-
tologically precarious.”⁴⁴ A creature can be moved inwardly though derived from
outer source. Creaturely willingness not indifference, even as it receives stimula-
tion to act freely.
Recently, Terry J. Wright’s Providence Made Flesh wants to see eschatology
realized in the sense of Presence. To believe in Providence is to believe: “that
God acts as he works out from the midst of his people, the Church, and through
the Church, his body, the world; and by faithfully offering humanity back to the
Father in his own flesh, again, by the Spirit, the world has access into – or be-
comes in its entirety the place of – the presence of God.”⁴⁵ In a novel and even
refreshing approach, Wright is determined to avoid causal language. Gubernatio
gets collapsed into concursus and “the Son makes atonement and thus ensures
the continuance of God’s presence in the world.”⁴⁶ God sustains all things equal-
ly, but his presence’s intensity varies. God can be more present in some things
than in others. As to how God acts then: this question “need not arise.”⁴⁷ Yet
the “how is He present” question is not answered either! “Deutero-Isaiah be-
lieved God to be present in the expansion of the Persian Empire across the an-
cient Near East.”⁴⁸ Well, how so? We are told: “it is in the Spirit-directed, obedi-
ent life of Christ, and in the Spirit-directed, obedient life of Christ’s body, the
Church, that God’s providence is made flesh,”⁴⁹ yet the examples given: “Is
God intensely present equally in the execution of a despot and the rape of a
minor?” or in the 9/11 attacks, seems to have little to do with the mediation of
that presence through the church.
In another very recent monograph Alexander Jensen is sympathetic towards
the Process Theology’s notion of God contributing to history by providing no
more than a divine lure, although he wants to suggest it is more than that, be-
cause as transcendent (according to transcendence in a “strong” sense), God
is source of all being, not an existent being to be in conflict or having to lure an-
other. For as Aquinas and Tanner have both argued, divine causality is quite dif-
 Ibid., 168.
 Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh: Divine Presence as a Framework for a Theology of
Presence (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2009), 223.
 Ibid., 228.
 Ibid., 232.
 Ibid., 231.
 Ibid., 136.

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ferent from the created version.⁵⁰ He rejoices that Providence is really a modern
and enlightenment doctrine, since after 1700 the world was no longer viewed as
static. What this means for God is a little unclear. It would seem that Jensen ac-
cords with Alfred North Whitehead’s view of God as poet, giving the world vi-
sion, and hence reaction to the world to some degree. What one is left with,
from readings of Schleiermacher is that divine presence as “mere extension of
his influence” can be corrected by Bonhoeffer’s vision, for whom divine personal
presence could be mediated through Word and sacrament and the believing
community; but don’t forget the Spirit who mediates life of Christ in a hidden
way. Jenson wants to replace the “feeling of absolute dependence” with “experi-
ence of the presence of the Risen Christ” as the centre of the doctrine. “God is
beyond being, utterly ineffable, but, at the same time, present in creation in a
very real way.”⁵¹
This vision is self-consciously Christocentric: the logos as the divine agency
within time and space, while the Father is the transcendent divine agency be-
yond time and space Drawing on the De Genesi ad Litteram 1,2,6 Jensen claims
patristic authority for creation as being something that takes place within the du-
ration of the Trinity:
This is supported by the observation that Augustine, discussing creation in the Literal
Meaning of Genesis, makes an explicit link between the creation of time and the co-eternity
of the Son with the Father. Whatever the This is itself excludes the possibility of any stasis
in eternity – contrary to Pannenberg’s reading, which assumes that Augustine thought of
divine eternity as static.⁵²
God may well speak creation into existence which is then all present to him: but
that does not mean that God is not to be thought as residing beyond created
space, for his transcendence is “otherwise.” The problem is that such a move
has the Arian implications of which Augustine and others would have been
only too aware.
Another misinterpretation appears with regard to Scotus and univocity.⁵³
Without going too deeply into late medieval metaphysics, the notion of “univoc-
ity of being” allowed for God to be seen as a partner of humanity in his relating
 Alexander S. Jensen, Divine Providence and Human Agency: Trinity, Creation and Freedom
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2014), 5.
 Ibid., 140 f.
 Ibid., 39.
 Ibid., 43. Jensen helpfully adduces Scotus’ Opus Oxoniense I dist III, q1, which when com-
bined with Ockham (Questiones in librum secundum sententiarum Rep II qu 8), seems to result
in a God whose “duration is not completely simultaneous.”

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to his creation ad extra, even while in himself he is totally transcendent and be-
yond such categories as duration. He seems here to envisage temporal provi-
dence mapping on to an eternal willing of long duration, which touches the
world through the “organ” of “the one simultaneous and eternal act of God’s
willing.”⁵⁴ This means that creation is unnecessary, without having to speculate
that God chose it from a number of possible worlds. Yet in Jensen’s picture, the
divine will here acts as a conduit for a God who can hardly hold back from cre-
ating. Further, where he agrees with Schleiermacher, that God is eternally active-
ly creating, one needs to object that’s not the same thing as God’s being experi-
encing duration in time, however much Jensen thinks it is. Surely, pace Jensen,
according to Barth the divine Dauer is not a worldly Dauer, but there is only an-
alogically speaking “time” or duration in the Trinity.
 Ibid., 142.

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Conclusion
The early Christian writers were keen to show how Christianity showed a free-
dom that was purposeful, because it built on a creation order that manifested
those values. If one might view him as synthesing much of the patristic thinking
on the matter, then Augustine conceived of providence as intelligent, that God
has a relationship of ordaining and ordering towards creation. Providence
works on a cosmic scale, relating to groups (“human race”, “church”) before
it comes down to individuals, yet it is for the individual who is pursued by super-
natural grace to see how the divine cosmic plan has a place for him or her. How
providence works in individual lives remains mostly hidden, with glimpses at
odd moments, and is more clearly visible in key turning-points of public history.
When individuals embrace it, then the prevenient grace working within them
leads them towards providence.
With Boethius as representative of a less confident Christian society, Provi-
dence became more transcendent, even aloof, as it remained in heaven as a sur-
veying presence there. Fortune and Philosophy moved in to fill the gap. With
Eriugena too, it was not some intermediary world-soul but the Spirit Himself, un-
derstood as the divine power of a divine mind, who fulfilled the task of continu-
ing creation and perfecting it while doing so, yet this was done to creation rather
than inviting creatures to find their historical place within a divine plan. The ear-
lier Middle Ages did not believe in the progress of nature, or the spiritualising of
it, but in the revelation of God through misfortune so that there could be spiri-
tual progress for souls, despite the world’s darkness and senescence (so, Hugh).
This pessimism about this world could lead to an eschatological mentality,
wherein the monastic movement was the harbinger of a new world taking
shape, with Christ’s presence becoming stronger in the world until his return be-
came inevitable. The theology of the Byzantine early middle ages insisted on free
will against the insidious temptations of cosmic monism (“Islamic” determin-
ism) or cosmic dualism (forces both divine and Satanic). Not all suffering is
evil if the right reaction to it is chosen.
In Scholastic Theology Providence became even more strongly a doctrine
about the Being of God, as reflecting on the combination of Divine Intellect
and Will. Dominicans stressed both the Generosity and the Omniscience of
God, with Predestination in the order of redemption as being more like an exec-
utive decision in time, posterior to the providential divine disposition. Francis-
cans held providence to be less a plan in the Divine Mind and more the exercise
of that will. In that sense the Franciscans were true both to Augustine with his
emphasis on the Creator-creation relationship, but also forward-thinking. Later

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292 Conclusion
medieval thinkers preferred to see Providence as to do with signposts in creation

which gave persons a certain freedom to respond intelligently, rather than seeing
Providence in overly directive terms. For Aquinas there was no sense of God
being one cause among others, but that did now seem appropriate: divine and
creaturely freedom in proportion allowed the affective to be effective, even
while resistible. Causality could be viewed as transferred rather than as delegat-
ed or secondary, with an immediacy in creation, yet with other causes also being
available. God could be related to and one could come to share in his providen-
tial detachment, even while trusting one’s senses as the best way of being in-
formed about life. One could have a prudential wisdom about the future and
this in the image of God.
For Luther, God’s larger plans and providence in all His freedom and crea-
tivity were not accessible to the human mind, but graciously, guidance for
one’s own and family life could be glimpsed and even grasped. Special provi-
dence was not restricted to believers, since it works off the back of divinely in-
stituted and guided institutions such as family, law, government (Melanchthon)
and also culture and the arts (Calvin), but believers are able to recognise it and
see God and Christ in it. With the later Reformation, Providence seemed more
like judgement, with only a remnant remaining, as Predestination took over
Providence, or at least stamped it indelibly. However in Bullinger, and in a con-
tinuing tradition, providence was an assurance of everyday goodness, even as
the end of the Age approached.
The early modern interest in natural science led to a love of details in a pe-
riod when theology seemed to be at in impasse in a divided Europe. Although
some like Newton believed passionately in a God active in the world (while
not belonging to the world as per some pantheism), the Enlightenment confi-
dence affirmed a dignified freedom of humanity through reason. If concursus
was a doctrine that intended to guard God’s part in human affairs, by the eight-
eenth century it served more to guarantee humanity’s part in divine affairs. With
an increase in subjectivity as the foundation of religion, providence got easily
conflated with guidance or vocation, so long as (in Schleiermacher’s view) the
things perceived were significant and not trivial. God remained at a height
above the all. The humanity of Christ gave moral guidance to help plot one’s
way in life.
It will be observed that in the review of the last half-century or so on theol-
ogy of providence, the particular theories of Process Theology and the Theolo-
gies in the light of Natural Science have been left to one side, or only mentioned
in passing. If this means presupposing a particular theology and a particular An-
thropology, then the justification for this can be sought in the following chapters.
There are three things to notice in the recent Protestant treatments of the doc-

Authenticated
Conclusion 293
trine, which one could almost call “trends”: the turn to continuous creation to
speak of the maintaining of creation, formerly known as “conservation”; the re-
sponsiveness of God in the concursus (a co-operation with creatures); the escha-
tologising and simultaneously the universalising and “developmental-construc-
tive” nature of gubernatio.
In what sense are the three components of the traditional understanding of
the doctrine: conservatio, concursus and gubernatio to be preserved at all costs?
These are not different actions, but three aspects of one Divine work that has
been ongoing ever since creation. Translated into theological sense these
mean, respectively, that God has to engage with the forces of chaos and un-cre-
ation unleashed or given access to the world through human sin, that he has to
work with human agents, and hence there is a place primarily although not ex-
clusively for the church, and that he has to steer the rudder in order to correct the
direction that a sequence of events is taking, not least when human assertion of
creaturely freedom is deceived into compulsive and uncontrollable tendencies.
This might seem to make God’s Sovereignty look rather limited, with only the re-
assurance that the eschaton will bring him a full degree of control. (That is of
course what Barth allows, while not wanting to speculate overly much on that
latter scenario.) Conceived of in this way, conservatio and gubernatio amount
to the same thing, leaving only concursus as the area for discussion. The former
two could be accounted for through deistic-sounding principles of teleological
moral law built into the world: opposing or straying from these will eventually
prove one’s undoing. Concursus however requires a consideration of “hand to
hand” combat (of the Jacob’s Ladder sort).
Part of the problem is the atrophying of the natural scientific imagination.
How things work or do not work, how they can be made to work, what is behind
the appearances – all these things are worthy, yet like indulged children demand
that those who work in the humanities play their games, with their rules. There is
nothing outside the material, or what is spiritual is simply energy. Any idea of
the historical, the ethical, the metaphysical is only of use as it helps to shed il-
lusions: such discourse is commanded to be self-deconstructing.
History can be viewed as the meaningful unfolding of stories large and
small, public and private. Michael Higton has taken Hans Frei’s lament, that
the end of figuration meant the end of Providence as a sign that Frei accepted
the death and the inevitable remaining dead of figuration: “The providential his-
tory of God’s ways with the world which underlays pre-critical figural interpreta-
tion has been replaced by an inward history in which the truly significant occur-
rences lie beneath the surface, as modulations in the rhythms in the one,

Authenticated
294 Conclusion
cumulative, evolving, continuous story of Spirit.”¹ Higton follows this with what
he feels is Frei’s manifesto for retrieving figural interpretation: “What Frei calls
‘figural interpretation’ is nothing more than the process by which Christians pay
ever-renewed attention to the particularity of Jesus Christ on the one hand, and
to this thoroughly historical world on the other and trust to find glimpses of ways
in which each worldly reality might find its own particularly appropriate fulfil-
ment in Christ.”
The point that Higton’s otherwise helpful analysis seems to miss is that for
Frei it was more a case of operating from the bible’s own vision of Christ towards
a re-shaped vision of the world that would in turn re-shape and not just accom-
modate worldly reality. There is a confidence that understanding the biblical pat-
tern of providential history can inspire afresh an awareness of how God might be
at work now. This does not retreat to the vision that was lost post-Cocceius but it
does reclaim it as it gains more. Hence, to speak of history in Christ means that
history is held as a span between both Advents; that those in Christ can see it as
meaningful as much as absurd and that the story of Jesus informs more than is
informed by other historical events or mythical constructs. The Cross when un-
derstood in its context is rich in possibilities – for hope, self-recognition, trans-
formation, mutual forgiveness, solidarity. There is an energy which is hidden yet
which plots and moves, available to all who will not hold on to theirselves and
lives, but see the story as taking them on.² The Incarnation is more than simply a
part of God’s providential order; it is part of it so as to encompsss it and suffuse
that order with a dynamic presence that makes a possibility of each moment.
Only on the basis of a theology of history which thinks of the course of
events as meeting with God’s Heilsgeschichte in its judgement and salvation at
Creation, Incarnation, Cross and Second Advent, does world-history – and the
stories of lives contained within these larger stories – receive a framing and a fix-
ing worthy of a Christian biblical and theological doctrine of Providence. How
that should look has not been the purpose of this book. That has been to review
the history of teaching and ideas about Providence, the better to understand
Providence and in turn the better to understand providence in our time. However
the constructive task of offering insight into what a doctrine of Providence
should look like in this generation lies beyond this book, but it is to be hoped
that these pages, with their presentation of historical examples of thinkers grap-
pling with Providence have made that next step a little less daunting to take.
 Higton, Christ, Providence and History, 149.

 I have found the last chapter of Eberhard Jüngel’s Gott als Geheimnis der Welt, 6. Aufl. (Tübin-
gen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992) suggestive here.

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What is the overall structure and content of the book?

What is the overall structure and content of the book?

How does the book discuss the development of providence in early Christianity?

How does the book discuss the development of providence in early Christianity?

Mark W.

Divine Action from a Human Point of View

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© 2015 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Chapter One: Providence in the early Christian Church’s Theology 5

Chapter Two: The Medieval Account of Providence 55

Chapter Three: Later Medieval Developments 104

Chapter Four: Reformation Providence 135

Chapter Six: The Enlightenment’s ongoing Challenge to the Doctrine of

Chapter Seven: Providence in twentieth-century theological

Reactions to Barth on Providence 242

Index of Scripture References 325

Index of Key Figures 328

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 Journals IV A 164 (1843).

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One is indebted to Silke-Petra Bergjan’s work to see how Clement, Origen

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Overall then, in Origen’s understanding the goal of pedagogical pronoia was

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this he thinks very differently from Origen.⁷⁹ There is no employment of a Logos

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Constantine.⁸⁷ In his Triecennial Oration of 336, one year before Constantine’s

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to the supralunary realm. In Oration 27,10 he attacked the erroneous interpreta-

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shadowy figure, Nemesius. A contemporary, perhaps a good friend of Gregory of

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 Ibid., 279.

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