Providence meticulous, mysterious and momentous

I’ve just re-read Luther’s classic The Bondage of the Will, in which he refutes the ubiquitous belief that the (fallen) human will is balanced between good and evil, able to choose either. I’ve only just got it back after an Arminian friend borrowed it to refute it twenty-two years ago, seeking to achieve against Luther what Erasmus failed to do, and not succeeding, kept it on his shelf.

In effect the book (like John Calvin’s similarly titled book) is a scriptural exposition of free grace, which would seem to be something to celebrate. But the human mind usually leaps to the corollary of grace elevated over “free-will”: if it is God who chooses us, and not we him, how can he judge those he does not so choose? That’s why there was ever a controversy about the will within Christianity.

Luther, of course, points out that when the same issue was raised in New Testament times, Paul argued against it fully, in the Spirit, in Romans 9, and as he comes face to face with the mystery, finally leaves it unanswered as being above the human pay-grade:

19 One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us? For who is able to resist his will?” 20 But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? “Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this?’”21 Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?

As I have often preached, we like to say that God’s ways are higher than ours, until they actually are, and then we complain. But election and the human will are far from the only matters about which we are enjoined by Scripture to exercise that thing called “faith,” by believing what God says about himself even at the points where evidence seems contradictory.

When you think about it, after you know that God’s only Son gave his life for you, and know that you have been called, freely forgiven and granted eternal life, it’s a little irrational to cast all that experience of love into doubt because you don’t comprehend God’s thinking on unbelievers.

Comparably, one of the perennial objections to believing that the natural creation is good (as per Genesis 1) is that we can’t see why God would create a perishable world in which death, predation and parasitism occur. I showed at book length in God’s Good Earth how, willy nilly, God did just that. Whilst one may speculate forever on the “why” of the matter, in the end God is surely entitled to create how he likes.

Despite the claims of the Malthusian Darwinists that “…the universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference,” one walk outside in the sunshine refutes it, and reading something like Michael Denton’s Nature’s Destiny puts it to bed permanently. The Christian has experienced God’s love in the persistent bounty of a beautiful creation, and has read his claim that the creation is good (as Luther points out, God means good from his perspective rather than ours!). And yet we will always be troubled by animal suffering or the destructiveness of earthquakes and asteroids. As in the question of “free-will,” the only final answer this side of glory is, “He is the Lord – he will do what seems right to him.” Do we really know better than he does?

That brings me to the linked question of providence, over which people similarly tie themselves in knots. And I am specifically referring here to the remarkable providence of Donald Trump’s recent survival of an assassination attempt.

I have often argued here (with Thomas Aquinas, who posts anonymously!) that providence must be meticulous if God’s promises and purposes are to mean anything. Josh Swamidass, for example, questioned whether God would bother with the granular details of evolution, still less the trivia of human existence, such as whether I choose Weetabix or muesli for breakfast. He is concerned only with the bigger questions, such as a functioning biosphere or our calling in life. But if I choke on a raisin in the muesli, suddenly my apportioned role in the kingdom of God could be permanently truncated: life is lived on a knife-edge.

In the same way, chaos theory alone makes meticulous providence crucial for the key promises of God. If John the Baptist had choked on a locust, or more to the point had any of his ancestors failed to participate in his genealogy, all the ancient prophecies about his ministry would have fallen to the ground. No promised preparation for the Messiah means no baptized Messiah. At best we’d have an improvised Plan B that has to apologise for deviating from the promises of the law and prophets. The Open Theists might prefer that, but it doesn’t fit the evidence.

In most individual cases, the discussion of providence involves such “what if?” contingencies. But in the case of the Trump bullet, scarcely nobody would deny that one centimetre changed history. Evangelical opinions on Trump range from his being a new Moses to being the final antichrist. I’ve always been inclined to a middle view – that he is like King Jehu, who was pivotal in the salvation history of Israel even though of questionable spiritual status. What is not in much doubt (as evidenced by the near-inevitability of an assassination attempt to many minds not claiming prophetic insight) is that the course not just of American politics, but of world history because of America’s influence, is profoundly different in three scenarios dictated by wind speed or muscle tone: the bullet misses, the bullets strikes home, or as actually happened, the bullet pierces the ear.

There’s no need to do more than sketch out the obvious on this. Not a few have plausibly suggested that a Trump-deranged assassination could well have triggered a civil war, given the political tensions in play. For the bullet to miss, or for the security services to have acted rather more effectively, might have raised the stakes of the election, or simply been the relatively minor event of a lone psychopath being arrested or shot outside the perimeter of the rally.

But the actual circumstances are so extraordinary that only words like “providence” and “miracle” are adequate to the task. Even atheistic commentators use the words in scare quotes, and the more deranged haters of Trump appear to melt down because the whole universe is proving white supremacist. The sheer precision of the miss invites the Trump sceptic or global conspiracist to posit a set-up fraud, which would require even more divine providence, it seems to me, to succeed.

I suppose those Christians who believe Trump to be antichrist (some have commented to that effect on The Hump) would attribute the thing to the luck of the devil. But since the devil only operates by divine permission, that would still only tell us that God has set these times for the appearance of such an antichrist.

I’m not impressed by self-styled prophets who say that a near miss precipitates Trump’s conversion (and hence ushers in the new Moses). Though it would be good to be able to see Exodus 21:1-6 as germane.

But put yourself in Trump’s position. You are already fully aware that you are a man of some kind of destiny. It doesn’t matter to my argument whether you see yourself as God’s unworthy vessel, as God’s perfect hero, or simply cynically as the best thing that’s ever happened. A bullet 1cm from your brain simply must tell you that your destiny matters to God (and ergo to the world). Or if (and this I don’t believe) you are not simply vain or bombastic but a complete egomaniac narcissist, such an experience would finally convince you that you are God, as near as dammit.

Now, which of these scenarios, if any, plays out I don’t care to guess. So far, the runes look auspicious – Trump has publicly attributed his survival to God, rather than demanding worship, and immediately saw the need to change tack to a more unifying election pitch. But whatever the case, I believe that God’s providence is remarkably on display, and that God’s special providence will produce God’s desired special outcomes. At the very least, surely any Christian must appreciate the intriguing way that the role of God in world events is becoming ever more apparent to people. Whatever the battle is, it’s becoming seen as spiritual and not just political.

But I’ve noticed that some commentators have been equivocal about considering the role of providence, divine, demonic or whatever, for one reason: Corey Comperatore. He is the guy who was killed by one of the bullets that missed Trump, an archetypal innocent bystander displaying an exemplary life and heroism in screening his family from danger and paying the ultimate price. I won’t ignore, either, the two others critically injured. How, people say, can one invoke providence for preserving the President when it so clearly ignored these others? Doesn’t God care about the little man?

It is inevitable that the world focuses mainly on the figure of Donald Trump, with all the ramifications for billions of people round the world. But that does not mean that a providence that frowns on the bystander does not hide (to allude to the hymn) the smiling face of God towards him. It is not unknown for Christians with worthy ambitions to choke on a raisin in their muesli, or (to cite instances I know from real life) to die in a road accident on their first trip as a missionary, or to die of cancer with small children. Such hard providences are part and parcel of this “vale of tears,” and though it is usually futile to seek to discover how they refine God’s people, or contribute to the Kingdom, they are as significant to God’s loving purposes as the more evident signs of God’s hand.

Scripture itself makes reference to innocent bystanders suffering as the direct result of divine providence. Joseph was warned in a dream to take Jesus to Egypt to avoid the murderous wrath of Herod against him. Yet not only did that wrath result in the slaughter of the innocents of Bethelehem, whom God did not warn, but their death is referenced in Matthew as fulfilling sacred prophecy. A mystery indeed. Then again, in Acts 12, the miraculous release of Peter from jail, by courtesy of an angel, is taught in every Sunday School. But we seldom consider the guards, put to sleep by God, who were by executed by Herod for dereliction of duty.

The Bible makes no attempt to justify God in such instances, though his involvement is clearly indicated. Once again, like creation and election, the understanding of providence is well above our pay grade. The more we recognise that, and let God be God, the more we are likely to see how actively involved he is in this world’s affairs. There is no cause named “chance.”