_Christian Theology
          by Milton Valentine, D.D., LL.D
          Copyright 1906,
          Lutheran Publication Society
          Printed Philadelphia, PA.
          by The United Lutheran Publication House_
               Pages 334-379
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            CHAPTER IV.

          THE WORKS OF GOD.

These are properly discriminated into three forms--
Creation, Preservation, and Providence.  Together they
form Christian Cosmology.  In entering it our order of
advance is from the immanent Trinity to what belongs
to the economic Trinity, or the Triune God in _opera ad
extra_.  The immanent glory of God becomes a declara-
tive or manifested glory, showing His intelligence,
wisdom, will, and power in an established cosmos or
world order, reflecting the divine character and purpose.
His "eternal power and Godhead" are here understood
by "the things that are made" (Rom. i. 20).

          CREATION.

Creation is that action of the Triune God by which
He has called the universe of the heavens and the earth
into existence.  By necessary conception, this is His
first work _ad extra_.  The only action that precedes it
is the immanent eternal activity of the divine essence or
trinitarian life.  God is the absolute originating Cause,
the Creator of all being, other than Himself.  All that
_is_, other than God, is created by God.  So the Scriptures
clearly teach (Gen. i. 1; Neh, ix. 6; Ps xix. 1; Acts
vii. 50; xiv. 15; xvii. 24-28; Rom. i. 19, 20; xi. 36;
I Cor. viii. 6; Eph. iii. 15; Heb. i. 10; ii. 10; xi. 3;
John i. 3); and the best insight of science and philosophy
sustains the truth.
---------------End of Page 334----------------------------
But in accepting this truth, theology seeks, if possible,
to vindicate it by reaching some conception as to how
God could and did, from the perfection and completeness
of His own being in itself, move outward in the origi-
nation of other being.  The aim is, primarily, not to de-
termine the objective end divinely contemplated and
sought in the action originating other existence, but
rather to form a conception of the subjective impulse, so
to speak, toward _ad extra_ creative production:  what _in_
God was the ground of such proceeding outward in orig-
inative power.  And the inquiry adjusts itself, not to any
of the old pagan views of deity, marked by their obsolete
emanational cosmogonies, nor to our modern pantheistic
views with their blind evolutionisms, but alone to the
idea of God as reached in Christian theism.  Theology
rightly finds the explanation in the truth that while God
is absolutely complete and self-sufficient in His intelli-
gence, power, happiness, and holy freedom, He is also
the fullness of love.  In the very act of knowing Him-
self in the perfection of His own being, there must be
embraced an absolute self-discrimination from every other
conceivable or possible object.  The idea of otherness is
part of the discrimination of self.  While intelligence is
thus the primary seat of all possibilities, the divine love
is essentially communicative, and uses its conscious
plenitude of power to actualize its ideals of creature ex-
istence and blessedness.  It is the nature of holy Love,
or loving Will, to look beyond Self, and use its power to
create objects upon which it may bestow its kindness
and the happiness of which they may be made capable.
Love is the reason of creation.

This explanation of the reason applies _directly_ to the
creation of the universe of intelligent, holy, _personal_
-------------End Of Page 335------------------------------
beings, capacitated for conscious participation in the
fellowship of love and blessedness.  The aim of Love
could not be a mere material, unconscious, non-sentient
world, however great or beautiful that might be.  For
that could have no recipiency for the blessedness whose
enjoyment Love means in its divine impulses.  Love's
aim must look to a creaturely existence made consciously
participant in the high life of knowledge, goodness, and
happiness.  The teleology of the divine creative love
means creatures made in the divine "image and like-
ness"--"children," endowed with kindredship of nature.
The realm of inanimate or irrational nature is not the
realm in which Love can find its own or establish for
others a participation in its excellences and happiness.
For our earthly world the aim of creation was _Man_, the
creature "son of God" (Luke iii. 38), for fellowship in
holiness, love, and immortal blessedness.  The physical
cosmos was not, and could not be itself, the end, but a
means to the end.[1]  Physical nature can have only a
relative value, as serving God's love in its aim with
respect to the welfare of the race endowed with capaci-
ties for fellowship in His thought and love, whom He
placed in dominion over it (Gen. i. 26, 28; Ps. viii. 5-8;
Heb. ii. 7).

These two truths--that God's love was the motive
for His exercising creative power, and that love's aims
must seek a world of goodness and blessedness--at once
bring into view the necessary answer to the question as
to God's _objective_ end in creation.  If love must, by very
conception of love be _altruistic_, that end cannot be Him-
----------------------------------------------------------
[1] Even evolutionist cosmogony recognizes Man as the goal to which
the whole evolution looked.  See John Fiske's "The Destiny of
Man," pp. 26-34.
--------------------End of Page 336------------------------
self, or "His own glory," as is often asserted.  Since His
own being and glory are eternally perfect, above all in-
crease or diminution, He could have no motive to add to
them by creation or any work _ad extra_; no motive to
"manifest" or to "declare" His glory, as even that
would imply a sense of relative incompleteness.  More-
over, were His supreme or ultimate aim to glorify Him-
self, it would be absolute self-seeking, and the force of the
word of revelation, "God is love," would be contradicted
with respect to this great work.  Without doubt, God
does "manifest" His glory through creation, but this
truth comes to its full meaning only when that creation
is seen to come out of the heart of His love with altru-
istic aim of love.[1]  To say that because God is infinite
He cannot act for finite ends, is to make Him absolute
Egoism and deny unself goodness in Him altogether.
And such conception collides with the whole claim of the
Gospel.  If we accept the redemption as a work of pure
love, looking to human welfare, shall we hesitate to be-
lieve that the good of the universe of spiritual and moral
beings was a great enough end for the work of creation?
Further, this source of creation in love, not in self-seek-
ing, is in beautiful harmony with the required supremacy
of love in man.  For him the whole law of duty is
summed up on love (Matt. xxii. 37-40).  He is to be trained
into the divine likeness, that the glorious principle of
goodness may be established in the life and order of the
entire realm of personal existence and activity.

The great truth that God claims ownership of all
things, desires to possess all, and hold them subject to
----------------------------------------------------------
[1] Luthardt:  "The purpose of creation is love.  When God created
the earth He manifested His glory, but the purpose of His heart was
love."--"Saving Truths," p. 9.
---------------------End of Page 337------------------------
His authority and control--the great fact of His self-
assertion and sovereignty--is no contradiction of this
truth that His holy love thus aims unselfishly, through
both creation and redemption, at creature welfare and
happiness.  For, the maintenance of His sovereignty
and rights is the fundamental condition of all creature
good.  God must desire all things for Himself, for the
sake of His intelligent creatures, in the purposes and
activities of His holy love with respect to the uni-
verse.  It is only as God's rights and sovereignty are
recognized that the rational creation attains, or can
attain, order and blessedness in the fellowship of this
love.[1]

But the theology of creation requires further defini-
tions.

I.  Creation is a _free_ action of God.  It is not of an
absolute necessity, or eternal, like the immanent activi-
ties of the divine life, but optional in the divine love and
choice.  The Scriptures clearly attribute it to the will or
personal action of God (Gen. i. 3; Ps. civ. 30; Col. i. 16).
Neither internal nor external necessity can be supposed.
No _internal_, because God, as the perfect personality, is
fully self-sufficing in His Trinitarian life and absolute
perfections, needing nothing for His self-completeness.
There is no necessity for "otherness" or being outside
of Himself for the realization of His own personality.
The representation that His love "necessitated" Him to
create is a misapplication of the idea of necessity.  For
love is moral, not physical, and by very conception is
----------------------------------------------------------
[1] As to the difficulties, often alleged, from the course of life and
the study of nature, against thus acknowledging holy love as the
motive on which the world has been created and conducted, see pages
278-289.
-----------------End of Page 338-------------------------------
_free_.  Remove it from the sphere of freedom and it is
no longer love.  The love out of which creation comes
is only the motive for creating.  No _external_ necessity
is supposable, because nothing external existed.  All
that is external is the product of the divine creative
action.  To posit anything outside of God, as necessi-
tating His action of creation, is destructive of the very
conception of God as the absolutely self-grounded first
Cause of all things.  His free-will of love is, therefore,
the sole causality of the universe.

2.  Creation must be ascribed to God _as Triune_.  It is
sometimes attributed to Him in His Unity, or without
reference to distinctions of subsistence (Gen. i. I, 26;
Neh. ix. 6; Rom. xi. 36).  But is sometimes ascribed
to the Father (I Cor. viii. 6); sometimes to the Son
(John i. 3; Col. i. 16); and to the Holy Spirit (Job xxvi.
13; Ps. civ. 30).  We are guided, thus, to think of the
work of creation not as peculiar to one Person of the
Trinity, but as by the whole Godhead, of undivided
Will, one counsel, one creative power.  Theology, how-
ever, is justified in the commonly made distinction, sug-
gestive of realities in the divine working, into the mys-
tery of which we cannot clearly penetrate, when it
follows the Scripture in speaking of the creation as
"of God the Father" (ex) (I Cor. viii. 6), "through the
Son" (dia) (I Cor. viii. 6; John i. 3), "in the Holy
Ghost."[1]  There is in this representation a reflection or
echo of the truth of the immanent Trinity.  Our theology
must recognize the divine Trinality in the work without,
however, forgetting to hold the Unity also in clear view.
For this the statement of Hollaz is in point:  "The three
----------------------------------------------------------
[1] Sartorius:  "The Father created the world through the Son, in
the Holy Spirit of love."--"Doctrine of Divine Love," p. 22.
---------------End of Page 339------------------------------
persons of the Godhead are not three associated causes,
but one Cause, one Author, one Creator.  Although they
are three distinct persons, yet they influence the work of
creation with one power."[1]

3.  The Scripture teaching also requires us to dis-
tinguish the creative work as _primary_ and _secondary
(creatio prima seu immediata_ and _creatio secunda seu
mediata_).  The first expresses the original action by
which God directly brought into existence, out of nothing
(_ex nihilo_), _i.e._, without pre-existing material, the ele-
mentary substances, with their properties and powers.
This may properly be regarded as implied in the chaotic
or formless condition referred to in Gen. i. 2.  It ex-
presses absolute creation, as wrought without means.
The secondary creation is the subsequent action of God
by which He originates out of the substances so created,
particular distinct forms of existence, especially the dif-
ferent species of living beings with organization, laws,
and appointed development, according to His plans.
This is illustrated in the successive formations referred
to in the Genesis creative week.  Thus, while creation
of the first order is absolute, _i.e._, origination out of non-
being, that of the secondary order, as it uses the sub-
stances originated in the primal action, though still real
creation, becomes _formative_ or _architectonic_.

This truth of the absolute creation of the cosmic mate-
rial, or world-stuff, from non-existence (_ex nihilo_), it
must be noted, is peculiar to Biblical and Christian cos-
mology.  None of the heathen religions or philosophies
have reached or presented this great truth.  The Latin
phrase, "_ex nihilo nihil fit_," is a denial of it.  Lucretius
defends the proposition:  "_nullam rem e nihilo gigni divin-
-----------------End of Page 340------------------------------
itus unquam_," by the consideration that otherwise there
would be no need of seed or eggs.  Plato and Aristotle
postulated an eternal chaotic matter (hule) out of which
the world was formed.  Plutarch defends Plato's views:
"The creation was not out of nothing, but out of matter,
wanting in beauty and perfection, like the rude materials
of a house, lying first in confused heap.[1]  The same view
marks the cosmogonies of Egypt, Syria, Babylon, and all
non-Jewish Oriental peoples.[2]  Some claim has recently
been set up for a conception of creation from noth-
ing in the Zoroastrian and Vedic teachings and in
Egyptian records,[3] but the claim has not been estab-
lished.

The Scriptures evidence of this truth is both direct and
indirect.  The use of the word _bara_ (xxx) to "create," in
contradistinction from _asa_ (xxx) and _yatsar_(xxx) to _form_
or _fashion_, in Gen. i.I and ii. 7, is of force, though not
conclusive, in this direction.  While it is to be conceded
that the first word does not necessarily and always denote
production without the use of pre-existing material, it is
yet certain that its manner of employment here gives
evidence that such is its real and intended meaning.  For,
since in the context (verse 2) "the earth" is yet chaotic,
"formless," and "void," the word _bara_ in verse I could not
be meant to express any action of _fashioning_ or giving
the cosmic _forms_, but must refer to the calling of the
elements into existence.  And in the generic Biblical
use of the word it is, in the Kal form, found applied
only to God, and never to human production, or with an
-----------------------------------------------------------
[1] "Procreation of the Soul."
[2] Ranks's "Universal History," Vol. I., pp. 21-22.
[3] James F. Clarkes, "Ten Great Religions," Vol. II., p. 205; Renouf,
"Hibbert Lectures, pp. 216-222.
---------------End of Page 341------------------------------
accusative of material.  This distinction in its applica-
tion hold throughout the account of creation.  While
in ch. ii. 7, _yatsar_ is uesed to express the making of man
as a physical being, "of the goround," in ch. i. 27, _bara_
is employed to describe the making of him as a spiritual
being, a new existence.  In ch. ii. 2, 3, both _bara_ and _asa_
are joined in expressing the whole creative action:
"Created and made," or "created to make," a phrase
that implies at once a distinction between the words and
a combination of the two kinds of divine work in the
whole outcome of creational power.  Beyond doubt the
idea of absolute creation was current among the Hebrews.
"The later Scriptures show that it had become natural
to the Hebrew mind."[1]  They show that God was
thought of as alone "eternal," "Before the earth and the
world, from everlasting to everlasting" (Ps. xc.i), "be-
fore all things" (Col. i. 17); "Of whom" (_ex tou Theou_)
are all things (Rom. xi. 36).  See also John i. 1-3; I
Cor. viii. 6; Col. i. I6. "By faith we understand that
the worlds have been framed by the word of God, so that
what is seen hath not been made out of things which
do appear" (Heb. xi. 3), clearly teaches that God did
not use visible materials for the visible cosmos.  With-
out classing the apocryphal book of Maccabees with the
Biblical Scriptures, we must yet take vii. 28 of this book:
"God made these things out of nothing" (_ex ouk onton
epoiesan tauta ho Theos_), as a positive witness to the Jewish
belief of creation without pre-existing material.  St.
Paul's declaration: "Who quickeneth the dead and call-
eth the things that are not as though they were," evi-
dently views the divine fiat as calling into being from
non-existence.
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[1] A. H. Strong's "Systematic Theology," p. 85.
---------------End of Page 342------------------------------
This feature of the Christian view is sustained from
the data of reason and the best light of science.  The
only rational concept of God, as the absolute and infinite
ground of all finite being, disallows the idea of a second
eternal, self-existent essence.  Beyond all question, the
conception of eternal or self-existent being must be
admitted.  Since something now exists, _something_ must
have existed from eternity--as a beginning of existence
from nothing without any cause is inconceivable.  And
that Being must have in itself the potency of causation
for the origination.  But if the difficult conception of
self-existence must be admitted, as it really must, the
supposition of self-existent matter duplicates the diffi-
culty, and at the same time introduces an external lim-
itation on the being and work of God.  Further, all
that science has been able to discover as to the nature of
matter, or the physical substance of the universe, in its
assumed atoms, reveals a plan or adaptation in their
structure, as of "manufactured articles."[1]  They bear
clearly the marks of subordination to use, or of inten-
tionally prepared materials for world-building.  Science
does not favor, but discredits, the notion that matter,
with its forces, laws, and possibilities, is eternal.  Prof.
Maxwell, writing of these atoms as the foundation stones
of the material universe, says:  "They continue this
day as they were created, perfect in number and measure
and weight; and from the ineffaceable characters
impressed upon them, we learn that those aspirations
after accuracy in measurement, and justice in action,
which we receive among our noblest attributes as men,
are ours because they are essential qualities of Him
who, in the beginning created not only heaven and earth,
---------------------------------------------------------
[1] The characterization of Sir John Herschel.
--------------End of Page 343-----------------------------
but the material of which heaven and earth consist."[1]
To make matter with its forces and laws eternal, would
place the whole basis of the universe outside of God,
and reduce His position or power to that of a mere
cunning and skillful Architect.  But the orderliness of
these laws, their adaptation to the ends of intelligence
and purpose is inconsistent with such a theory.  The
whole teleological proof for the existence of God, beyond
all rational questioning, shows matter with all its powers
and laws to be the product of Mind, or intelligent pur-
pose.  Kant says finely:  "There is a God, because
nature, even in chaos, could not proceed otherwise than
with regularity and order....  Nature, left to its own
general qualities, is rich in fruits which are always fair
and perfect.  Not merely are they harmonious and
excellent themselves, but they are adapted to every
order of being, to the use of man, and to the glory of
God.  It is thus evident that the essential properties of
matter must spring from one mind, the Source and
Ground of all being; a mind in which they belong to a
solidarity of plan.  All that is in reciprocal relations of
harmony must be brought into unity in a single Being,
on whom it all depends.  There is, therefore, a Being
of all beings, an infinite mind and self-sustaining
wisdom, from which nature in the full range of all its
forms and features derives its origin, even as regards its
very possibility."[2]  Kant further declares:  "The propo-
sition that God as the universal first Cause, is the cause
of the existence of substance, can never be given up,
without at the same time giving up the notion of God
as the being of all beings, and therby giving up His all-
----------------------------------------------------------
[1] Encyclopaedia Britannica.
[2] See Blackwood's "Classical Series," pp. 109-110.
----------------End of Page 344----------------------------
sufficiency on which everything in theology depends."[1]
Whatever is that is not God is a creature of God.

If it be alleged that this teaching still leaves us under
the necessity of admitting as true the difficult concep-
tion of self-existent eternal being, our reply must be
that no theory of the universe, as an actual reality, has
ever been suggested, or can be suggested, that obviates,
or can obviate, this necessity.  The recognition of
_something_ self-existently eternal is lodged in the neces-
sities of rational thought and knowledge in the presence
of existing being, and can be evaded only be ceasing to
think.  And, therefore, the affirmation of Lotze is suffi-
cient to meet the case:  "When we characterize the
inner life of the personal God, the current of His
thoughts, His feelings, His will, as everlasting and with-
out beginning, having never known rest and having
never been roused to movement from some state of quies-
cence, we call upon imagination to perform a task no
other and no greater than that which is required from it
by every materialistic or pantehistic view."[2]

4.  Even cosmic times and spaces are of God.  Neither
time nor space, as we have seen, is to be thought of as
an `entity,' as frequent representations seem to make
them.  Nor are they mere `relations,' as is sometimes
taught.  Nor yet are they mere subjective `forms of
thought,' possibly fictional and illusory product of
the human mind's own action, as in the relativity of
Kantian phenomenalism.  But they are true and real for
the actual objective universe.[3]  Yet they belong to the
--------------------------------------------------------
[1] "Practical Reason," Abbott's Translation, p. 279.
[2] "Microcosmus," Bk. IX., ch. iv., pp. 684-685 (Charles Scribner's
Sons, 1894.
[3] Pp. 243-247.
-------------End of Page 345------------------------------
world or universe only as created by God.  They appear
as limited and measured intervals between or occupied
by occurring events and by material bodies.  They have
in themselves no substance--no ontological existence.
Space, in itself, is absolute void, blank emptiness, the
precondition or possibility of extended material exist-
ences.  So, also, Time, in itself, is simply the necessary
presupposition of events, change, succession in an order
of before and after, or measurably enduring finite
existence.  Before any creation by God, if we may con-
ceive such `before,' there was nothing but God.  He
was the only existence; but then instead of the nothing-
ness or void of other being than Himself, His creational
power put finite existences, with material dimensions and
successional movement.  And so, cosmic space and
cosmic time, or, translated into the terms of their equiv-
alents in human experience and consciousness, measured
extension and distances, and measured duration, became
realities for the universe.  Before creation there were
only the possibilities--not the realities of these--and their
possibilities lay only in the power of God.  The poten-
cies were in His Will; and the creation of things, with
material extensions and succesional movements of
change and events, became the birthday of actual cosmic
spaces and times.

5.  With respect to the _secondary_ creational work,
that which, out of the created elements or essences, con-
structed the cosmic system, with its manifold forms of
existence and adjustment, we must look upon it as hav-
ing been _progressive_.  This conception lies imbedded in
the swift sketching of the Genesis account.  However
interpreted as to cosmagonic details, the work of the six
days' creation, on the basis of the chaotic material,
------------------End of Page 346---------------------------
moves forward through a series of advances in physical
order, through originations of plant life, of animal life, of
human life.  The creative work is represented as pro-
ceeding step by step in ascending grades to that which
marked the end or aim of the world-order.  With this
Science concurs.  It is written on the rock-leaves of the
great geological record.  But the Scriptures do not
allow us to think of this progressive work as a simply
_self_-contained and _self_-productive evolution of primordial
matter or energy.  For the advance is connected with
succession of distinct creative words of the divine Will
and power.  "Let there be light," "Let the waters
bring forth," etc.  The secondary creative work must,
therefore, be so viewed as to leave place for the divine
freedom to _guide_ and _uplift_ the progress according to its
own plan, fulfilling the "increasing purpose" that is
unquestionably apparent in historic realization.

Without doubt, this historic and progressive creational
work has been marked by the presence and action of
`second causes,' the energies lodged in the nature of the
primordial substances, adjusted for the continuance and
advance of cosmic conditions.  The records of geology,
as well as the indubitable facts of present cosmic action
and life, are full of testimony to this.  It were absurd in
face of these facts to deny that either now or in past
geologic time, there have been real forces in nature,
operating under regular inherent order or law, through
which the special existences now filling the world have
come to be.  God has created, and evermore creates,
individual creatures, if not species, by or through second
causes acting in the established forces and uniformities
of nature.  Whatever may be the outcome of the inquiry
concerning the `origin of species,' it is certain that
-------------End of Page 347-----------------------------
_individual_ plants, animals, and men are thus called into
existence.  And such work does not cease to be God's,
because effected under the action of means or established
causal forces.   The means are God's, set efficiently to
work under His will and through established powers.
In Christian theism all power in the universe is ulti-
mately Will Power.  As far as it has been creatively
lodged in the material or natural forces of the universe
it is but the manifestation of the omnipotent energy of
the divine Will.

Just as confidently must it be maintained that in His
creational work, God did not, after the creation of the
word-material and its forces and laws, vacate or abandon
all _direct_ creative production.  The clear implications of
the Genesis sketch exhibit God's direct word of power
as the ground of the successive originations from the
void and formless condition of the cosmic substances.
Let alone, it would seem that the chaos would not have
become the actual populated cosmos of the divine pur-
pose.  At least it did not become such without specific
acts of the divine Will, particularly and directly causal
for certain increments in the essential properties, reali-
ties, and forms of being.  There are such increments,
whose appearance is inexplicable from any known or
discoverable powers belonging to matter, _per se_, such as
the _origin of life, sensation, mind, self-consciousnews,_
and _free rational self-determination_.  Chaos, if left alone,
could not have made man.  Plant-life, animal life, needed
words to creative power for their introduction into the
system of world-existnece; and for human _mind_ a
crowning divine action of specific, direct creation was
requisite.  And the efforts of human science virtually
continue to sustain these Biblical implications, in its con-
--------------End of Page 348-------------------------------
fessed inability to deduce either life or mind from the
inherent properties of matter[1]--the matter which it gen-
erally represents as cooling from the form of fire mists,
and as in its early condensed forms for ages azoic.
Neither science nor philosophy has been able to translate
the mere atomic powers or motions into the terms of
life, intelligence, and free-will.  No capacity for spon-
taneous generation of life has been discovere in
matter; no way has been shown for the birth of free-
dom from the realm of material necessity.  Theology
may well take this impotence of science to explain these
originations from the inherent powers of physical nature
as a confession of its right to see a divine truth in the
Biblical implications, when the record connects these
originations with specific fiats for steps of increment to
nature's endowment.  The primary creation of the
material for world-building must be viewed as meaning
God's continued presence and potency for whatever
working His plan may include for carrying it forward to
the high ends of His purpose.  And unless science has
utterly misread nature's geologic record, cosmic time has
witnessed an immense ascent into higher types and forms
of existence.  This is an impressive evidence of some
divine efficiency beyond the simple action of the un-
changed sum of nature's inherent forces moving forward.
The supernatural is a deeper reality in God's plan than is
often supposed.  If the cosmic atoms remain forever the
same, none added, none lost, none changed, the same in
quantum and character, it is difficult, if not impossible,
---------------------------------------------------------
[1] Du Bois Raymond, Lepzig, "Lecture on Limits of the Knowl-
edge of Nature," as quoted by Lange's "History of Materialism,"
II., p. 310, asserts that these origins are utterly inscrutable before all
attempts of science.
-----------------End of Page 349----------------------------
to conceive how, if left absolutely alone, their inter-
actions would take and maintain an _ascending_ move-
ment; and, instead of going on upon a dead level, a simply
forward line, a _progressus in infinitum_, bring ever new
and _higher_ beginnings, improved and nobler forms.  This
_lift_ of nature in its progress shows not only the presence
of a preserving power, but of a directive and creational
power, a power at work other than natural forces alone.[1]

6.  _The relation which God established between Him-
self and the universe_, must be theologically determined
by these truths of His abolute creatorship, originating
and forming it in motives and for ends of love and creature
blessedness, and by the general implications as well as
specific affirmations of the Scriptures concerning it.
The point is one of vast and vital importance to every
interest of human life, and the whole question of human
destiny.  Dark and hopeless is the view offered by ma-
terialism, which, wholly denying a personal and pur-
poseful Creator, bids us look on the universe as having
nothing but matter whose highest self-evolutions appear
in human intelligence and activity, as a mere fate-phe-
nomenon of special organization, necessarily _ending_ with
the end of the organization.  No less gloomy and para-
lyzing is the view when human life is pantheistically or
monistically represented as only a part of the phenomena
of the one abolute spirit-substance, differentially evolv-
ing itself into and forming all cosmic existences, and
returning--identifying God and Nature, as at present
-------------------------------------------------------
[1] "Unless there are reseves of power, there can be no progress.
Evolution, if it is to proceed toward the better and not the worse, re-
quires a power and a will over and above the process, a power and a
will which will communicate themselves to the system and reinforce
it from time to time."--Dr. A. H. Strong, "Christ in Creation and
Ethical Monism," p. 5.
---------------End of Page 350--------------------------
urged by various prominent writers, both philosophical
and theological.[1]  No more inspiring is the deistic sepa-
ration of God from the world, in which He is viewed
 as its Creator indeed, but as having so constituted it
that it remains self-working in its own given forces and
laws, needing and receiving no immediate divine presence
or care--while God lives in some lofty empyrean above the
world, without interfering with its established on-going,
and without any word of concern or direction for the well-
being and issues of life.  In this extreme doctrine of the
divine transcendence, nature is left a pure mechanism of
force and action, with no place for any providential cause-
ality, either as revelation, miracle, or answer to prayer.
Carlyle's characterization of the relation:  "An absentee
God, sitting idle ever since the first Sabbath at the out-
side of the universe and seeing it go," suggest how utter
an exclusion from hope and help in God may come with
a false conception of His relation to the world.

But when we let the light of His creatorship and His
aim of love in it fall upon the question, it is evident
that He takes a relation of most real and active goodness
to the spiritual beings for whom He forms the world,
whom He makes kindred in nature for the blessdness of
fellowship.  His abolute self-consistency forbids any
idea that His continued preservation of the world may
mean abandonment of the loving interest in which He
created.  And unless the entire picture of the divine
aim and supernatural providence in the pages of the his-
torical record from Genesis to Revelation is nothing but
fictitious sketching, God has been showing an abiding
and working presence in the world, adding a redeeming
-------------------------------------------------------
[1] As against all monism, see Bibliotheca Sacra, October, 1902, p.
689.
-----------End of Page 351-------------------------------
activity in expression of His loving interest in the life
and happiness of man.  Theology, therefore, as true to
its Scripture data, must maintain a twofold reality in the
relation of God to the world-universe.  _First_, that He is
_transcendent_ to it.  As the absolute Cause of it, He is
_before_ and _above_ it.  This relation is part of the essen-
tial truth of the principle of causation.  He is "God
over all" (Rom. ix. 5; Eph. iv. 6).  "The heaven of
heavens cannot contain Him" (2 Chron. ii. 6; vi. 18;
I Kings viii. 27).  _Secondly_, He is also _immanent_ in the
universe.  This is a direct implication of His own omni-
presence.  He fills all things with His presence and
energy.  "He is not far from every one of us; for in
Him we live and move and have our being" (Acts xvii.
27-28).  He is "through all and in all" (Eph. iv. 6).
The divine efficiency in creation was transitive, and
abides as indwelling power in all things.  In a true
sense, He put Himself into nature--not as an identifi-
cation of essence with it, but a living Presence.  His
will-energy, which is lodged as a permanent force
in nature, and nature's so-called laws, spoken of as
"second causes," expresses the ever-present efficiency of
His abiding Will.  Neither the cosmic substances nor
forces could continue to exist and act in indepenedence
of the upholding efficiency of the abiding Will.  This
power of God fills and permeates all nature, and He is
wherever He works.  Neither the _transcendence_ nor the
_immanence, however, is to be conceived of as _absolute_.
An absolute transcendence would mean the deistical
separation of God from nature, a constitution of the
world as a self-sustaining and self-acting mechanism, and
God simply outside of and apart from it.  An absolute
immanenece would signify a transfer of the divine free-
-----------End of Page 352--------------------------------
dom into the established action of nature or identification
of God with nature.

This relation of God to the world of nature, as both
transcendent and immanent, gives place for both the
action of "second causes," or what are termed natural
forces, and for special divine action in and among
these forces and laws.  On the one side, it accounts
for all the uniformities of nature, the reign of law or
enchainment in relations of cause and effect, of which
science speaks; and, on the other, for the reality of
Providential ordering of history, the reality of super-
natural revelation, miracle, and whatever response the
divine Will of goodness in the Infinite Father may make
to His children's needs or prayers.  It recognizes nature's
existence and laws as subservient to the divine plan of
love and goodness, and forever susceptible to His use
and direction.  It recognizes, as experience and science
themselves attest, the elastic character of the system,
ever open to the use and service of the will-power of
human freedom, and even more fully open to the touch
of God for the accomplishment of the supreme moral
and spiritual aim for which the physical world exists.
As God is before nature, above it, under it, in it, and
through it, without being a part of it, as its forces and
laws are but the modes of His will for its preservation,
we must think of Him as, through His omnipresence,
abiding forever _free_ for all the special providential
causation which His wisdom may choose for the con-
summation of His purpose of love.

It is no essential part of the theology of creation to
explain _how_ its formative steps of advance were effected,
or to trace the causal relations between them.  Super-
natural revelation, because not given to unfold a science
--------------End of Page 353------------------------------
of nature, but to afford necessary religious truth, has, in
this connection, limited itself to the affirmation of the
essential facts that needed to be brought into view for
this purpose.  Scientific theories which seek simply to
explain the _method_ of the creative progression, while
recognizing its divine authorship, are not properly sub-
jects of dogmatic notice unless they affect the religious
truths for whose disclosure supernatural divine revela-
tion stands.  Nevertheless it is interesting and assuring
to find in the brief Genesis statement of the creation so
many points of agreement with the conclusions of the
maturest science in matters apart from religious relations.
The extent of the agreement is remarkable, in such large
features as (I) The creation of the elements in a remote
past; (2) an early state of chaos; (3) a progress through
the order of the advance, viz.: _First_, a condition without
life; _secondly_, vegetable life; _thirdly_, animal life;
_fourthly_, man.  The harmonies on points on which
science has come to its conclusions only in the late
few decades, are so truly notable and peculiar as to
become significant of something supernatural in the
Genesis representations, made away back in a period
utterly unscientific.  For science has only in these last
few years read, from geologic pages, the truth of a
primal chaos, and azoic period of the earth, the pro-
gressive formation of the earth-strata, the beginning of
life, the advance in its grades, and the order of advance.
But how did Moses know these things?  Who taught
him?  There is reason in the declaration of Dutoit
Haller, that what took place in the physical world before
the appearance of man must have been revealed to the
writer of Genesis; and in the assertion of Biot: "Either
-------------End of Page 354------------------------------
Moses had a more profound instruction in science than
that afforded by our own century, or he was inspired."[1]
But it is in the fundamental position and basal value of
the great and determinative religious truths, that the
account in Gen. i.-ii. exhibits its essential theological
importance and shows its divine signature.  It is neces-
sary only to note these great truths and recall their
bearings in order to see a divine reason of supreme import,
why this account has been made to stand at the very
beginning of the entire Biblical record of the providential
and redemptive self-manifestion of God.  For we thus
discover that in these, viz.:  the existence of God, the
creation of all things by Him, the origin of man, his
formation after the divine image, his endowment with
rational freedom and moral responsibility, his assigned
"dominion" over lower nature, his status of holy fel-
lowship with his Maker, and his lapse into sin, there are
presented the great _foundation_ truths that are presup-
posed and concerned in the entire Bible history of God's
dealings with mankind throught the revelation of His
will and law and grace, from its first pages in Genesis to
its last in the Apocalypse.  Without the setting forth of
these fundamental facts at the beginning, the entire
Scripture development of doctrine, worship, command-
ment, warning, training, and appeals to conscience,
hope, and fear, throughout the Old Testament and the
New, would lose their intelligibility and meaning.  The
whole explanation of the consummated revelation stands
in the facts or truths made known in the creation record.
They never disappear, they are absent from no part, and
when the volume closes they have upborne the whole
-------------------------------------------------------
[1] Quoted from Prof. Rishell's "The Foundations of the Christian
Faith," p. 192.
----------------End of Page 355-------------------------
administrational and redemptive movement.  It is a fact
of immense importance that for the wonderful organ-
ism of teaching concerning God and man and eternal
life in the completed Scriptures, the great foundation
truths are all discovered to have been given on their first
pages, and that the theology of creation is heard rever-
berating through the entire theology of Providence and
Salvation to the consummation in "the last things."
Surely there must have been some divine direction for
the hand that sketched out these foundations.

		PRESERVATION
Preservation is that continuous agency of God by
which He maintains in existence the world, or universe,
which He has created.  It is described as an "upholding
by the word of His power," and by various equivalent
statements (Heb. i. 3; Gen. viii. 22; Neh. ix. 6; Ps.
xxxvi. 6; civ. 29-30; John v. 17; Acts xvii. 28; Col. i.
17).  It necessarily involves the following points:

I.  That the continuance in existence of every created
thing necessarily depends upon the power that brought
it into being.  It has, and can have, no _absolute_ exist-
ence.  It cannot attain to independence.  All creation
would fall back into nothing without the divine power
in which it has its being.  It is no more capable of self-
upholding than it could have been of self-origination.
We are compelled to think that the divine power _could_
not confer on any part of creation necessary or absolute
existence.  For this would involve the obliteration of
the whole distinction between that which is God and
that which is not God, the contradiction of making origi-
nated being self-existent or without beginning.  Only
God can have absolute immortality (I Tim. vi. 16).  A
------------End of Page 356----------------------------
creature can have immortality only in the abiding will
and power of God, and according to His plan.  This
plan may give to the creature real objectivity of exist-
ence, and lodge in it an endowment of creaturely ener-
gies and order, but the continuance must rest in the
steady will of Him who made it, not for instant per-
ishing, but with a view to preservation.

2.  Preservation is, therefore, not something merely
negative, a doing nothing, a mere refraining from
destroying, but a positive exercise of divine power,
efficiently sustaining given existence and order.  It is,
also, something more, and more direct, than a simple
self-activity of inherent properties and powers, con-
ceived of as imparted to nature by the act of creation,
and able, thenceforth, to operate themselves independ-
ently, according to the deistical notion of God's sup-
posed withdrawal and separation from the world, in the
otiose relation of merely "seeing it go."

3.  This positive divine efficiency of preservation must
be conceived, further, as establishing the _permanency_ of
existence and the _uniformities_ of action in nature, recog-
nized as "second causes," through which, as means,
cosmic processes and advance take place and continuous
life-phenomena are presented.  We are as little to deny
second causes as to think them independent of God.
Their actual forces and working which are the subjects of
our daily experience and of scientific examination, and
which exhibit the "reign of law" in nature, express
the abiding will of God both as Author and Sustainer of
nature.  They are rightly acknowledged as objectively
real, and, with their regularities of causation, actually
embodied in the system of nature, as the result of God's
preservational efficiency upon the products of His crea-
------------End of Page 357-------------------------------
tional work.  Even the creative act, in itself, must neces-
sarily be viewed as producing something which then
has an existence of its own, with its own real, though
dependent, forces and properties.  Otherwise the Divine
cause has really effected nothing.  "In the interest of
the creation-idea itself, it is important for the divine act
of constitution to give rise to something having separate
existence, and not remaining inherent in the divine con-
ception and volition.  And thus must creative activity
itself produce that which is destined to be permanent
existence and able to become the object of conserva-
tion."[1]  Preservation can conserve only what creation
brings into existence.  God did not create for instant
perishing, but with high and unchangeable view to a
real world, a real universe, in great aims of love and
goodness, whose working out belongs to His eternal
will and plan.  Hence His preservational efficiency holds
in existence the world-constitution which His power
produced.  And we rightly regard the permanency and
uniformity of this established secondary causation, with
its "reign of law," as at the basis of that possibility of
human foresight and consequent self-adjestment to con-
ditions of safety and welfare through which the world
is made a fitting abode for the training of free personal-
ity into self-control and moral character.  Forecast of
the future, prudence, adjustment to relations, and seiz-
ure of opportunities are some of the rich things pro-
vided for in these uniformities.

This objective reality of "second causes" in both
material and spiritual nature, resting thus on the two-
fold divine action of creation and conservation, must be
made explicit and emphasized.  As a result of the double
----------------------------------------------------------
[1] Dorner, "System of Christian Doctrine," II., p.48.
-------------End of Page 358----------------------------
action God has established other being than Himself
--being that has its own existence, its given forces
and modes.  Its actual endowments amount to a con-
ferred _relative_ independence.  The closest observation
of nature, from its largest forms to its minutest constitu-
ents, the most penetrative and exhaustive analysis of its
action from masses to molecules, make this impression
upon us.  But more:  When we face the phenomena of
_human_ history and scan the consciousness of human _per-
sonality_ in its freedom of choice and self-direction, often
in conflict with every conception of what must be the
divine will, a relative creaturely independence cannot
fail to appear as an evidently intended and actually con-
ferred resultant from the twofold divine action.  This
relative independence is as little to be denied as is the
_absolute_ dependence of the whole system upon God.  It
is just in that part in which the cosmic system comes to
its crown, in human freedom, that this truth of a divinely
conferred, relatively-independent creaturely selfhood be-
comes indubitable.  And it is a truth that needs perpet-
ual re-affirmation and remembrance in order to guard
against the overdrawn theories of the Divine Immanence
and Efficiency which attribute every human act or choice,
as well as motion of matter, directly to God and anni-
hilate free personality and responsibility.

4.  Theology, therefore, cannot accept the oft-repeated
representation[1] which substitutes "continuous creation"
(_creatio continua_) for preservation, making the continu-
ance of the universe the result of ceaseless instantaneous
reproduction.  In this the idea of preservation, as simply
----------------------------------------------------------
[1] As by Hollaz, I., 531; Richard Rothe, "Theological Ethics," I.,
186-190; Jonathan Edwards' Works, II., 486-490; Nathaniel Emmons'
Works, IV., 363-389; McPherson, "Christian Dogmatics," 177.
----------------End of Page 359-----------------------------
upholding an objective existence already given by cre-
ative power, disappears in that of a direct divine crea-
tional efficiency which, moment by moment, makes
nature what it is.  But this notion accords as little with
the implications of reason as of revelation.  Plainly the
Scriptures make a clear distinction between preservation
and creation, and, indeed, set them over against each
other (Neh. ix. 6; Heb. i. 2, 3; Col. i. 16, 17).  And in
the light of reason, whether guided by the principles of
natural or revealed truth, difficulties of a very decisive
character come into view.  To substitute momentary re-
creation for preservation would seem to imply that God
does not, or rather cannot, by a primary creative act,
form any creature being, either of matter or mind, with
more than momentary existence or constitute it with any
measure of enduring energy, but that He must instantly
repeat His work in order to give it a form of continu-
ance.  The so-called creative action would, in fact, in
that case _fail_ to create, _i.e._, to give and establish real
objective existence, endowed with forces or potencies of
its own in permanency.  And the utter annulling of
"second causes" would compel us to refer every event,
among minutest atoms, creeping worms, the clothing of
continents with myriad trees and flowers and heads of
golden corn, and the flashing rays of light in all the
skies, each one to a direct and immediate specific fiat of
God.  The theory would wipe out the whole realm of
cosmic and creature causation--nothing being left but
immediate divine volitions and their direct effects.  In-
stead of physical forces, with their correlations and
transformations, passing from phase to phase and pro-
ducing their uniform phenomena, we would have to sub-
stitute direct divine productions.  We should have to
-----------End of Page 360----------------------------
drop the idea of the action of one particle of matter on
another, of matter on mind, and mind on matter, of our-
selves as the authors or directors of our own thoughts or
of our own choices.  This sweeping obliteration of creat-
ure causality, in favor of a supposed direct all-doing of
God, implicit in Cartesianism, and developed by Geulinx
and Malebranche into the fiction of philosophical Occa-
sionism, would make the created world of nature and
life bear a false and deceitful face throughout, and issue
in _acosmism_.  Fire would not be the cause of heat, but
only the occasion for God's creating a heat.  The spring
in a watch would not be the cause of the motion that
measures time, but only the occasion of divine creation
of motion.  My will to raise my hand would not stand
as cause of the action, but ony the occasion of it.  This
denial of the objective reality of secondary causation, as
a reality conferred by creation and permanently main-
tained by preservation, would necessarily obliterate all
free agency, personality and responsibility, and, in
making God the only and direct cause of everything
that comes to pass, make Him also the immediate author
of all sin.  The implications of the theory are its sufficient
and full condemnation.

And yet there is a great truth covered under the phrase
"continuous creation."  This creation, however, is a
divine action _through_ second causes, not by their non-
existence.  They are creatively provided _means_ for the
secondarily creative work of bringing into existence ever-
advancing originations, perhaps of new species, certainly
of ever-successive individuals in crystalline forms, and in
vegetable, animal, and human life.  The earth of history
presents an almost infinite progress of new beginnings,
individual creatures that were not but are brought into
---------End of Page 361----------------------------------
existence.  There has been an inconceivably great _creatio
continua_.  But, so far as we know, or have means of
discovery, it is of the secondary order (_creatio secunda_,
already defined),[1] and moves upon the basis of the _preser-
vation_ of the substances, properties, and modes given by
primary creation.  This confirms the Scripture doctrine
of conservation, instead of setting it aside.

5.  Preservation becomes also the presupposition and
basis for the further divine action which we call Provi-
dence, which consummates the intention and plan of
both the creation and conservation of the world.  And
when it is viewed especially in connection with the
accompanying divine creational activity, new proof of its
reality appears.  Besides the proofs, already mentioned,
from the Scriptures and the dependent character of cre-
ated beings, a positive divine preserving Presence is
strongly evidenced by the _progression which nature shows
into constantly higher and more advanced stages and
forms_.  If science has indeed found a cosmic truth in
the principle or law of the conservation, transformation,
and equivalence of the physical forces, no atom added or
lost, it is logically inconceivable that the evolution,
through motion under simply inherent causality, should
of itself _lift_ the movement and hold it to an ascending
or higher order.  The fixed quantum of elements, each
with its fixed properties and affinities, we must think,
could only continue or advance upon a level.  But if
science has shown us anything decisive, the onward
movement has not been on a level, a mere _progressus in
infinitum_, producing evermore mere monotonous replica
of earlier things, but has ever been bringing _new_ begin-
nings, new stages, a progressive ascent.  In the rock-
---------------------------------------------------------
[1] P. 340.
-------------------End of Page 362------------------------
leaved folio of geology we find, as we have seen, the
records of an azoic age, a rise to vegetable life, to animal
organization, to the formation of man, the lofty reality
of personality with intelligence, reason, and free-self-
determination.  Science has shown no letter or syllable
of suggestion how all these things were, or could be,
inherently enclosed in the elements at the start, to be
evolved as simply let alone.  This elevating progress
shows a power at work in conservation with a true effi-
ciency not only for preserving the world but, at the same
time, giving direction and increment for holding the
movement to the divine plan.  There has been a power
at work other than the natural forces.  Perhaps we
should say: the natural forces are filled with God's ever-
efficient presence, working through these forces the un-
folding counsel of His love and wisdom.

		PROVIDENCE

The divine purpose in the work of creation and of
conservation is continued and carried forward in that of
_Providence_.  This aims to consummate the purpose of
both the others.  It is properly defined as that efficient
forecast and activity through which God's care and power
conduct the course of the world onward to the accom-
plishment of His holy and loving design.  In its charac-
ter, it is distinctively governmental and administrative.
It is often designated simply `government.'  Though God
is Father as well as Ruler in relation to mankind, His ad-
ministration, while embracing His fatherly care and favor,
is none the less governmental by reason of this feature of
it.  In God fatherhood and sovereignty are reconciled.
With respect to its position and relations in the total
divine activities, Providence comes under a threefold
--------------End of Page 363------------------------------
view.  _First_, it proceeds upon the presupposition and
basis of the real existence of all the material, forces,
movements, and possibilities which creation and preserva-
tion have given and established as the world-system and
order, in both physical and spiritual realms.  _Secondly_, it
_uses_ all these creature powers and endowments, especially
in and through the intelligence and free activities of man-
kind, for the regulation and direction of the advance to
the realization of the divine plan.  _Thirdly_, in its tele-
ological character, it means the active supremacy of the
divine wisdom and love, to the exclusion alike of all
notionso of chance or fate or deistical withdrawal from
interest in the world.  It thus affords sure ground for
the faith that commits itself to the guidance of the divine
truth and grace, as it conducts the world history on to
the triumph of the kingdom of God.

It is plain that the theoretic view of Providence must
be based on that understanding of God's relation to the
world which recognizes both His transcendence and im-
manence.  In His transcendence, as God over all, His
supreme dominion moves in absolute independence for
the aims of His goodness and will.  It excludes all
ideas of the compromise to His perfect freedom by
a pantheistic confusion of the divine essence with the
world itself.  In His immanence, as "_in_ all," His real
and ever-living presence keeps His will and power in
adequate contact with the possibilities of all the second
causes that operate in the world.  The counter-theo-
ries of God's relation, namely, that of absolute trans-
scendence and that of absolute immanence, are both con-
tradictory of the whole conception of Providence.  The
former, connected mostly with the materialistic and
mechanical view of nature, as a machine constructed,
---------------End of Page 364-----------------------------
wound up, and thence self-acting, besides being both un-
biblical and irrational, removes God from all present
agency in the world and surrenders it wholly to the action
of second causes.  The latter, whether the outcome of
pantheistic ideas, or of some other form of denial of
second cause, and making God the immediate author of
every event, annihilates human freedom and the whole
principle of responsibility.

Providence is properly distinguished as _ordinary_ and
_extraordinary_.  It is _ordinary_ when carried on by the
ordinary means, _i.e._, through the regular, established
forces and laws of nature, in matter and mind, or
through the regular, instituted redemptory and super-
natural means or agencies of grace.  It is _extraordinary_
when God works either without means, or beyond or
above the reach of means, apart from, or transcendent to,
the established order of natural forces and laws, as in
miracles.

1.  Of _ordinary_ providential government we must
discriminate clearly between two kinds, viz.: that
which is directly _causal_, and that which is _permissive_
merely.  This distinction must be held as deeply real
and profoundly important, in view of its relations to the
questions of freedom and responsibility.  It distinguishes
between what God Himself does, and that which He
allows human freedom to choose and to do.  It marks
the difference between that of which God is alone or im-
mediately the cause, and that of which He permits the
will of man, enfranchised with the attribute of freedom,
to become the determining and effective cause.  While
providence embraces the realm of both lower nature and
that in man, and its superintendence connects itself
with both the sphere of physical existence and that of
----------------End of Page 365--------------------------
human self-determination, it is necessary to believe that
it deals with each according to the constitution divinely
given and preserved to it.  In His providential causality
God respects the lofty endowment of free personality in
which man's life is to be lived.

In this _causal_ order four forms are clearly distinguish-
able:  (_a_) _Absolute_ causality--that is to say, in the
ranges of movement of the simply physical or mechan-
ical forces of nature, in which changes or events take
place under purely natural laws, as chemical interactions,
crystalizations, atmospheric and electric changes, clouds
and rain, gravitation, flow of tides, falling of bodies, etc.
The causation in these spheres is of God's own absolute
establishment and conservation, and the effects are of His
working.  (_b_) _Hindering_ causality--the action of His pres-
ence and will, especially in relation to the contingent
activity of man or lower orders of creation, through influ-
ences or means held subservient to His employment, that
shall hinder what would otherwise take place.  It is limit-
ing action.  Human will even is competent to prevent fore-
seen contingencies in the order of events.  And God, in
His omniscience and omnipotence, may, without in-
fringing liberty, touch the springs of human thought, or
intervene in complex conditions, for the prevention of
evil.  We are told of His restraint of the "remainder"
of "man's wrath" (Ps. lxxvi. 10).  (_c_) _Directive_ causal-
ity--also especially in the range of human free action.
He may, and does, touch the minds of men and masses
with directive influences, so as to guide the movements
of life and history to the ends of His will (Matt. ii. 12-
13; Acts iv. 28).  The Old and the New Testaments are
gemmed with illustrations of His providential ordering.
Christ's kingdom of grace and power, working on through
--------------End of Page 366-----------------------------
the truth, the Church, the Holy Spirit, and all the
spiritual forces of redemption, historically expresses and
illustrates this great fact of God's directive moral admin-
istration on the earth.  He works in men both to will
and to do of His good pleasure.  (_d_) _Overruling_ causal-
ity--bringing good out of evil, bending the lines of con-
sequences so as to make them prove corrective, and co-
operative with the order of the divine preference and
love.  The history of Joseph illustrates this (Gen. I. 20).
What his brothers meant for evil against him placed
him in high power for happy service--a beautiful over-
ruling, suggestive of providential possibilities.  The
crucifixion of Christ (Acts iii. I3), including the crime
of Judas, the iniquity of the Sanhedrim and the wrong
of Pilate, overruled to bear a part in bringing about Jesus'
redemptory self-offering on the cross and opening the
way of eternal salvation to a world of sinners, stands
as the historical triumph of this divine strategy of
providential love.  By wheels within wheels God re-
verses the natural consequences of men's wickedness,
bringing good out of evil in victories of conquering
grace.

The _permissive_ form of providence relates to the abuse
of human freedom in purposes and acts of sin.  It im-
plies the reality of this freedom as a fundamental endow-
ment of man, conferred in creation and continued in
conservation, an endowment in which human personality
is established as an actual and imperishable factor in
the determinations of conduct and the movements of
life.  This abides in the world-plan as a system of moral
possibilities, obligations, and responsibilities.  To the
activities of free-will, so far as they work wrong and
evil, God relates Himself only permissively, as simply
-------------End of Page 367------------------------------
allowing to men the use and exercise of their own essen-
tial attributes of personality.  The old representation of
a divine _concursus_, not simply in conservation, but also
in active, governing providence, as an efficient factor in
_all_ human self-determinations cannot be accepted because
of its logically making God a direct and active sharer in
the sinful and guilty volitions of men.[1]  In essential
constitution and by very conception, free personality can
operate itself on the basis of simple existence or pres-
ervation, and needs no help of _concursus_ for sinful
choices.  Creation itself constituted the human will
autonomous.  And by absolute moral necessity, sin
being, _per se_, something against God's will, He cannot
and dare not be conceived as directly concurring in
making the choice of it.  Moral wrong is _possible_ as an
_abuse_ of freedom, a choice for which man is creationally
made capable and responsible, but for which the Divine
Will can have no power of concurrent choice.  We are
fully justified in saying that the human will can and
-----------------------------------------------------------
[1] Recently reasserted by Dr. J. McPherson, "Christian Dog-
matics," sec. 28, where, without making any exception of the
human will, he says:  "Absolutely there is but one cause, just as
there is but one self-existent and non-originated life.  Secondary
causes are causes only in the sense in which creaturely lives are lives.
This means that these secondary causes cannot operate without the
co-operation of the first cause.  And hence it is that, in the ordinary
course of providence, nothing happens of which it can be said that it
has proceeded either from the first cause or from secondary causes
operating independently of one another.  There is simply an _influxus_
of God's omnipresent power upon the actions and effects of second
causes, and thus there is a co-operation of God, a _concursus divinus_,
in accordance with which one and the same effect is produced by God
and the creature."  Dr. McPherson fails to express any assent to
Julius Mueller's view that, in "the case of free creatures God gives
the _power_ to desire and decide, but man himself desires and decides
on behalf of the good or the evil."
------------End of Page 368------------------------------------
does of itself antagonize God's will.  God's attitude
toward sin is not that of co-operation, but that which
says, "Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate"
(Jer. xliv. 4).  By nothing in the entire Biblical repre-
sentation in connection with creation, preservation, or
providence can it be shown to be His aim or desire
to have men sin, do wrong, or violate their moral re-
lations, or that He co-operates in making the choice of
sin.  The whole work of redemption is just an expres-
sion of desire to save men from it, a movement of the
divine endeavor to recover men from this abuse of their
free powers.  Though for preservation of the _existence_
of free personality, to which has been given a relative
moral independence, there belongs a direct _concursus_,
yet in providence, as an active, directive efficiency,
there, manifestly, cannot be a real concurrence when
men, in contradiction of God's holiness, use their con-
served personal endowments in forms of disobedience.
The unquestionable truth, "God cannot be tempted with
evil, neither tempteth He any man" (Jas. i. 13), surely
forbids any idea that He _pre-curs_ in the way of _pre_-
direction or influence for human sinful choices.  Just as
certainly does it imply that He does not and cannot _co_-
operate in making them.  With respect to choices of
what is _good_ and _right_, providential concurrence, and
also _pre_-currence, must be emphasized; for God "works
in men both to will and to do of His good pleasure"
(Phil. ii. 13).  All the provisions of His redemptory
grace are proof of this precurring and co-operating effi-
cacy for human working in _righteousness_.  And just in
the degree in which it is certain that God does concur,
for righteousness, with the endowed or enabled possibili-
ties of human choice, by that degree it is certain also
----------------End of Page 369------------------------
that He does _not_ concur in choices of sin.  Theology
must represent God as consistent with Himself, and His
providential activities as consistent with His attributes
of holiness and goodness.  This is the import of the
effort of some Lutheran dogmaticians, who carry the
doctrine of the divine _concursus_ into the sphere of provi-
dence.  In order to avoid implicating God with sin, they
introduce strained distinctions between the volitional
"effect" and "defect," or between the volitional "ma-
terial" and "form," through which an appearance at
least is secured of repudiating divine concurrence with
the sinful _quality_ of the choice, while concurring for the
choice.[1]  The ungodly choices and deeds of men need no
invoking of an immediate co-action of God for their ex-
planation.  The attribution of it is entirely superfluous.
The human will is competent for them, left purely to
itself.[2]  The Scriptures teach, and our theology rightly
maintains, that though, by reason of corruption in their
affectional nature, men are unable without grace effec-
tually to will spiritual good, they nevertheless have
ability of will in _evil_, to resist divine grace, and to con-
tinue in sin.  The form of Concord theologians made
this explicit for our Lutheran theology when they
distinctly explained why many who hear the word of
God are not converted but perish in sin, finding the ex-
planation in the fact that men, though without natural
----------------------------------------------------------
[1] As Quenstedt, I., 545; Hollaz, 443; Hutter, 234.
[2] Dr. Charles Hodge, though thoroughly Ausgustinian, is con-
strained to reject the notion of a divine "concursus" in this relation,
as (I) founded on the false assumption that the human will is not
able of itself to make these evil choices; (2) as an unwise attempt to
explain the inexplicable, and (3) as "mutiplying difficulties, raising
subtle and perplexing questions which no man is able to solve."--
"Systematic Theology," I., pp. 604-605.
-------------------End of Page 370------------------------------
ability to exercise faith, are, nevertheless, abundantly
able to resist, remain in unbelief and perish.[1]

The term "permissive," in defining providence in rela-
tion to moral evil, must, therefore, not be conceived as
involving any approval of it, even the least.  It can
imply no softening or relaxing of the antagonism of the
divine holiness to it--no co-operative action of God's will
with the human will in determining a preference for it.
The few passages of Scripture which have sometimes been
explained as meaning divine co-action or even propulsion
in this relation (as Ex. iv. 2I; Rom. ix. I7: I Sam. xvii.
I0; Prov. xvi. 4) are capable of far more legtitimate in-
terpretaion, and will receive it when exegesis is freed
from the dogmatic prepossessions of supralapsarian
predestinationism and its dogma that all things, the
fall included--"whatever comes to pass"--have been
immutably chosen and fore-ordained in God's free
will.

2.  Ordinary providence is properly distinguished also
as _general_ and _particular_.  The Scriptures give clear
basis for this distinction.  General providence rests in
the truth that the divine administration is grounded in
one great aim as the goal of the world's purpose, viz.:
"the kingdom of God," and it expresses the generic
broad superintendence of the course of earthly affairs
for this.  God "works all things after the counsel of His
will" (Eph. i. II), His `kingdom ruling over all' (Ps.
ciii. I9), with helm set to the consummation.  Special
providence is that which takes account of all the minute
details for specific and immediate effects in connection
with personal individual welfare and particular needs.
It is that without which the sparrow does no fall, and by
---------------------------------------------------------
[1] "Form. Con.," Part II., ch. ii., pp. 52-60.
-------------End of Page 371-----------------------------
which the hairs of our heads are all numbered (Matt. x. 29-
30; Luke xii. 6-7).

Some men who have been ready to believe in a gene-
ral providence have refused faith in a special providence.
They have consented to recognize a great cosmic order
in the earth and planetary systems, and some exercise of
divine power in the support an directive care of it all
as a whole--possibly also in determining the course of
empire and the destiny of nations.  But they have
deemed it derogatory to God, to conceive of Him as con-
descending to the minor matters of individual life and
interests.  Their attitude comes from the deistic notion
of God's transcendence, as implying that He has at least
so withdrawn from the world as to "limit His activity
to the maintenance of general laws."  But in truth a
general and special providence imply each other.  They
are two aspects of one and the same divine superin-
tendence which covers all things.  The particular prov-
idence becomes tributary to the general.  The general
is made up of the particular, and is impossible without
it.  The universality of the particular means reach
and supremacy for the total.  The smallest things often
send their effects through the lives of men and the
course of empire.  Indeed, it is little beginnings that
history finds at the root of movements which become
world-wide and dominant phenomena.  God must care
for the least as the order of care for the greatest.

It is through the combination of these two aspects
of providence that we reach the view of the divine
administration which is most inspiring and richest for
Christian faith.  Without doubt, since the accomplish-
ment of "the kingdom of God," in its increasing reality
in the earth and for its consummation in heaven, is the
--------------End of Page 372---------------------------
goal to which the generic movement is directed, great
emphasis must be laid upon the general providence that
holds to the development.  The realization of this all-
embracing aim has a supreme importance as expressing,
in the aggregate, the issue which redemption was
designed to bring for the good of man and the glory of
God's love.  The keynote of this was given in the Old
Testament promises of the Messiah's dominion.  The
New Testament is resonant with proclamation and para-
ble of the founding and progressive establishment of
this kingdom--in _process_ during its earthly advance, in
_completion_ in its heavenly reality.  Than that God
should consummate this ultimate inclusive goal, there
can be no greater aim for Him.  He will bend the world's
lines of history to this.  But this emphasis upon the great
goal and the Scripture assurance that God lives and reigns
for its realization, means no diminution of importance
and guaranty of the interests involved in particular
providence.  It might seem that it would signify relative
withdrawal from care of individuals and the minutiae of
their interests or welfare.  But, in truth, it is just in the
emphasis and certainty with which God holds the
grand generic purpose in hand, that we have love's
guaranty for each believer's completest care.  For, not
simply is perfection in that which is least the only way
to insure the great goal, but the consummated kingdom
is _for the sake of the individuals_ it embraces.  The
kingdom is not a mere abstraction, but an issue sought
for the sake of God's children.  It is for _them_ that He,
in Jesus Christ, is conducting the historic movement
into triumph, and, in the divinity of His concern, num-
bering the hairs of their heads.  His kingdom is great
and precious to Him because it gathers them into its
------------End of Page 373-------------------------------
holiness and immortal blessedness.  And it does not
trouble Him to condescend to minutiae.  He who, while
sweeping rolling worlds and systems through space, in
the music of spheres, paints with its own beauty the
delicate flower or enamels a beetle's wing, is the God of
providential care and love.

It is well here, from this view of the different forms
of ordinary providence, to recall the three distinct
ranges or grades in which the divine action moves.
There are differences in the kind of action according to
the place or elevation of the natural or established
spheres through which the divine efficiency works.
_First_, the lowest range, in and through the regular laws
of cause and effect in material and physical nature.  God
has care of this entire realm, with its forces and proper-
ties.  He preserves it for the moral drama and issues of
human life.  Its place is basal and instrumental.  It is a
_means_ for the great spiritual purpose.  He has ordered
and keeps its energies and forces plastic to the touch
and use of human will and life, and thus closely
related to the opportunities and possibilities of moral
progress.  "He causeth the grass to grow for the
cattle and service of man" (Ps. civ. 14).  "Fire and hail,
snow and vapors, stormy winds fulfilling His word"
(Ps. cxlviii. 8).  "He maketh His sun to rise on the
evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and the
unjust" (Matt. v. 45).  Indeed, it is easy to conceive of
the physical conditions of life, to which mankind are
very sensitive and by which they are affected every day,
as being divinely employed as providential means of
human stimulation, guidance, or limitation.  _Secondly_,
a higher range in the realm of _mind_, through its
ever-open susceptibilities of thought, desire, and will,
--------------End of Page 374----------------------------
under which life takes direction and character.  With-
out doubt, God, who is immanent in nature, may
operate through mere human reason, affection, or con-
science, to help righteousness, check wrong, and bend
lines of earthly life and history to His purposes.  We
may adopt Bishop Berkley's statement:  "The uni-
verse is God's ceaseless conversation with His crea-
tures," and its multitudinous voices to the ear of human
souls may well be conceived of as something for provi-
dential direction.  _Thirdly_, the highest range, in and
through the _specially constituted means_ and _powers of
redemption and grace_.  This range, distinctively, is that
of the regularly _established system of supernatural_ truth,
agencies, powers, and means of spiritual recovery from
sin and the restoration of men to God and eternal life.
It expresses not something that belongs to the "natural"
world, as nature was constituted by creational action,
but an order of divine administration, made needful by
sin, and superadded to the merely natural system as the
redemptory and soteriological economy.  It includes the
supernatural provision for human reconciliation, and all
the divine truth, agencies, and forces for its application
to individuals and society.  It embraces the divine
institution of the Church and the means of grace for the
regeneration of personal life and the evangelization of
the world.  Altogether it forms a supernatural economy
for the overthrow of the intrusion and work of sin, and
to gather mankind into the kingdom of God.  This is
the great range of movement through which God is
working on His providential administration toward
its great consummation.  It is through these instru-
mentalities of the Gospel and the Church that He is
entering into the minds and hearts and lives of millions
---------------End of Page 375---------------------------
and millions of men, from early childhood to old age,
for direction of human thought, will, and energy.
Through these things He secures control of the order
and movement of family life, of communities, of states
and nations.  It is thus He creates civilizations and uses
them in tributary relation to His will.  He makes the
wonders of science and invention, from Christendom's
enfranchised intellect, serve the ever-enlarging reach of
Christian light into the dark places of the earth.  He
employs the consecrated activities and means of His
people for the overthrow of wrong and the victories of
righteousness.  Even when, through ambition and crime,
states and nations sweep the desolations of war through
defenseless tribes, He shows His overruling power for
reversal of issues, by moving the ready powers of Chris-
tian love and enterprise upon the scene for fresh tri-
umphs in truth and goodness.  And thus it is through
this high range of the supernatural and redemptory
economy, that God's providential action is most peculi-
arly and effectually reaching on toward the goal of His
purpose.

3.  _Extraordinary Providential action_ is properly de-
fined as that employed by God in rare and exceptional
events designated _miraculous, i.e., without means_, or
_apart_ from the ordinary relations of cause and effect
through which He commonly works in nature and
grace.[1]  In contradistinction to the regular administra-
tion through fixed order of means to ends, in natural,
moral, or spiritual life, this is distinctly exceptional,
and without any linkage of ordinary cause and con-
sequence that we may know, previse, and employ.  It
-------------------------------------------------------
[1] The possibility and reality of this have already been shown (pp.
102-108).
---------------End of Page 376-------------------------
is by an immediate action of God, and incalculable--
the true "miracle."  It is not only _supernatural_, as
all the redemptive working through established means
of grace is, but it is by special direct causation.  It is the
kind of divine action belonging to the _giving_ of a revela-
tion and its authentication in "signs," "wonders," and
"powers."  The Old and New Testaments abound with
illustrations.  The incarnation, the mighty deeds of
Christ, His resurrection, etc., are examples.  The initia-
tion and establishment of the redemptory economy, the
setting up and verification of it for mankind, was neces-
sarily by this direct and extraordinary manifestaion.
But theology properly teaches that this is no longer a part
of the providential activity in the world, inasmuch as
all the provision of redemption have been wrought out,
and the adequate economy of application to human life
regularly provided through an established and divinely
authenticated order of means of grace.  The abiding
presence of the "supernatural" in the system of divine
means for spiritual ends, superseded the need of "mira-
cles," which formed a necessary feature in the earlier
history of redemption.  The "supernatural" or redemp-
tive economy now has its own laws or order of uniformi-
ties, in spiritual powers that have been organized for
man's spiritual and eternal life.  Through the word of
the Gospel, with its ever-present Spirit of light and
power, God comes into the human soul through its intel-
ligence, conscience, and capacity of consent.  And the
law of faith is that of acceptance of this divine order
and conformity to its working.  Its very heart-principle
is that of harmonization with the divine plan and pro-
vision as essentially made known to us.  There is no
call to look for "miracles" to effect or show us some-
-------------End of Page 377----------------------------
thing more than that which has been provided to reach 
us through established means.  The blessings of grace
and the realization of redemption appear according to
the measure of submission and conformity to a spiritual
order.  Everywhere personal salvation comes to men
through the instituted means, and advances according to
the use of means.  Everywhere the kingdom of Christ
extends according to the rule of the commission:  "Go
ye, make disciples of all nations."  It is not upon the
"miracle," God's working without means, that our faith 
is now to turn, with respect to personal salvation or the
world's conversion.

It is not, however, to be said that extraordinary provi-
dence, in the sense of transcendence of uniform means,
has no permanent place in the divine administration.
It certainly belongs to the closing events of the world's
presence, we must regard God as touching, with more or
less efficiency of directive or interventional powers, upon
the ongoings of human life and history, for the care of
men and the interests of His kingdom.  The reality of
special providence and answer to prayer imply as much
as this.  Though God's plan has obligated men to the
order and use of means, He has not bound or limited
Himself to them.  The instruments of His ordinary
providence, as already shown, embrace the whole uni-
verse of the physical, mental, and redemptory economies.
But these do not exhaust His powers.  In His imma-
nence in the universe He is still more than it, and
the infinitude of His possibilities is at the service
of His holiness, wisdom, and love.  He has not said in
vain:  "Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall
find."
----------------------End of Page 378-------------------
"That from us aught should ascend to heaven
So prevalent as to concern the mind
Of God high-blest, or to incline His will,
Hard to believe may seem, yet this will prayer."--_Milton_.

"Prayer moves the hand that moves the world."--_J. A. Wallace_.

"All things work together for good to them that love God."
--------------End of Page 379-----------------------------

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