A small group of us have spent many early Friday mornings over the past two years attempting to wade through Karl Barth’s doctrine of election. We have routinely brought questions to the table that Barth was clearly trying to avoid answering and rightly so. Recently, it has led me to reconsider God’s providential work in creation, in other words, the old “what is God’s will” kind of questions.
What I am about to suggest is not necessarily consistent with Barth (I don’t know Barth well enough to judge this definitively). That said, I do not think it is inconsistent. It is the concept of immediate providence. I do not know if this term is original. It probably is not, so who ever wants to take credit for it, go right ahead.
How many places in Scripture do we read about how we are to pray, petitioning God? If we presume some sort of fatalistic predetermination, such prayers are either “predetermined” or a fraud. After all, if we are told to ask, but it will not make any difference, what does that say about God? On the other hand, if we presume that God is off in the distance, unconcerned with us, asking is just as meaningless. Even prayers of thanksgiving are mere divine vanity in either scenario. On the other hand (apparently I have a lot of hands), if God is working immediately, here and now in relationship with creation and humans in creation, prayer takes on rich significance.
If God is in immediate relationship with creation and humans in creation, prayers of thanksgiving, lament, and petition are communion with God. Our requests are neither a charade nor a waste of time. The Scriptures are full of examples of this. The Exodus narrative is certainly loaded with the immediacy of God’s providential work, as are the Gospels. Certainly, the presence of the Holy Spirit shouts this basic truth.
Some of you maybe thinking, “but doesn’t God have a plan”? What about the Scriptures that speak to God’s knowledge of the “days of our lives” (not the soap opera), prophesy or Paul’s predestination language?
Here I appeal to a time honored principle of letting Scripture interpret Scripture. However we are to understand these things, we must do so in a way that is consistent with the greater narrative and teaching of Scripture. From these Scriptures we must surely understand God’s redemptive work as intentional and unstoppable. God does not deal with creation in some sort of whimsical way even if those He created do. Neither does God manipulate creation in a fatalistically deterministic way. If He did, the appearance of God’s response to both Israel as a nation and various individuals would be little more than an illusion.
So what does this mean? I suggest that God is working out His unstoppable redemptive plan through His immediate providential work in, and in relationship with, creation and humans. We have the opportunity to participate with God through the leading of His Holy Spirit. We can also be stubborn and attempt to thwart His redemptive plans (makes as much sense as drilling holes in life boats), but to presume we can alter the meta-narrative of redemption is folly indeed. We can, however, by the grace of God, participate in God’s work with our limited human capacity, because of God’s immediate providence.
Hey Bill,
I took a class on his doctrine of election w/ Bruce McCormack, which was very helpful. It’s interesting that Barth doesn’t treat providence until Church Dogmatics III.3 in the Doctrine of Creation, despite the fact that election is treated in Church Dogmatics II.2 in the Doctrine of God. I like how you emphasize God’s immediate providence as it connects with prayer.
Kudos for reading and discussing Barth early in the morning!
Here is how Barth summarizes the doctrine of providence:
The simple meaning of the doctrine of providence may thus be
summed up in the statement that in the act of creation God the
Creator as such has associated Himself with His creature as such as
the Lord of its history, and is faithful to it as such. God the Creator
co-exists with His creature, and so His creature exists under the presupposition, and its implied conditions, of the co-existence of its
Creator. God does this as His free will normative in its creation, and
His wisdom, goodness and power therein displayed, remain the same.
He does it as He is always to the creature the One He was when it
did not exist and came into being, as He continually acts as such
towards and with the creature which He has called to life, as He
sovereignly exercises His lordship over His work and possession in
new acts and revelations of His free will, wisdom, goodness and
power, and therefore as He causes the history of the creature to be
the history of His own glory. He does it as–far from leaving the
creature to itself and its own law or freedom, its dissatisfaction
or self-satisfaction–He causes it to share in His own glory, namely,
by the fact that it may serve Him in His immediate presence and
under His immediate guardianship and direction, thus fulfilling its
own meaning and purpose, having its own honour and existing to its
own joy. Hence whatever may take place in the history of the
creature, and however this may appear from the standpoint of its
own law and freedom, it never can nor will escape the lordship of its
Creator. Whatever occurs, whatever it does and whatever happens
to it, will take place not only in the sphere and on the ground of the
lordship of God, not only under a kind of oversight and final disposal
of God, and not only generally in His direct presence, but concretely,
in virtue of His directly effective will to preserve, under His direct
and superior cooperation and according to His immediate direction.
In this history, therefore, we need not expect turns and events which
have nothing to do with His lordship and are not directly in some
sense acts of His lordship. This Lord is never absent, passive, nonresponsible or impotent, but always present, active, responsible and
omnipotent. He is never dead, but always living; never sleeping,
but always awake; never uninterested, but always concerned;
never merely waiting in any respect, but even where He seems to
wait, even where He permits, always holding the initiative. In this
consists His co-existence with the creature. This is the range of the
fact that in the act of making it He has associated Himself with the
creature. He co-exists with it actively, in an action which never
ceases and does not leave any loopholes. And so the creature co-exists
with Him as the reality distinct from Him, and in its own appropriate
law and freedom, as He precedes it at every turn in His freedom of
action and with His work-He its Creator, who as such must no less
necessarily precede it than it must follow Him as His creature, and
be directly upheld by Him in its own existence, and stand under His
direct and superior co-ordination, and be directly ruled by Him.
Again, it is the majestic freedom of the Creator in face of His creature
which is as such the guarantee of the faithfulness and constancy with
which He is over and with it. Church Dogmatics III.3, p. 12-13.
Thanks for the comment Chris. Barth does cover a lot of territory–word wise anyway–before getting to the questions that seem to plague us. I am sure that is very intentional. The “therapy” as David Guretzki keeps reminding us.
…on to III.3…opps, I have to finsh the doctrine of election first
Well it is over for now.
And after two years, what have (I) learned???
Well if you were in the group.
You may see the answer in this message already.
It is not about (I) or the (individual).
It is about Jesus Christ, Son of God the Father.
The old safe Sunday School answer is right.
And it took us two years to come to this???
Yeah, that’s about it