Systematic Theology – Creation and Providence

Creation and Providence

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Systematic Theology

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 3 of 17

Track: #3

Year:

Dictation Name: 3 Creation and Providence

[Rushdoony] Our subject now is creation and providence. Under the influence of paganism many people have seen the universe as a cold, mechanical, and empty force. This is true in antiquity and since the time of Hegel at least. Vitalistic philosophy has seen a tendency and a moving force in the universe, life, but it is non-personal and essentially mindless. It manifests direction and purpose only in retrospect as a result of chance and blind urges, not as a self-conscious and decreed will. Now in such a world view the universe has produced man together with a billion and one other things. But the universe is unconscious of man, and indifferent to him, it is totally meaningless. Tomorrow a wondering star, asteroid, comment, or some other cosmic light may mindlessly destroy the earth and man. If this idea is denied by other scientists, it’s denied on physical, electro-magnetic ground. But all agree that sooner or later cosmic death will overwhelm us all. Indeed we might say that William Butler Yates poem The Second Coming best sets forth the modern mood, especially in the sentences “things fall apart; the center cannot hold; mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.”

Because of this the doctrine of providence is remote to modern man, even believers do not think often about it. In modern world of science things are reduced to weights and measures, to calculable things, and churchmen have been much influenced by Hegel and Darwin. Even men with a very deep religious experience do find providence a remote subject. This is a devastating fact; it means that for most people the government of God is seen as withdrawn from the world. God’s law, God’s presence is not in effect now according to such a view. Not surprisingly the preaching of providence has largely disappeared. We hear little about providence from the pulpit. When we do have immediacy and relevancy in preaching it is experiential, not theological. God is near to us in certain events, and moments, and things. The emphasis is on being born again, a product rather than on the object fact of and the cause, God’s work of atonement, justification, and electing grace. In other words we are more interested in what happens to us, then it what God did. And so preaching has shifted from the reformation when it was on justification, on electing grace, on atonement, and is now on salvation as a personal experience. This is humanism.

For many doctrinal preaching is cold and remote. Sometimes it is, because if doctrine is preached it is made into something abstract because God is abstracted from this world. The reformation had a very heavy emphasis on objective doctrine. The reformation did not talk about what you and I experience, but what God had done for us. It was medieval theology that emphasized the experience. The reformation took it away from the person and said “this is the faith, see what God hath done.” As a result the reformers had a strong involvement in the world round-about them. They did not reduce the faith to the soul of man; they saw it as God’s governing principle for all of life; the salvation of man, the salvation of society. But in the seventeenth century there was the rise of introspection and subjectivism. The puritans began step by step to leave the old faith and to write about the psychology of conversion, rather than doctrine. The older emphasis was called scholasticism, and we have people to this day who, and especially this day perhaps, who call Westminster Standards “Scholastic” because they place the emphasis on the objective faith rather than making the subjective experience primary.

But the doctrine of creation requires us to have a God-centered faith. IN the world of Charles Darwin, in the world of evolution, man can be subjective. After all, he is the only frame of reference, the only mind in the world. If the universe is mindless then human beings alone have minds. Meaning then requires subjectivity. There is no meaning out there in the physical universe, no meaning beyond the universe in God, meaning is limited to the mind of man; the rest of creation is brute factuality. But if Genesis is true, then subjectivism is a delusion. I cannot make my experience, my thinking, my logic, central. The subjectivism of the modern world we find not only in philosophy and in theology, but in life. Man is seen as the center of all things, and when man is made the center, and his experience the center, man can say “no” to God. If God is the first and basic fact in the universe, God can say “no” to man. But if man is central man can say “no” to God. Then no real doctrine of predestination is possible. Mans will is sovereign. But a strict, Biblical doctrine of creation requires an objective perspective; it requires us to believe in theology, not anthropology. God is totally the creator; hence he is totally the governor.

The word providence in the Greek “pronoia” means “perceiving beforehand” it is closely related to foreknowledge and predestination. The purpose of providence is to affect God’s eternal decree and to do so infallibly. All things move to their predestined purpose in Him. One scholar has said, Grintz, and I quote “There is a connection between providence and the principle of reward and punishment.” Exactly so; God having created the world has made it a law order in which His providence brings about His desired purpose. Paganism held to a fixed order of universe above the gods, the gods were products, not creators; and therefore the gods could provide no providence. Only in Biblical faith is a doctrine of providence possible, because only a faith which says that God is in total control over all His creation, and has a personal relationship to all things, can you have a doctrine of providence. Scripture tells us that neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight. But all things are naked and open unto the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. In other words God’s providence is cosmic, it is national, it is personal, it is natural, it is total.

To quote from Grintz again “It can be said that the entire Bible is a record of divine providence, whether general or individual.” Both Proverbs and the Psalm, of course, are full of references to providence; and we are told that because God is the Lord there is no in consequential act in all of creation, everything has meaning. Proverbs 16:33 says “Lot is cast at the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is the Lord” Proverbs 21:1 “The kings heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water He turneth it whither so ever He will.” As a result in Ecclesiastes 11:9 we read “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these things God will bring thee to judgment.” God is the Lord, all things have meaning. And Romans 8:28 makes clear that God uses every event to His own good purpose, so that even mans’ wrath and evil shall praise Him that is work to God’s purpose and glory. As a result God’s purpose can never be frustrated, and all things work together for evil to them who deny the Lord.

Thus we have in scripture not only 8:28 that says all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose, but we have the statement that all things work for evil in Gods universe to those who are evil. In Lamentations 1:22 we read “let all their wickedness come before Thee, and do unto them as Thou hast done unto me for all my transgressions, for my sighs are many and my heart is faint.” Obadiah 15 declares “For the day of the Lord is near upon all the heathen. As Thou hast done it shall be done unto Thee. Thy reward shall return upon Thy own head.” Again in Jeremiah 50:29 “Call together the archers against Babylon, all ye that bend the bow camp against it round about, let none thereof escape, recompense her according to her work, according to all that she hath done do unto her; for she hath been proud against the Lord, against the holy One of Israel.”

The universe is one of total meaning. That total meaning is entirely the ordained purpose and decree of the absolute and sovereign God. Therefore the covenant people of the Lord have a glorious assurance in the face of all struggles, adversities, and attacks, of God’s providence. According to Isaiah 54:17 “’No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment Thou shalt condemn, this is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness is of me’ saith the Lord.” Only where the doctrine of God’s providence is truly believed and is basic to a man’s life and faith is there a true Sabbath possible. A man may cease from his labors but He cannot rest in the Lord until or unless he relies firmly on God’s providence. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God Thou hast made us for Thy holy purpose. Thou hast called us to be Thy people and given us great and glorious promises in Thy word. Give us grace to know that all our trials and our burdens come from Thee; that Thou dost use them to test us, to draw us closer to Thee, to make us stronger in Thee so that we might more effectually serve Thee. Give us grace therefore to walk by faith, to trust in Thee in everything to give thanks, and to rejoice evermore in Christ Jesus our Lord and our Savior, in His name we pray, amen.

We shall continue in our next session with The Joy of Creation in Providence.