The connection with the preceding commonplace.
The connection with the preceding commonplace.
§ 1. God, the creator of all things, did not abandon the work which He created, but with His omnipotence still preserves it and with His wisdom directs and governs all things in it. “For He is not like someone who goes away after he has built the structure of a building, and his work stands though he has stopped and gone away. The world could stand for barely a blink of an eye if God would take His guidance away from it,” according to Augustine (De Gen. ad lit., bk. 4, ch. 12). Nemesius writes that both of these are characteristics of God: “He made all things well and takes good care of what He made” ([De nat. hom.], ch. 42).
God did not abandon His work.
§ 2. According to Augustine (De Gen. ad lit., bk. 5, ch. 20), there are some who think that “God made only the world, but now the world itself makes the rest as God ordained and ordered, though He Himself does nothing.” Against this we recall that statement of the Lord: “My Father is working until now, and I am working” [John 5:17]. Chrysostom writes (on Ephesians, homily 19): “For as a ship cannot stand firm in the billows without a pilot, however strong and well-equipped she may be, all the less can the universe stand firm without God’s care and guidance.”
The Creator and the Caretaker are the same person.
§ 3. Scripture connects these two, and both must be believed with a trusting heart, namely, that God is the Creator and that God is the Caretaker. Job 12:9–10: “In the hand of Him who made all things is the life of every living thing and the breath of all mankind.” Acts 17:24–25 and 28: “He made the world and everything in it. He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. In Him we live and move and have our being.” Ps. 121:2 and 4: “He made heaven and earth. He who keeps Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.” Consequently, Anselm writes (Monol.): “Just as nothing was made except through the creating essence, so nothing continues to flourish except through the preserving power of the same.” The wrongheaded idea that God left His creation merely to its own governing spreads a great darkness over human minds and produces bleak doubts, according to Theodoret (Περὶ προν., orat. 1).
Nature itself is a witness of the providence of God.
§ 4. If you intend to be a pupil of nature, you will discover that it is taken care of in its basest and least significant things no less than in its noblest; that necessities are given to all until the end; that all things continue in a marvelous, certain order; that those things which act without intelligence and understanding still attain their purpose; that things which militate against each other are tempered in such a way that they break each other’s might and, though contrary to each other, are beneficial to the world; and that there is a greater consideration for the common good than for the private; etc.
§ 5. As a result, Boethius writes ([De consol.], bk. 3, pros. 12): “As this world would not have come together from such different and opposing parts had there not been one to join such diverse things together, so also that connected diversity of natures, inharmonious as it is, would be disjoined and torn apart were there not one to hold together what He has connected. Neither would such diversity disentangle impulses so arranged by places, times, efficient power, distances, and qualities, were there not one to remain constant Himself and arrange these varieties of changes.” Theodoret writes in the same vein (De provident., orat. 1): “Of visible things, consider their nature, disposition, order, state, movement, consonance, harmony elegance, beauty, function, delight, variety, change, and persistence among corruptible things. You see the providence of God manifest in every part of creation. You see it in the sky and in the lights of the sky; in the sun, the moon, and the other stars; in the air; in the clouds; on the earth; on the sea; in plants; in grasses; in seeds; in living creatures, rational as well as irrational; in creatures which walk and in those which fly; in swimming things and in reptiles. Think for yourselves: He holds together the vaults of heaven so that the sky has not grown old after so many thousands of years, accepting no change, but yet it has a corruptible substance that can be acted upon [passibilem], and it continues just as it was when it was lifted up by the word of creation,” etc.
§ 6. Lactantius employs a similar induction (Instit. div., bk. 1, ch. 6): “No one is so ignorant and so untrained that, as he lifts his eyes toward heaven, he does not perceive that there is some providence (though he may not know by whose providence all this which he sees is governed) from the very magnitude, movement, disposition, continuation, usefulness, beauty, and symmetry of things. Furthermore, he must know that it is impossible for that which stands in marvelous order to have been constructed apart from a greater plan.” On the contrary, if one pays attention, he will find “that in every member of the body is reflected the forethought of divine providence,” as Nemesius teaches.
§ 7. Plato had climbed by the staircase of creation to the point that he wrote: “Whoever denies God’s providence denies God” (De legibus, bk. 10). We add that those people who deny His providence err more disgracefully than those who deny God. Erasmus (In symb. catech. 2, p. 55): “Unless I am mistaken, in the same way you would be less angry with him who thought that you were not1 born than with one who believed that you have no sense or human understanding or other attributes without which a man loses the title ‘man.’ ” Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 5, ch. 9): “To confess that God exists and to deny that He has the foreknowledge of coming events is outright madness.”
§ 8. Therefore the statement of Pliny is disgraceful and is in conflict with nature itself (Nat. histor., bk. 2, ch. 7): “We must laugh at the idea that whatever is on high takes care of human affairs. Can we believe, or can there be any doubt, that it is not polluted with a tragic and manifold administration?” On the contrary, one should know that, just as we must not think of laziness, idleness, or inertia when naming God, so also we must not think of labor, effort, or assiduity in the work of God. Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 12, ch. 17): “He Himself knows how to act while resting and how to rest while acting.”
Natural knowledge of providence is weak.
§ 9. However, the knowledge of the providence of God which has been taken from the book of nature is weak and imperfect, not because of any fault of nature itself but because of our defective mind. Statius cried out as Rutilius recovered from an illness: “Hooray! You gods do exist!” When Tibullus died, however, Ovid thundered: “Forgive this weary soul! When the wicked fates carry off good men, I am forced to think that the gods do not exist.”2 So also we read in Vergil, when he lost his son by a premature death: “Your mother calls both the gods and the stars cruel.”3 Most beautifully of all, however, Claudian has described those heathen doubts or, as he himself calls them, “tumults of the mind” in the introduction to his invective against Rufinus.
Rather, surer and more perfect is the knowledge of God’s providence which one seeks from the book of Scripture.
1 Read te non esse natum with Cotta instead of te esse natum.
2 Ovid, Amores 3.9.35–36 (LCL 41 [1931], p. 482).
3 Vergil, Ecologues 5.23 (LCL 63 [1999], p. 54).