Chapter V: God’s Control
CHAPTER V: ON THE THIRD ACT OF PROVIDENCE, NAMELY, CONTROL
What sort of an action control is.
§ 55. Third, therefore, providence consists of “control” [διοίκησις], the actual and temporal sustaining and governing of all things by which God regulates and directs all things wisely, freely, powerfully, and well.
The objects of control.
§ 56. This provident care of God deals with all things which exist and occur in the world. Col. 1:17: “In Him all things hold together.” Heb. 1:3: “He upholds all things by the word of His power.” Wisdom 6:[7]: “He takes forethought for all things.” Wisdom 8:1: “[Wisdom] reaches mightily from end to end and orders all things well.” Wisdom 12:13: “God cares for all.” Control has as its object not only the heavenly and incorruptible natures but also things under the heavens, not only species but also single individuals.
Errors about the objects of providence.
§ 57. Clement (Strom., bk. 5, p. 275), Cyril (Catech. 8), and Augustine (De Gen. ad lit., bk. 5, ch. 2) tell that there were some who thought that “the highest parts of the world are governed by divine providence, but the lowest part of earth and the closer atmosphere in which winds and clouds rise up are driven rather by accident and chance.” Pliny (Nat. hist., bk. 2, ch. 7) thinks that the lower parts are controlled by the impulses of heaven and of the stars. We also quote from the Arab Algazel (Metaph., bk. 3, ch. 5): “The first cause1 does not know particular things except according to universal knowledge.” Ovid (Trist., bk. 2, vv. 216ff.) writes:
As he busies himself on high with gods, heaven, and all that entails, Jupiter has not the time to attend to details.
Rabbi Moses (De direct. perplex., ch. 136) says: “No individual corruptible things are in the province of divine providence except humans, because of their intellect, which is incorruptible.”
However, nothing seems to move by chance as much as all those stormy, turbulent qualities by which the surface of the atmosphere is changed and upset. And yet Ps. 147:8: “God covers the heavens with clouds; He prepares rain for the earth.” Ps. 135:7: “He makes the clouds rise, He makes lightnings with the rain, He brings forth the wind from His storehouses.” Matt. 5:45: “He makes His sun rise and sends rain on the just and the unjust.”
How Jerome’s statement should be explained.
§ 58. In his commentary on Habakkuk 1, Jerome says: “It is a silly flattery of God to extend His majesty to the point that He knows moment by moment how many gnats are born or die, how great a number of flies exists, or how many fish swim in the sea.” [Jerome] would be taking away from the praise of divine providence, unless you take this sentence to mean that God does indeed know individual things precisely but not in that manner of knowing which happens successively each passing moment, but rather with the intuitive knowledge by which He looks at all things all at once. Matt. 10:29: “Two sparrows are sold for a penny, and not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father.” What birds are cheaper than sparrows? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God. Matt. 10:30 and Luke 12:[7]: “But even the hairs of your head have been numbered.” Matt. 6:28: “God clothes the lilies.” See also Lombard (Sent. 1, dist. 39, letter D), where he tries to take Jerome’s statement in a good sense.
§ 59. Therefore Ambrose (De offic., bk. 1, ch. 13) is correct in writing: “If making even the tiniest of things is not too low or insulting to God, much less does it belittle Him to govern what He has made.” Irenaeus (bk. 2, ch. 45): “Not one of those things which have been made or are being made escapes God. Instead, by His providence each thing receives its disposition, number, and quantity.” Augustine (De civ. Dei, bk. 10, ch. 14) praises the statement of Plotinus: “The beauty of flowers and foliage proves that providence reaches down from God on high to these earthly things below. It confirms that all these humble things which pass away so quickly cannot have such beauty and variety of their forms unless it is fashioned from where the intelligible and unchanging form, having all things at the same time, perseveres.”
§ 60. “Who arranged the bodies of gnats and fleas so that they are the way they are, have the lives they do, and move the way they do? Consider whatever tiny little beast you wish, however minute. Who has ordered it? Who has made it? You who are fearful before the small, praise the Great!” (Augustine, commentary on Psalm 147, vol. 8).
1 See above, p. 58 n. 6.