Heinrich Bullinger (1504–1575) on the Providence of God

Bullinger:

That the whole world is maintained and very well governed by God’s providence.

The fourth Chapter.

That God
does yet
now preserve
the things
he has made.
John 5.

But God did not only make this world, and all things that are therein, but also preserves the same, and yet now God’s power works in preserving of it. Whereupon Christ our Lord says, “My Father works hitherto and I work.” Now it were a fond thing to grant that the Whole was created by God, and to deny that he cares for it, or governs it. Therefore all things that are, and do move anywhere are and do move by God his providence, the Elements, the courses of the Starts, seasons and varieties of times, fruit, and other things, which the earth brings forth, continual springs of fountains, the certain courses of Rivers, Monsters of the Sea, besides these beginning continuance and change of Empires, and those things which are punishments all these things, and whatsoever else may be reckoned up, are ruled by God’s providence and counsel. And that these things are very well and excellently governed, not only the Holy Scriptures,  but also daily experience does teach, and all the saints in Heaven do confess. Apoca. 4^th and 5^th chapters.

Epicures.

Amongst the Gentiles in times past the Epicures, who had regard neither of God nor man (whose like would to God we had not in our time a great many), did think God neither cares for us at all, neither yet sees what we do, and that there was no providence of God at all: and others judge all things to be ruled either of nature, or fortune, and therefore that all things come to pass either by chance, or at all adventures, or else to be ordered by constellations, that is by the force and power of Stars, or by man’s means and counsel. But such as hold these opinions, these never have any regard of God, or commit their affairs unto God. Wherefore such men are fro good cause rebuked by S. James which says, “go to now you which say, today, or tomorrow we will go into that city, and remain a year there, and will use merchandise, and get grain, whereas you should rather say if the Lord will, and if we live, we will do this or that,” [ James. 4.]. For Christ our Lord has also commanded us not to be careful for all things to come, [Mat. 5. Luke. 12.] but for to do those things which are commanded of God, and finally to cast all our care upon him [ 1 Peter. 5. Heb. 13.], for so much as as with our carefulness we cannot make one hair either white or black [Mat. 10.], and that all the hairs of our heads are numbered unto God, without whose will, not the very smallest birds that are, fall unto the ground. And saint Paul says, God gives unto all men life, breath, and to be short all things, for through him, we live and have our being and move. And David says: “The eyes of all things are cast upon thee O Lord, and thou gives them meat in due season, and opening thy hand feeds all things living, which being shut up, all things perish and decay,” [Psal. 147.].

And Daniel says, wisdom and power of the Lord’s, which changes times and seasons, which puts down kings and makes kings, &c [Daniel. 2.]. If any man be desirous to have more testimonies of this, sort let him read Levit. 26; Deu. 28; Job. 38; and 39. Esai; 40; Jere. 10; Psa. 104, 107, 139, and 147; and the commentaries of Saint Augustine upon the 148^th Psalm.

What profit comes
by the knowledge
of God’s providence.

And this true and perfect knowledge of God’s providence whereby all things are governed, makes men patient in adversity, modest and ware, and in all all matters it keeps in us the remembrance and reverence of God, and stirs us up ti praise and call upon God.

Henry Bullinger, Common Places of Christian Religion, (Imprinted at London by Tho. East, and H. Middleton, for George Byshop, 1572), 38-40. [Some reformatting; some spelling modernized; and underlining mine.]

John Marbeck (ca. 1510-ca.1585) on the Providence of God

Marbeck:

Providence.

Of the providence of God, what it is.

Providence is not only that unspeakable power whereby it comes to pass, that God has foreseen all things from everlasting, and most wisely provided for all things beforehand: But also that eternal decree or ordinance of the most wise and righteous God, whereby that everything that has been, has been: and everything that is, is: and everything that shall be, shall be: according as it liked him to appoint from everlasting

Beza.

We mean by the providence of God, that even as he is creator of all things, he is also the conserver, which does by his eternal power and wisdom, guide and govern them, and by his sovereign  goodness in such sort, that nothing comes by adventure, neither in heaven nor in earth, without his counsel and ordinance, and his most just will, be it in general, or in particular.

Peter Viret.

No good or evil does happen without a cause, or by fortune without God’s providence, but all things do happen after his judgment.

Hierom., upon Eze.

Providence is sometime as much to say as knowledge, and foreknowledge of things to come. Sometime it signifies an ability to foresee for others of things necessary, so it is said that God in heaven does foresee and care for all. Again, some do decline the providence of God after this wise: Providence is the everlasting and unchangeable kingdom and administration of all things. They do mean (says Musculus), by the word of kingdom, dominion and power, and by the word of administration, the temperature of that dominion which they added, because of the finding and giving of all things unto us, which seems in show, to be a condition of ministry, as well as of dominion.

Musc., Fol. 425. and 426.

God’s providence we call that sovereign Empire and supreme dominion, which God always keeps in the government of all things in heaven and earth contained. And these two (that is, prescience and providence), we so attribute unto God, that with the Apostle we fear not to affirm, that in him we have our being, moving and life. We fear not to affirm, that the way of man is not in his own power, but that his foot-steps are directed by the eternal God (that the sorts and lots which appear most subject to fortune), go so forth by his providence, that a sparrow falls not on the ground, without our heavenly Father. And thus we give not to God any prescience, by an idle sight, and a providence by a general moving of his creatures (as not only some Philosophers, but also more then is to be wished in our days do), but we attribute uto him such a knowledge and providence, as is extended to every one of his creatures. In which he so works, that willingly they tend and incline to the end, to the which they are appointed by him, &c.

Knox, fol. 21.

Because we know not all things (says S. Austen), which God does concerning us in most good order, that therefore in only good-will we do according to the law, because his providence is an unchangeable law. Therefore since God does claim unto himself the power to rule the world, which is to us unknown. Let this be a law to us of soberness and modesty, quietly to obey his sovereign authority, that his will may be unto us the only rule Justice, as the most just cause of all things. I mean not that absolute will, of which the Sophists do babble, separating by wicked and profane disagreement, his Justice from his power, but I mean that providence, which is the governess of all things, from which proceeds nothing but right, although the causes he hidden from us.

Calvin, 1. book, chapt. 17, Sect. 3.

Iohn Marbeck, A Book of Notes and Common Places, collected and gathered out of the works of diuers singular Witers, and brought Alphabetically in order (Imprinted at London by Thomas East, 1581), 880-881. [Some reformatting; spelling modernized.] [Note: Marbeck’s reference to Hierom probably refers to Hieronymus Zanchius, the Latinized and alternative spelling used for Jerome Zanchi, also known as, Girolamo Zanchi. And needless to say, Musc. refers to Musculus.]

The Westminster Confession on Divine Permission of Sin

WCF:

Of Providence

5: 5. The almighty power, unsearchable wisdom, and infinite goodness of God so far manifest themselves in his providence, that it extends itself even to the first fall, and all other sins of angels and men; and that not by a bare permission, but such as hath joined with it a most wise and powerful bounding, and otherwise ordering, and governing of them, in a manifold dispensation, to his own holy ends; yet so, as the sinfulness thereof proceeds only from the creature, and not from God, who, being most holy and righteous, neither is nor can be the author or approver of sin.

Of the Fall of Man, of Sin, and of the Punishment Thereof:

6: 1. Our first parents, being seduced by the subtlety and temptation of Satan, sinned, in eating the forbidden fruit. This their sin, God was pleased, according to his wise and holy counsel, to permit, having purposed to order it to his own glory.

LC 19:

Q19: What is God’s providence towards the angels?

A19: God by his providence permitted some of the angels, willfully and irrecoverably, to fall into sin and damnation, limiting and ordering that, and all their sins, to his own glory; and established the rest in holiness and happiness; employing them all, at his pleasure, in the administrations of his power, mercy, and justice.

Contra: “…permission in the case of the Almighty has no specific meaning,” Gordon Clark.¹

____________________

¹Gordon Clark, What do Presbyterians Believe?, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 1965), 67. Perhaps this work should have been entitled, What do Hypercalvinists believe?

Johannes Wollebius on Fall of Man and God’s Providence and Decree

Wollebius:

(2)

1. Sin is either the first sin or the result of it.

2. The first sin is the disobedience of the first parents, by which they transgressed God’s prohibition concerning the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

PROPOSITIONS

I. The cause of the transgression of Adam and Eve was neither God nor a decree of God, nor the withholding of any special grace, nor the permission to fall, nor any naturally incited motive, nor the providential government of the fall itself.

It was not God, because he had most strictly forbidden the eating of the fruit of that tree. It was not his decree, because that carries only an immutable, not a coercive necessity, nor does it lead anyone toward sin. It was not the withholding of some special grace by which man might have remained innocent, for there was no obligation to give even the grace that God did give man; he received, in fact, the ability to act as he willed, although not that of willing as he could. It was not any naturally incited motive, for a motive in itself is not sin. It was not the providential government of the fall, for to bring good out of evil is to be the source of good rather than of evil.

II. God both did, and did not, will the first sin. He did not will, in so far as it is sin, but he willed and decreed it, in so far as it is a means of revealing his glory, mercy, and justice.

III. The immediate cause of original sin was the instigation and persuasion of that old serpent, the devil.

IV. Its antecedent cause was the will of man, which by itself was indifferent toward good and evil, but, when convinced by Satan, was turned toward evil.

V. There are five stages of the fall, by which man fell from God one step at a time, not all at once: (1) Thoughtlessness and meddlesomeness when Eve conversed with the serpent in her husband’s absence; ( 2 ) unbelief, as little by little she began to agree with the lies of Satan, who called into doubt the goodness of God toward man, so that she distrusted God; (3) desire for the forbidden fruit and for divine glory; (4) the deed itself; ( 5 ) the temptation of Adam and the arousing of undisciplined desire also in him.

VI. If all the aspects [pars] of this sin are taken into account, it is rightly called transgression of the entire natural law. Man sinned by unbelief, distrust, ingratitude, and idolatry, as he fell from God and set about making an idol of himself. He also sinned by despising God’s word, by rebellion, homicide, and intemperance, by the secret taking of what was not his without God’s permission, by assent to false statements, and finally by the desire for higher dignity, indeed, for the dignity that belongs only to God. Whence it is too narrow a definition to call this sin intemperance, ambition, or pride.

Johannes Wollebius, “Compendium Theologiae Christianae,” in John W. Beardslee III, Reformed Dogmatics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 1977), 67-68.

Johannes Wollebius on the Providence of God

Wollebius:

The actual providence of God is that work by which God not on preserves his creatures, but governs all things with unlimited [immensus] wisdom, goodness, power, justice, and mercy.

I. To deny providence is to deny God.

II. Actual providence differs from eternal providence as the execution of a decree differs from the decree.

III. In eternal providence what God intends to do, in actual providence what he wants, is uppermost.

IV. Providence consists not only of knowledge, but of the governance of all things, from the greatest to the least.

V. The providence of God does not destroy secondary causes, but upholds them.

VI. From the standpoint of providence, events which are contingent with respect to secondary causes are necessary. But it is the necessity of immutability, not of coercion.

VII. The providence of God is very different from Stoic fatalism. Stoic fatalism binds God in the net of secondary causes; Christian [teaching] subordinates secondary causes to the absolutely free will of God, which employs them freely, not of necessity, not because them, but because he wants them.

VIII. Both good and evil deeds are controlled by the providence of God.

IX. Good deeds are controlled by his effective act, under which heading belong the divine prevenience [praecursus] , concurrence [concursus] and support [succursus].

X. Evil deeds are controlled by realized [actuosus] permission, and hence by allowing, limiting, and directing them.

XI. The providence of God is always free from disorder and sin, even in connection with disorderly and sinful acts.