How Can God Govern Over All Things?: The Means of Providence

By Thomas G. Reid Jr.

Librarian and Registrar, Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary

Introduction

In Gordon Clark’s (1902-1985) discussion of the providence of God as described in the Westminster Confession of Faith (1646), Chapter 5, Clark recounts an interesting story.

My uncle once hired a chauffeur to drive him around a mountainous part of Turkey. As the chauffeur kept up too fast a speed around the sharp curves along the precipices, my uncle urged more caution. But the Turk replied that the date of their deaths was fated; and if this was the day, caution would be of no use; whereas[,] if this was not the day, caution was unnecessary.[1]

Clark then wryly observes, “The Turk was clever, but not Calvinistic.”[2] Why? Because God’s providence is always worked out according to means, which helps to undergird the responsibility mankind faces for its choices in life.

The teaching of the Westminster Confession of Faith on the subject of the means of providence is found in Chapter 5, Paragraph 3, which reads, “God[,] in His ordinary providence[,] maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them[,] at His pleasure.”

In considering these means of providence, three questions need to be raised and answered.

What Is The Correct Definition Of The Means Of Providence?

God is pleased to use two basic means in order to further his work of providence. One is the primary or direct means, in which God Himself works in an extraordinary way to accomplish His purposes in providence. The other is the secondary or indirect means, in which God works through other beings or things to accomplish His purposes in providence. A. A. Hodge (1823-1886) explains why the word “causes” may also be used of this phenomenon, since the word “means” may be defined: “through the agency of second causes subject to his [God’s] control”.[3] But Calvin is right that “there is no strict or systematic distinction” between the two means or causes.[4]

A classic example of the difference between the two means of providence is found in Acts 12:20-24. A crowd from Tyre and Sidon proclaimed King Herod to be a god and not a man (verse 22). “Because he did not give glory to God”, but accepted this false praise, Herod was “immediately” struck and killed by an angel of the Lord. That is an exercise of the primary or direct means of God’s providence. But, we also read that Herod “was eaten by worms and died” (verse 23),[5] for God accomplished His providence through a secondary or indirect means at the same time. As R. C. Sproul (1939- ) has observed, “The Westminster divines insisted that secondary causes are real, that the force we exert is real force. However, any force or any power exerted in this world depends upon the power of God for its efficacy.”[6] The Puritan Obadiah Sedgewick (1600?-1658) helpfully compares the situation to a mill for grinding corn, which depends on the wind for its effect.[7]

And sometimes, as the Bremen Consensus of a German Reformed state church in 1595 explains,

The Scripture ascribes to God Himself what comes to pass by intermediate causes, as when Joseph says [Gen. 45:8], “It was not you who sent me, but God.” And: “I will send Assyria and charge him to act against the people of my wrath, to rob and to utterly destroy, though he does not so intend and neither does his heart so think” (Isa. 10[:6-7]).[8]

The Westminster Confession states that God “is free to work without, above, and against” the means of providence, “at His pleasure”. Gordon Clark has questioned this formulation in his work What Do Presbyterians Believe?, focusing his ire on the word “without”. Clark asks, “Does God ever accomplish [H]is purpose without using some means or other?”[9] However, Chad Van Dixhoorn (1971- ) has no problem with the word “without”, believing that it means that God “is ‘free to work’ outside of normal parameters”.[10] The Confession’s language here is found in the later Savoy Declaration of 1658[11] and the London Baptist Confession of 1677,[12] suggesting that it enjoyed wide acceptance among Calvinists of that period. Nonetheless, A. A. Hodge has a more clear formulation than the Confession does concerning this point: God created all second causes, “and [H]e must be able to do directly without them what [H]e does with them, and limit, modify, or supersede them, at [H]is pleasure.”[13]

Van Dixhoorn defines the second word of the Confession’s trio, “above”, as meaning that God “can stretch standard limitations and subvert conventional assumptions”.[14]

Gordon Clark is happier with the third word the Confession uses, “against”, but only if it “means nothing other than God’s power to work miracles and this to accomplish [H]is own aim in opposition to the usual processes of nature”.[15] These three words are designed to express that, in Obadiah Sedgwick’s words, “Divine providence will seldom work and appear in set means.”[16]

The concern of the statement in the WCF 5, 3, is on the “ordinary Providence” of God, on the secondary or indirect means, not on the primary or direct means. The focus is not on the unusual or miraculous or rare, but on the day-by-day providence of God within the universe He has created. In this regard, three aspects of providence must be discussed, although it is important to note that the Confession does not define the means which can be grouped under these three headings. Other Reformed and Presbyterian confessions of the time are equally silent on the definition of the means of providence;[17] many do not even mention the means of providence.

The First Aspect Of The Means Of Providence Is God’s Preservation Of The Universe, Including The Earth.

God created the universe “very good” (Gen. 1:31). But, with the fall into sin, the whole universe was affected, causing it to groan and labor, as in the birth pangs of a woman about to bring a child into the world (Rom. 8:22). As the winds and low air pressure of a tornado or hurricane cause the walls of a building to groan, threatening collapse, the universe after the Fall was under enormous pressures and risked disintegration. But God stepped in and maintained the universe, so that His purposes in grace toward the elect, almost all yet to be born into the world, might still be accomplished. If God were to remove His sustaining providence from the universe, everything would collapse, and God would be left alone once again.[18] Frederick Leahy (1922-2006) observes:

Nothing in nature is static. There is constant change, and yet there is underlying regularity and stability[,] as promised and guaranteed by the covenant God[,] confirmed to Noah after the Flood (Gen. 9). Where does this uniformity in nature come from, if not from God who, through His Son, ‘upholds the universe by the word of his power’ (Heb. 1:3)?[19]

The Catechism of John Calvin (1509-1564) written in 1538 maintains that, “When [H]e is named ‘Creator of heaven and earth’, we are at the same time to understand that all [H]e once created [H]e everlastingly nourishes, sustains, and quickens.”[20] In Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion, he writes, “We see the presence of the divine power shining as much in the continuing state of the universe as in its inception.”[21]

If we are to describe God’s preservation of the universe in more detail, we must posit the laws of nature, such as gravity, which maintain the universe as truly that, a universe – not a multiverse, but a universe or a world in which conflicting forces may rage against one another, but do not pull it apart and cause it to collapse.

The Second Aspect Of The Means Of Providence Is God’s Government Of The Universe.

Having maintained the very existence of the universe, God actively involves Himself in the progress of life. In this way, Christianity stands against Deism, which teaches that God creates and maintains, but no more. And this government is not limited; John Reisinger observes, “God controls and uses everyone, even the devil, in working out His plan (Isa. 10:7-11; Ps. 76:10).”[22]

From the beginning, God established three creation ordinances to guide providence. One is the Sabbath, by which mankind is to follow God in resting one day in seven (Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:8-11). Attempts to change the time, as in the early days of Soviet Russia, when a ten day week was implemented, in order to increase the collapsing productivity of the Russian population, since the link between work and reward had been severed by the Communists, were quickly abandoned. While it may be argued that the Sabbath in the modern West has been expanded to the weekend, doubling the time of rest, the modern world does not observe a regular Sabbath. As a result, we have had to create various holidays, scheduled strategically throughout the year, in order to try to imitate some of the benefits of the Sabbath.[23]

The second creation ordinance is work, in some ways the flip side of the Sabbath. Six days each week, men and women are to work to sustain their lives, develop the creation, and serve the Creator (Ex. 20:9). The shorter and shorter work week, like the thirty-five hour week legally imposed by the Socialists in France or the thirty hours per week recently proposed by Amazon for its employees,[24] indicate that modern man believes that work is a necessary evil, rather than a positive good.

The third creation ordinance is the marriage of one man and one woman (Gen. 2:18-25). From their one flesh relationship comes the next generation, which permits the perpetuation of the covenant line throughout the millennia, until the return of Christ. The modern assault on the meaning of marriage is a clear expression of mankind’s battle against God’s providence, believing that, if someone can do something approximating marriage, that he or she or they may do that something, no matter what God has built into the very fabric of His world.

But the creation ordinances do not exhaust the means by which God governs His creation through His providence.

A fourth aspect is conscience. While men are described in Rom. 1:18 as those “who suppress the truth in unrighteousness”, we are unable to totally deny the existence, power, deity, and attributes of God (Rom. 1:19-20). A still, small voice remains in each human being, causing us to be uncomfortable at times in our rebellion against God. As Edmund Clowney (1917-2005) observed at the 1973 Urbana Missionary Convention of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship, the very vehemence with which unbelieving men and women shake their fists at God indicates clearly that they know He is there and that they are responsible to love and obey Him. Of course, the transformed conscience of the believer can function to keep us faithful to God.

A fifth means by which God governs His universe is law. He has communicated His legal expectations of the crown of His creation first directly to mankind, then indirectly through spokesmen to us, and eventually in written form, as His Spirit caused God’s prophets and apostles to write down His law. In that law, we see both the perfections of God and the imperfections of man. But God has not only written His law on stone and paper, He has written His law in our hearts. It is that law which educates our consciences and, in the elect, helps them to respond in covenantal faith and repentance. Jer. 31:33 observes:

I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the LORD.[25]

A sixth means by which God governs His universe is the civil magistrate. In the perfect life of the Garden of Eden, there was no need for the external order provided by someone granted the “power of the sword” (Rom. 13:4). But post-Fall, mankind needs the structure of human government to maintain order, life, morality, and property. The Book of Judges bears a salutary witness to what happens in the absence of stable human government: “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (17:6; 21:25, the final verse in the Book), leading to chaos and immorality.

And King Solomon observes in Proverbs 21:1, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, Like the rivers of water; [H]e turns it wherever He wishes.” Herman Hoeksema (1886-1965) comments in his sermon on Is. 10:15 entitled “The Vaunting Ax” concerning the looming threat of the nation of Assyria against the nation of Israel. That pagan nation “is not a mere ax[,] but a rational and moral agent[;] he has his own purposes and counsels[,] even while he accomplishes the purpose of the Most High; and these purposes are wicked … in doing so[,] he becomes guilty and is punished and destroyed.”[26]

A seventh means by which God governs His universe is human society itself. We are not alone here, even if part of a married couple. For a prisoner, solitary confinement is considered a terrible punishment. Society influences us all, through its customs and its language, through the fear of the ostracism of others and the desire for the approval of others.

In these seven ways, and in others, God governs this world, working out His providence through means.

The Third And Final Aspect Of The Means Of Providence Is God’s Sanctification Of His People.
Since this aspect is not directly concerned with the universe in its entirety, it is not always considered a means of providence. The Westminster Shorter Catechism (1647) defines providence in question and answer 11 as follows: “God’s works of providence are, [H]is most holy, wise, and powerful preserving and governing all [H]is creatures, and all their actions.” The Westminster Larger Catechism question 18 is similar. So it appears at first glance that the Westminster divines did not conceive of providence as extending beyond preserving and governing. But note the immediately following question and answer.

Question: What special act of providence did God exercise toward man in the estate wherein he was created? 

Answer: When God created man, he entered into a covenant of life with him, upon condition of perfect obedience[,] forbidding him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon the pain of death. (Italics added.)

The Westminster divines thus defined providence in their Shorter Catechism as extending beyond preservation and government to include the covenantal relationship between God and His people, leading to their salvation and sanctification. The Westminster Confession concludes its consideration of the providence of God with a similar insight. “As the providence of God doth, in general, reach to all creatures; so, after a most special manner, it taketh care of [H]is church, and disposeth all things to the good thereof” (WCF V, 7). And we can readily see that God does work through the means of grace among His people in such a way that His providential control is extended and enhanced. The very first question of the wonderful Heidelberg Catechism (1563) also connects providence to our salvation.[27]

Question: What is thy only comfort in life and death? 

Answer: That I[,] with body and soul, both in life and death, am not my own, but belong unto my faithful Savior Jesus Christ; who, with His precious blood, hath fully satisfied for all my sins, and delivered me from all the power of the devil; and so preserves me that[,] without the will of my heavenly Father, not a hair can fall from my head; yea, that all things must be subservient to my salvation, and therefore, by His Holy Spirit, He also assures me of eternal life, and makes me sincerely willing and ready, henceforth, to live unto Him.[28]

Obadiah Sedgwick writes clearly, “God has a special providence over His church and people.”[29] G. C. Berkouwer (1903-1996) observes, “A distinction is often made in dogmatics, and in practical life, between general Providence, and special Providence, and even very special Providence.”[30] The last refers only to the elect. The more conservative Dutch Reformed theologian G. H. Kersten (1882-1948) agrees: “[W]e may not confuse the work of redemption with that of providence … Nevertheless, the providence of God and the redemption of Christ are not to be separated from each other.”[31]

The primary means of God’s providential sanctification of His people is through preaching, the authoritative proclamation of His message through the men whom He has called and His church has formally recognized. Rom. 10:14-15 read:

How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach unless they are sent? As it is written: “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the gospel of peace, Who bring glad tidings of good things!”[32]

Such preaching is conducted in the consciousness that it divides mankind into two distinct groups. The apostle Paul writes these sobering words, “For we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. To the one we are the aroma of death to death, and to the other[,] the aroma of life to life.” Paul then exclaims, “Who is sufficient for these things?” Nevertheless, Paul goes on preaching, “not, as so many, peddling the word of God; but[,] as of sincerity … as from God, we speak in the sight of God in Christ” (II Cor. 2:15-17).

The secondary means of God’s providential sanctification of His people is through the ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s Supper, the one initiatory, the other hortatory. Both are quite limited in their effects compared to the communicative and directive possibilities contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments when they are preached in fullness and boldness and faithfulness.

Thus, as Christian philosopher Paul Helm (1940- ) maintains, the providence of God is complete, its means being concerned with three matters, “the cosmic, ecclesiastic[,] and personal”.[33]

Yet even as we list these many ordinary means by which God exercises His providential control over all things, a question nags at us: How do we explain God’s use of means in providence? Are these three aspects and numerous actions not merely a disparate group of factors without an overarching meaning, leaving us rather mystified by the whole matter? There seems to be an orderliness in the means of providence, but why? And so we come to the second of the three questions to be considered tonight.

What Is The Correct Explanation Of The Means Of Providence?

One theory advanced to explain the means of providence is the natural law theory, particularly connected with Thomas Aquinas (1225?-1274), the important medieval Romanist theologian. Therefore, this theory is advocated more typically by Roman Catholics than by Protestants. In the Thomistic tradition, the means of God’s providence are all viewed as the expression of a law created by God and embedded in the natural order of the universe, coming to expression in varied but orderly ways.

Proponents of the natural law theory envision great apologetical potential in it, imagining that it provides a point of contact with unbelievers of many kinds. Look around you in nature, they say, and you can see that all is working together towards a goal, and only a divinely-determined goal can suffice to explain it all.

But, the natural law paradigm seems inadequate to explain the complexities of the means of providence. And, to the extent that it is true, it tends to crowd out the influence and thus responsibility of both man and God, making us little more than bystanders to a process we little control or understand. As A. A. Hodge writes, God’s “will is expressed in what is called natural law, but it does not follow that [H]is whole power is exhausted in those processes, nor his whole will expressed in those laws.”[34] Calvin observes, “But if God’s government is so extended to all his works, it is a childish cavil to enclose it within the stream of nature.”[35]

Thus, the natural law theory fails to explain all of the means of God’s providence, only some of them.

A second theory advocated to explain the means of providence is the common grace theory, particularly associated with the Dutch Reformed theologian, educator, and politician Abraham Kuyper (1837-1920) and his disciples.[36] Kuyper explained the providential control of God over all things as having two tracks, a special grace track for the elect and a common grace track for all mankind, both the elect and the reprobate. In God’s providential outworking of His purposes in creating and maintaining the universe, He manifests a mercy, a lovingkindness, a love, toward both the elect and the reprobate. Positing these twin graces, Kuyper believed, helped to explain the providence of God and especially the means He uses in it. G. I. Williamson (1925- ), in his discussion of the means of God’s providence in the Westminster Confession, draws out this connection quite explicitly.[37]

But, there are significant problems with the very idea of a common grace, let alone its adequacy in explaining the means of providence.

First of all, the definition of common grace is vague. Richard Mouw (1940- ), former professor of philosophy at Calvin College and president of Fuller Theological Seminary, wrote a book entitled, He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace. In it, he begins by confessing, after forty years of studying the matter, “I am convinced that there is such a thing as common grace, but I am not very clear what it is …”[38] Paul Helm admits in his book The Providence of God, “The phrase ‘common grace’ is unfortunately ambiguous,”[39] and casts it aside as unhelpful to understanding the subject.

Second, the Biblical proof for common grace is thin, at best. Mouw cites only five texts in his one hundred page work on the subject, four of which do not seem to have anything to do with the concept and the fifth hardly proving it.[40]

Third, as a result of the first two difficulties with the common grace theory, it is not surprising that the theory is not advocated in any of the Reformed confessions or catechisms of the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, in the time of greatest theological acumen in the Reformed and Presbyterian churches. The only mention of common grace in any of them is in the Canons of Dort (1619), in which the Remonstrants or Arminians are accused of and condemned for holding it, in Rejection 5 of the 3rd and 4th Heads of Doctrine.

Fourth, while some Reformed scholars both before and after Kuyper certainly believed in some kind of common grace – Calvin himself refers a handful of times in scattered places in his voluminous writings to a “general grace”, without really defining it – they do not seem to have convinced enough of their brethren[41] to include it in the authoritative documents of the Reformed or Presbyterian churches.[42] And many have opposed the theory of common grace. The Puritan Stephen Charnock (1628-1680), for one, wrote against the idea of common grace in his book Divine Providence: “It cannot be supposed that the Spirit, whose mission is principally for the church, should give such gifts out of love to men who hate [H]im, and are not the objects of [H]is eternal purpose[;] but [H]e hath some other ends in doing it, which is the advantage of [H]is church and people; and this God causes by the preaching of the gospel, which when it works gracious works in some, produceth common works in others for the good of those gracious ones.”

The common grace theory, then, whatever it means, goes beyond the Scriptural and confessional authority which the Reformed or Presbyterian churches have acknowledged from their inception.*

Therefore, if the natural law theory does not prove enough and if the common grace theory proves too much, is there an alternative?

Yes, we can find it in the Mediatorial Kingship of Christ theory, that precious doctrine worked out in the cauldron of the British Isles in the seventeenth century by the Covenanters.[43] As a member of the eternal Godhead, Jesus has always enjoyed an essential Kingship over the universe He created. “All things were made through Him, and without Him[,] nothing was made that was made” (John 1:3). In addition to the essential kingship, Jesus has been rewarded with the Mediatorial Kingship over the universe, for His perfect obedience in furtherance of the Divine purpose in creation and providence and salvation. The risen Christ Himself observed, “All authority on heaven and earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18); thus, Jesus believed that He then enjoyed a different kind of authority than He had enjoyed before. The apostle Paul wrote of Jesus Christ in this current age, “For He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet” (I Cor. 15:25). The experience of the means God uses in providence thus can be viewed as the moving parts of one exciting whole, the mediation of Jesus Christ over all the whole universe.

[Editor’s Note: This view presented by the author does not represent the position of the Reformed Presbyterian Theological Seminary on the subject of common grace, which is consistent with the Testimony of the RPCNA (16.4) and is delineated in the article by Dr. Richard Gamble.]

Furthermore, since the universe is viewed as a kingdom in the Holy Scriptures, there must be a King over the kingdom and there must be subjects within that kingdom. Each is a moral entity, with its unique role to play in that dynamic environment. The direct means of providence are the specific responsibility of King Jesus, while the indirect means of providence are the specific responsibility of mankind. Together, the direct and indirect means of providence work to preserve, govern, and sanctify, the first two over the whole universe, the last over the elect only. Together, the direct and indirect means of providence serve one purpose, to advance the reign of King Jesus until He returns, against the continuing and significant efforts of the devil and his minions.

Only such a perspective as the Mediatorial Kingship of Christ brings to the subject of the providence of God can account for the existence of the various means of Providence, and their inter-related working and orderliness.

Having defined the meaning of the means of providence and having explained the way God uses them, a third and final question arises.

What Are The Correct Implications Of The Means Of Providence?

The doctrine of providence overall bears many implications for our life and faith, but what, more specifically, do the means of providence provide to believers?

First, We Must Have Faith In The Means God Uses.

How many times have believers wished for God to use the direct means of providence against His and their enemies! Many of the Psalms cry out to God for just such redress. Psalm 35:1-4 is typical of such Psalms.

Plead my cause, O Lord, with those who strive with me;
Fight against those who fight against me.
Take hold of shield and buckler, And stand up for my help.
Also[,] draw out the spear,
And stop those who pursue me.
Say to my soul, “I am your salvation.”
Let those be put to shame and brought to dishonor Who seek after my life;
Let those be turned back and brought to confusion Who plot my hurt.

However, just as many Psalms encourage the believer to wait for the Lord to act by the use of the means of His providence. Psalm 27 concludes in verses 13-14,

I would have lost heart, unless I had believed
That I would see the goodness of the LORD
In the land of the living.
Wait on the LORD;
Be of good courage,
And He shall strengthen your heart;
Wait, I say, on the LORD!

We may want God to act with the direct means of providence, but usually, we must accept in faith that He is only going to work indirectly. As the Second Helvetic Confession (1566) puts it: “We do not condemn the means whereby the providence of God works, as though they were unprofitable; but we teach that we must apply ourselves unto them, as far as they are commended to us in the Word of God.”[44] what our circumstances may be. We believe that Christ is Mediatorial King, no matter

Second, We Must Be Humbled By The Means God Uses.

The believer may fancy that he is so important to God that God owes the saint a particular providence, in a particular way, by a particular means. But God is usually pleased to choose a means which confounds our inflated view of ourselves and reminds us that we are merely a small part of a great whole, rather than the center and focus of it all.

Ultimately, we must acknowledge that God’s use of the means of providence remains rather mysterious to us, the direction of the divine hand is veiled to our minds, the subplots and tangents of the general movement of life are difficult to divine, and only the end result can rest clear to our minds. We are in providence, but we do not understand providence. The development of Christ’s mediatorial kingdom is not as we would plan and execute it. Calvin believed that the means of providence were “the secret things” of Deut. 29:29,[45] and the “deep abyss” of Psalm 36:16.[46] The French Confession of 1559, largely the work of Calvin himself, urges us, “When we acknowledge that nothing can be done without the providence of God, we do most humbly adore His secrets, which He has hidden from us.”[47] The Belgic Confession of 1561 claims that, “We will not curiously inquire into [providence] farther than our capacity will admit.”[48] As William Plumer (1802-1880) writes, “Let us not be curious in prying into the inscrutable secrets connected with providence.”[49] means God chooses to use. We must humble ourselves in the face of the

Third, We Must Be In Awe At The Means God Uses.

Big or small, obvious or hidden, sudden or slow, the means God uses are many and are expressed in the great tapestry of life in this universe, as Jesus Christ works out His mediatorial kingship. To change the metaphor, Jesus is like the conductor of a great symphony orchestra, using the many instruments at his disposal to follow the composer’s score in order to produce a unified result that glorifies God. In the light of God’s providence, the believer, in Calvin’s words in the Institutes, “with becoming humility[,] submits himself to fear and reverence”[50] before God.

Moreover, God always uses the means of providence in such a way that His sovereignty and man’s responsibility are maintained in their integrity. But how can that be? The French Reformed theologian Auguste Lecerf (1872-1943) provides the answer. His pupil Pierre Marcel (1910-1992) writes,

In a striking formulation which stands tall, without the slightest contradiction, both in the theological and psychological realms, as well as in the philosophical, Professor Lecerf loved to repeat: “We believe in a God sufficiently powerful to realize freely in relation to His creatures what He wills necessarily in relation to Himself.”[51]

Marcel adds: “Here is the all-powerful God, the God of the Holy Scriptures. There is no other.”[52] Properly understood, the means of providence lead us to the same conclusion.

Notes

1. Gordon Clark, What Do Presbyterians Believe? (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed, c1965), 62.
2. Ibid.
3. A. A. Hodge, The Westminster Confession: A Commentary (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2002), 95.
4. Sung-Sup Kim, Deus providebit: Calvin, Schleiermacher, and Barth of the Providence of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, c2014), 30.
5. All quotations are from the New King James Version (NKJV).
6. R. C. Sproul, The Invisible Hand: Do All Things Really Work for Good? (Dallas: Word, c1996), 105.
7. Obadiah Sedgwick, Providence Handled Practically, ed. Joel Beeke and Matthew Winzer (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, c2007), 42.
8. James T. Dennison Jr., Reformed Confessions of the 16th and 17th Centuries in English Translation (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, c2008), 3:670-671.
9. Clark, What Do Presbyterians Believe?, 65-66.
10. Chad Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith: A Reader’s Guide to the Westminster Confession of Faith (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2004), 72. He sees this phenomenon in Pauls’ shipwreck (Acts 27:9-28:6), and Job 34:20 and Matthew 4:4, proof texts in the Confession, although Clark dismisses Job 34:20 as irrelevant.
11. Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 4:464.
12. Ibid., 4:539.
13. Hodge, The Westminster Confession, 98.
14. Van Dixhoorn, Confessing the Faith, 72.
15. Clark, What Do Presbyterians Believe?, 65-66.
16. Sedgwick, Providence Practically Handled, 44.
17. Such as the Savoy Declaration (1658) or the London Baptist Confession (1677).
18. Sung-Sup Kim disagrees. “The threat is not merely that of dissolution and nonexistence. It is the menace of active evil, chaos, and confusion.” Deus providebit, 28.
19. Frederick S. Leahy, The Hand of God: The Comfort of Having a Sovereign God (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, c2006), 26.
20. Found in Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 1:425.
21. John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), 1:197.
22. John G. Reisinger, The Sovereignty of God in Providence (Pensacola, Florida: Chapel Library, [ca. 2005]), 1-2.
23. Not to mention longer and longer vacations, and more and longer periods spent in “cures”. “A distinguished physician, Sir James Crichton Browne, has explained this necessity very forcibly. He says, ‘We doctors are now constantly compelled in the treatment of nervous diseases to prescribe for our patients prolonged periods of absolute rest and complete seclusion. Such periods are, I think, only Sundays in arrears.’” D. MacCallum Blair, The Medical Aspect of Sabbath Observance (London: Sovereign Grace Union, 1934), 7. Note that his comment was written already more than eighty years ago.
24. Strategically consistent with the requirements of the misnamed Affordable Care Act.
25. Partially quoted in Heb. 10:15-17.
26. Herman Hoeksema, The Vaunting Ax (Crete, Illinois: Evangelism Committee of the Protestant Reformed Church, ca. 2010), 4.
27. As Herman Hoeksema observes in Reformed Dogmatics (Grandville, Michigan: Reformed Free Publishing Association, c2004), 322.
28. The Confessions and Church Order of the Protestant Reformed Churches (Grandville, Michigan: Protestant Reformed Churches in America, c2005), 83-84. Italics added.
29. Sedgwick, Providence Handled Practically, [21] (italics added). Calvin sees a third form of providence in His work in the elect by the Holy Spirit. Kim, Deus providebit, 30-31. Calvin wrote, “The Church is God’s own workmanship, in which He exercises His providence.” Ibid., 32. Another Puritan, John Flavel, summarizes the situation somewhat differently: “There are two means or instruments employed in this work. The Spirit, who effects it internally (Rom. 8:13), and Providence, which asserts it externally.” The Mystery of Providence (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 2002), 99.
30. G. C. Berkouwer, The Providence of God (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, c1952), 180.
31. G. H. Kersten, Reformed Dogmatics: A Systematic Treatment of Reformed Doctrine Explained for the Congregations (United States: Netherlands Reformed Book and Publishing Committee, c1980), 182.
32. The quotation is from Isaiah 52:7.
33. Paul Helm, The Providence of God (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, c1994), [93]
34. Hodge, The Westminster Confession, 98.
35. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1:200.
36. Kuyper developed his common grace theory in three volumes, De gemeene gratie (Leiden: Donner, 1902-1904), now finally being translated into English in three volumes: Common Grace (Grand Rapids: Christian’s Library Press, 2013- ). Kuyper recognized a certain danger in his concept and used a different word in Dutch for common grace (“gratie”), rather than the usual word for (saving) grace (“genade”). But the difference between the two words seems merely semantic, both referring to a positive attitude by God.
37. “By means of the instruments of common grace[,] God is able to restrain the new center (ego) of man’s fallen sinful nature and give considerable influence to the ‘outer’ remnants of man’s paradise nature in the reprobate.” G. I. Williamson, The Westminster Confession for Study Classes (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1964), 51. Henry Krabbendam waxes lyrical in praise of common grace in providence in Sovereignty and Responsibility: The Pelagian-Augustinian Controversy in Global Philosophical Perspective (Bonn: Verlag für Kultur und Wissenschaft, 2002), 148.
38. Richard Mouw, He Shines in All That’s Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 13.
39. Helm, The Providence of God, 99. Helm seems unwilling either to embrace common grace or deny it; see especially page 100.
40. Rev. 21:24-26; I Peter 2:11-17; 3:15-16; Jer. 29; and Luke 6:35. The last text is the only one possibly relevant to the subject of common grace.
41. Stephen Charnock, Divine Providence (Ames, Iowa: International Outreach, 2005), 67.
42. Due to this lack, the Christian Reformed Church of North America had to resort to adding to its Three Forms of Unity “Three Points of Common Grace” at its Synod meeting of 1924. This decision heightened tensions within the denomination to the extent that several ministers, many elders, and thousands of members seceded (some were deposed or suspended) to form the Protestant Reformed Churches.
43. This doctrine was well-delineated in William Symington’s book, Messiah the Prince, or, The Mediatorial Dominion of Jesus Christ (New York: Robert Carter, 1839). Often reprinted, it has been recently abridged by J. K. Wall as William Symington’s Messiah the Prince Revisited: The Mediatorial Dominion of Jesus Christ (Pittsburgh: Crown & Covenant, c2014).
44. Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 2:818-819.
45. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1:213.
46. Ibid., 1:212.
47. Found in Dennison, Reformed Confessions, 1:143. The Waldensian Confession of 1560 is very similar. Ibid., 2:220.
48. Found in Ibid., 2:431.
49. William Plumer, Jehovah-Jireh: A Treatise on Providence (Harrisonburg, Virginia: Sprinkle Publications, 1993), 41.
50. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1:212.
51. Pierre Charles Marcel, Revue Réformée 1, no. 1 (avril 1950), 44.
52. Ibid.