Divine Providence and Meaning, Part 2
“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?"
About the author: Dr. Ashish Varma is an Indian American theologian based in Chicago, Illinois. His dissertation work explored theological grounding for virtue ethics. In recent years, his research has sat at the intersection of theological engagement with race and ecology, writing and speaking on both. Additionally, he edited and contributed to A Praying People, a collection of essays on prayer (Wipf & Stock, 2023).
What is the provenance of providence? That is, where does it belong theologically? The debate usually considers the relationship of divine providence to creation: is creation a finished thing or an ongoing event, ever unfinished and always unfolding? Karl Barth takes the side of anchoring providence to creation while distinguishing the two. God rested from creation, yet God continually sustains creation and works to bring about God’s purposes. Put differently, creation is a stage full of performers—including Godself—and props. In the words of John Calvin, creation is the theater of God’s glory. From the vantage point of this metaphor, providence pertains to all that God accomplishes upon the stage of creation.
The explanatory benefit of this mode is helpful, for it gives us a metaphor that is easily recognizable and neatly sets the scene: “creation” includes the “what” and “where.” Accordingly, humanity builds onto the set, uses it in various ways to engage with one another, and moves in and out of its places. In this scenario, providence would be akin to the director’s voice that moves action coherently on stage. Actors can improvise, but the manner of improvisation sets the scene for faithful and unfaithful action. Faithful action participates with God’s providential work, while unfaithful action contends with it, thereby contributing to conflict that can harm the stage of creation itself. Sometimes, of course, humanity can wrongly think it is working within the narrative direction of the divine director and, therein, create ironic violence in the name of God. I addressed the trouble with interpretation, meaning, and control in part 1.
Building upon that previous work, I will question the simple either-or dynamics by which we usually interpret providence. We often assume that either God acts or we act, whether consciously or unconsciously. Within the either-or, we can easily embed a second binary: at any moment, God blesses us or judges us. Similarly, we are either worthy of divine blessing or divine judgment/correction at any given moment. Our interpretive acts can easily betray these presumptions over providence. Structurally, we see these problematic binary interpretations of providence in our cultural myths of manifest destiny or our easy interpretations of blessing amid national economic strength (and vice versa). Individually, we too readily try to interpret meaning into our circumstances: “She smiled at me, which must mean God wants us to be together” or “I did not get that job, which must mean God is angry with me.” The examples are numerous. The present point is that we tend to ascribe providential meaning, as though the stories we craft (socially and individually) substantially account for God’s actions, purposes, and goals.
Interestingly, a significant culprit for our providential illusions is the theatric default we tend to pose for providence. The issue is not necessarily the division of labor: Barth, among others, offers a compelling reason to treat the divine acts of creation and providence as related yet distinct loci.1 After all, the conclusion of Genesis’s days of creation insists upon rest, and arguably, the following Edenic scene portrays the dynamic life of continuity within creation as it receives its fullness from God and rests in God. Surely, “rest” does not mean the cessation of liveliness, which exists in deep and beautiful entanglements throughout the Genesis 2 narrative.2 Neither is the problem precisely the use of dramatic metaphors. Several theologians have done so to great success.3 The problem lies in the implicit presumption that surfaces when we set the stage of creation.
When we make creation the stage that we occupy, manipulate, and navigate, we forget that we are implicated in the rest of creation, which is involved in us. Humanity does not exist apart from creation but is part of it.4 There is no humanity as we know it once detangled from the earth and all of her creatures. Life is deeply and inextricably entangled and, thus, dependent upon each other, from soil, plants, fungi, and insects within the soil to land animals, creatures of the sea, and birds.5 Divine providence includes the entirety of the terrestrial domain—not to mention the cosmos. Not surprisingly, the intermingled relationship of God’s providence to the terrestrial serves as the climax to the biblical book of Job, where it is precisely God’s goodness and providence that Job has put on trial.
In the book of Job, we encounter our present moving pieces. Job and his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar all seem to embrace the troublesome binary. For Job’s friends, the situation is quite obvious: Job has sinned against God! Throughout three sets of rebukes, they cycle through versions of the same argument in which they insist that God blesses those who should be blessed while God curses those who should be cursed. There is no other option for them: if someone experiences life-altering calamity, they deserve it, for God providentially brings judgment upon the guilty. Job is experiencing the worst of such calamities, for he has lost wealth, health, and family. What other answer can there be? He must have sinned against God and is experiencing his just punishment!
For his part, Job grows increasingly indignant. As readers, we are privy to the mysterious prologue of the book, where the satan6 contends with God over the nature of Job’s faithfulness: is his apparent piety the result of his material prosperity, or does Job genuinely revere God? From Job’s perspective, he is an innocent person experiencing the unjust judgment of God. His solution is to call for a day in court where he can show God his fidelity. Again, the logic is simple: if someone reveres God and acts morally upright individually and socially, God will bless that person. Job has been the chief doer of good; therefore, God messed up and ought to rectify the situation. For Job, the binary is intact, so the problem must be that God is unjust.
In Job’s case, the situation is complicated on several fronts. Most notably, the details of the prologue disappear with no subsequent mention. The satan is never heard from again, nor do we find a resolution to the wager between God and the satan. When God finally appears in chapter 38, God does not mention the prologue wager. Almost as intriguing is the status of Job’s fourth friend, Elihu, who appears for the first time in chapter 32. Elihu rebukes everyone—Job and the other three friends. Yet Elihu himself disappears after his monologue. When God finally speaks, God also rebukes Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar but makes no mention—positive or negative—of Elihu. Indeed, Job does not even respond to Elihu, adding to the mysterious status of Elihu’s rebuke of Job, especially since Elihu’s monologue does not fit neatly into either side of the providential binary that Job and his three friends tout for the first 32 chapters of the book.
Yet, both of these narrative mysteries may be consequential to providence. The prologue seems to serve its function by setting the scene. The issue is neither a grander theological point about why trials generally happen nor how God conducts business in some divine court. Rather, the end seems to be literary, letting the reader know that Job is, in fact, innocent. In other words, the prologue seems to set the scene for a discussion on providence. Whereas Job and his first three friends adopt opposite sides of the providence binary, the prologue immediately tells us that the binary should be off the table. Meanwhile, Elihu’s role seems to be a tempering one, reminding the reader that justice and faithfulness matter and that ignorant speech detracts from lofty self-perceptions. We know that Job was initially innocent, but per Elihu, Job’s petulant demands of God demonstrate his lack of perfection.
Nevertheless, the real intrigue comes in the final section of the book of Job, where God pelts Job with 77 questions in rapid succession. Notably, the focus of each of these questions is creation. In the book of Job, creation, and providence sit closely together. However, what distinguishes God’s questions from the binary version of our theatric model is the ambiguity that persists when God is done. For instance, God asks Job, “Have you ever commanded the morning to appear and caused the dawn to rise in the east? Have you ever told the daylight to spread to the ends of the earth, to bring an end to the night’s wickedness?” (38:12-13) Job has not (successfully) commanded the sunrise and the illumination of the earth. However, God does not give insight into the mechanics of providence in these situations either. How does God negotiate the consistent and perpetual agency of the earth’s rotation around the sun while remaining intimately active in the earth’s processes?
In an important sense, we are no closer to answering the mechanics of providence at the end of the 77 questions. That is at least one of the points of the questions. Job understands and says, “You ask, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?’ It is I . . . I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes. I take back everything I said, and I sit in dust and ashes to show my repentance” (42:3, 5-6).
In another sense, though, Job did learn a lot. He discovered that the interwoven realities of creation (including human belonging and agency) are complicated enough before engaging the ways God moves within and through creation. After the interrogative bombardment, Job could be content with a basic affirmation of divine providence because he could not begin to hold together all of the woven strands he would need to maintain. However, beginning to realize just how much he could not know and understand arose in Job's affirmation of faith. Rather than interpret, he could reorient, find little joys—such as marveling over the sunrise—and learn to trust that God is at work.
What difference could this make for us? Can we say more about providence? I believe that we can, to a degree, shift modalities from scientific knowing and understanding to poetic perception. To develop a poetic sense of providence, I will appeal to J. R. R. Tolkien’s Ainulindalë in part 3.
Meanwhile, where does Job’s affirmation of faith direct us? First, the role status plays in the book of Job is worth noting. Job himself was a wealthy man with a large family. As we saw in Part 1, the prosperity within his social structures became the basis for interpreting divine blessing. For most of the book, both sides of the ledger presume the equation between social prosperity and divine favor. For Job’s friends, the sudden fall from grace means Job has earned his plight. For Job, the equation remains a cosmic principle, so the only open conclusion is that God is, in fact, not just. The back-and-forth reveals that there are no other arguments in play. Of course, we, the readers, know better when reading the book of Job, but in our lives, we too easily fall into the same trap: “I have what I want, so God must be happy with me. She lost what she had, so God must be judging her.” Or, “Lord, have I not done what you asked, giving voice to the voiceless? Why, then, have you left me destitute?”
Conversely, success within the grain of social structure might have no meaning. The fact that I do or do not have a job that I want might not say anything directly about what God is doing. The presence of certain political leaders and Supreme Court justices (and their decisions) does not necessarily mean God’s work is or is not on display. As far as we can tell, all these things mean that social requirements have been met or successfully manipulated to accomplish some finite will according to the grain of social structures. The either-or binaries that social definitions, laws, and processes produce do not dictate the directions and purposes of divine providence.
Second, and more positively, we see, especially in God’s response to Job, that divine providence mysteriously interfaces with creational forces. These forces do not necessarily move linearly or toward some obvious social goal. The entanglements of creation make the drawing of clear lines nearly impossible. For example, where does my body begin and end? In more straightforward ways, I can point to the space between my outer skin and physical environment, but what about the food I intake? When does the zucchini that I eat cease to be a foreign object within me? How about the millions of bacteria in my body—are they “me” or something else? And socially, can I be known as I am apart from my relationships and my history? Yet, am I reduceable to any of these physical, social, or historical factors? When God invokes the complexities of creation, God is invoking the complexity of forces and movements in creation that cannot be reduced to a single or a few grains.
God is at work, but trying to interpret this work in simple binary ways that align with social systems of reward only serves to give us myopic pictures of God. At the end of the book, after the barrage of 77 questions, Job seems finally to have understood this. While Job experiences the restoration of his social status and personal wealth, other books of the Bible complicate easy equivalences. For example, Habakkuk must accept the complicated interface between time and divine justice. Hosea must accept that love must sometimes swallow the bitter pill of injustice. Jesus learns that faithfulness to God’s will must sometimes bear the greatest injustices.
Finally, divine providence offers hope. Precisely because God is not limited to the grains of social mechanisms, God can sustain and provide in a greater variety of ways, often unexpected. Perhaps a former mentor reaches out in difficult times simply because you came to her mind. Or maybe a friend across the country sends aid through grocery money. Whatever the answer, God’s answer to Job made clear that the opacity of creation’s forces provides rich and diverse levers for the mysterious provisional work of God.
In anticipation of part 3, we might close with a word from Gandalf the Grey: “There was more than one power at work, Frodo. . . . Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought.”7
Barth sees creation as the prerequisite of providence to the degree that it is the initial work of God with which God subsequently willfully “associates.” Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics III/3: The Doctrine of Creation, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance, trans. G. W. Bromiley and R. J. Ehrlich (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1960; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2010), 48.1. For Barth, the “perfection of creation” is not a property that belongs properly to creation. Its perfection is found precisely in its created capacity to be fully itself through its providential ordering, joining creation’s history/time to divine covenantal history. In this way, providence is the divine operation of God’s purposes amid the history of creation, even as creation’s history is distinct from divine providential working (III/3.48.3). I will work through this complex dynamic in part 3 of my series on providence, where I will present Tolkien’s use of the music of the Ainur as a fuller way to describe providence in the spirit of what Barth seeks to explain through more prosaic categories.
On creation and entanglement, see Norman Wirzba, This Sacred Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), especially chapter 4.
For example, see Hans Urs Von Balthasar, Theo-Drama: Theological Dramatic Theory, 5 vols., trans. Graham Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1988–1998); Ben Quash, Theology and the Drama of History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2005); Wesley Vander Lugt, Living Theodrama: Reimagining Theological Ethics (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2014).
Willie James Jennings compellingly describes the racialized tragedy that has unfolded historically directly as a result of our loss of this important insight about creation. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010).
See Ashish Varma, “At Home among the Trees: Prayer from the Heart of the Earth,” in A Praying People, ed. James Spencer and Ashish Varma (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2023), 96–116.
For my present purposes, it is not important to discern whether the book of Job here refers to “Satan” as a proper name describing Jesus’s adversary in the New Testament or is a generic reference to “an accuser.”
J. R. R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1994), 55.
Thank you for a refreshing review of Job’s conundrum. You offer intellectual nutrition that for me elicits even deeper analysis on this subject, one I’ve long regarded as being of critical importance. The creation nexus, though suffering from neglect in most corners, links us to God’s word and our place in the universe, in ways that demand greater attention. Life and our relationship with God and His entire creation is—as you show—more complicated than simple binary suppositions infer.