Providence

PROVIDENCE

PROVIDENCE. Providence is God's fore-knowledge, beneficent care, and governance over the universe at large and human affairs in particular. Providence also refers to God himself in his providential aspects, to a person who acts as the means of Providence, and to an act (favorable or unfavorable) witnessing or manifesting God's will. Providence is the hinge that explains and gives moral value to worldly events in terms of religious doctrine. The word derives from the Latin providentia, 'foresight'.

Christians, Jews, and Muslims of early modern Europe all prayed to an omnipotent Creator God and all therefore believed in divine Providence. Within this period, however, the concept of Providence was most contested and most invoked in the Latin West. Providence had always been important in Catholic theology, but it rose to greater prominence as the writings and theology of St. Augustine of Hippo (354–430) gained influence among many Catholic thinkers in the high and late Middle Ages. The Augustinian emphasis on the omnipotence of God brought with it linked beliefs that tied an emphasis on Providence to emphases on the importance of God's grace for the human soul's salvation and damnation, predestination, and God's positive responsibility for evil in the world. Augustine's influence was particularly strong among the members of the eponymous Augustinian monastic orders.

When the Augustinian monk Martin Luther (1483–1546) broke with Rome, he took his stand in large part on an Augustinian formulation of the sole power of God's grace to save souls. Huldrych Zwingli (1484–1531), John Calvin (1509–1564), and Théodore de Bèze (1519–1605) successively elaborated upon Luther's revolt by grounding salvation absolutely on the logical sequence of God's absolute sovereignty, God's continuing and providential control of the world, and God's predestining salvation and damnation of human souls. For both Lutheran and Reformed Protestants, Providence therefore assumed a far more central role in their doctrine than it had held for even the most Augustinian of medieval Catholics; for the Reformed, Providence was at the very core of their beliefs. Some of the most intense believers among the Reformed, such as the English Puritans, came to believe that they could discern the predestinate fate of their souls and achieve assurance of salvation by careful scrutiny of the signs of God's Providence in the world. For them, "experimental providentialism" was not only a matter of intellectual doctrine but was also the emotional heart of their practical divinity.

For early modern Catholics, Providence continued to be an important part of their theology. In polemics against Protestants, Catholic controversialists often invoked friendly Providence. Spanish writers referred to Providence to explain their nation's conquest of its New World empire, while Gaelic bards explained the English conquest and settlement of Ireland as God's providential punishment of the Gaels for their sins. Contemplation of the sure working out of God's Providence, manifested in works such as Thomas More's (1478–1535) De Tristitia Christi (1535; On the sorrow of Christ), also served to console Catholics during their misfortunes. The Augustinian note resounded among Catholics from the Reformation to the French Revolution.

Yet among Protestants, particularly among the Reformed, providentialism was far more intense, and it permeated their thought and culture. Faith in God's Providence gave the Huguenots the patience to endure massacres and political defeats during the French Wars of Religion, and the Dutch and the English saw the preservation of their political independence and religious liberty through the age of religious wars as providential dispensations to elect nations. Providentialism also united nations internally. In early seventeenth-century England, a popular culture of providentialism united the different Protestant subcultures; likewise, a century later the depiction of the Glorious Revolution (1688–1689) and the Protestant Succession as providential events underpinned the era's Whig political consensus. Providentialism also provided the material for much of the era's literature. Dutch travel accounts, Huguenot poetry, and English history plays—examples include Willem Ysbrantzoon Bontekoe's disaster thriller The Memorable Account of the Voyage of the Nieuw Hoorn (1646), Théodore-Agrippa d'Aubigné's epic recapitulation of the French Wars of Religion, Les Tragiques (1616), and Shakespeare's depiction of the triumph of Henry Tudor in Richard III (1594)—all manifest providential content and structure.

Providentialism could also be revolutionary, despite a tendency for all churches, states, and social orders to justify their establishment by claiming providential dispensation. The Scot John Knox (1506–1572) justified his resistance theory partly in terms of Providence; and a century later English Puritan saints-in-arms justified their actions promoting civil war, revolution, regicide, and an English republic with reference to the doctrine of Providence. Oliver Cromwell's (1599–1658) career provides an excellent case study of how providentialism could inspire military and political actions. Post-Restoration Puritans, chastened by the experience of political defeat, tended to a more fatalistic interpretation of Providence as they moved to the more passive politics of dissent.

Providentialism lessened in rough proportion to the general secularization of Western thought and was progressively supplanted by theories of causation that lessened or removed God's role in worldly events. In the scientific realm, chance, probability, and mechanical laws replaced concepts of providential causation: Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), Robert Boyle (1627–1691), and Isaac Newton (1642–1727) successively distanced God from the day-to-day operations of the physical universe. In the realm of historical thought, providentialism had been fading since the Renaissance, when classicizing humanists such as Niccolò Machiavelli (1469–1527) reemphasized the pagan, profoundly unteleological concept of Fortune at the expense of Providence. The random purposelessness of history exemplified by Fortune would remain for historians after belief in the personified concept faded. Thomas More, Garcilaso de la Vega (1539–1616), Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704), and Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) all upheld more providential conceptions of history, but the disjunction of Providence from history would prove to be permanent and widening. Giovanni Battista Vico (1668–1744) retained a providential structure in his cyclical conception of human history, but removed it from the details of the historical narrative. Among Enlightenment historians, Voltaire (1694–1778) thought the philosophical historian, not God, gave history its structure and its moral purpose, while Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot (1727–1781) substituted earthly progress for divine Providence, and thus bequeathed a this-worldly sublimation of providential history to Hegel and Marx.

With regard to Providence, Orthodox Christians responded with particular intensity to the new Protestant doctrines, and Jews with particular intensity to the claims of Newtonianism. Both, however, retained conceptions of Providence largely unchanged during this period.

See also Bèze, Théodore de ; Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne ; Boyle, Robert ; Calvin, John ; Cromwell, Oliver ; Defoe, Daniel ; Gassendi, Pierre ; Glorious Revolution (Britain) ; Knox, John ; Luther, Martin ; Machiavelli, Niccolò ; More, Thomas ; Newton, Isaac ; Puritanism ; Reformation, Protestant ; Vico, Giovanni Battista ; Voltaire ; Wars of Religion, French ; Zwingli, Huldrych .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of books and articles dealing with Providence in early modern Europe—although the focus is largely upon Providence in England. For theological surveys that include mention of Providence, see Alister McGrath, Reformation Thought: An Introduction (Oxford, 1988); George A. Maloney, S. J., A History of Orthodox Theology since 1453 (Belmont, Mass., 1976); and A. D. Wright, The Counter-Reformation: Catholic Europe and the Non-Christian World (New York, 1982). For more specialized books and articles on Providence, see Barbara Donagan, "Providence, Chance and Explanation: Some Paradoxical Aspects of Puritan Views of Causation," Journal of Religious History 11 (1981): 385–403; M. A. Fitzsimons, "The Role of Providence in History," The Review of Politics 35, 3 (1973): 386–397; Peter Lake, "Calvinism and the English Church 1570–1635," Past and Present 114 (1987): 32–76; Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (London, 1971), pp. 78–112; Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford, 1999); and Blair Worden, "Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England," Past and Present 109 (1985): 55–99.

David Randall