Theopedia

Divine action

In him we live and move and have our being.

— Acts 17:28

Definition

Divine action names the question of how God is at work in the created world: whether he only upholds it in being, works through the ordinary course of natural causes, or acts on it directly, as in a miracle (Heb. 1:3; Acts 17:28). Reformed theology answers by distinguishing God’s ordinary providence, exercised through second causes, from his freedom to act immediately and without them; deism denies that God acts at all beyond the original act of creation; process theology and open theism locate God’s own action within a future that remains genuinely open, even to God himself.

Classical Reformed theism

The 1689 London Baptist Confession states this as the doctrine of providence: God “doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures and things,” ordinarily “by the same providence he ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes,” yet remains “free to work without, above, and against them at his pleasure.”12 Charles Hodge defines a miracle as “an event, in the external world, brought about by the immediate efficiency, or simple volition of God,” in contrast to “the ordinary operations of second causes, as upheld and guided by God,” which cover “the common processes of nature; the growth of plants and animals, the orderly movements of the heavenly bodies.”3 Herman Bavinck locates both kinds of divine action in the same underlying reality, God’s active and immediate concurrence with every creature: “God working through secondary causes does not mean they intrude between God and the effects with their consequences. For that reason a miracle is not a violation of natural law, since God is no less involved with maintaining the ordinary order of the natural created world. In miracles God only puts into effect a special force that, like any other force, operates in accordance with its own nature.”4 Stephen Charnock draws the same distinction from the side of divine power: “Miracles, indeed, affect more, because they testify the immediate operation of God, without the concurrence of second causes; not that there is more of the power of God shining in them than in the other.”5

Charles Hodge answers at length the objection, raised in his own century by the scientist and clergyman Baden Powell, that this account of miracles requires believing in “imagined interruptions of natural order” incompatible with the “vast series of dependent causation” that science investigates.6 Hodge replies that natural law is not itself an independent power alongside God but “the will of God” made regular, “subject to Him, and therefore liable at any time to be suspended or counteracted, at his good pleasure”; the uniformity science studies “continues only so long as He wills.”7 A. A. Hodge’s catechetical Outlines of Theology grounds God’s ordinary providential government in an extended list of biblical texts covering the natural world, the animal creation, human affairs generally, and the circumstances of individuals (Ps. 104:14; 135:5-7; 147:8-18; Matt. 6:26).8

Deism

Deism holds that God fashioned the world’s natural laws at creation and then does not act further within it. Peter Sammons summarizes the position: “God built a world like a watchmaker builds a watch. The watch (creation) itself testifies to the Creator without the Creator telling it He made it. Furthermore, once He winds up the watch for it to work, He leaves it to itself.”9 On this account God does not sustain, direct, or intervene in the world after making it, and no miracle in the classical sense is possible.

Process theology and open theism

Process theology and open theism locate divine action within an unsettled future rather than an unchanging decree. Open theists, in Matthew Barrett’s description, hold “that the future is open to God; he does not know what will happen,” reading biblical language of God relenting or coming to know something in the most literal sense available.10 Barrett traces the position’s roots to the Arminian commitment to libertarian free will: unable to reconcile a creature’s genuinely undetermined choices with God’s exhaustive foreknowledge of them, some Arminians “reject God’s exhaustive foreknowledge” instead of libertarian freedom itself.11 On this view God’s action in the world is itself responsive and time-bound, adjusting to creaturely choices as they occur rather than executing a plan fixed from eternity.

Related Doctrines

Further reading

  • Thomas F. Tracy, ed., The God Who Acts: Philosophical and Theological Explorations (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994).
  • Kevin Vanhoozer, Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion, and Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).

References

  1. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 5, “Of Divine Providence,” para. 1. ↩

  2. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 5, “Of Divine Providence,” para. 2-3: “Although in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly… yet by the same providence he ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes… God, in his ordinary providence maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them at his pleasure.” ↩

  3. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871), 618. ↩

  4. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 10, “Creator of Heaven and Earth.” ↩

  5. Stephen Charnock, The Existence and Attributes of God, ed. William Symington, 2 vols. (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1853), vol. 2, “Discourse X: On the Power of God,” 52. ↩

  6. Hodge, 619, quoting Baden Powell. ↩

  7. Hodge, 620. ↩

  8. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 14, “Providence,” 265. ↩

  9. Peter Sammons, The Forgotten Attributes of God: God’s Nature and Why It Matters (Fort Washington, PA: CLC Publications, 2023), chap. 9, “Omnipresence,” 189. ↩

  10. Matthew Barrett, None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2019), chap. 7, “Does God Have Emotions? Impassibility.” ↩

  11. Matthew Michael Barrett, “The Inadequacy of Arminian Synergism,” in “Reclaiming Monergism: The Case for Sovereign Grace in Effectual Calling and Regeneration” (PhD diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2011), 335. ↩