'The Mystery of Providence', by John Flavel

Banner of Truth Trust, 1976 reprint, 221pp 

The other Friday was a bit crazy. On the way to dropping one family member off at the railway station and then taking another to the Doctors, my car had a puncture. I managed to get to the station on time, but had to change the tyre before driving to the surgery. The car jack was bolted down so tightly that I struggled to get it free. It was raining and cold, but the spare tyre was duly fitted. Thankfully the Doctors honoured the appointment, although by now we were running late. 

Later that morning I went to get a new tyre fitted. As I returned home, I found my key wouldn't open the front door. Apparently, the end had snapped off in the lock. Someone was home and was able to let me in, but now the lock wouldn't work on the outside, which was no good. A locksmith was called and the lock was replaced within hours. Great. But I needed cash to pay the tradesman and none of the cashpoints in town were working. Thankfully, my wife returned from work just at the right moment and we had to plunder her unspent Christmas money. 

Oh, and we also found out our boiler needed replacing on that day . 

Meanwhile I was trying to prepare a sermon for our Sunday evening service. 

As a good Calvinist I couldn't put all that down to 'bad luck'. It was part and parcel of what the Puritan John Flavel called 'The Mystery of Providence'. At one point in his work he counsels believers on how to bear up under 'dark and doubtful providences'. My experiences a few weeks ago were hardly Book of Job territory, but the feeling that whatever I did was going to go wrong left me wondering what weird stuff Providence might have in store for me next.

Well, since starting this post a few weeks ago and then putting it on the back burner, the coronavirus pandemic has blown a massive hole in everyday life. Including bringing regular church meetings and activities to a juddering halt. And I thought my 'freaky Friday' was bad. 

How can an old 17th century book help us come to terms with the ups and downs of life?

What is probably Flavel's most famous work is an an extended meditation on Psalm 57:2 His basic thesis is that 'The Church is [Christ's] special care and charge. He rules the world for its good, as a head consulting the welfare of the body' (p. 27). He divides his treatment into three main parts.

• The evidence of Providence 
• Meditation on the Providence of God 
• Application of the Doctrine of Providence 

Flavel urges believers to consider the Lord's dealings with them. Our birth, conversion, employment, family life, and sanctification are all subject to the Lord's overruling providence. Meditating on providence will foster an attitude of gratitude in believers.

The Puritan preacher writes with great pastoral sensitivity, but not of the 'there, there, never mind' variety. He is tremendously robust in dealing with afflicted saints. Flavel will not leave us wallowing in self-pity when everything seems to be going wrong.

His sovereignty is gloriously displayed in His eternal decrees and temporal providences. He might have put you into what rank of creatures he pleased. He might have made you the most despicable creatures, worms, or toads: or, if men, the most vile, abject and miserable among men; and when you had run through all the miseries of this life, have damned you to eternity, made you miserable for ever, and all this without any wrong to you. And shall this not quieten us under the common afflictions of this life? (p. 130).

Yes, COVID-19 may have upset our holiday plans, disrupted our work and made us anxious for our health, but it could be worse, and deservedly so. You could be a despicable toad, or a damned soul in hell.

We don't know for how long coronavirus will mean restrictions on everyday life, or when we will be able to gather for worship once more with God's people. We can become impatient for the Lord to bring this horrid virus outbreak to an end. But Flavel won't let us off the hook. We who delayed repenting from sin and believing in Christ cannot complain if the Lord requires us to wait upon him a while before he answers our prayers.

Directives are given on how believers may know that 'afflictive providences' are being used for our spiritual good.

It is a good sign that our troubles are sanctified to us when they turn our hearts against sin, not against God. (p. 201) 

Never does a Christian take a truer measure both of his corruptions and graces, than when under the rod. (p. 203)

Flavel urges the practice of recording the Lord's providential dealings with us, for our own benefit and for the encouragement of others. Let me say that today we had a new boiler fitted. Seems to be working well. More efficient than the old one. Doesn't leak. Although the government's measures to deal with coronavirus means all our church meetings and activities have been suspended, Providence is opening up new ways of ministry and fellowship via phone and social media. We can still serve our local community. Our people are reaching out to elderly neighbours with offers of practical help and support. The Lord is good and his steadfast love endures for ever.

When reading The Mystery of Providence, I was often reminded of the hymn 'Great Providence of Heaven' by David Charles (1762-1834) translated from the Welsh by Edmund Tudor Owen. It's almost a sung version of Flavel's work. A hymn for our times. Listen here.

Here's a concluding thought from John Flavel for us to meditate on in these uncertain and anxious days:

How Providence will dispose of my life, liberty and labours for time to come, I know not; but I cheerfully commit all to Him who has hitherto performed all things for me (Psalm 57:2). 

"Cheer up, it could be worse" John Flavel style

I've been reading John Flavel's The Mystery of Providence off and on for some months. I can't recall how the  book came into my possession, but my copy is a 1976 Banner of Truth reprint, cover price 60p. I also have the six volume set of Flavel's Works, bought when I was a student at London Seminary, 1988-90. The Mystery of Providence is probably the West Country Puritan's best known book and is found in Volume 4 of the Works. But that's a hefty tome. The paperback is a more handy version for reading to redeem time when waiting for a hospital appointment, or something. 

What made me switch from sporadic to sustained reading was making my way though Some Pastors and Teachers by Sinclair B. Ferguson. Chapter 17 is on John Flavel and The Mystery of Providence. I'm sure I'll benefit from what the writer has to say, but thought that I should go Flavel ad fontes before looking at Ferguson's treatment. So I've put Some Pastors and Teachers on hold until I've finished Flavel. 

I'm now on Chapter 9, How to Meditate on the Providence of God, which is very thought provoking and practical. You can't help admire the Puritan Pastor's deep knowledge of Scripture, sound theological understanding and facility for telling application. Compared with the often heavy going John Owen, with whom I'm more familiar, Flavel is a lively and gripping writer. In one passage he seeks to shock his readers out of self pity when groaning under "sad and afflictive providences". It's his version of, 'cheer up, might be worse'. 

His sovereignty is gloriously displayed in His eternal decrees and temporal providences. He might have put you into what rank of creatures he pleased. He might have made you the most despicable creatures, worms, or toads: or, if men, the most vile, abject and miserable among men; and when you had run through all the miseries of this life, have damned you to eternity, made you miserable for ever, and all this without any wrong to you. And shall this not quieten us under the common afflictions of this life? (p. 130).

Or, as someone once said, "Anything above ground is a mercy of God". Yes, cheer up, it could be considerably worse. At least you're not a despicable toad. Hopefully not, anyway. 

The Secret Providence of God by John Calvin

The Secret Providence of God,

John Calvin, Edited by Paul Helm,

Crossway Books, 2010, 125pp

Sebastian Castellio was once a friend and supporter of John Calvin. For a time the two men worked together in Geneva. But they drifted apart both in terms of their friendship and also theologically. Castellio especially came to dislike Calvin's teaching on the absolute sovereignty of God. He released an open letter criticising what Calvin had written on the subject. The letter took the form of fourteen articles on predestination supposedly drawn from Calvin's works, together with a point-by-point rebuttal of the Reformer's views. Calvin was stung into action on reading Castellio's manuscript. He entered the fray to defend his teaching on the providence of God. This work offers a fresh translation of Castellio's missive and John Calvin's response. 

Calvin argues his case with vigour and clarity, constantly appealing to the teaching of Scripture in support of his views. Calvin's position was not idiosyncratic. The Reformer saw the issues clearly because he stood on the shoulders of Augustine. He repeatedly cites the views of the Church Father over and against his opponent. Accordingly, Calvin insists on both the absolute sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man for his sin. He makes a distinction between the revealed will of God, which man is bound to obey and his secret will by which God governs even the sinful actions of men (Deuteronomy 29:29). But this does not mean that God is conflicted, as in all things he decrees that which is wise, just and good.  

The Reformer takes no prisoners when it comes to denouncing Castellio's disingenuous calumnies, "Now you see, you dog, what you accomplish by your violent barking (p. 64).  He raises the matter of Castellio's alleged theft of firewood when he lived in Geneva to illustrate that when people sin they do so willingly and are therefore responsible for their actions (p. 112). He concludes by likening Castellio to Shimei who cursed David when he was on the run from Absalom. Like David, Calvin could only bear up under Catellio's onslaught by taking refuge in the secret providence of God. Calvin wrote with such passion partly because he was irked by Castellio's deliberate caricaturing of his views, but his great concern was to vindicate the sovereignty of God as attested in Holy Scripture. 

Readers might wonder what exactly is the relevance of this long-forgotten theological spat to our situation today. Well, the views similar to those somewhat crudely advocated by Castellio have not gone away. He reasoned that if God is absolutely sovereign, with his will governing all things, then he must be responsible for the sinful conduct of men. He summarises Calvin's teaching under Article 4, as saying, All the crimes that have been accomplished by any man are the good and just works of God (p.43). Castellio would have it that God permits sin in deference to man's freedom, but not that he willingly permits sin for his own secret and wise purposes. The calumniator's views anticipate the teaching of Jacob Arminius. The seeds he planted find their fruition in Open Theism, which has been finding inroads in contemporary Evangelical circles. Calvin's robust response to Castellio will put iron into the veins of today's theologically anaemic Evangelicalism. 

Juxtaposition: Herman Bavinck on God's fatherly providence and Thomas Hardy's blighted star

The lives of Herman Bavinck (1854-1921) and Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) intersected the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Both men were affected in different ways by the upheavals in thought and life that characterised that turbulent period in world history. As their respective portraits show, the Dutch Reformed theologian and the English novelist and poet shared a common a penchant for extravagant facial hair. But Bavinck and Hardy had very different outlooks upon life. In this post I want to try and bring Hardy's bleak determinism into dialogue with Bavinck's account of the fatherly providence of God. 

Reading Bavinck on providence in Reformed Dogmatics Volume 2: God and Creation (Baker Academic, 2006) put me in mind of Thomas Hardy. The theologian makes a pointed distinction between fate and God's providential rule of the universe. In her excellent biography, Thomas Hardy: Time-Torn Man (Penguin, 2007), Claire Tomlain devotes a chapter to Hardy's fatalistic outlook as it found expression in his novels. The chapter is entitled The Blighted Star, after Tess' complaint in Tess of the D'Urbevilles that this planet is a "blighted star" due to the frustrations and hardships of life. 

As a young man Thomas Hardy came under the influence of Henry Moule, the evangelical vicar of Fordington. When revival broke out under Moule's ministry in 1855, Hardy seems to have been affected. While training as an architect he began to study the New Testament in the original Greek and was a regular church goer. But this early piety was not to last. By 1866 he no longer accepted many of the key teachings of the Church. Reading the liberal theology of Essays and Reviews and the writings of the agnostic Thomas Huxley helped to unsettle his beliefs. On attempting to make a living as a writer, he became acquainted with Leslie Stephen and his atheistic fellow-travellers. 

Tomlain cites the perceptive comment of Irving Howe on the impact that his loss of faith had on Hardy's outlook, 

Because Hardy remained enough of a Christian to believe that purpose courses through the universe but not enough of a Christian to believe that purpose is benevolent or the attribute of a particular Being, he had to make his plots convey the oppressiveness of fatality without positing an agency determining the course of fate... The result was that he often seems to be coercing his plots...and sometimes...he seems to be potting against his own characters. 

This can be seen, for example in The Mayor of Casterbridge, where the impersonal forces of fate seem to conspire to bring down Michael Henchard. The erstwhile mayor dies a lonely and hopeless death. He gives up on life because of the odds fixed against him by 'that ingenious machinery contrived by the gods for reducing human possibilities of happiness to a minimum.' The final words of the novel, found on the lips of Henchard's supposed daughter, Elizabeth-Jane are devoid of hope as she reflects that, 'happiness is the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.' On reviewing Jude the Obscure, one of Hardy's most bitterly anti-Christian novels, Edmund Gosse wondered, 'What has Providence done to Mr. Hardy that he should rise up in the arable land of Wessex and shake his fist at his Creator?'

Mention of Providence brings me to Herman Bavinck's treatment of the doctrine in Reformed Dogmatics. His single chapter consideration of the subject comprises the fourth and final part of RD Vol. 2, appropriately entitled God's Fatherly Care. The theologian begins by marshalling a vast array of biblical materials. He concludes that providence is God's kingly work of upholding and governing the world that he has made in accordance with his eternal plan and purpose. "His absolute power and perfect love, accordingly, are the true object of faith in providence reflected in Holy Scripture." (p. 593). Bavinck distinguishes the divine foreordination of all things from fate. Pantheism, which fails to differentiate between the transcendent Creator and the creation, inevitably collapses into fatalism,

On its premise there is no existence other than the existence of nature; no higher power than that which operates in the world in accordance with ironclad law; no other and better life than that for which the materials are present in this visible creation. For a time people may flatter themselves with the idealistic hope that the world will perfect itself by an imminent series of developments, but soon this optimism turns into pessimism, this idealism into materialism. (p. 599).

As Howe pointed out, Hardy's fatalism was a twisted and ruined vestige of his earlier Christian belief in divine providence. He felt that life must have a purpose, even if that purpose is a pantheistic impersonal force that is out to get us. But as Bavinck makes clear, citing Augustine, God's providential ordering of the world is not "a blind coercive power, outside of and in opposition to our will, for 'the fact is that our choices fall within the order of the causes, which is known for certain to God and is contained in his foreknowledge.'" (p. 600). Christian theology recognises a concurrence between the providence of God and the free actions of his human creatures. "Neither are the secondary causes merely instruments, organs, inanimate automata, but they are genuine causes with a nature, vitality, spontaneity, manner of working,  and law of their own." (p. 614). We are not, like Hardy's characters, the unwilling victims of a malign deterministic force. We are the free subjects of God's providential rule. As the Westminster Confession of Faith states,

God from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of His own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. (III:I) 

'New Atheist' Richard Dawkins goes further than Hardy, with the latter's belief that 'purpose courses through the universe'. Consistent with his unbelief, Dawkins denies that there can be any purpose in life. Without God there can be none. 

Such a universe would be neither good or bad in intention. It would manifest no intentions of any kind. In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precicely the properties that we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, but blind, pitiless indifference." Daily Telegraph, 10 May 1995. 

The biblical teaching on providence set out so helpfully by Bavinck preserves us from the hopeless pessimism of unbelief. "In all circumstances of life, it gives us good confidence in our faithful God and Father that he will provide whatever we need for body and soul and that he will turn to our good whatever adversity he sends us in this sad world, since he is able to do this as almighty God and desires to do this as a faithful Father." (p. 619). 

Amazing Providence

I take Saturdays as my day off. I know that many pastors have a day off on Monday to recover from the labours of the Lord's Day. But I have a wife and two teenage children, so I like to take Saturday off to spend time with the family. We live about 10/15 minutes drive away from Longleat Safari Park. Every other year we buy Passport Tickets that enable us to visit the attraction as many times as we like during the season. A month or so ago we drove round the Safari Park and saw the lions and tigers etc. One rainy Saturday we had a look round Longleat House. Amongst other things the house has on display the blood-spattered top worn by Charles I when he was beheaded. The blood of the "Man of Blood". Last weekend we had a wander around the Hedge Maze. 

The maze is a rather large affair, covering around 1.5 acres and it is easy to get lost in all its bends and twists. Each member of the family took it in turns to take the lead, but we couldn't find our way to the viewing tower that dominates the maze - and the exit. At one point we just kept going round and round in circles. Frustratingly, every way we turned we kept coming back to exactly the same spot. Then I had a flash of inspiration, or rather I remembered something that an old friend told me. He said that the maze is set out so that if you consistently turn to either the left or right (I won't tell you which), then you'll make it to the viewing tower and find the way out. 

We managed to get back to the starting point and tried out my scheme. Even if turning left (or right as the case may be) didn't seem like the right thing to do, that's what we did. And we made it. The photo above was taken from the highest platform of the viewing tower. When we were lost, the maze seemed totally random and utterly confusing. We could see no rhyme or reason to it. But there was a plan. It did make sense. My friend advised me well. From the perspective of the viewing tower it was perfectly clear. Just keep on turning left, or was it right and you're home. 

Why am I telling you all this? Well, as we were wandering round the maze, I began thinking about how life can sometimes seem rather confusing, full of dead ends and seemingly meaningless twists and turns. Things don't always pan out as we expect and we might be tempted to wonder whether there is any purpose to life all. But God has a plan. Through what may appear to us the random maze of this life, he is working his purpose out. A hymn came to mind. It was David Charles' wonderful meditation on the providence of God, especially the final verse, 

Great providence of heaven -
What wonders shine
In its profound display
Of God's design:
It guards the dust of earth,
Commands the hosts above,
Fulfils the mighty plan
Of his great love

The kingdoms of this world
Lie in its hand;
See how they rise or fall
At its command
Through sorrow and distress,
Tempestuous storms that rage,
God's kingdom yet endures
From age to age.

Its darkness dense is but
A radiant light;
Its oft-perplexing ways
Are ordered right.
Soon all its winding paths
Will end, and then the tale
Of wonder shall be told
Beyond the veil.
David Charles, 1762-1834

How does God speak to us?

More from my talk on Holy Scripture as the living and active Word of God, (see here & here):

1) Presuppositions

Two basic assumptions lie at the back of the Christian faith:

a. God is there.
b. God has spoken.

2) How does God speak to us?

a. Creation (Psalm 19)
b. A sense of God (Romans 1:18-20, Calvin on sensus divinitas)
c. Providence (Acts 14:15-17)
d. The great acts of redemption (Covenant, exodus, law, conquest, dynasty, exile & return).
e. Through his Son (Heb 1:1-4, John 1:1-18)
f. Scripture: Clarifies a, b, & c. Records and interprets d & e. Gives voice to the Spirit and enables us to discern his witness and promptings, g.
g. By the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture, bearing witness with our spirits (Romans 8:15-16) and guiding in the Lord's service (Acts 13:2, 16:6 & 7).

"Without God’s acts, the world would be empty. Without God’s words, the acts would be mute." In fact, God invariably acts by speaking. Creation, providence, redemption and the consummation are the products of the Lord's mighty speech-acts.

The Bible is needed to narrate and record the works of God in creation, providence and redemption and to interpret the meaning of those events. Without the Scriptures we would have no authoritative account of the coming, death and resurrection of Jesus and what that means for us. But the Bible gives us far more than information. In Holy Scripture we have the communicative action of the Triune God.