John Piper on Providence

John Piper, Providence (Wheaton: Crossway, 2020).

Crossway have made available a substantial volume (over 700 pages) by John Piper on the doctrine of providence.

Here’s the blurb:

‘The providence of God is his purposeful sovereignty by which he will be completely successful in the achievement of his ultimate goal for the universe. God’s providence carries his plans into action, guides all things toward his ultimate goal, and leads to the final consummation.

‘John Piper draws on a lifetime of theological reflection, biblical study, and practical ministry to lead readers on a stunning tour of the sightings of God’s providence – from Genesis to Revelation – to discover the all-encompassing reality of God’s purposeful sovereignty over all of creation and all of history.’

Further information is available here, and a pdf of the book can be downloaded here.

The Kirby Laing Centre (February 2021)

The Kirby Laing Institute for Christian Ethics (KLICE) has become an independent charity now called The Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology in Cambridge (KLC).

According to their website, ‘KLC is committed to foster and nurture public theology and Christian scholarship, rooted in spirituality, practiced in community, oriented toward the question how then shall we live?’

In the latest article in their Nuances in Public Theology series, KLC’s Director, Craig Bartholomew, reflects on the tools we need to integrate our scholarship and our Christian faith. The article (‘The Bible and Other Texts: The Character of Scripture and its Role in our Scholarship’) is available as a pdf here.

In addition, Ethics in Conversation (formerly Ethics in Brief) ‘offers succinct, insightful Christian perspectives on a range of contemporary ethical issues’. In the February 2021 edition, Matthew Wiley engages with Vernon White’s book, Purpose and Providence: Taking Soundings in Western Thought, Literature, and Theology. The review is available as a pdf here.

On How God Provides

The below is an excerpt from an email written for the congregation where I am one of the pastors.

We know that God can provide miraculously. He’s done it on several occasions: manna in the wilderness, oil in a jar that doesn’t run out, small amounts of bread and fish which feed thousands...

Amazingly, though, in the normal scheme of things, he chooses to provide through a combination of the turn of the seasons, the rhythm of sowing and reaping, and a lot of hard work. It’s just as miraculous in its own way.

So, we pray ‘Give us today our daily bread’ (Matthew 6:11), but we don’t expect the bread suddenly to appear in the bread bin. (If it does in your household, please let us know!) God is still the ultimate giver of the bread, of course, but he provides it through a combination of farmers, bakers, truck drivers, and shop keepers. There’s a similarly long line of people between the rain that falls in the reservoirs and the fresh, clean water that comes out of our taps. No bread or water comes to our tables without the work, time, skills, and gifts of people who work on our behalf.

The 16th-century reformer Martin Luther recognised this, insisting that the farmer shoveling manure and the maid milking cows please God through their work as much as the pastor preaching or praying. As Luther made clear, ‘God is milking the cows through the vocation of the milkmaid’. He knew that so-called ‘ordinary’ men and women are agents of God’s providential care in the world. Our work – your work – is one of the ways God himself works in the world.

In these recent weeks, this has been pressed home to us with even more force.

If ever there was a time we needed dedicated doctors, paramedics, nurses, healthcare workers, microbiologists, economists, government leaders – and many others like them – it is now. They deserve our respect and admiration as well as our prayers at this time. But it’s also a time when the significance of the apparently more ‘mundane’ jobs has come to the fore – the people who stock the shelves and serve us in shops, the people who deliver our post, the people who empty our wheelie bins. God uses them all, working through them to bring about his own good purposes for society.

For us, too, whatever we find ourselves doing in this season, God continues to work through us to benefit other people – as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, grandparents, friends, neighbours, and colleagues. Through us, in spite of the current situation and however we might feel about it, God is at work each and every day.

John Hayward et al. on Earthquakes, Tsunamis and the Providence of God

Over at the Jubilee Centre, John Hayward posts some reflections on the recent earthquakes which have devastated areas of New Zealand and Japan.

He links to a 2009 article by Andrew Atherstone on divine retribution, which reflects theologically on responses to extreme flooding in Britain in 2007.

He also links to a 1993 Cambridge Paper by Mark Dever on providence, in which Dever identified five biblical principles to help us as we seek to find meaning in the events of the world around us:

1. God is sovereign, acting purposively in history

2. Ultimately, God will vindicate himself; evil will be punished

3. In the meantime, any adversity must be viewed in the light of the end

4. In the meantime, any good must be understood as God's gracious blessing

5. Full judgement and blessing will come only finally

While we’re on the topic, a 1999 article by Steven A. Austin and Mark L. Strauss challenges the view that Jesus promised a pronounced increase in the frequency and intensity of earthquakes immediately prior to his return. According to Austin and Strauss, if Matthew 24:4-14 is understood to refer to general signs of the present age, ‘earthquakes are seen as recurring catastrophic events common to the present age – events that must not be misinterpreted as “signs” of an immediate end’.

Forrest S. Weiland on Esther

Forrest S. Weiland, ‘Seeing the Unseen’, Kindred Spirit Magazine 29, 3 (2005).

In 2002, Weiland published a series of four essays on Esther in Bibliotheca Sacra (the theological journal published by Dallas Theological Seminary), looking at history, genre, plot structure, literary conventions, etc. This shorter piece offers a more ‘devotional’ take on the book, seeking those places where God has left his ‘fingerprints’, working through the events recorded in the story.

In a marital squabble
Queen Vashti’s refusal to appear at a banquet at the bidding of King Ahasuerus’, which set in motion a series of events that made it possible for Esther to become queen of the Persian Empire (1:12).

At a beauty contest
Esther’s beauty provided the opportunity for her to enter and win the beauty pageant, to become the king’s wife (2:7, 9, 15, 17).

At the job site
Mordecai’s employment at the king’s gate (2:19, 21) gave him the opportunity to overhear a plot to kill Ahasuerus, the recording of which made it possible for the king to discover it four years later (2:21-23; 6:2).

In the throw of the dice

In chapter three the casting of the lot before Haman ‘in the first month’ falls out so that the destruction of the Jews is to take place in the ‘twelfth month’ (3:7), giving eleven months to prepare their defense.

In the words of a concerned cousin
When Mordecai asks Esther to intercede on behalf of the Jews, he adds, ‘And who knows whether you have not attained royalty for such a time as this?’ (4:14).

During the silence at a special dinner
Esther’s unexplained failure to speak up and request help from the king at the first banquet allowed several important events to unfold, notably the king’s insomnia and his discovery of Mordecai’s good deed that occurred four years earlier (2:16; 3:7; 6:1-3).

In the late-night reading of a dull book
After reading about Mordecai’s deed in the chronicles, the king decided to reward him at the same time Haman planned to have him hanged (6:4-10).

When a wife changed her mind

After Zeresh essentially said to her husband regarding Mordecai, ‘Hang him!’, she reversed her counsel, saying, ‘If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish origin, you will not overcome him, but will surely fall before him’ (5:14; 6:13).

After a short walk in the garden
Ahasuerus’s return from the garden at the exact moment when Haman was falling on Esther’s couch led the king to misinterpret that action as an attack on the queen and resulted in the execution of Haman (7:8).

At the gallows
Haman ended up hanging on the very gallows he had prepared for Mordecai (7:9-10).

In the heat of battle
Dread of the Jews had fallen on many of the people (8:17; 9:3) and not one Jew was listed as killed in the fighting.