1. The primitive view, held during the childhood of superstition, identified the gods with the elements of nature. Thus Zeus, or Dis. originally meant sky, and was worshipped as a god, afterwards known as Jupiter, or Jove, and by the Canaanites and Babylonians called Baal, Bel, or Belus. The earth was also worshipped as Demeter and Cybele, called by the Anglo-Saxons Her- tha; the sea as Neptune; the sun as Phoebus, or Apol- lo ; the moon as Diana ; light as Indra. Fire as Agni and .summer heat as Dormer, or Thor, are other in- stances, in various localities, of the worship paid to the elements or forces of nature as gods, each being accred- ited a providence of its own. In the childhood of Oc- cidental philosophy also, the Ionian philosophical phys- icists of Greece, in their search for the principle whose
PROVIDENCE
V10
PROVIDENCE
existence should give a rational explanation of all things (called the Beginning, or I- ir.-t Cause), identified it with some elements of nature, as the "Water" of Thales and Hippo of Samos; the "Air" of Anaximenes; the "Air -Intelligence" of Diogenes of Apollonia and [dseus of Himera. Her mathematical philosophi re, the Pythagoreans, looked for tliis first cause in incorporeal elements, as in the "Numbers" of Pythagoras and the " Infinite" of Anaximander. The Eleatice metaphys- ical philosophers— regarded the world as the mani- festation of God, as in the "Sphere" of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Zeno; while the dualism of the "Fire- ( ther" ofHeraclitus, ami the •• Love-mingler" of Emped- ocles and Anaxagoras, and the materialism of the " At- oms" of Leucippus and Democritus were similar in their pantheistic ootions, and contained the idea of a provi- dence in but a very crude and unsatisfactory form. The Stoics taught that the working force in the uni- verse is God; tin-1 consciousness of the universe is De- ity; the human soul is a part of the Deity, or an em- anation from him.
■2. When the distinction between irregular and fortu- itous "phenomena and the uniformities of nature became clear, the last were regarded as independent processes, broken in upon by the interferences of the gods, who were endowed with human passions ; such interferences being the chances, accidents, irregularities, etc., of nat- ure." rims Minerva wasthe goddess of wisdom; Mars. the god of war; Mercury, the god of eloquence and traffic; Pan, the god of terror: Laverna, the goddess of thieves; Venus the goddess of beauty: Cupid, the god of love ; Nemesis, of vengeance, etc.
3. The next advance was to the conception of one supreme God, infinite in his perfections and works; a sovereign Ruler bestowing rewards and inflicting penal- ties by using nature as the instrument of his will, he being a power above nature, and interfering with its processes at his pleasure. This seems to have been in part t lie view ol Socrates, and was the Judaieal notion modified into special or general providences according to persona] interest in the event. That the Christian Church adopted this view in the main is evident from the fact that the Apostles' Creed, and the confessions 6f faith of IreiKcus and Terlullian. and the NicffillO- Constantinopolitan symbol (A.D. 325 and 381, the only general confession covering the w bole field of systematic divinity during 1500 years), contain no restatement of the doctrine.
The Catholic Church added to this view the dogma of Church infallibility, for which the Protestants sub- stituted that of the infallibility of the Scriptures, both ing special providential watchfulness.
I. The doctrine of determinate concursus advocated by John Scotus Erigena in the middle of the 9th cen- tury holds thai l here are two causes in all effects, the firs! being in and not merely with the second, so that the first cause, and not the second, makes the act what
it is. Augustine, the Schoolmen, the Thomists, and Dominicans in the Latin Church, the Lutherans, Re- formed, and mosl Calvinistic divines in the Protestant Church have supported it, but in Mich sense that the moral quality of a sinful act is referred to the creature, and the effectual cause of the act only to God. General concursus is a modification of the foregoing view, and holds i hat God sustains creatures and their powers, and excites them to act according to their nature. The
Franciscans and Jesuits, an g the Romanists, and the
Remonstrants and later Arminians, among the Protes- tants, have advocated Ibis theory.
ius, Malebranche, and Bayle developed the concursus into the occasionalism of philosophers, which represents God as the sole actor, the creature only fur- nishing him an occasion lo ael, and being merely the instrument by which be absolutely ami irresistibly ac- complishes his own designs. The dependence of the creaiure upon the* reator, superseding all efficiency of second cause-, as hi Id by Schleiermacher and the school
to which he belongs, Schweizer and Dr. Emmons, clas- sifies them practically with the Occasionalists.
C. Leibnitz rejected the concursus and Cartesian views, and propounded the theory of Pre-established Harmony, somewhat akin in iis radical idea to the -Annua Mundi" of Pythagoras, Plato, and th andrian School; the "Archaeus" of Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, and Von Helmont; the " principium hylar- chicum" of Henry More; the -plastic- nature" of Cud- worth, and the "unconscious organizing intelligence" lately advocated by Dr. Laycock and Mr. Murphy. This theory holds thai there are two worlds, matter ami mind, each incapable of acting upon the other, yet both so adjusted to each other by a divinely pre-ar- ranged harmony thai volition and muscular contraction are contemporaneous. The volition would exi-t just the same without the contraction, and the muscular movement would take place just the same without the volition, each being moved by a force within, but the prearranged harmony secures that they shall seemingly stand related as cause and < ffect ( iod i- a being of in- finite perfections, ami the imperfections of creation are accounted for by the nature of the monads of which souls and bodies are composed.