THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
The reconciled child of God forms part of the closely linked chain of divine acts of grace which reaches back into the eternity of the plan of salvation depending on election, and which stretches forward to the future and eternal fellowship of Christ. The act of God, being absolutely free, can not be broken or made of none effect. Since, moreover, the unchangeable love and fatherly protection of God free the believer from the sense of guilt and from the evil in the world, a religious interpretation is given to the concept of omnipotence. Having this certainty, Paul has no occasion to discuss theoretical difficulties which do not exist for the religious soul, so that both the absolute working of God and the moral freedom and responsibility of the believer are taken for granted. Thus, on the one hand, God accepts and rejects according to his will (Rom. ix. 18), the very purpose of divinely caused unbelief being the exercise of divine mercy (Rom. xi. 32). Faith is ascribed to divine calling (Rom. viii. 29), and the preservation and perfection of the believer are likewise due to God (I Thess. v. 23; I Cor. i. 8-9), on whose will the minutest details of life are made contingent (Rom. i. 10; I Cor. iv 19). On the other hand, the apostle appeals to the human will (Rom. xii. 1; I Thess. ii. 11-12; Phil. i. 27; Col. i. 9-10); and in Phil, ii. 12-13 both aspects of the problem are combined. Elsewhere also the good deeds of the faithful are regarded as God working within him, though there is no hint of synergism. In the epistles to the Galatians and the Romans the outlines of a religious philosophy of history are given. The loving counsels of God, to make the world his kingdom wherein man may share, are shown not to have been thwarted by Adam's fall (I Cor. ii. 7; Rom. viii. 29). All creation strives toward the goal set by divine grace (Rom. viii. 18-23; I Cor. xv. 24-28); and in Rom. ix.-xi. is given that magnificent concept of the world-ruling ways of God for the realization of divine salvation which has aptly been termed the Pauline theodicy. The summary of Paul's doctrine of providence is found in the words, " All things work together for good " (Rom. viii. 2S). Earthly sufiering and earthly evil are the means whereby man is brought into fellowship with the sufferings and death of Christ, and are the path by which man becomes a partaker of the life and glory of the Savior (Rom. v. 3-4, viii. 18; II Cor. iv. 17-18; Phil. i. 29, iii. 10-11, 20-21; Col. iii. 1-4). Though in the post-Pauline portions of the New Testament the doctrine of providence is not brought into so close a connection with the atonement, it is based throughout on the presupposition of the fatherly goodness and love of God. The believer is urged to cast all care on God, who cares for him (I Pet. v. 7), and for this reason perfect contentment is stressed (Heb. xiii. 5-6). All things must be regarded as subject to the divine pleasure (James iv. 13-15). Through faith in providence the Christian gains the right attitude toward the earthly ills that he experiences, knowing that they ;re but the chastening* of a father (Heb. xii. 5-11), tests of patience and faith (James i. 2-4, 12), and glorification of God if they be endured in the name of Christ and for his sake (I Pet. iv. 12-16).
Early patristic literature shows the influence of Greek philosophic thought, since its interest in the doctrine of providence is mainly cosmological. According to Clement, denial of providence is not merely denial of Christian doctrine, but of the very existence of God, and merits punishment rather than refutation. Both Clement, Origen, 5. Patristic and the later Greek Fathers sought, and moreover, to solve the problem of Scholastic theodicy, stressing human freedom and Teaching, responsibility, and at the same time exempting God from all blame for the existence of evil by declaring that evil is not positive, but is mere negation. The interest of the Greek Fathers in the theory of providence was, however, by no means exclusively theoretical; they used it as a distinct motive for a living trust in God amid all the sufferings and calamities of earthly life. Western teachers likewise represented belief in providence as a part of natural theology. Augustine especially took an epoch-making position toward the entire problem, rejecting the concepts of both chance and fate, and holding that divine providence operates in all things, no matter how minute or obscure. His theodicy shows a combination of Christian and Neoplatonic concepts, evil being merely the negation or absence of good, and the imperfect and incomplete serving to exalt the perfection of the whole. Evil may, however, also be either a punishment of the wicked, or a means of testing, strengthening, and perfecting the good. God permits the existence of evil only that he may turn it into good, so that all exercise of human freedom subserves the plan of providence, nor can the wicked in any way thwart the divine will. All these concepts are elaborated in the De civitate Da into a masterpiece of Christian philosophy of history; and a similar point of view is represented in the De gubernatione Dei of Salvianus, in which the history of the world is interpreted as the divine judgment of the earth. In their endeavor to explain the problem of the theodicy Anselm and Abelard took the optimistic point of view that the present world was the best possible, although Hugo of St. Victor regarded this position as limiting God's omnipotence. It was Thomas Aquinas, however, who gave the doctrine of providence an extraordinary scope. Creation and conservation are identical so far as God's activity is concerned, and differ only in respect to the secondary causes which mediate the divine activity. The will of God acts normally through secondary causes; when it acts directly and without them, a miracle is worked. In the governance of God, however, reason and method must be differentiated, the first being immediate and the second mediate. Not alone in his determinism but also in his teaching of predestination Thomas harks back to Augustine, regarding both foreordination and reprobation as special fonnsof divine providence; while in his theodicy, in which he likewise follows Augustine, he even states that God is, in a sense, the source of evil as well as of good, since " the perfection of the universe requires that not only should there be incorruptible things, but also corruptible ones." The increasing tendency of medieval thought to break with Augustinianism