Random Thoughts (1)

I found these comments in one of my draft essays, and I posted them on my other (soon-to-be-phased-out?) blog, The Aardvark Conundrum. It's appropriate that they have found their way to Christ Pantokrator. It's also quite likely that I'll post random thoughts on God's providence in the future, so this post should be considered the first of its kind.

[1] Given that God is God and the creature is not, how can – and if so, how may ­– the Christian Church describe the manner in which God acts in a world completely unlike him?

[2] The doctrine of providence is the sum of the Christian Church’s ongoing statements about God’s action in the world. Each new statement on providence that issues from the Church also implicitly assesses the language the Church employs to describe God’s action – particularly now that it is increasingly acknowledged that ‘God’, in the Christian tradition, ought to be recognised as the God and Father of Jesus Christ, along with the Holy Spirit. It is important that contemporary accounts of divine providence acknowledge that the God who acts can only be the triune God of Christian confession. Statements about providence should always be evaluated by the emphasis they place on the distinctiveness of the triune God’s action in relation to creaturely action as attested by Scripture.

[3] This is not to claim that the Church must prove God acts. The Church’s very existence testifies to the fact that God is active, for it recognises that the Holy Spirit incorporates people into the one body of Jesus Christ, whose faithfulness to the Father made possible such an event.