The providence of God is an exquisite and awe-inspiring doctrine, relating, as it does, to God’s relationship to the world he has created. It is also a doctrine with vital pastoral significance. Early on, Fergusson defines providence as follows: “Within Christian theology, providence is the sequel to creation. After creating the world, God preserves and…

Professor Fergusson’s The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach is an impressive contribution to the search for an adequate Christian doctrine of divine providence. The merits of the book are many, and there is much to appreciate. Fergusson’s discussion is grounded in consideration of Scripture (including both the Hebrew Bible/Christian Old Testament and the New…

David Fergusson’s The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach is an important recent contribution to studies of the doctrine of providence and divine action, and I am grateful for the opportunity to engage a little with it in a public forum. In this essay, I will focus on Professor Fergusson’s reshaping of double agency and the…

It is a real pleasure to engage David Fergusson’s important new book The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach, not least because it is a (partial) answer to my ongoing prayers for doctrinal and spiritual renewal in the Church of Scotland. David arrived at New College (the faculty of Divinity of the University of Edinburgh)…

Many contemporary approaches to divine providence strive towards a relational and explicitly Christian, read Trinitarian, account of the doctrine, and David Fergusson’s work numbers among these. The goal is a praiseworthy, good, and powerful God, who is neither distant nor dominant, thus enabling dignified creaturely action. However, Fergusson risks absenting the Father in various ways…

The doctrine of providence is harried on many fronts. Horrendous evil, human freedom, modern science, pastoral abuses, and the diverse witness of Scripture each challenge theologians, who seek to present providence. David Fergusson enters this fray with his recent release The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Fergusson presents a cumulative…

(Thank you for the opportunity to participate in this conversation. I feel a bit like an amateur player who inexplicably finds himself at the big table for the World Series of Poker. But the subject is irresistible, and I welcome the opportunity to explain what I meant when I said to my friend Dan Treier…

When I first read Dan Trier’s (excellent) introductory essay, which raises the question of this Areopagite, I thought about it really hard for at least an hour! While reflecting on the biblical, scientific, and philosophical material that I think I understand, a distinction between ‘chance’ and ‘randomness’ eventually emerged. You the reader will have to…

The Hebraic intellectual world on display in the Bible, unlike the rest of the ancient Near East, creates the epistemological condition for a logic of signs and wonders against chance. Conversely, in a Near Eastern conceptual world that understands every doorway, cat’s path, moonrise, etc., ad infinitum to be discrete nonverbal signals from the gods,…

When we flip a coin before a sporting event, are we forcing God to choose an outcome for our own meaningless enjoyment? Or is it a mistake to view God as acting like a magic 8-ball toy who gives answers any time we ask? Many Christians in the West speak theologically in ways that imply…

I appreciate the question. It is an important one, given the ways in which issues about chance come up both in scientific reflections and in everyday life. The question is difficult to answer in a few words (I have a whole book on the subject). To begin with, it is useful to ask what each…

One recent morning I gave my friend John Wilson, the longtime editor of Books & Culture, a copy of my new book, Introducing Evangelical Theology. By early evening he was tweeting his dissent about p. 122. There I summarize parameters from Donald Bloesch: “God’s providence is personal: we do not believe in fate. God’s providence…