Book Review
Paul Helm: The Providence of God. Leicester, U. K.: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993. 241. No
price listed.
Reviewed by John M. Frame. This
review originally appeared in Westminster
Theological Journal 56:2 (Fall, 1994), 438-442.
Over the last twenty years there has
been a revival of religious, and especially Christian, influence upon
philosophy. When I majored in philosophy at Princeton from 1957 to 1961,
a student would have been laughed out of a seminar for
even tentatively suggesting a theistic response to a
philosophical question. Today, however, a great number of
well-respected philosophical thinkers are arguing historic Christian
positions. With this movement we may associate names like Plantinga, Wolterstorff, Alston, Mavrodes, Adams, Swinburne, Hasker,
Craig, Stump, Zagzebski, Morris, Willard, Kreeft. Paul Helm, Professor of the History and
Philosophy of Religion at King's College of the University of London, has
been very much a part of this, but also more.
While there is much to applaud in
this movement, I confess that I have been disappointed that certain
views are almost universally shared among these thinkers:
especially, (1) weak views of biblical authority, (2) the conviction
that divine supratemporality must be jettisoned
for philosophical reasons, and (3) the idea that the problem of evil and
the nature of human moral responsibility require us to adopt an indeterminist concept of human freedom such as was
advocated by Pelagius, Molina,
and Arminius.
On all three of these matters, Helm
diverges from the consensus. Once an associate editor of The Banner of Truth, he has worked
in the history of doctrine as well as philosophy. Helm is a Calvinist, and
one who does not hesitate to argue the philosophical cogency of historic
Reformed positions. He recognizes the central, indeed sufficient, role of
Scripture in doctrinal formulation, and he has argued the timelessness of
God in his book Eternal God. In
previous books, but especially in the present volume, he has also
articulated and defended a historic Reformed view of divine sovereignty.
To me, therefore, his writing is enormously refreshing, and all the more
so because he does his work so very well. The present volume itself
is excellently done on the whole with, of course, a
few imperfections.
The
Providence of God seeks to set forth the biblical doctrine of
providence, discussing both philosophical and practical issues related to
it. That may be a bit much to try to include in a volume of this size. You
will not find here the kind of in-depth exegesis characteristic of Bavinck or Murray. For the most part, Helm sticks with
exegetical points which are fairly obvious, however neglected by our Arminian friends. An exception would be 224-228, where
his interesting discussion of the "weakness of God" gets beyond
the scope of traditional Reformed exegesis. The philosophical and more
broadly theological argumentation is more satisfying than the Scripture
exegesis as such, although I wished at a number of points (especially
168ff, 177ff, 189ff and 224ff) that Helm had taken more space (or
been permitted more space by his editors) to give more
adequate development to his thoughts.
While I'm mentioning formal
weaknesses of the volume, I would also observe that on a number of matters
(such as prayer, 78ff, 145ff, efficacious grace, 119f, 189f;
voluntarism, 165ff, 183f; fatalism, 137ff, 218ff, 232ff; two divine
"wills," 47ff, 131ff) Helm sketches a position, breaks off the
discussion, then resumes it later in the book. This creates some
repetition as well as some separation between matters that should
perhaps have been discussed together. Later discussions sometimes
contain material that would have been helpful for a reader to have at
the earlier point. For example, the discussion of modeling on
31ff would have been more helpful had it been placed beside the
actual description of providential models on 168ff. Some case could
be made for this "resumptive"
approach, but I find it something of a hindrance to comprehension.
One typo: "importance"
should be "important" in line 6 of 131.
On the whole, however, the book is
very clearly written and contains cogent arguments on important issues,
which I will summarize here, with some evaluation.
Helm identifies his Calvinistic
position as a "no-risk" view of providence, as over against
various views of Arminian, Socinian
and "process" thinkers in which God "takes risks."
For Helm, God takes no risks, because he has foreordained all
the events of nature and history. Helm expounds the no-risk view
in three interrelated contexts: the course of nature and history, the
history of redemption, and the experience of the individual Christian (in
my vocabulary: situational, normative,
existential, respectively).
Methodologically, he insists that a
Christian doctrine of providence must be derived from Scripture (27), but
not by way of deduction from some master-concept, nor by development of
a quasi-scientific "theory" which could be tested by events.
He not only rejects the analogy between theology and
scientific explanation, but also with "personal explanation," on
the ground that God's intentions (as opposed to the intentions of
finite agents) are known only as he reveals them. But isn't that true
of finite agents as well, making possible the kind of analogy
he himself develops on 36? Here again, I wish he had expounded
his argument at greater length.
Positively, he urges the use of
"models" by which the scriptural data can be drawn together
coherently and false inferences discouraged. His fundamental model is that
of biblical divine sovereignty and the resulting "compatibilist"
view of human freedom (66ff, 174ff). That is, human liberty does
not consist in the capacity to perform uncaused actions, as
in "risky" views of providence (otherwise called indeterminism, libertarianism, Arminianism),
but in the capacity to act according to one's own desires, a capacity
which is "compatible" with the divine foreordination
of those desires and actions.
Helm supplements this basic model
with others on 168ff: that of evil as a "privation," divine
"permission" of evil (specific "permission," not the Arminian nuda permissio), and a
distinction between "levels" (divine and creaturely)
of causality. All of these, I think, deserve more thorough discussion than
he presents. I'm not as convinced as he is of the value of the first two.
As to the fourth, he remarks, that on the model of dual "causal
levels" "it is hard to see that there can be two separate sets
of necessary and sufficient conditions for the same action" (182),
and leaves the matter there. But he might have explored further
sub-models, like the relation between an author and the characters in a
novel, in which that same duality of necessary and sufficient conditions obtains.
But doesn't Scripture sometimes
represent God as "taking risks," being ignorant, changing his
mind, giving people the power to resist his will? Granted that Scripture
also includes affirmations of God's foreordination
of all things, should we accommodate the latter expressions to the former,
or vice versa? Helm responds to this question by pointing out
the theological costs and benefits of the two alternatives. In
the final analysis, the risk language must be accommodated to
the no-risk teaching; else we would have to deny clear
biblical teachings about God's omniscience, will, efficacious grace.
That would be a "theological reductionism in which God is distilled
to human proportions" (52). He explains the "risk" language
in terms of Calvin's doctrine of accommodation, but with an insight of
his own: God must represent his actions as temporal in order
to demand a human response in space and time. This is a
rather profound point, correct in my estimation, and one which, again,
I wish he had been able to expound at greater length.
Today it is popular among
philosophers to use the concept of divine "middle knowledge"
(knowledge of what will happen granted any possible set of conditions) in
order to reconcile divine sovereignty with indeterminist
human freedom. Helm points out quite rightly that if people have such indeterminist freedom, God cannot have "middle
knowledge" of what they will do granted previous conditions. For the
conditions, on this view, never determine human free actions. Thus indeterminism excludes divine middle knowledge. Helm
is absolutely right here, and I can't understand why so many other
sophisticated philosophers have failed to see this point.
Helm recognizes that it is not
possible to make these matters perfectly transparent to reason, but he is
also (I think wisely) reluctant to state a priori what can and cannot
be understood by reason: see the discussion of antinomy on 61-66.
His discussions of pantheism, panentheism, deism, and theism are illuminating,
although I am not entirely clear as to a couple matters: (1) Helm argues
that pantheism and panentheism exclude any
interaction between creator and creature, because "it is impossible
for one thing to interact with itself" (73). True; but if the
pantheist (unlike Parmenides) permits some degree
of complexity within his monistic reality, it is not clear why
there could not be some interaction between God and his
aspects/parts, as indeed finite persons interact with their own
bodies, qualities and thoughts. (2) Helm thinks the idea of creation
in time is conducive to deism (79f), but I am not persuaded by
his very sketchy argument for this assertion.
Helm's account of providence in the
history of redemption will be familiar ground to students of Reformed
theology, but probably not to many customers of Inter-Varsity Press.
He discusses creation, fall, covenant, miracle and prophecy, the incarnation,
and the important (though sometimes neglected) matter of the attitudes
toward providence shown by Old and New Testament saints. He rightly
rejects as unbiblical the rather technical, philosophical
definitions of miracle in terms of a natural/supernatural distinction or
in relation to laws of nature (106). Here he departs from many
philosophical accounts and from the typical representations of the Old
Princeton theologians.
He presents a solidly biblical
doctrine of guidance (121ff) based on the commands, rather than the decretive will of God. He points out that even
"risk" views of providence must allow for a distinction between
these two "wills" of God (I would prefer: a distinction between
two senses of "will" when that term is applied to God). Fatalism
is rejected because God foreordains means as well as ends (137ff).
Therefore our actions and decisions have significant effects upon the
course of history. Petitionary prayer is a
special case of this principle (153ff).
Helm points out helpfully that
divine foreordination is compatible with the
view that some events in the world lack physical causes (142ff).
His discussion of the problem of
evil is also both orthodox and insightful. He rejects the nominalist/voluntarist idea
that God is above moral predication (ex lex) (163ff, 183ff). As we have seen earlier, he
also rejects the traditional free-will defense, while giving some support
to "privation" and "permission" models.
His main defensive strategy,
however, is a form of the "greater good defense," that God
permits evil in order to bring about important goods not otherwise
realizable. His particular emphasis: that the specific blessings of the heavenly
glory "cannot be properly understood except in terms that
presuppose sin and suffering" (203). Some have regarded evil as
remedial (e.g. the Irenaean view that evil
produces maturity of character), and others have regarded it as necessary
for justice, to display and maintain the moral order in the universe.
On Helm's view, these two principles unite in the cross of
Christ, through which is accomplished both God's vindication of
God's justice and his renewal of the creation.
The final chapter contains some
practical suggestions for applying the doctrine of providence to the
Christian life. The most interesting suggestion here is that we need to
recognize the fact that God's power in providence is not a "raw
power" which immediately accomplishes its every purpose by sheer
force. Rather, the nature of God's power, like his purpose for evil,
is best seen at the cross of Christ. God's power is displayed
in weakness and suffering, in patience, often in the delay
of judgment and the salvation of sinners. Yet herein is a
strength greater than any mere army or weapons of war. Thus it is
wrong for us to try to identify God's providence directly with
any human political program.
In sum, the book has a few
weaknesses, but it is in general a very good introduction to the doctrine
of providence and a reliable guide through many important problem areas.