Anyone at the Helm?

He who prepares mountains in His strength,
Who is girded with power,
Who troubles the depth of the sea,
The sounds of its waves.
The nations shall be troubled,
And those who inhabit the ends of the earth
Shall be afraid because of Your signs;
You shall gladden the outgoings of morning and evening.
You visited the earth and watered it;
You enriched it abundantly;
The river of God is filled with waters;
You prepared their food, for thus is Your preparation thereof.
Water its furrows; multiply its fruits;
With its raindrops, the earth will be gladdened when it produces fruits.

(Psa 64:7–11 LXX)

Those who disbelieve in the reins of providence and are foolish enough to maintain that the universe, consisting of heavens and earth, for all its ordered arrangement, is without a guiding hand, seem to me to resemble a man sitting in a ship traversing the sea who watches the pilot take the tillers and move the rudders as required, bearing now right and now left, and directing his ship into his ports of call.

Now that man would be a manifest liar, obviously resisting the truth, if he said that there was no helmsman at the poop, that the vessel had no rudders, that it was not directed by the movement of the tillers, but that it was carried along automatically, that it overcame the force of the waves on its own, that it struggled of itself with the impact of the winds, and that it was in no need of help of sailors or of a helmsman to issue orders for the common good to the crew.

Theodoret of Cyrus, On Divine Providence 2.1–2

The Great Reversal

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.  And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.  (Luke 1:32-33)

God often does things in a way that is completely opposite to human expectations.  We sometimes call this the Great Reversal.  Evident too in the individual lament psalms is the Gospel theme of the Great Reversal.  Psalms 22, 31, and 69 are all psalms of David, and the life of David offers many examples of reversal: the eighth and last don of Jesse became his foremost son; the shepherd boy was anointed by Samuel to shepherd Israel; the lightly armed youth slew the fearsome giant; the young man unjustly hunted by King Saul succeeded him as king; and while King David wanted to build a house for God, instead God established David's house (dynasty) to endure forever through the Son of David who would rule on the throne of David for eternity (Luke 1:32-33; 2 Samuel 7).

Arthur A. Just, Heaven on Earth, 121

Glory in the Marvelous Providence of God

By those instances then which we have brought forward from the gospel records we can very clearly perceive that God brings salvation to mankind in diverse and innumerable methods and inscrutable ways, and that He stirs up the course of some, who are already wanting it, and thirsting for it, to greater zeal, while He forces some even against their will, and resisting.  And that at one time He gives his assistance for the fulfillment of those things which he sees that we desire for our good, while at another time He puts into us the very beginnings of holy desire, and grants both the commencement of a good work and perseverance in it.  Therefore it comes that in our prayers we proclaim God as not only our Protector and Savior, but actually as our Helper and Sponsor.  For whereas He first calls us to Him, and while we are still ignorant and unwilling, draws us towards salvation, He is our Protector and Savior, but whereas when we are already striving, He is gwont to bring us help, and to receive and defend those who fly to Him for refuge, He is termed our Sponsor and Refuge.

Finally the blessed Apostle when revolving in his mind this manifold bounty of God’s providence, as he sees that he has fallen into some vast and boundless ocean of God’s goodness, exclaims: “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!  For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?”*  Whoever then imagines that he can by human reason fathom the depths of that inconceivable abyss, will be trying to explain away the astonishment at that knowledge, at which that great and mighty teacher of the gentiles was awed. For if a man thinks that he can either conceive in his mind or discuss exhaustively the dispensation of God whereby He works salvation in men, he certainly impugns the truth of the Apostle’s words and asserts with profane audacity that His judgments can be scrutinized, and His ways searched out. This providence and love of God therefore, which the Lord in His unwearied goodness permits to show us, He compares to the tenderest heart of a kind mother, as He wishes to express it by a figure of human affection, and finds in His creatures no such feeling of love, to which he could better compare it.  And He uses this example, because nothing dearer can be found in human nature, saying: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?  But not content with this comparison He at once goes beyond it, and adds these words: “Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you.”†

John Cassian, Conference XIII: On the Protection of God, 17

* Romans 11:33-34
† Isaiah 49:15

Not Because of Our Virtue

In you, O Lord, do I take refuge;
        let me never be put to shame;
        in your righteousness deliver me!
Incline your ear to me;
        rescue me speedily!
Be a rock of refuge for me,
        a strong fortress to save me!
For you are my rock and my fortress;
        and for your name’s sake you lead me and guide me;
you take me out of the net they have hidden for me,
        for you are my refuge.
Into your hand I commit my spirit;
        you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.  (Psa 31:1-5)

The sin covered me in deep shame, [David] is saying, but I pray this may not long remain with me owing to my confidence placed in you.  Do not fix your eyes on my sin, but on the lawlessness of my pursuers.  By applying this righteous verdict, you will free me from the calamities besetting me.  Heed my prayer, and give me prompt help.

He said this* also in the eighteenth psalm, indicating God’s manifold care.… Now it is likely the Old Testament term agreed with that in the Gospels, which give a glimpse of the prudent person building the house on the rock, which the force neither of winds nor of rain and floods ruined on account of its stability: You will accord me providence of every kind on account of your name, in which I trusted.  Now, through all the verses occurring here we learn the measure of his prudence.  His appeal for divine assistance is made on the basis not of his own virtue but of God’s name and of God’s righteousness and because he hoped in him.

Theodore of Mopsuestia, Commentary on Psalms 1-81
Trans., Robert C. Hill

*  I.e., rock of refuge and fortress

God's Providence Points to Himself

For from him and through him and to him are all things.  To him be glory forever.  Amen.

He made everything personally, as controller he personally brings to completion all things that have been made.  It behooves everyone to look to him, giving thanks for what they have, and asking for providence in the future.  They ought also offer him due praise.  Through these expressions the divine apostle showed that he did not acknowledge a difference in purpose between from whom and through whom, the former (as though indicating something greater) belonging to the Father, and the latter (as conveying something less) referring to the Son: he applied both to each person.

Theodoret of Cyrus, "The Letter to the Romans" on Romans 11:36

Christ's Incarnation as the Prime Example of God's Providence and Care

Come, let us say a few words about the incarnation of our savior, which is the summit of God's providence toward men.  For nothing shows his immeasurable goodness so well, neither sky, nor earth, nor sea, nor air, nor sun, nor moon, nor stars, nor the whole visible and invisible creation which has been created by a single word, or rather which a word has produced as soon as it is willed, nothing shows his providence so well as the only begotten son of God, who was in the form of God, the brightness of his glory and the figure of his substance, who was in the beginning and was with God and was God, by whom all things were made taking the form of a servant to be made in the likeness of man and found in human form, and he was on the earth, and he conversed with man, and he took our weaknesses and bore our infirmities.  Now the blessed Paul recognized this as the greatest proof of the love of God for men and exclaimed: But God commends his love toward us because when as yet we were sinners Christ died for us.  And again: He that spared not even his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how has he not also, with him, given us all things?

Saint John agrees that this is so: For God so loved the world as to give his only begotten son for it so tat whosoever believe in him may not perish but may have life everlasting.  God, then, has not simply a care for men, he has a loving care for them.  Such is the excess of his love that he gave us his only begotten son, consubstantial with him, born before the rising of the daystar, who, he used as his collaborator in creation, to be our physician and savior and to confer through him the gift of adoptive sonship on us.

For when the creator perceived that mankind had gone over to the standard of the hated tyrant and had fallen into the very abyss of evil, trampling recklessly on the laws of nature when he saw too that the visible creation, though it manifests and proclaims that it is the work of a creator, is unable to convince of this fact those who have fallen into the depths of insensibility, he contrived our salvation with wisdom and justice. For he did not wish to liberate us merely in virtue of his omnipotence, nor did he want mercy to be his sole weapon against the enemy who had enslaved our nature—the enemy might misrepresent such mercy as unjust—but instead he contrived a way that was full of kindness and adorned with justice. Uniting conquered nature to his own, he enters the contests, prepares to reverse the defeat, and to retrieve by conquest the one who had been badly vanquished of old and to undo the tyranny of the one who had bitterly enslaved us, and restore us to our former freedom.

Theodoret of Cyrus, On Divine Providence, Discourse 10.12-14

Foolish to Disbelieve God's Providence

Those who disbelieve in the reins of providence and are foolish enough to maintain that the universe, consisting of heavens and earth, for all its ordered arrangement, is without a guiding hand, seem to me to resemble a man sitting in a ship traversing the sea who watches the pilot take the tillers and move the rudders as required, bearing now right and now left, and directing his ship into ports of call.

Now that man would be a manifest liar, obviously resisting the truth, if he said that there was no helmsman at the poop, that the vessel had no rudders, that it was not directed by the movement of the tillers, but that it was carried along automatically, that it overcame the force of the waves on its own, that it struggled of itself with the impact of the winds, and that it was in no need of help of sailors or of a helmsman to issue orders for the common good to the crew.

Theodoret of Cyrus, On Divine Providence, Discourse 2