Calvin's Institutes

Section: 1.16.7-9

7. God’s providence also regulates “natural” occurrences

Also, I say that particular events are generally testimonies of the character of God’s singular providence. In the desert God stirred up the south wind, which brought to the people an abundance of birds. [Ex. 16:13; Num. 11: 31.] When he would have Jonah cast into the sea, God sent a wind by stirring up a whirlwind [Jonah 1:4]. Those who do not think that God controls the government of the universe will say that this was outside the common course. Yet from it I infer that no wind ever arises or increases except by God’s express command. Otherwise it would not be true that he makes the winds his messengers and the flaming fire his ministers, that he makes the clouds his chariots and rides upon the wings of the wind [Ps. 104:3-4; cf. Ps. 103:3-4, Vg.], unless by his decision he drove both clouds and winds about, and showed in them the singular presence of his power. So, also, we are elsewhere taught that whenever the sea boils up with the blast of winds those forces witness to the singular presence of God. “He commands and raises the stormy wind which lifts on high the waves of the sea” [Ps. 107:25; cf. Ps. 106:25, Vg.]; “then he causes the storm to become calm, so that the waves cease for the sailors” [Ps. 107:29]; just as elsewhere he declares that he “has scourged the people with burning winds” [Amos 4:9, cf. Vg.].

So too, although the power to procreate is naturally implanted in men, yet God would have it accounted to his special favor that he leaves some in barrenness, but graces others with offspring [cf. Ps. 113:9]; “for the fruit of the womb is his gift” [Ps. 127: 3 p.]. For this reason, Jacob said to his wife, “Am I God that I can give you children?” [Gen. 30:2 p.]. To end this at once: there is nothing more ordinary in nature than for us to be nourished by bread. Yet the Spirit declares not only that the produce of the earth is God’s special gift but that “men do not live by bread alone” [Deut. 8:3; Matt. 4:4]; because it is not plenty itself that nourishes men, but God’s secret blessing; just as conversely he threatens that he is going to “take away the stay of bread” [Isa. 3:1]. And indeed, that earnest prayer for daily bread [Matt. 6:11] could be understood only in the sense that God furnishes us with food by his fatherly hand. For this reason, the prophet, to persuade believers that God in feeding them fulfills the office of the best of all fathers of families, states that he gives food to all flesh [Ps. 136:25; cf. Ps. 135:25, Vg.]. Finally, when we hear on the one side, “The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and his ears toward their prayers” [Ps. 34:15], but on the other, “The eye of the Lord is upon the impious, to destroy their memory from the earth” [Ps. 34:16 p.], let us know that all creatures above and below are ready to obey, that he may apply them to any use he pleases. From this we gather that his general providence not only flourishes among creatures so as to continue the order of nature, but is by his wonderful plan adapted to a definite and proper end.

(Discussion of fortune, chance, and seeming contingency in events, 8-9)

8. The doctrine of providence is no Stoic belief in fate!

Those who wish to cast odium upon this doctrine defame it as the Stoics’ dogma of fate. This charge was once hurled at Augustine. Even though we are unwilling to quarrel over words, yet we do not admit the word “fate,” both because it is one of those words whose profane novelties Paul teaches us to avoid [I Tim. 6:20], and because men try by the odium it incurs to oppress God’s truth. Indeed, we are falsely and maliciously charged with this very dogma. We do not, with the Stoics, contrive a necessity out of the perpetual connection and intimately related series of causes, which is contained in nature; but we make God the ruler and governor of all things, who in accordance with his wisdom has from the farthest limit of eternity decreed what he was going to do, and now by his might carries out what he has decreed. From this we declare that not only heaven and earth and the inanimate creatures, but also the plans and intentions of men, are so governed by his providence that they are borne by it straight to their appointed end.

What then? you will ask. Does nothing happen by chance, nothing by contingency? I reply: Basil the Great has truly said that “fortune” and “chance” are pagan terms, with whose significance the minds of the godly ought not to be occupied. For if every success is God’s blessing, and calamity and adversity his curse, no place now remains in human affairs for fortune or chance. And that saying of Augustine also ought to impress us: “It grieves me that in my books Against the Academics I have so often mentioned Fortune; although I did not mean some goddess or other to be understood by this name, but only a fortuitous outcome of things in outward good or evil. From fortuna also come those words which we should have no scruple about using: forte, forsan, forsitan, fortasse, fortuito [haply, perchance, mayhap, perhaps, fortuitously]; which nevertheless must be wholly referred to divine providence. And I did not pass over this in silence but said it, for perhaps what is commonly called ‘fortune’ is also ruled by a secret order, and we call a ‘chance occurrence’ only that of which the reason and cause are secret. Indeed, I said this: but I regret having thus mentioned ‘fortune’ here, since I see that men have a very bad custom, that where one ought to say ‘God willed this,’ they say, ‘fortune willed this.’ ” In fine, Augustine commonly teaches that if anything is left to fortune, the world is aimlessly whirled about. And although in another place he lays down that all things are carried on partly by man’s free choice, partly by God’s providence, yet a little after this he sufficiently demonstrates that men are under, and ruled by, providence; taking as his principle that nothing is more absurd than that anything should happen without God’s ordaining it, because it would then happen without any cause. For this reason he excludes, also, the contingency that depends upon men’s will; soon thereafter he does so more clearly, denying that we ought to seek the cause of God’s will. How the term “permission,” so frequently mentioned by him, ought to be understood will best appear from one passage, where he proves that God’s will is the highest and first cause of all things because nothing happens except from his command or permission. Surely he does not conjure up a God who reposes idly in a watchtower, willing the while to permit something or other, when an actual will not his own, so to speak, intervenes, which otherwise could not be deemed a cause.

9. The true causes of events are hidden to us

Yet since the sluggishness of our mind lies far beneath the height of God’s providence, we must employ a distinction to lift it up. Therefore I shall put it this way: however all things may be ordained by God’s plan, according to a sure dispensation, for us they are fortuitous. Not that we think that fortune rules the world and men, tumbling all things at random up and down, for it is fitting that this folly be absent from the Christian’s breast! But since the order, reason, end, and necessity of those things which happen for the most part lie hidden in God’s purpose, and are not apprehended by human opinion, those things, which it is certain take place by God’s will, are in a sense fortuitous. For they bear on the face of them no other appearance, whether they are considered in their own nature or weighed according to our knowledge and judgment. Let us imagine, for example, a merchant who, entering a wood with a company of faithful men, unwisely wanders away from his companions, and in his wandering comes upon a robber’s den, falls among thieves, and is slain. His death was not only foreseen by God’s eye, but also determined by his decree. For it is not said that he foresaw how long the life of each man would extend, but that he determined and fixed the bounds that men cannot pass [Job 14:5]. Yet as far as the capacity of our mind is concerned, all things therein seem fortuitous. What will a Christian think at this point? Just this: whatever happened in a death of this sort he will regard as fortuitous by nature, as it is; yet he will not doubt that God’s providence exercised authority over fortune in directing its end. The same reckoning applies to the contingency of future events. As all future events are uncertain to us, so we hold them in suspense, as if they might incline to one side or the other. Yet in our hearts it nonetheless remains fixed that nothing will take place that the Lord has not previously foreseen.

In this sense the term “fate” is often repeated in Ecclesiastes [chs. 2:14-15; 3:19; 9:2-3, 11], because at first glance men do not penetrate to the first cause, which is deeply hidden. And yet what is set forth in Scripture concerning God’s secret providence was never so extinguished from men’s hearts without some sparks always glowing in the darkness. Thus the soothsayers of the Philistines, although they wavered in doubt, yet attributed their adverse fate partly to God, partly to fortune. If the Ark, they say, shall pass through that way, we shall know that it is God who has struck us; but if it passes through another way, then it has happened to us by chance [I Sam. 6:9]. Foolishly indeed, where their divination deceived them, they took refuge in fortune. Meanwhile we see them constrained from daring to think simply fortuitous what had happened unfavorably to them. But how God by the bridle of his providence turns every event whatever way he wills, will be clear from this remarkable example. At the very moment of time in which David was trapped in the wilderness of Maon, the Philistines invaded the land, and Saul was compelled to depart [I Sam. 23:26-27]. If God, intending to provide for his servant’s safety, cast this hindrance in Saul’s way, surely, although the Philistines took up arms suddenly and above all human expectation, yet we will not say that this took place by chance; but what for us seems a contingency, faith recognizes to have been a secret impulse from God.

Not always does a like reason appear, but we ought undoubtedly to hold that whatever changes are discerned in the world are produced from the secret stirring of God’s hand. But what God has determined must necessarily so take place, even though it is neither unconditionally, nor of its own peculiar nature, necessary. A familiar example presents itself in the bones of Christ. When he took upon himself a body like our own, no sane man will deny that his bones were fragile; yet it was impossible to break them [John 19:33, 36]. Whence again we see that distinctions concerning relative necessity and absolute necessity, likewise of consequent and consequence, were not recklessly invented in schools, when God subjected to fragility the bones of his Son, which he had exempted from being broken, and thus restricted to the necessity of his own plan what could have happened naturally.