Dec 01 2007
On Divine Providence Bk 1, Ch 3 Belief In God Removes Difficulties
On Divine Providence
Book 1, Chapter 3
He who believes in the existence of God can have no valid reason for being disturbed in mind on account of the difficulties presented by the governmnet of providence. He loves, however, to ponder on those difficulties, that he might better know the greatness of God.
The very objections, then, the very difficulties, which the government of Divine Providence presents, are of advantage to man, and might be regarded as a sign and gift of Providence itself; providing only that upon meeting such enigmas, which after all are merely the result of his own ignorance, he does not, like a coward, shirk from the encounter, giving himself up at once for vanquished, and so prove unfaithful to that Supreme Goodness which would have made use of this very means to enlighten him.
For so, in truth, is it wont to happen, that by being bropught face to face with the like problems, men of upright heart are led to investigate and discover the mighty secrets of Divine Providence. Firm in the belief of the existence of a Supreme and Infinite Being, they never doubt the goodness and wsdom of His rule. No difficulty, however impossible to solve by the aid of mere reason, can in the least degree shake the constancy of their faith, or cool the ardor of their love for the infallible Lord. Still, they love to meditate on those mysteries with a view to their solution; for it is precisely by penetrating into the depths of those wonderful ways by which God works out His designs, that man comes to understand how immeasurably the Divine Greatness transcends human littleness.
The delight which a wise man experiences in endeavoring to penetrate into reasons like these, is similar to, though of course far exceeding, that which is felt in scanning the conduct of some great man, who by vastness of genius, prowess, and sagacity in counsel, was immensely in advance of all his contemporaries. How pleasing it is to note the grand aims of such a man’s enterprises, and the extrordinary and novel means by which he acheived success! The less apparently fit-nay, the more obviously unfit these means appear for the attainment of the end in view, and the more unexpectedly and happily that end and the whole enterprise was accomplished, the great is the delight afforded by the study of the singular and altogether exceptional ways by which it was brought about. How pleasing to identify one’s own with those wonderfully sagacious and far-reaching views, which, before they were justified by the event, would perhaps have been condemned by everybody as eccentric, if not utterly preposterous!
Now, if even man when gifted with superior genius or character, very frequently acts in a way quite different from that which would be pursued by other men, and which they sometimes think wrong or foolish, need we wonder if the Infinitely Wise Ruler of the universe very often disposes in a manner which we find hard to conceive, and which seems to us absurd, merely because it is wholly at variance with our own notions of things?
All that is demanded of us in this matter, therefore, is that we should treat God with the same respectful considerations which we very readily show towards great men. We say that a great man, an extraordinary genius, seems to be free from the restraint of common laws. We call an artist, a painter, a poet, original, for the very reason that he has been able to strike out for himself a path never before trodden by anyone-in other words, because, leaving behind all vulgar precepts as suited only to insufficiently secure intellects, he has raised himself on the powerful wings of an inspired nature, to flights which till then it would have been thought rash or impossible to attempt. Does this mean that he withdrew himself from subjection to the eternal rules? No; he only withdrew himself from subjection to such rules as were known to the men of his time, who, accustomed to measure everything by these alone, set down as foolish or abnormal, not merely what fell below that standard, but also rose to an order one degree above it. (THEODICY: ESSAYS ON DIVINE PROVIDENCE by Antonio Rosmini)
