"Give us our daily bread"
Transcendent
God, Immanent God and Providential God
Note. See also Prayer about the Being and Will of God and Prayer about the Providence of God
This is the third document of a four
document series on the Lord's prayer. The
fourth document is not available, yet.
"Give us our daily bread"
This petition is not just about bread; it
is about the care of God for all needs of our life. This petition should be
translated with an unconditional confidence in God's providence. But, what is
the providence of God?
The providence of God was one of the
greatest revelations of God through Jesus.
There are many opinions on how far God
intervenes in the universe, but I am going to mention only three: that of a transcendent
God, that of an immanent God, and that of a providential God.
Transcendent God
Just by looking at nature some have
thought that God is a transcendent God. He may be seen as an eternal
Being, distinct, apart and separated from the universe. He lives over
"there," distant from us, foreign to our lives; he doesn't meddle
with us; he already predetermined from eternity all human actions and all the
events of the universe.
Creation is complete, stable and finished;
all the events of the universe are already predetermined and won't change. God
is immutable, unchanging; God is omnipotent; he is eternal and doesn't have
anything to do with time; is omniscient; he even knows from eternity all
"free" actions of men, because they are predetermined. This latter is
for those believers as a problem that they have, and that they can't explain
satisfactorily.
This description fits with variations the
interpretation of Agustine, Thomas Aquinas and their
followers for centuries. To excuse them of their evident mistakes, we might say
that they didn't know, then, nature and the universe, as we know them now.
More in the book
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