 In
the cultural and economic climate of some four centuries
B.C.E., shipbuilding played a very significant role in
commercial competitions. Seafarers were involved in
trading with peoples of various nations. Ship captains
would vie with one another as to who had access to the
choicest wood and constructed the best trading vessel.
Each ship was placed under the protection of a
particular god. This took the form of an ornate, carved
statuette that served as a guarantee of good luck in
business deals. As seafarers set out on trading vessel
voyages over wild and threatening waves, sea captains
were wont to offer a prayer to one of these carved
images, set on the prow of their ship. It was this
over-emphasis on human means which prompted the sacred
writer to expose the foolishness of idolatry:
They give the name of god to what is made by human art;
gold and silver which human workmanship has turned into
the likeness of living things, blocks of senseless stone
that human hands have carved long ago.
Book of Wisdom, 13:10
Long before the Book of Wisdom was ever written,
however, the psalmist had already expressed concern over
an exaggerated trust in artifacts:
They
have mouths but they cannot speak
They have eyes but they cannot see
They have ears but they cannot hear
There is never a breath on their lips
Their makers will come to be like them
And so will all who trust in them.
Ps. 135
Although the reality of Providence permeates the Bible,
the word as such occurs only once, explicitly. It too is
found in the Book of Wisdom:
Your
Providence, O God, is what steers the ship
Your Providence, O God, is what steers the ship
You have opened a pathway even through the sea
A safe path over the waves, showing that you can save
Whatever happens so that even without skill
A person may sail abroad.
Book of Wisdom 14:3-4
Michael O'Brien illustrates this message in his icon
entitled: "The Angel of Providence".
Early in the history of the Church, one of the Fathers,
Theodoret of Cyrus, writing on Divine Providence,
returns to the shipbuilding metaphor:
For the
Creator directs creation and has not left the ship of
His making without a pilot, but is Himself both the
shipright and the one who planted the raw material, both
causing it to grow and building the vessel, and He
continues to hold the rudder. The proof of this is in
the circle of so many years and the vast span of time
which, far from destroying the ship, has preserved it
safe and reveals it not only to primitive peoples but to
recent generations.
Although the Hebrews had a highly developed appreciation
of a directing providence, the specific name is due to
the influence of the Greeks, who did not attribute it to
a personal God. They used the term to denote a rational
order of things, where a divine reason permeates
everything, sees ahead, (pro-videre), provides for what
is coming, watches over someone's needs. The Bible's
Book of Wisdom is closer to the Hebrew source of the
word and draws upon a long tradition of salvation
history. Written just a few years before the birth of
Jesus, it was the last of the Old Testament books to be
incorporated into the canon of the Bible and as such it
serves as a link between the Old and the New Testaments.
The author could look back on all of the Old Testament
and readily assent to the truth that the divine reason
that permeates everything is indeed a divine providence,
a power rightly attributed to God.
The Greek view of Providence was really a dogma of
stoicism: events and things are predetermined and humans
can only comply. For the sacred writer, on the other
hand, Providence means Emmanuel, i.e. God with us. When
the Hebrews adopted the word providence, they took it to
mean not just an idea or concept but a reference to God
acting in history, God allied with the people, in
keeping with the idea that already prevailed in their
sacred books. Faith in a Provident God prevails as a
recurring theme in the New Testament, culminating in
Jesus as the supreme manifestation of God's loving care
for us. A non-negotiable element in the Christian view
of our relationship with a Provident God is the virtue
of humility. We acknowledge that our very lives are
gifts received from the Giver of Life and we build our
ships with our God given talents.
To believe in Providence means to transform one's whole
conception of the world. It ceases to be the world of
natural science. It means that everything in the world
retains its own nature and reality, but serves a supreme
purpose which transcends the world: the loving purpose
of God.
In order to come to terms with the true meaning of
Providence we need to be sensitive to levels of
discourse. One level speaks to our tangible, measurable
human experience. Another level transcends the
commonplace, challenges us towards richer meanings. For
example, the solicitude of the shepherd is synonymous in
Sacred Scripture with the Providence of God. At one
level the word shepherd means a person guarding the
sheep; and to some ears it has a male connotation. Yet
it transcends gender so connotes concern and thus
becomes a particular expression of the Providence of
God. At this level Providence means that there is a
seeing mind behind everything that happens and that I am
the object of that seeing.
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