Allow me to jump in here with a modern Lutheran comment-
It seems to me that both modern science and basic theological
insights (i.e., christological & trinitarian) demand an important
revision of the _ordering_ of doctrines of creation & providence.
Traditionally one was supposed to start with creation as origination, &
then see providence primarily as divine sustenance of what God had
created in the beginning.
But both Luther's & the Heidelberg Catechisms, in explaining the
First Article, actually emphasize providence. We begin with belief that
God is active in our lives today & then extrapolate that belief to God's
origination of all things - just as science begins by studying our
space-time neighborhood & then tries to extrapolate what it learns to a
scientific cosmology. Thus I would suggest that in a sense providence
be given precedence over origination.
& within the doctrine of providence, we need to move away from
the idea that what God _primarily_ does is to maintain static structures
of the world - because the structures of the world _aren't_ static.
Within the classic division of providence into
sustenance/cooperation/governance, cooperation - God's activity with &
through the dynamic natural processes of the world, should be given
precedence over sustenance. Not that God doesn't sustain creatures, but
that they are sustained precisely by God's cooperation with the
processes which (in physical terms) make them what they are.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@imperium.net
http://www.imperium.net/~gmurphy