Providence Haunts

Providence haunts. It lingers in our literature and poetry. When we look back, it stalks our very lives. However, the pressures at work in our imaginations, social and personal, will continue make it difficult to identify the hand of God. Easy articulations of meaning and purpose will keep slipping away, lost in this secular and scientific age. But providence persists in stubborn and perplexing ways. White’s chastened account of the doctrine allows us to avoid the twin evils of over-interpretation and reductionism. Providence “reconfigured from loss is surely stronger” (p. 165). Such providence will never let us go, precisely because it can be lost and found again and yet again.

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From a review published at Ethics in Conversation.