so that nothing is done but through him and by his decree?—That is so.
Note first of all that the almightiness is mentioned only after the Fatherhood of God. That is to say, his almightiness is no abstract idea such as we often imagine when we say God “can do everything.” We fall then into ridiculous riddles: can God lie? etc. These absurdities originate in a false beginning. God’s almightiness should only be considered in the exercise of the almightiness, such as it is revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
In Jesus Christ, God is hidden and reveals himself. That is his almightiness. He is holy, and his holiness should not allow the creature to exist before him. He kills and makes us alive at the same time, he is merciful and he punishes. His very revelation of himself does not yield him into the hands of men: he remains free.
In Jesus Christ, God, out of the mercifulness of his heart, comes down from eternity, before the world is created. He bears all sins, all miseries and even death. He wills to suffer in his Son, and bearing in him all our sins, he wills to glorify himself. Victorious through the Cross, that is his almightiness.
In Jesus Christ, God, who is free, loves his creature; he who is above comes down below without ceasing to remain sovereign. Again, that is his almightiness.
In Jesus Christ, finally, God, who is the judge, the norm of man, judges us and at the same time pardons us. Again, that is his almightiness.
You see: the almightiness of God is not an abstract notion, not a power omnipotent in itself, a mad and profligate notion. But it is an action, an existence, a concrete manifestation of almightiness.
“All creatures are in his hand.” Again this is not an idea, but an event. The expression “the hands of God” is no anthropomorphism. God disposes of men, governs and leads them. Even as he is the real Father, he also is he who has the real hands. We must beware of the idealistic spiritualism which makes us say: God is too much of a spirit to have hands. No, he has hands, the real hands (and not paws like ours …).
Finally, the almightiness of God is really almighty. We do not have to fear that there may be other kingdoms beside the kingdom of God: kingdom of the devil, kingdom of passions, evil, my bad behavior, my bad thoughts. Surely all these things exist, but not otherwise than subjected to God.
Thus is God continually at work: no off-seasons for God. He does not need to dream and sleep as we do, nor to take refuge in a world of fiction and fantasy. He is always he who allows and commands, and, in the words of the Heidelberg Catechism (26): “… I have no doubt (that) … he is able to do it, being almighty God, and willing, being our faithful Father.” He will take care of us and will even change evil into good, not that evil as such becomes good, but by reason of God’s work, evil is used unto good.
QUESTION 25. Why do you add: Maker of heaven and earth?—Because he manifested himself to us through his works, and in them he is to be sought by us (Ps. 104; Rom. 1:20). For our mind is incapable of entertaining his essence. Therefore there is the world itself as a kind of mirror, in which we may observe him, in so far as it concerns us to know him.
We cannot know God in his essence. “No man can see my face and live.” But God makes himself known to us in the world. Here we must make several clarifications in order to avoid some big mistakes.
First of all, the world, creation, is not a part of God as the gnostics used to represent it. The world is not an emanation from God, but the putting into being of something different from God, which is over against God. If the world were divine in itself, it could not be said: God loves the world, for then God would be loving himself and remain alone. Love signifies: relationship between two really different beings. The world is then a reality in itself, a proof of the mercy of God who agrees to the existence of something outside of himself. There is an absolute imparity between God and the world, but, within this imparity, there is a hyphen: creation depends on God. God upholds creation and God judges what is good and what is evil. There is no good and evil “in itself,” but God judges good and evil. And the sin of man consists precisely in the fact that he himself wants to judge what is good and what is evil.
Next, what is the nature of the knowledge of God which is given us in the world? Let us beware now: Man has no possibility to know God “through nature.”
There is no knowledge of God which was given along with the existence and the essence of the world. We ourselves cannot say: God is in the world here or he is there. But God himself is he who, in the world, gives himself to our knowledge, according as he pleases. We notice with what reservations Calvin speaks of this knowledge: the world does not stand witness of God but insofar as God wills it and wherever he wills it. It is not the history of any people which witnesses unto God, but the history of Israel. It is not any book, but the Holy Scripture. It is not any man, but Jesus Christ. And yet the history of Israel, the Bible and Jesus Christ belong to the world. The world then is a mirror that reflects something found elsewhere, that reflects it insofar as God wills it and wherever God wills it.
QUESTION 26. By heaven and earth you understand, do you not, whatever creatures exist?—Yes, certainly; but in these two names are comprised all things, since they are either heavenly or earthly.
The Nicene Creed expresses it this way: “the visible and the invisible.” We might add: ideas and matter, spirit and body, angels and beasts. Thus there is distinction between spirit and matter. But if there be a relative superiority of the spirit over matter, there is no absolute difference between them in relation to God: both spirit and matter are creatures and redemption applies as well to either. Let us not fancy that spirit is divine in itself, or that matter, unlike spirit, is not called to redemption. Let us not fancy that this is only an ecclesiastical problem: it is also a political problem. For all that is within the world is called to redemption. Spirit and matter are united both in sin and grace: let us not separate what God has united.
QUESTION 27. Why then do you call God merely creator, when it is much more excellent to defend and preserve creatures in their being, than once to have made them?—This term does not merely imply that God so created his works once that afterwards he took no care of them. Rather, it is to be held that the world, as it was once made by him, so now is preserved by him, and that similarly both the earth and all other things persist only in so far as they are sustained by his virtue and as it were his hand. Besides, since he has all things under his hand, it also follows from this that he is the supreme ruler and lord of all. Hence from his being Creator of heaven and earth, we are to understand that it is he only who with wisdom, goodness and power rules the whole course and order of nature; who is the author of both rain and drought, hail and other storms, as also of serenity; who fertilizes the earth of his beneficence, or again renders it sterile by withdrawing his hand; from him also both health and disease proceed; to whose power finally all things are subject and at whose nod they obey.
We have here the opposite of the parable of deism which says God made the world like the clockmaker a clock. Once all was finished, the clock works by itself, with no help from the clockmaker. On the contrary, God is maintaining his creation unceasingly. Nothing in the world is independent of God; where there is order, it is God-given. If there be chance or fate, these are still under God’s governance. No necessity, no absolute action is independent of God, no freedom which is not God-granted (for he does grant it), no contingency which is not disposed of by God. The order existing in the world has nothing absolute about it. It does not exist aside from him who ordains. At bottom, both determinism and indeterminism are false: God governs and allows determinate and indeterminate things.
From our point of view as creatures, there are “good” things and “evil” things. But the certainty of the fatherly governance of God teaches us how to be thankful for whatever he sends our way. For all things are under his governance. The Heidelberg Catechism puts it even more positively (27): “All things come not by chance, but by his fatherly hand.” Therefore there can be no need for a theodicy,
