Providence literally means seeing ahead, and theologians still argue how far
The word providence comes from Latin roots meaning to see ahead. In theology it names God's care for the world, but traditions split sharply over the details: does God steer every arrow and sparrow, merely sustain the laws of nature, or foresee choices without fixing them?
Theologians usually separate general providence, God keeping the universe and its natural order in existence, from special providence, extraordinary interventions in individual lives such as miracles or punishments. The capitalised phrase Divine Providence can also serve as a name for God. In secular English the word drifted toward plain foresight, or, for a deist or atheist, nature's protective bounty.
Jewish thought calls the idea supervision of the individual, and classical Jewish philosophers taught that God directs, even continually recreates, every tiny detail of creation, a view that shapes much of Orthodox Judaism's approach to nature. In the Latin West, Augustine pictured one supreme being governing a vast crowd of independent creatures with different natures and purposes, and Thomas Aquinas developed the doctrine most fully in the Summa Theologica. The Eastern Orthodox writer St. John of Tobolsk took an uncompromising line: the arrow that slipped between the joints of King Ahab's armour was guided by God, and nothing at all happens by chance.
Protestants refined the question of evil. Lutherans hold that God cooperates with every deed as a deed but not with the corruption in a wicked one, and Martin Luther drew a social lesson: since God works through farmers, parents and officials alike, no useful job should be looked down on. Reformed Christians, in Article 13 of the Belgic Confession, insist God rules everything yet is not the author of sin, and they reject the Epicurean idea that the world runs on luck. Their notion of divine concurrence treats natural causes as real while holding that God acts in each of them, which separates them from deists, whose God builds the machine and walks away. Calvin likened creation to a theatre staging the drama of redemption.
Early in the 17th century the Dutch theologian Jacobus Arminius challenged Calvin. His limited providence keeps human free will compatible with God's foreknowledge but not with strict determinism, so salvation depends on election conditioned on faith that God foresees.
Source: Divine providence
