The Unsearchable Providence of God

From these examples, then, which we have brought forward from the Gospel records, we can see very clearly that God brings salvation to the human race in many different and countless ways, and by paths no one can search out. Some who already want it and thirst for it he stirs up to run their course with greater zeal, while others he compels even against their will and as they resist. At one time he gives his help to bring about the things he sees we desire for our good; at another he puts into us the very beginnings of holy desire, and grants both the start of a good work and perseverance in it. That is why in our prayers we call God not only our Protector and Savior, but actually our Helper and Upholder. For when he first calls us to himself, and draws us toward salvation while we are still ignorant and unwilling, he is our Protector and Savior. But when we are already striving and he brings us help, as he is accustomed to do, and receives and defends those who flee to him for refuge, he is called our Upholder and Refuge. Finally, the blessed apostle, turning over in his mind this many-sided generosity of God’s providence, sees that he has fallen into a vast and boundless ocean of God’s goodness, and he cries out: “Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are the judgments of God, and his ways past finding out! For who has known the mind of the Lord?” So whoever imagines that by human reason he can sound the depths of that abyss beyond all understanding will be trying to explain away the amazement at that knowledge which awed so great and mighty a teacher of the Gentiles. For if anyone thinks he can either take in with his mind or discuss to the end the arrangement by which God works salvation in people, he plainly attacks the truth of the apostle’s words, and claims with irreverent daring that God’s judgments can be searched and his ways traced out. This providence and love of God, then, which the Lord in his unwearied goodness is pleased to show us, he compares to the tenderest heart of a kind mother. He wants to express it by a picture drawn from human affection, and he finds among his creatures no feeling of love to which he could better compare it. He uses this example because nothing dearer can be found in human nature, saying: “Can a mother forget her child, so as not to have compassion on the son of her womb?” But not content with this comparison, he at once goes beyond it and adds these words: “And though she may forget, yet I will not forget you.” [a]