Providence Is Remarkable

One of the underlying presuppositions of the Charismatic world is that if God is not actively intervening in creation through miracles and signs and wonders and things like that, then you’ve got an absentee God. If we don’t take the Charismatic position, they say, your God isn’t really there. Charismatics frequently lob this charge at non-Charismatics, that, you know, if you believe the miraculous Charismatic gifts have ceased, they say, then your view is a close cousin of deism, which is virtually a denial that God is present and at work in this world’s affairs. If you doubt whether today’s Charismatics are truly speaking in tongues, and getting direct revelation from God, they will tell you that your skepticism is tantamount to materialistic rationalism. It’s essentially a form of rank unbelief. That’s because the only way the typical Charismatic can envision God as active and personal is as if He is constantly displaying His presence in creation by miraculous means, you know, through constant, direct extra-biblical revelation or with supernatural signs and wonders in the heavens. And they think if He’s not doing that, then He’s not there.

That way of thinking comes dangerously close to the Gnostic notion that that’s how God is. He stands outside His creation and therefore if He acts at all, it must be from outside the cosmos by overturning the natural order of things. And if you think I exaggerate, let me quote some fairly typical sources...

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