Systematic Theology, by Louis Berkhof - New Leaven

exercise of divine power. The power of God put forth in upholding all things is just as
positive as that exercised in creation. The precise nature of His work in sustaining all
things in being and action is a mystery, though it may be said that, in His providential
operations, He accommodates Himself to the nature of His creatures. With Shedd we
say: “In the material world, God immediately works in and through material properties
and laws. In the mental world, God immediately works in and through the properties of
mind. Preservation never runs counter to creation. God does not violate in providence
what He has established in creation.” 82 Preservation may be defined as that continuous
work of God by which He maintains the things which He created, together with the properties
and powers with which He endowed them.
3. ERRONEOUS CONCEPTIONS OF DIVINE PRESERVATION. The nature of this work of God
is not always properly understood. There are two views of it which ought to be
avoided: (a) That it is purely negative. According to Deism divine preservation consists in
this, that God does not destroy the work of His hands. By virtue of creation God
endowed matter with certain properties, placed it under invariable laws, and then left it
to shift for itself, independently of all support or direction from without. This is an
unreasonable, irreligious, and an un-Biblical representation. It is unreasonable, because
it implies that God communicated self-subsistence to the creature, while self-subsistence
and self-sustenation are incommunicable properties, which characterize only the
Creator. The creature can never be self-sustaining, but must be upheld from day to day
by the almighty power of the Creator. Hence it would not require a positive act of
omnipotence on the part of God to annihilate created existences. A simple withdrawal
of support would naturally result in destruction. — This view is irreligious, because it
removes God so far from His creation that communion with Him becomes a practical
impossibility. History plainly testifies to the fact that it uniformly spells death for
religion. — It is also un-Biblical, since it puts God altogether outside of His creation,
while the Bible teaches us in many passages that He is not only transcendent but also
immanent in the works of His hands. (b) That it is a continuous creation. Pantheism
represents preservation as a continuous creation, so that the creatures or second causes
are conceived as having no real or continuous existence, but as emanating in every
successive moment out of that mysterious Absolute which is the hidden ground of all
things. Some who were not Pantheists had a similar view of preservation. Descartes laid
the basis for such a conception of it, and Malebranche pushed this to the farthest
extreme consistent with theism. Even Jonathan Edwards teaches it incidentally in his
82 Dogm. Theol. I, p. 528.
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