English 233:  Introduction to Western Humanities - Baroque & Enlightenment

Note on the "interventionist policy of the Creator."

To say that the Bible depicts God as "interventionist" means that

(1) God is portrayed as caring, intensely concerned (not as merely disinterestedly monitoring all that takes place in the world); this God is a loving deity.

(2) Nature and human affairs are represented as a process of event constantly open to advent. God constantly participates in history.  (He is not merely intensely concerned, but actively concerned in what goes on in history.)

In explaining the latter, you should be able to cite some important subcategories (miracles, revelations, the sacraments [according to the Catholic and Lutheran doctrines], answers to prayers) and examples.

These interventions of the Creator into the creation take place from the outset: God walks in the garden (Genesis 3:8f); He imposes curses imposed as punishment upon the serpent, Eve and Adam, respectively (3:14-19); He expels them from the garden (3:23-24).

Subsequently, divine interventions proliferate:

• Old Testament: the Flood, the covenant with Noah, the Tower of Babel, the covenant with Abraham, the deliverance from the Egyptian Captivity (the calling of Moses, the miracles before Pharaoh, the parting of the Red Sea, the destruction of the pursuing hosts, the provision of manna from heaven in the desert), the burning bush and the issuance of the 10 Commandments, the conquest of the Promised Land, the prosperity of David, the reproval of David via the prophet Nathan for the murder of Uriah the Hittite, the death of Queen Jezebel, the destruction of the Northern Kingdom, the Babylonian Captivity.

• [Post-testament: the Dispersion (after the destruction of the Masada in 70 AD); the creation of Israel? {the dispossession of the Palestinians???}]

• New Testament: the Redemption (Incarnation, Crucifixion, and prophesied Second Coming).

• [Post-testament: the Great Persecution? the Christianization of Rome? the Fall of Rome? the evolution of the Catholic Church? the fate of the Crusades? the Plague? the Protestant Reformation? {the "Manifest Destiny of the United States???} {the Holocaust under the Nazis?} {the outcome of World War II?} {the dissolution of the Soviet Union?}].

(Note:  The point of the items set between curly brackets - {...} - is to suggest the intrinsically controversial nature of particular claims about "the role of God's hand in history."  Is there a method devisable to secure agreement upon them?  Is there a manner outside of a "method"?)

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      Contents copyright © 1999 by Lyman A. Baker. 

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      This page last updated 11 October 2000.