On God’s continuous working every created thing depends.

God can be understood to have rested from establishing different kinds of creatures, because he did not now establish any new kinds any more. But he rested like this in such a way as to continue from then on and up till now to operate the management of the things that were then put in place, not as though at least on that seventh day his power was withheld from the government of heaven and earth and of all things he had established. If that had been done, they would have immediately collapsed into nothingness. It is the creator’s power, after all, and the virtuosity, the skill and the tenacity of the almighty, that causes every created thing to subsist.

  - Augustine, Comment on Genesis 4:11

Let all the earth fear the LORD; let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of him! For he spoke, and it came to be; he commanded, and it stood firm.

  - Psalm 33:8, 9

Every sincere Christian, from any communion within the Body of Christ, confesses that God is sovereign and almighty, and that His providential care extends to all created things. But is this a true article of faith or merely a confession of convenience? That is, do we really believe, as Augustine says, that nothing could exist unless God were continually attending to it, that His providence oversees, sustains, animates, and causes to subsist whatever exists anywhere in the vast cosmos?

And if we do believe this, why do we feel it necessary to bow to the pressure of an unbelieving age and set aside this vital confession of our faith, allowing the wordsmiths of secularism to call the tunes in the score of intellectual thought?

Modern “enlightened” thought has worked diligently to remove God from all conversations about ideas, truth, and meaning. In the world of ethics, thinkers have substituted relativism for God’s holy and righteous and good Law. In politics, utilitarian convictions redefine justice as God explains it in His Word. In science, “laws” of physics rule the cosmos, not a loving, all-attending God. In psychology, the autonomous self rejects any requirement of submission to God as the key to emotional health and personal flourishing – although neuroscience now seems poised to challenge whatever lingering sense of an autonomous self yet remains in the human brain. In literature, poetry, and the arts, venerable forms, themes, and devices, many of these invented, and most skillfully used, by believing artists in the past, have been replaced by the unbridled freedom of the artist and the market to determine the norms of creativity and beauty.

All this denying, debunking, and dismissing of God, and yet He never rests, never ceases to continue His gracious power toward the cosmos and its creatures, even those who adamantly oppose His inclusion among the scheme of things to be known: “Why do you boast of evil, O mighty man? The steadfast love of God endures all the day” (Ps. 52:1).

The world may reject God and substitute its own language to describe the world and how it works. But the Christian must not participate in this charade. We must reclaim the language of thought – and especially the language of science – following the path marked out by our forebears, a path which leads from Scripture through the study of the world unto the acknowledgement and praise of God and His glorious grace.

The world, Augustine continued, “is not like a mason building houses; when he has finished he goes away, and his work goes on standing when he has stopped working on it and gone away. No, the world will not be able to go on standing for a single moment if God withdraws from it his controlling hand.” God’s continuous grace toward us in such a way demands that we who believe in Him reciprocate by acknowledging, at every opportunity and by every means, His gracious presence and provision amid the patterns and creatures of the cosmos, and our duty to honor and serve Him in all our intellectual endeavors, taking every thought captive in order to make them all obedient to Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 10:3-5).

Here we need boldness, friends, and the encouragement and assistance of believing colleagues, supporters, and friends.