Chapter 13 - The Problem of Trust

Summary

The reason the debate over divine providence has such a powerful resonance in the lives of ordinary people is that it touches deeply on their relationship with God, and in particular on the attitudes they have toward God: their trust in God, their love for God, their hope in God’s promises, and more. One way to approach the debate over divine providence is to start with an account of appropriate religious attitudes and reason about which accounts of divine providence can make sense of those attitudes. I focus on the religious attitude of trust in God. R. Zachary Manis has argued that theological determinism cannot make sense of certain types of trust in God that religious believers often do and should have: trusting God with their own salvation and the salvation of others whom they love. I argue that theological determinism can in fact make sense of these types of trust in God, drawing heavily on Kierkegaard’s idea that we ought to love others with God as the “middle term.” I go on to argue that views other than theological determinism also struggle to make sense of believers trusting God with their own salvation and the salvation of those whom they love.