Providence for Me, Tough Luck for Thee?

Recall the words of Ratzinger regarding the divine relationality or relativity: in the theology of the Trinity

lies concealed a revolution in man's view of the world: the undivided sway of thinking in terms of substance is ended; relation is discovered as an equally valid primordial mode of reality.... 

[P]erson must be understood as relation.... the three persons that exist in God are in their nature relations. They are, therefore, not substances that stand next to each other, but they are real existing relations, and nothing besides....  

Relation, being related, is not something superadded to the person, but it is the person itself. In its nature, the person exists only as relation.

I want to bring this to bear on the recent assassination attempt, specifically, with some people (including Trump himself) suggesting that he was only spared as a result of providence. 

Which, for any compassionate or fair-minded person, leads directly to the question of why, if God can directly intervene to prevent an evil and spare someone's life, why didn't he do so for Corey Comperatore? 

This hardly seems fair, nor is it intelligible, i.e., grounded in a stable principle that we could apply to all cases. Rather, it makes God appear arbitrary: providence for me, tough luck for thee.  

In search of an answer, I revisited a number of books by Charles Hartshorne, because his is one of the only theologies I can think of that provides a plausible and consistent answer. 

Of course, the plausibility and consistency are purchased at the price of God's total omnipotence, but for me it is worth it to have a more intelligible, empathic, and relatable God. Come to think of it, there are many self-evident truths that cannot be proved, and absurdities that can be.

In the book The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne, one contributor says that 

Hartshorne knew that arguments for God's existence could be convincing only if the idea of God for which they argued was itself intelligible.   

Put conversely, it seems to me that it is indeed possible to prove -- beyond the shadow of a doubt and with geometric logic -- the existence of a God that is in turn totally unintelligible. 

Matter of fact, I just finished such a book yesterday. In it the author deduces eight ironclad attributes of God, including simplicity, perfection, goodness, infinitude, omnipresence, eternity, unity, and immutability. 

As longtime readers know, it is this last one in particular that troubles Bob, for immutable means immutable, meaning that what happens must happen and was bound to happen from all eternity. Which 

implies that human experience is fundamentally illusory. It implies also that what is for us future is for God, and therefore in reality, already just what it is, fully determinate. That means our sense of creativity, of rendering determinate what was, prior to that act, not determinate, is an illusion (Cobb, ibid.).

So, I'm always looking for a metaphysical loophole in the traditional view. However, I disagree with much of Hartshorne's overall philosophy and theology, to put it mildly, so the ultimate answer must either be found elsewhere or discovered by yours truly.

The closest thinker I've found to my view is the neo-Thomist Norris Clarke. Here he describes the problem -- that "it is impossible" for our actions 

to be both free and yet a logical consequence of a divine action which "infallibly" produces its effect. Power to cause someone to perform by his own choice an act precisely defined by the cause is meaningless.

Indeed, what is the point if  

God has caused all events, even free choices, to occur just as they have occurred? We would then face the implication that the most wicked acts are caused by God....

But

The notion of a cosmic power that determines all decisions fails to make sense. For its decisions could refer to nothing except themselves. They could result in no world; for a world must consist of local agents making their own decisions....

If God be in all aspects absolute, then literally it is "all the same" to him, a matter of utter indifference, whether we do this or do that, whether we live or die, whether we joy or suffer....

A wholly absolute God is totally beyond tragedy, and his power operates uninfluenced by human freedom, hence presumably as infallibly determinative of all events, and therefore, it seems, there need be no tragedy.  

Okay, Bob, we get it. Now, where's the loophole?  

Let me see if I can track down a suitable passage. Bestwecando at the moment:

the immutability which must be affirmed of God is the unchanging, indefectible steadfastness of an infinite plenitude of goodness and loving benevolence, but a benevolence which also expresses itself in a process, a progressive unfolding of mutual interpersonal relationships, spread out in real temporal succession at our receiving end... in terms of which he is truly related to us....

Hmm. Sounds like a person to me, recalling Ratzinger's words at the top.

Now, you probably know someone who is absolutely rigid, closed, predictable, and robotic. Which is not the ideal insofar as persons are concerned.  

Our bottom line for this morning is that perhaps a bit less in the immutability department redounds to a more personal and relatable God, which is fine by me. 

But we need to get down to specifics: why Trump and not Comperatore? How can we render this intelligible while denying neither man's nor God's proper and proportionate influence over events?

To be continued should sufficient interest be aroused.