Louisville Process Theology Network

Lincoln's Discernment of God's Purpose

Feb 20, 2009

From ?“Christianity Today?”, Winter, 1992, www.christianitytoday.com.


?“As early as 1862 Lincoln began to think the unthinkable: Perhaps the will of God could not simply be indentified with American ideas and the effort to preserve the Union.... In September that year, at one of the darkest moments of the war, he penned the following ?‘Meditation on the Divine Will?’?…..

?‘The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God cannot be for and against the same thing at the same time.

In the present civil war it is quite possible that God?’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party --- and yet the human instrumentalities, working just as they do, are the best adaptation to His purpose.

I am almost ready to say this is probably true --- that God wills this contest, and wills that it shall not end yet. By His mere quiet power, on the minds of the now contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.?’

Like a figure from Israel?’s ancient history, Lincoln was arguing with God. But, it was no longer a domesticated deity, an American God, but a ruler of nations. The truth had begun to dawn on Lincoln that this God was not at the nation?’s beck and call, but the nation at his.

Lincoln?’s thinking was beginning to diverge from the paths followed by Beecher, Dabney, and the overwhelming majority of his contemporaries?….

How could Lincoln point to the commanding sovereignty of a great God, while professional clerics spoke almost exclusively of a ?‘house god?’ completely in league with the North of South? How could such a profound grasp of God?’s grandeur come from an ordinary lawyer and politician, who during his lifetime was scorned for lack of culture? There can be no final answer to these questions?…..

The greatest difficulty in coming to a clearer picture of Lincolns?’ faith is the fact that his religion does not fit into modern categories. He was not an orthodox, evangelical, ?‘born-again?’ Christian striving toward the ?‘higher life?’ (as these terms have been used since the 1870s). But, neither was he a skeptical ?‘modernist?’ with a prejudice against the supernatural and an aversion to the Bible.?”