No man can resist the unfolding of time. The manifestation of God’s will in time, his divine providence, cannot be destroyed, altered, thwarted, or prevented from reaching the goal for which all of creation was intended. As scripture says, “Who Can oppose his will (Romans 9:19)?”

From all eternity, God had perfect foreknowledge of all the technology that would be invented and he ordained all things that have come to be and will be for the salvation of the souls. God never loses. The story of history, and including within that is the story of technological progress, is primarily the story of what God is doing in creation to show forth his glory. While evil exists and human nature is wounded by original sin, nonetheless we must recognize that God allows these defects in his creation in order that he might show his mercy and justice.

He shows his justice when God correctly punishes the sins committed by humans and when he allows for the natural order to unfold according to his providence. He shows his mercy when he goes beyond what is owed by nature and provides for his creatures out of the abundance of his goodness. The work of redemption of humanity through Christ is an act of mercy, an unmerited gift of his grace.

It is within this framework that we must understand all technology and all aspects of creation. While technology seems to be beyond nature, or artificial due to its being “created” by human intelligence, this is profoundly false. When God formed creation in his eternal will, all that is and will be was in his eternal plan. Humanity’s discovery of technology does not add anything to God’s creation nor does it take away from what he has made.

We can call technology an “artifact” to show that while it is the product of human creativity, it is not above or beyond nature, but uniquely placed within God’s plan for the world. The artifacts of human creativity have their place at the very beginning of human history. The first artifact is in fact the garments worn by Adam and Eve after their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. While on the surface this places artifacts and technology as being something that comes after the fall, that does not mean that it does not have a role in the plan of salvation. In fact, the first artifact shows the pattern by which all technology arises.

Due to our wounded human nature, our first parents had to discover the artifact of clothing to heal the effects of their first sin. The artifact became the means of returning to that innocence they had lost. However, the artifact of clothing would eventually become a snare, as we see in the course of history where clothing and the symbols associated with it become a means of vanity and pride. This is in fact the tension of all artifacts throughout history. They contain an incredible potential for good and yet contain a dangerous potential to enslave. Early in human history, the artifact of clothing gives way to the artifact of the idol, the supreme distortion of our capacity to create.

But technology has always preexisted in the mind of God, and therefore is an integral part of Divine Providence. To prove this point, consider the field of computer engineering. When humans began to create the first computers, the laws that governed them were neither arbitrary nor were they chosen by human design. We have to recognize that the laws of technology preexisted the actual things they governed and it was not for humans to invent technology, but to discover it.

Let’s try to understand this point by analogy. In games, the creator of the game chooses the rules which govern the game. If I make a game like monopoly, I can choose for the players to use a 6 sided dice or a 12 sided dice or whatever means I desire of how the players will proceed on the board. The rules are in a sense artificial and arbitrary. Artificial because they are not governed by predetermined laws and arbitrary in that there is no intrinsic connection between the rule and some larger principle. But the laws that govern computers are not like this. They are not created, but rather discovered.

Despite technology and artifacts being such an integral part of the human experience, still the fear of the artifact runs deep in the human psyche. We are all familiar with the story of Frankenstein which is the classic literary warning about human technology. In the story, Doctor Frankenstein creates a new human being from the remains of existing corpses. His creation is in fact new, suggesting that science has made him like God in his ability to create a new life form. From the onset of the scientific revolution, the human psyche has had a kind of primordial fear that the work of our hands would become a literal monster and turn against us. This fear is profoundly unChristian and is a kind of protest against God’s sovereignty.

We know that “all things work to the good for those who believe” (Romans 8:28) and that “where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more” (Romans 5:20-21). Thus we should assume that with each advance of technology sin will abound but grace will abound even more within the proper use of technology. Furthermore, we should believe that the technology God has given us will work to the good for his faithful children. Certainly it will lead some, perhaps many, away from the truth, but it will also be the salvation for those who believe.

We ought to abandon ourselves to God’s most holy will and ask ourselves, what does God plan on doing through this new technology. Instead of resisting the flow of his providence, we must trust that he is in charge and that he will show us what he wants to do in each generation.