Shrinking, shrinking, shrinking

Whereas historically the doctrine of providence assured a benign ultimate plan for the cosmos, with Locke and Smith we see a new emphasis: providence is primarily about ordering this world for mutual benefit, particularly economic benefit. Humans are seen as fundamentally engaged in an “exchange of services,” so the entire cosmos is seen anthropocentrically as the arena for this economy (Secular Age, p. 177). What happens in the “new Providence,” then, is a “shrinking” of God’s purposes, an “economizing” of God’s own interests: “God’s goals for us shrink to the single end of our encompassing this order of mutual benefit he has designed for us” (p. 221). So even our theism becomes humanized, immanentized, and the telos of God’s providential concern is circumscribed within immanence.—James K. A. Smith, How (Not) to Be Secular, 49