An Unsearchable Providence: The Lawyer's Concept of Act of God
![handle is hein.journals/oxfjls13 and id is 241 raw text is: An Unsearchable Providence:
The Lawyer's Concept of Act of God
C. G. HALL*
Thou shalt be visited by the Lord of hosts with thunder, and with earthquake, and great noise,
with storm and tempest, and the flame of devouring fire.
Isaiah 29:6
This paper had its origin in the recent publication of a variety of deeply reflective
perspectives upon God's activity in the world.1 Though their directive force
differs markedly,2 a common leitmotif is a rejection of the familiar, primitive
Biblical model of divine acts according to which the God of law and justice is a
God of troubles, ever at hand not afar off,3 who 'rages in the storm'4 and tests the
'perfect and upright' man with theft, pillage, fire, wind, sickness and death.
Rather, contemporary theologians would say with Austin Farrer that the will of
God expressed in an event is His will that 'the physical elements in the earth's
crust or under it... should go on being themselves and acting in accordance with
their natures'.5 By contrast, there has been no recent analysis of the lawyer's
concept of 'act of God' though linked, as it clearly is, to this discredited Biblical
model. Of course, the subject is treated peripherally in most standard textbooks
on Tort, in the relevant chapter on Rylands v Fletcher, but otherwise one has
largely to turn to Halsbury' and Broom's Maxims7 to discover anything more.
Thus, this paper is directed to the legal concept, 'what is known to lawyers as an
act of God'.8 For present purposes, Lord Esher's dictum in Pandorf v Hamilton9
that 'In the older, simpler days I have myself never had any doubt but that the
phrase does not mean act of God in the ecclesiastical and Biblical sense, according
to which everything is said to be an act of God; but that in a mercantile sense, it
* Senior Lecturer in Law, University of Buckingham. The writer acknowledges his debt to John Hudson, Parish
Priest.
I See, eg M. J. Langford, Providence (1981); Vernon White, The Fall of a Sparrow (1985); Maurice Wiles, God's
Action in the World (1986); Keith Ward, Divine Action (1990); B. Hebblethwaite and E. Henderson (eds), Divine
Action (1990).
2 Cf, eg, Wiles' 'stage manager' model with Ward's 'harmonization' approach.
Jeremiah 23:23.
Carlo Carretto, Why 0 Lord? (1986), 74.
A Science of God? (1966), 87-8.
6 9 Laws 4th ed, para 458; 45 Laws 4th ed, para 1251.
7 9th ed, 161.
' Per Lord Greene MR in.J. & J. Makin Ltd v London & NE Ry [1943] KB 467, 475.
9 (1886) 17 QBD 670, 675.
Oxford University Press 1993 Oxford Journal of Legal Studies Vol 13, No 2](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/oxfjls13&div=21&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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An Unsearchable Providence: The Lawyer's Concept of Act of God
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