Creation as Delegation, Humanity as Covenant Partner

“Do you object to the apparent ‘roundaboutness’–it could easily be made comic–of the whole picture? Why should God speak to Himself through man? I ask, in reply, why should He do anything through His creatures? Why should He achieve, the long way round, through the labor of angels, men (always imperfectly obedient and efficient), and the activity of irrational and inanimate beings, ends which, presumably, the mere fiat of omnipotence would achieve with instantaneous perfection?

Creation seems to be delegation through and through.  He will do nothing simply of Himself which can be done by creatures.  I suppose this is because He is a giver.  And He has nothing to give but Himself.  And to give Himself is to do His deeds–in a sense, and on varying levels to be Himself–through the things He has made.  In Pantheism God is all.  But the whole point of creation surely is that He was not content to be all.  He intends to be ‘all in all.’” (C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, pp. 94-95)

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“Petitionary prayer is, nonetheless, both allowed and commanded to us: ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’  And no doubt it raises a theoretical problem.  Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it.  But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate.  He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers; or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries.  Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to co-operate in the execution of His will.  ‘God,’ said Pascal, ‘instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.’ But not only prayer; whenever we act at all He lends us that dignity.  It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so.  They have not advised or changed God’s mind–that is, His overall purpose.  But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.  
For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures.  He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.  He allows us to neglect what He would have us to do, or to fail.  Perhaps we do not fully realize the problem, so to call it, of enabling finite free wills to co-exist with Omnipotence.  It seems to involve at every moment almost a sort of divine abdication.  We are not mere recipients or spectators.  We are either privileged to share in the game or compelled to collaborate in the world, ‘to wield our little tridents.’ Is this amazing process simply Creation going on before our eyes? This is how (no light matter) God makes something–indeed, makes gods–out of nothing.” (C. S. Lewis, The World’s Last Night: And Other Essays, pp. 8-9)