Claim. When providential central figures fulfill their portion of responsibility, providence moves to a new stage; when they fail, providence is prolonged and after a numerologically significant period a new person is called to repeat the same mission — explaining why sinful history has lasted so long.
Elaboration. The law of responsibility (G. Law of Responsibility) is the operative mechanism of the theory of responsibility introduced earlier. Adam and Eve were given a portion of responsibility ‘with [which] no one could interfere, not even God’ — the purpose being to qualify them as lords of creation. Their failure inaugurated the pattern that has governed all subsequent providence.
‘The providence of re-creation is to be accomplished in the same way, that is, when the human portion of responsibility (especially that of providential central persons) is fulfilled in addition to God’s portion of responsibility.’ Fulfilling responsibility means ‘accomplishing the mission given to human beings (providential persons) by exercising their own free will and taking responsibility for their actions.’
Two outcomes: success advances providence to a new stage; failure prolongs it, and ‘after a certain numerologically significant period of time, a new person is called by God to carry out the same providence.’ This is the structural basis for the law of synchronous providence (sec. III.G).
Lee names culprits explicitly: ‘Jesus was crucified and was unable to realize the unified world because the leaders of his time, including John the Baptist, the priests, and the lawyers, failed to fulfill their portions of responsibility.’ Communism ‘caused conflicts and confusion all over the world’ because ‘after the Industrial Revolution, the leaders of the Christian nations failed to fulfill their portions of responsibility.’
The contemporary application: ‘Today, the leaders of democracy must be awakened to the need to fulfill their responsibility in accordance with God’s will’ — guide all people, including those in Communist countries, to God’s word and love.
The doctrine is consequential pastorally: human failure has cosmic cost; specific named people (John the Baptist, Christian leaders post-Industrial Revolution) carry the weight of providential failure. This is the engine of indemnity and the theological warrant for Hendricks-style activist responsibility (01-church-growth-begins-with-god). Critics typically push that this distributes blame for divine outcomes onto specific historical figures whose actual options were constrained.
See also. goal-of-history-determined-process-undetermined, law-of-completion-through-three-stages, law-of-indemnity-suffering-as-restoration-condition