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Providence and Science in a World of Contingency: Thomas Aquinas' Metaphysics of Divine Action

Authors:
Providence and Science in a World of
Contingency
Providence and Science in a World of Contingency oers a novel assessment of
the contemporary debate over divine providential action and the natural sci-
ences, suggesting a re-consideration of Thomas Aquinasmetaphysical doctrine
of providence coupled with his account of natural contingency. By looking at
the history of debates over providence and nature, the volume provides a set of
criteria to evaluate providential divine action models, challenging the under-
lying, theologically contentious assumptions of current discussions on divine
providential action. Such assumptions include that God needs causally open
spaces in the created world in order to act in it providentially, and the untting
conclusion that, if this is the case, then God is assumed to act as another cause
among causes. In response to these shortcomings, the book presents a compre-
hensive account of Aquinasmetaphysics of natural causation, contingency, and
their relation to divine providence. It oers a fresh and bold metaphysical nar-
rative, based on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, which appreciates the relation
between divine providence and natural contingency.
Ignacio Silva is Associate Professor of Theology and Science at the Instituto de
Filosofía, Universidad Austral, Argentina, and Associate Member of the Ian
Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, University of Oxford, UK.
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Providence and Science in a World of Contingency
Thomas AquinasMetaphysics of Divine Action
Ignacio Silva
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Providence and Science in a
World of Contingency
Thomas AquinasMetaphysics of Divine
Action
Ignacio Silva
First published 2022
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ISBN: 978-1-032-00276-7 (hbk)
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DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465
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Contents
List of abbreviations of Thomas Aquinasworks ix
Introduction 1
1 Digging for criteria: A metaphysical history of divine providence 12
2 Science and providence today 32
3 A metaphysics of natural contingency 58
4 A metaphysics of Gods providence 83
5 Thomas Aquinas today 117
Final thoughts on Aquinas, contingency, and providence 139
Bibliography 150
Index 158
List of abbreviations of Thomas Aquinas
works
1
Summa Theologiae (126673) S.Th.
Summa Contra Gentiles (125964) SCG
De Ente et Essentia (1252/56) De Ente
De Substantiis Separatis (1271) De Subs. Sep.
De Principiis Naturae (1252/56) De Prin. Nat.
Compendium Theologiae (126973) Comp. Theo.
Quaestiones Disputatae De Malo (126667) De Malo
Quaestiones Disputatae De Potentia Dei (126566)
2
De Pot.
Quaestiones Disputatae De Veritate (125659) De Ver.
Quaestio Disputata De Spiritualibus Creaturis (126768) De Spirit. Creat.
Quaestio Disputata De Anima (126566) De An.
Quaestio Disputata De Virtutibus (127172)
3
De Virt.
Quaestio De Quodlibet 1 (1269) Quod. 1
Scriptum super libros Sententiarum (125156)
4
In Sent.
Expositio in librum Boethii De Hebdomadibus (125659) In De Heb.
Super Boetium De Trinitate (125758) In De Trin.
Expositio super librum De Causis (127172) In De Causis
Expositio super Dionysium De Divinis Nominibus
(126567)
5
In De Div. Nom.
In Psalmos Davidis Expositio (c. 1273)
6
In Psalm.
Super Evangelium S. Ioannis lectura (127072) In Io.
Sententia libri Metaphysicae (126972)
7
In Met.
Commentaria in octo libros Physicorum (126970) In Phys.
Expositio libri Peri Hermeneias (127071) In Peri Her.
In libros Aristotelis De caelo et mundo expositio
(127273) De Cae. Et Mun.
In librum Aristotelis De generatione et corruptione
expositio (127273) In Gen. et Corr.
Sententia libri De Anima (126970) In De An.
Sententia libri Ethicorum (1271) Sent. Eth.
Sententia super Meteora (126973) In Meteor.
Notes
1Aquinasworks, unless otherwise expressed in this list, are taken from the Leonine edition:
Sancti Thomae de Aquino Opera omnia iussu Leonis XIII P.M. edita, Rome, 1882.
2Ed. PM Pession, Marietti, Taurini-Romae, 1965.
3In Quaestiones disputatae, t. 2, Marietti, Taurini-Romae, 1965.
4Ed. P. Mandonnet, Lethielleux, Parisiis, 1929.
5Ed. C. Pera, P. Caramello, C. Mazzantini; Marietti, Taurini-Romae, 1950.
6Ed. R. Busa, Frommann-Hoolzbog, Stuttgart-Bad Cannstadt, 1980.
7Ed. MR Cathala, RM Spiazzi; Marietti, Taurini-Romae, 1971.
xList of abbreviations of Thomas Aquinasworks
Introduction
A The big question
The challenges that a world full of contingent events brings to the doctrine of
divine providence cannot be overstated. My goal in this volume is to address
these challenges, considering the relation between natural contingency and
divine providence from the perspective of Thomas Aquinas, a thirteenth-century
Christian philosopher, while actively engaging with recent philosophical and
theological literature on divine providential action. That is, instead of considering
those who deny the possibility of divine providence given the contingency of nat-
ural events, I will study proposals that oer the opposite approach, making use of
this natural contingency to oer models for understanding divine providential
action. In particular, I will consider what has been termed as the Divine Action
Project, which started at some point in the 1980s and lasted for about 25 years,
the ospring of which continues to spur today in numerous works on divine pro-
vidence and action.
Arguably, the main insight of this project was that contingency and indetermin-
ism in nature are of great value to the created order and that they are of signicant
value to theological discourses as well. Consider, for example, what George Ellis
has to say about the existence of contingency and randomness in the universe:
It turns out that they [biological systems] take advantage of the storm of
randomness encountered at the molecular level there is much evidence
that molecular machinery in biology is designed to use that randomness to
attain desired results. This is true also in terms of macro-levels of behavior,
and in particular, as regards how the brain functions. Randomness is har-
nessed through the process of adaptive selection, which allows higher levels
of order and meaning to emerge. It is then a virtue, not a vice.
1
There is an advantage, a benet, for the existence of randomness and chance in
the universe, a benet that, as I hope to explain in the following pages of this
volume, God puts to good use. Contingency and indeterminism, thus, do not
rule out the ever-intimate presence of the divine in creation; they rather point to
it, and to a certain extent require and demand Gods providence.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003173465-1
There are at least two strong convictions guiding the debate on divine provi-
dence today: rst, the three great monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam) arm that God is present in the universe and providentially active in it,
guiding it to its fullment. That is, God guides and directs the world caringly, and
does not stay away from it. God does not withdraw from the history of the world;
neither does God leave people without his help. Second, the natural world in which
we live, as described by modern science, is an orderly world, in which each event
appears to have a natural cause to it: everything in the created universe appears to
be caused, in one way or another, by something else in that same created uni-
verse. These two assertions, even if they serve as guiding principles to the
debate, appear to exclude each other. Either God is able to act directly in the
universe, or the scientic description of the world seems to leave no room for
Godtoact.Thescientic picture seems to present boundaries that God cannot
cross. These boundaries, though, are the creation of that very same God. The
idea of God sustaining nature and its regularities while miraculously interven-
ing, suspending, or ignoring those regularities looks, thus, close to a
contradiction.
2
As a rst step to tackle this dilemma, most actors in the contemporary debate
accept a distinction between special and general divine providence, the latter
referring to Gods creating and sustaining of the universe in its being, while the
former referring to Gods direct interventions in nature that would help history
develop in the ways God wants. Special divine providence is a notion aiming at
explaining the claim according to which God not only guides history through
the autonomous activity of nature, but also introduces novelty in nature,
according to His plans.
The second step usually taken in the providential divine action debate is to nd
within contemporary science places in which to locate Gods action. Following the
emergence of an indeterministic account of nature given by the development of
quantum mechanics in the early twentieth century, theologians explored the possi-
bility of an understanding of divine providential action through indeterministic
events. Many argue that such a possibility would rule out any divine intrusion
within the laws of nature, because the very laws of nature show that there are nat-
ural events that are open to several distinct outcomes. In such an image of nature,
God could choose which outcome to bring about, without disrupting any law.
This proposal, however, brings new diculties in the understanding of
providential divine action. A more technical analysis of how God could act in,
for example, quantum events (were they to be undetermined, or without a
sucient cause) shows that God should act as any natural cause, endangering
Gods transcendental status, putting a question mark on the purposefulness of
Gods actions. The root of these problems is, I will argue, the notion of
causality used in the debate, which, although many attempts have been made
to re-consider it, remains unexplained.
The argument I put forth in this volume, then, is simple in essence: the basic
idea is that there are some unexamined assumptions about causality, which lead
to embracing an ultimately inadequate solution and representation of God. The
2Introduction
concepts of causality, and of cause, used in the debate are, so I argue, deter-
ministic. Hence, my argument continues, God depends on the natural order to
act, leading to the conclusion that God acts as natural causes do. To counter
these problems, I propose revisiting Thomas Aquinasdoctrine of primary and
secondary causation and its relation to contingency and indeterminism in the
natural world.
There are, of course, many scholars who remark on Aquinassignicance
to philosophical and theological discussions today, and many would argue
that the study of theology or philosophy in Western culture cannot entirely
avoid his work. Arguably, Aquinas represents the summit of medieval
thought and has profoundly inuenced thinkers of the modern and con-
temporary periods. Contemporary scholars of the stature of Alister
McGrath
3
and Keith Ward
4
count him among the thinkers who must be
consulted in any discussion about God.
There is also great awareness within the context of todays debate on provi-
dential divine action that Aquinasthought could lead to a solution of the big
question. Robert Russell, one of the leading scholars in the discussions, points
to this fact several times when considering alternative proposals to his own. For
example, in the third volume of the Divine Action Project, published in 1995,
Russell enumerates several current approaches to divine action, mentioning
Neo-Thomism among them, together with process theology, uniform action,
and personal agent models.
5
By 2008, Russell arms that as a result of the
conversations two broad metaphysical systems were adopted by scholars parti-
cipating in the debates: process metaphysics and Neo-Thomistic metaphysics,
6
recommending further research on a detailed assessment of the relative merits
of the dierent proposals on divine action, mentioning, among others, the dis-
tinction between primary and secondary causality, two essential notions of
Thomasaccount of causation. Finally, in his latest production in 2018, Russell
dedicates several pages to analysing Aquinas-inspired approaches hoping to nd
bridges and connections between his proposal and those of Thomist philoso-
pher Michael Dodds, OP.
In fact, Michael Dodds is perhaps the better-known Thomist in the debate,
having published extensively, oering Thomistic perspectives on providence
and divine action in relation to the current debate, most prominently in his
2012 volume, Unlocking Divine Action.
7
Aquinasinuence can be easily per-
ceived in William Stoegers writings; Philip Clayton explicitly uses the classi-
cal formulation of causes, arming the necessity of talking about the formal,
material, ecient, and nal cause of Godsactionintheuniverse;
8
and Robert
Russell openly states that Gods creative action supplies the material and
formal causes in nature.
9
Sarah Lane Ritchie also spends much time in study-
ing Aquinas thought in the approaches of numerous contemporary Tho-
mists;
10
and nally, David Fergusson
11
as well as David S. Robinson and
Jennifer Wotochek
12
have recently remarked on the regained momentum in
recent literature of Thomist approaches and the resurgence of classical
accounts of non-competitiveagencies.
Introduction 3
It is not rushed, then, to say that Aquinas is already installed in the con-
temporary debate. Robert Russell suggests that it is necessary to give more focused
attention to making Aquinasmetaphysics explicit, given that it is not clear to
what extent the metaphysical diversity in the debate has enhanced or hindered the
conversations from making further progress.
13
Stressing this idea, Stoeger warned,
back in 2008, that the concept of creatio ex nihilo had not been carefully and ade-
quately engaged in this debate, and that it should be addressed in later research.
14
His main reason was that this notion, essential for Aquinas, provides the funda-
mental basis for properly understanding both Gods universal creative action and
Gods special providential action, a point that I make in the fourth chapter of this
volume. Michael Dodds is so far one of the very few scholars to embark on the
project with an explicit Thomistic perspective, oering a thorough analysis on
how Aquinasthought can be helpful for the debate, with the recent addition of
Mariusz Tabaczeks work on emergence and divine action and Simon Maria
Kopfs work on teleology and contingency in nature.
15
Contemporary scholarship on divine providence dealing with these matters is
currently booming within the current eld of science and religion, and I hope my
project will open new ground for debate. Recent works include David Fergussons
The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach; Alexander JensensDivine Pro-
vidence and Human Agency;KarlGibersons edited volume AbrahamsDice:
Chance and Providence in the Monotheistic Traditions; and Robert Russell and
Joshua Moritzs edited volume Gods Providence and Randomness in Nature:
Scientic and Theological Perspectives.
16
Fergussonsvolumeoers a historical
account of dierent approaches to the doctrine of providence, presenting in his
nal chapter a theological discourse that sets his own dogmatics and practical
theology of providence. Jensens book argues for a theologically Thomistic
account of providence in an open discussion with process theology on the theme of
human freedom in relation to divine providence. Gibersonsvolumeoers an
orderly collection of essays on the dierent historical approaches to providence
and chance that emerged in the monotheistic traditions. Russell and Moritzs
edited volume oers scientic and theological approaches to the issues of natural
randomness and divine providence working through that randomness.
In addition to these treatises on providence, there are several volumes framed
under the terms of divine action. For example, William J. Abrahamsfour-
volume work Divine Agency and Divine Action; Michael DoddsUnlocking
Divine Action: Contemporary Science and Thomas Aquinas; Robert Russell and
Nancey Murphys edited volume Philosophy, Science and Divine Action;Sarah
Lane RitchiesDivine Action and the Human Mind;andJerey Koperskis
Divine Action, Determinism, and the Laws of Nature.
17
Abrahamsworkisan
impressive four-volume project that explores the theological twentieth-century
debate on divine agency (Vol. I, 2017), its historical roots (Vol. II, 2018), oering
his own systematic theological account of divine action (Vol. III, 2019); and pre-
sents his views on God as an agent in nature (Vol. IV, 2021, is perhaps the most
relevant to my study, but was yet to be published while I was nishing writing
these pages). Doddsvolume is probably the most similar to mine, since it
4Introduction
explicitly engages with the current proposals for explaining divine action in light
of contemporary science, oering a Thomistic perspective on the matter. I take
Doddsvolume to be a most accomplished kick-ofor the regained momentum
in recent literature of Thomistic studies on divine providential action.
18
Russell
and Murphys edited volume includes chapters of several renowned scholars in
the science and religion eld. Ritchiesvolumeoers a wonderful panoramic
analysis of dierent approaches to divine action in the world especially through
the human mind, hoping to disengage herself from some other models that locate
Gods involvement in the world through the indeterminacies that creation oers.
Finally, Koperskisworkoers a neo-classical model of divine action, the basic
argument for which being that determinism is an add-on to the laws of nature,
and that these do not restrict the actions of personal agents in the world.
Sarah Lane Ritchie has seen a turn towards what she calls theistic naturalisms
in much of the latest literature on divine providential action, which in essence
seeks to arm a full commitment to the natural scienceswhile emphasising the
role of theology in dening the ontology of nature itself.
19
She describes this
theological turn happening through Thomism, pneumatology, and panentheism.
My work ts, thus, within this turn, since I try, as I will explain in the follow-
ing pages, to move away from contemporary models of divine providential action
that place this action in the causal gapsof nature, suggesting a model in which
nature and God relate at every moment, for which every moment of creation is
the causal joint, to use Austin Farrers foundational expression.
My aims in this work are, perhaps, modest in comparison to many of these
volumes, though they are still ambitious in attempting to oer a sound model
for divine providential action following the teachings of Thomas Aquinas.
Analysing the theological turnin divine action models, Ritchie has valued
Thomistic approaches to providential divine action as something of a gold
standard, because these approaches emphasise the fact that nature [is] always
in intimate connection to, and dependence on, Godand hence, both God and
natural processes are fully responsible for all natural events.
20
Aquinas is ada-
mant in this respect: natural things do not produce their eects unless for the
divine power.
21
This simple statement encloses all his metaphysics of provi-
dence: God is present with his power within every natural happening and every
natural process. Still, this simple statement also brings about rightful questions:
what does it mean to say that natural things produce their eects because of
divine power? How do we understand that natural things cause their eects
because they are created causes and as such receive their powers from God? Or
is it that God produces each natural eect without any input from natural
causes? Or is it both, God and the natural causes that produce, together, the
eect? Does God have to act so natural things can cause? Can God, in the end,
act in nature at all if natural things are acting?
I will attempt to answer these questions expanding on the following ideas. For
Aquinas, God causes creatures to exist in such a way that they are the real causes
of their own operations. Still, God is at work in every operation of nature.
Divine causality and creaturely causality, for Aquinas, function at fundamentally
Introduction 5
dierent levels. Gods causality is that of creation, while creatures causation is
that of natural change. Thus, Aquinas understands that these two dierent causes
(God and creatures) dier radically: God is the complete cause of the whole
reality of whatever is and yet in the created world there is a rich array of real
secondary causes. Indeed, following his understanding of creation out of nothing,
Aquinas arms the integrity and relative autonomy of the physical world and the
adequacy of the natural sciences to describe this world. Especially in his exposi-
tion of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo, Aquinas sought to arm the radical and
continuous dependence of all things upon God as their cause and that this
dependence is fully compatible with the discovery of causes in nature. Gods
omnipotence, Aquinas explains, does not challenge the possibility of real caus-
ality for creatures, thus rejecting any notion of divine withdrawal from the world
so as to leave room for the actions of creatures. In fact, Aquinas does not think
that God merely allows or permits creatures to behave the way they do. More-
over, creation out of nothing does not mean only that God creates being and
allows secondary causes to provide the particular determinations of individual
beings. Creatures are what they are, precisely because God is constantly present
to them as the cause of their being and their actions. Thus, Aquinas arms that
the same eect is not attributed to a natural cause and to divine power in
such a way that it is partly done by God, and partly by the natural ecient
cause; rather, it is wholly done by both, according to a dierent way, just
as the same eect is wholly attributed to the instrument and also wholly to
the principal agent.
22
Were God to withdraw, all that exists would cease to be. Hence, the autonomy
of nature is guaranteed by Gods creative continuous causality.
B Volume structure
A word on my use of words in the title might be required, in particular of the term
metaphysics. Readers acquainted with Aquinasphilosophy and in particular
with how Thomism has framed Aquinasthought in the centuries between him
and us, might be puzzled by my saying that I should use the term metaphysicsfor
referring to Aquinasconsiderations on natural causes: these doctrines are tradi-
tionally termed under the label of philosophy of nature. Something similar might
happen with readers expecting a theological discourse on the doctrine of provi-
dence, which is not usually termed as a metaphysical doctrine. In a nutshell,
todays treatises and discourses about causality tend to be labelled as metaphysical
discourses, and as such I simply adopt this trend. I nd no need to attach myself to
a language that is no longer in use in wider academic circles, such as that of phi-
losophy of nature, when even Aquinas made little use of it.
23
In fact, the notion of
cause as such is for Aquinas a notion that lies at the boundaries between his phi-
losophy of nature and his metaphysics, and in this sense, I am being faithful to
Aquinasthought. Regarding the notion of providence, I see it as a notion that
6Introduction
lies between metaphysics as Aquinas understood it, i.e., as the discipline seeking
the knowledge of the rst cause namely, God and theology, i.e., the discipline
that attempts to gain knowledge of the God following divine Revelation. Hence, I
am only considering providence in the rst sense, as a metaphysical notion. I thus
present in the pages to come a metaphysics of providence that is grounded in a
metaphysics of natural causation.
I begin my argument by seeking for criteria to assess providential divine
action models in what I like to call a historical dig or excavation. Thus, in the
rst chapter, Digging for criteria, I present a brief metaphysical history of
divine providence, considering four dierent episodes in the history of Western
intellectual thought that oer models of divine providence. The episodes start in
medieval Islam and Christianity, passing through early modern Europe and the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, arriving to the current debate. This
historical preliminary study reaches four dierent criteria, or better desiderata,
that inform the debates and that, I argue, can serve to assess the contemporary
(and future) models of providential divine action and natural contingency. My
point is that these historical episodes, even if distant in time from each other, are
shaped by these metaphysical options or principles: 1) Godsomnipotence;2)
Gods involvement in the workings of nature; 3) the autonomy of nature; and 4)
the success of natural reason and science. I show in this metaphysical history that
thinkers through these episodes struggled to put together these four desiderata in
their respective models of divine providence, having to juggle with them in their
respective models of divine providence, suggesting that Aquinasmodel manages
to hold the four of them.
In the second chapter, Science and providence today, I present the fundamental
notions of the debate surrounding providence and science, such as general divine
action, special divine action, and explore the basic features of contingency, inde-
terminism, chance, and randomness. I address how these concepts are used to
argue for divine providence through the workings of the created indeterminate
order. To show why I think the debate is ill-formulated, I exemplify the main ideas
guiding it by focusing on Robert Russells model of quantum divine action, but
also referring to John Polkinghornes ideas on chaos theory and divine action and
Jerey Koperskis considerations of the laws of nature in relation to Godsprovi-
dential action in the world. I will, thus, examine the philosophical and theological
assumptions on causality and God that inform current discussions on divine pro-
vidence, the major assumption being that the notion of causality is identied with
that of determinism, a move that ultimately implies understanding divine causality
as natural causality, locating Gods causation among created causes, a wholly
undesirable conclusion.
In the third chapter, A metaphysics of natural contingency, I start my main
argument bringing in Aquinasmetaphysical thought on nature in full display,
investigating how natural causality works for Aquinas and providing a new and
fresh assessment of his account of the classical four causes of the natural world:
material, formal, ecient, and nal. This analysis will show that the essential
notion in the denition of cause is that of dependence. This denition allows
Introduction 7
Aquinas to speak of contingent causes (which can be scientically described in
indeterministic or random terms) in the causing of their eects, a feature that is
tightly tied with the fact that natural ecient causes fail at times in their producing
of their eects. I suggest, then, understanding divine providence using this broader
notion of causality as that upon which something depends.
I continue with my deep dive into Aquinasmetaphysics in the fourth chapter,
A metaphysics of Gods providence, in which I present how Aquinas sought to
arm the radical and continuous dependence of all things upon God as their
cause. The chapter rst focuses on Aquinasdoctrine of God as pure being, in
order to pave the way for his exposition of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo,from
which his metaphysical doctrine of providence springs. Following Aquinas, I
argue that complete dependence of creatures upon God is fully compatible with
the discovery of real causes in nature. Thus, one can argue for a God who,
without disrupting the order of natural causes, governs providentially the devel-
opment of the universe acting in and through these created causes. The reader
will nd that the explanations in these two chapters are heavily based on a
widespread reading of Aquinaswhole work, and not only on the loci classici of
both his summae. The benet of this method will be a return to Aquinas, rather
than an exposition of an Aquinas-inspired Thomism, which is, as I argue by the
end of the volume, the root of many misconceptions regarding his thought.
In the nal chapter, Thomas Aquinas today, I argue that Aquinas oers the
metaphysical principles for a solution to the questions raised by the current debate
on divine providential action. On the one hand, Aquinasaccount of nature is not
totally and absolutely deterministic, allowing, for instance, for a re-interpretation
of Heisenbergs understanding of quantum mechanics, which lies at the heart of
many models of divine providential action today. On the other hand, given Aqui-
nasaccountofGods causality of every event in nature, God can be said person-
ally to be the cause of the particular and individual ways in which creatures cause.
My concluding remarks will be dedicated to addressing some objections to
Aquinasideas today and to how recent work in science and religion has
engaged creatively with his thought. I hope to arrive at the conclusion that,
given Aquinasunderstanding of natural and divine causality, a plausible
description of divine providential action in nature is possible, without it being
against natural causality.
Acknowledgements
Much of what is included in this volume has been in my mind for over a
decade, starting with a doctorate at the University of Oxford, for which I owe
my rst token of gratitude to my two supervisors Peter Harrison and William
Carroll, both of whom encouraged me from the very early stages of my
research. A special thank you must also go to Andrew Pinsent and Alister
McGrath, who welcomed me at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Reli-
gion after my doctorate for over seven years. Their continuous encouragement
and support cannot be overstated.
8Introduction
The pages that follow draw much on some of my previous published work:
Divine Action and Thomism: Why Thomas Aquinass Thought is Attractive
TodayActa Philosophica 25:1 (2016), 6583; A Cause Among Causes. God
Acting in the Natural WorldEuropean Journal for the Philosophy of Religion 7:4
(2015), 99114; Providence, Contingency, and the Perfection of the UniversePhi-
losophy, Theology and the Sciences 2:2 (2015), 137157; Revisiting Aquinas on
Providence and Rising to the Challenge of Divine Action in NatureThe Journal of
Religion 94:3 (2014), 277291; Great Minds Think (Almost) Alike. Thomas
Aquinas and Alvin Plantinga on Divine Action in NaturePhilosophia Reformata
79 (2014), 820; Werner Heisenberg and Thomas Aquinas on Natural Inde-
terminismNew Blackfriars 94 (2013), 635653; John Polkinghorne on Divine
Action: A Coherent Theological Evolution,Science and Christian Belief 24:1
(2012), 1930; and Thomas Aquinas Holds Fast: Objections to Aquinas within
TodaysDebateonDivineActionThe Heythrop Journal 54:4 (2011), 658667.
The nal write-up of this book was made possible by a grant from the John
Templeton Foundation (ID 61030) at the Philosophy Institute of Universidad
Austral (Argentina), where I worked along with skilled philosophers who sup-
ported me and endured along the process: Juan Francisco Franck, Claudia Vanney,
and Mariano Asla. Several scholars have throughout the years helped me clarify
and better my thoughts. An unjust and incomplete list must include, in no parti-
cular order, John H. Brooke, Alex Arnold, Michael Dodds, Robert Russell, Julia
and Andrew Meszaros, Simon Kopf, Tim Pawl, Michael and Emily Burdett,
Gonzalo Recio, Thomas Oord, Agustín Echavarría, Craig Boyd, Jeroen de Ridder,
Mark Harris, and Andrea Sangiacomo. Those who rst introduced me to the study
of Aquinasmetaphysics in Argentina should also receive my gratitude: Oscar
Beltrán, Olga Larre, Héctor Delbosco, Juan Pablo Roldán, and the late Juan
Roberto Courrèges. Needless to say, the shortcomings in my arguments are only
due to my lack of skill, while most of the successes come from their advice.
Perhaps the most important expression of gratitude should go to Thomas
Aquinas himself, who reached the heights of divine metaphysics and continues
to illuminate us today, driving at least my thoughts to God. Finally, my most
particular thank you goes to my loving wife, Agustina, and our joyful and ever
hopping children, Felicitas and Joaquín, through whom I daily discover in my
life the tender care of Gods providence.
Notes
1Ellis, George, Necessity, Purpose and Chance, in Robert Russell and Joshua M.
Moritz (eds), Gods Providence and Randomness in Nature (West Conshohocken,
PA: Templeton Press, 2018), 2167, 23.
2Wildman, Wesley J., The Divine Action Project, 19882003,Theology and Science
2:1 (2004), 3175, 38.
3McGrath, Alister (ed.), Theology: The Basic Readings (Malden, MA and Oxford:
Blackwell, 2008), 31: [The Summa Theologica, Thomaswork] is widely regarded as
the landmark in Christian Theology, and is one of the most widely used and widely
cited theological sources.
Introduction 9
4Ward, Keith, The Big Questions in Science and Religion (West Conshohocken, PA:
Templeton Press, 2008), discusses his views on God, creation, divine causality, the
soul, etc, in contrast with those of Aquinas.
5Russell, Robert, Introduction, in Robert Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur
Peacocke (eds), Chaos and Complexity: Scientic Perspectives on Divine Action
(Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory CTNS, 1995), 7.
6Russell, Robert, Challenges and Progress in Theology and Science: An Overview of
the VO/CTNS Series, in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and William R.
Stoeger (eds), Scientic Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City and Berkeley, CA:
Vatican Observatory CTNS, 2008), 356, 20 and 36.
7Most prominently, Michael Dodds has published Unlocking Divine Action. Contemporary
Science and Thomas Aquinas (Washington DC: CUA Press, 2012).
8Clayton, Philip, Natural Law and Divine Action: The Search for an Expanded
Theory of Causation,Zygon 39:3 (2004), 615636, 631.
9Russell, Robert, Quantum Physics and the Theology of Non-Interventionist Objective
Divine Action, in Philip Clayton (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science
(Oxford: OUP, 2006), 579595, 586.
10 Ritchie, Sarah Lane, Divine Action and the Human Mind (Cambridge: CUP, 2019),
Chapter 7 in particular.
11 Fergusson, David, The Providence of God: A Polyphonic Approach (Cambridge:
CUP, 2018), 255.
12 Robinson, David and Jennifer Wotochek, Kenotic Theologies and the Challenge of
the Anthropocene: From Deep Incarnation to Interspecies Encounter,Studies in
Christian Ethics (2020), 114, 5.
13 Russell, Challenges and Progress, 23.
14 Stoeger, William, SJ, Conceiving Divine Action in a Dynamic Universe, in Robert
John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and William R. Stoeger (eds), Scientic Perspectives
on Divine Action. Twenty Years of Challenge and Progress (Vatican City and Ber-
keley, CA: Vatican Observatory CTNS, 2008), 225247, 226.
15 See Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action; Tabaczek, Mariusz, Divine Action and Emer-
gence: An Alternative to Panentheism (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame Press, 2021);
Kopf, Simon Maria, Divine Providence and Natural Contingency: New Perspectives
from Aquinas on the Divine Action Debate, DPhil Thesis, University of Oxford,
2019. Michael Heller also comments on how important it is to look at Aquinas. He
does it, however, in a rather condensed way compared with the amount of time he
oers to contemporary science. See his Generalizations: from Quantum Mechanics
to God, in Robert J. Russell, Philip Clayton, Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John
Polkinghorne (eds), Quantum Mechanics. Scientic Perspectives on Divine Action
(Vatican City and Berkeley, CA: Vatican Observatory CTNS, 2001), 191210.
16 Fergusson, The Providence of God; Jensen, Alexander, Divine Providence and
Human Agency (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014); Giberson, Karl, Abrahams Dice:
Chance and Providence in the Monotheistic Traditions (Oxford: OUP, 2016); and
Russell and Moritz, Gods Providence.
17 Abraham, William J., Divine Agency and Divine Action (Oxford: OUP, 201721, in
four volumes); Dodds, Unlocking Divine Action; Russell, Robert and Nancey
Murphy, Philosophy, Science and Divine Action (Leiden: Brill, 2009); Ritchie, Sarah
Lane, Divine Action and the Human Mind; and Koperski, Jerey, Divine Action,
Determinism, and the Laws of Nature (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020).
18 See Fergusson, The Providence of God, 225.
19 Ritchie, Sarah Lane, Dancing Around the Causal Joint: Challenging the Theological
Turn in Divine Action Theories,Zygon 52:2 (2017), 361379, 367.
20 Ritchie, Divine Action, 344.
21 SCG III, c. 70.
22 SCG III, c. 70.
10 Introduction
23 Aquinas did make use of the term natural philosophy. Still, a simple search in the
Corpus Thomisticum for the terms philosoph* naturaegives no relevant result.
Only when one searches for philosoph* natural*one gets results referring to
something similar to what contemporary Thomists term philosophy of nature.
Aquinas uses this term about 40 times, less than half the times he uses the term
metaphysicsin all his works.
Introduction 11
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... Some argue that it is incoherent(Oppy 2014, 285-286), that it leads to the problem of causal overdetermination(Leidenhag 2019, 923-924), or that it unnecessarily magnifies the problem of evil(Abraham 2017, 179- 185). For exposition and defense of this theory in the context of science-religion debates, see, e.g.,Dodds (2012),Tabaczek (2016),Silva (2021). ...
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The world's major monotheistic religions share the view that God acts in the world. This Element discusses the nature of divine action, with a specific focus on miracles or 'special' divine acts. Miracles are sometimes considered problematic. Some argue that they are theologically untenable or that they violate the laws of nature. Others claim that even if miracles occur, it is never rational to believe in them based on testimony. Still others maintain that miracles are not within the scope of historical investigation. After addressing these objections, the author examines the function of miracles as 'signs' in the New Testament.
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In this book, Mariusz Tabaczek develops a contemporary, re-imagined proposal of an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective on theistic evolution. Deeply rooted in classical philosophy and theology, the volume combines careful textual analysis of ancient, medieval, and contemporary literature with innovative, original, and constructive argumentation and modelling. Tabaczek offers a wide-ranging set of arguments on behalf of those who advocate for the relevance of classical philosophical and theological thought in the context of contemporary science and the dialogue between science and religion. Avoiding simplistic answers to complex questions concerning the origin of species, including the human species, his book inspires critical thinking and a systematic approach to all major philosophical presuppositions and both philosophical and theological repercussions of the theory of evolution. Without contradicting or abandoning the letter of the tradition, Tabaczek echoes the spirit of Aristotle's and Aquinas's philosophy and theology, moving them forward to embrace the evolutionary aspect of the contemporary view of reality.
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The doctrine of providence, which states that God guides his creation, has been widely conceived in action terms in recent theological scholarship. A telling example is the so-called divine action debate, which is largely based on two principles: (i) providence is best conceptualised in terms of divine action; and (ii) divine action is best modelled on human action. By examining this debate, and especially the Divine Action Project (1988–2003), which led to the ‘scientific turn’ of the debate, this book argues that theo-physical incompatibilism, as a corollary of this ‘framing’ of providence, can be identified as a main reason for the current deadlock in divine action theories—namely, the assumption that just as human (libertarian) free action presupposes causal indeterminism, so, too, does divine action in the world presuppose causal indeterminism. Instead of recalibrating the much-discussed non-interventionist objective divine action (NIODA) approaches, this book advocates a ‘reframing’ of providence in terms of the virtue of prudence. To this end, this book examines the ‘prudential-ordinative’ theory of Thomas Aquinas and contrasts it with the prevalent ‘actionistic’, or action-based, model of providence. In this process, the book discusses, among other topics, the doctrine of divine transcendence, primary and secondary causation, natural necessity and contingency, and teleology as essential features of this ‘prudential-ordinative’ theory. How these two approaches fare when applied to the question of biological evolution is the subject of the final part of this book, which revisits the controversy between Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris over what would happen if one were to rerun the tape of life.
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DIVINE ACTION, DETERMINISM, AND THE LAWS OF NATURE by Jeffrey Koperski. New York: Routledge, 2020. 168 pages. Hardcover; $160.00. ISBN: 9780367139001. Ebook; open access. *When it comes to talking about God's action in the world and laws of nature in the science classes I teach, my students sometimes wonder if God, violating the very laws he created, is a problem. Jeffrey Koperski has written a book for those students and for you, too! You can see that Koperski is a teacher well experienced with explaining philosophical ideas to students majoring in anything but philosophy (who form the bulk of our philosophy teaching). This makes his new book a very accessible and enjoyable read. Moreover, no matter your background, you are likely to learn something new reading this book, perhaps even about your favored approach to divine action in the world. *Koperski is right to point out that philosophy of science--particularly philosophy of physics--is missing from most divine action discussions. If it enters at all, philosophy of science makes only cursory contributions. He is also right to observe that the causal closure of the physical, or of nature as a whole, gets too little attention in the divine action literature despite the outsized role it plays. Koperski ably shows why neither causal closure nor determinism are genuine obstacles to divine action in the world. Philosophy of science allows Koperski to clear a lot of this dead brush from the ground of divine action literature. This is an important contribution to the discussions. *Koperski helps us think more accurately about laws of nature (full disclosure: he and I have talked about these issues and tread a lot of the same ground). The assumption or metaphor of laws as "governing" events in nature has been accepted as largely unanalyzed in the divine action literature. Though he rarely uses this language, Koperski shows why the metaphor of laws "governing" things does not stand up to close analysis. He endorses a view of laws functioning as constraints that enables us to think more clearly about how God can act in the world without violating laws. *Koperski describes his model for divine action as decretalist and nonviolationist. The laws that scientists deal with represent divine decrees--gifts of order and constraint to creation. The regularities of creation genuinely exist and genuinely act. Koperski captures a biblical view of God's relationship to creation; he also considers natural philosophers' critical thinking about laws in the seventeenth century. *As for nonviolationism, Koperski points out that laws--the nomic conditions or features of the world--do not make things go (no "governing" metaphor). Rather, as physicists have recognized, it is forces that make things move. What laws do is provide nomic constraints on the behavior of forces (p. 134). His model is nonviolationist in that these laws are not violated when God acts in nature; rather, when there are nonnomic changes, "the laws adapt to change. This was true when we thought that nature was Newtonian, and it remains true in the age of quantum mechanics and relativity" (p. 135). Koperski's account is consistent with what I think physics reveals to us about the laws of nature--they function as typicality conditions: A law tells us what to expect for the behavior of forces on a system typical for the constraints represented by the law. But when new factors or conditions are introduced, the law does not tell us what to expect. The typicality is shattered, but not the law. Yet, this does not distress physicists; we know how to model and calculate what happens with these additional factors that the original law did not cover. *Consider a simple example: A grandfather clock keeps time well because of the lawlike regularities involved in its functioning. Yet, if I use my finger to keep the minute hand from moving forward, the clock will cease keeping time accurately. No laws have been violated; however, a genuine physical change has taken place regarding the clock's functioning. The regularities are still there--the laws are still operative--but they adapt to the presence of a new effect or force introduced into the clock system. What this means is that "once the laws of nature are distinguished from the behavior that is the result of those laws and nonnomic conditions, we find a vast space of contingency in which God can act" (p. 135). Koperski calls this a "neoclassical model of special divine action" (p. 135) because God is not manipulating laws to act in the world. If humans can make genuine nonnomic changes to nature without violating laws (e.g., rockets that overcome gravity's pull), clearly God is able to. The question then becomes one of God's relationship to the contingent order he has given creation. *You may be thinking of possible objections to this account of divine action. Koperski discusses several and I recommend you read what he has to say about them. I will briefly discuss what seem to be the most serious--that is, possible violations of energy conservation. There are many reasons to think that conservation laws function as constraints on systems when particular conditions hold. For instance, as Koperski points out, according to general relativity, energy conservation does not apply to an expanding universe. In a dynamic spacetime, the motion of objects does not conserve energy. More generally, any system whose dynamics depend on time will fail to conserve energy, and there are lots of such systems in the actual world. Physicists have precise ways of quantifying how much a system violates energy conservation and describing the resulting order of the system in question. The idea that any system violating energy conservation can always be embedded into a larger system restoring conservation is just that--an idea and nothing more. Physicists do not have any good reasons supporting this idea (though some defend it to maintain their reductionist intuitions). There is plenty of opportunity for divine action in the world and energy conservation is never an issue. *One could sweat some details. For example, Koperski rehearses arguments to the effect that quantum processes suppress chaos, thus undercutting the amplification of small quantum changes to macroworld effects (pp. 52-53). While it is true that quantum mechanics is no friend of chaos, the amplification argument is more along the lines of a chaotic macroscopic system being sensitive to quantum fluctuations; this doesn't depend on the existence of so-called quantum chaos. There always are stringent constraints on such amplification, however; so, Koperski is correct that banking on this as a route for divine action is still a hopeless cause. And I am not convinced that physics and philosophy of science are pointing toward an eventual rejection of ontological randomness in quantum mechanics (pp. 60-63). Irreducible randomness is not lawless chaos; it is a form of order that God has given to creation even if it offends the deterministic intuitions of some physicists and philosophers. None of Koperski's account stands or falls with these quibbles. *I would like to see Koperski's account enriched with the doctrine of creation, such as in Understanding Scientific Theories of Origins: Cosmology, Geology and Biology in Christian Perspective, Robert C. Bishop et al. (IVP Academic, 2018). His discussion in sec. 4.2 suggests that seventeenth-century natural philosophers eventually ditched all forms of divine-mediated action for direct or unmediated divine action as embodied in the laws of nature (the discussion is a little oversimplified, but this is a short book). This amounts to treating the laws of nature as the main mediators of all that happens in creation (back to the "governing" metaphor). In contrast, the doctrine of creation's emphasis on multiple forms of divine-mediated action helps to address the divine relationship to creation in which God is working in and through nature, not outside and apart from it. This is exactly what Koperski's account needs for some of the questions he entertains at the end of the book and for some he leaves unanswered (e.g., why one does not have to restrict divine concurrence to Thomist models only). *Reviewed by Robert C. Bishop, Department of Physics and Engineering, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL 60187.
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This book is a revised and expanded edition of three lectures delivered by the author at Wake Forest University in 1979. Long out of print, in its new edition it should be a valuable resource for scholars and teachers of the philosophy of religion. The first two lectures, after a critique of the incompleteness of St. Thomas Aquinas's famous Five Ways of arguing for the existence of God, explore lesser-known resources of Aquinas's philosophical ascent of the mind to God: the unrestricted dynamism of the human spirit as it reaches toward the fullness of being, and the strictly metaphysical ascent to God from finite to infinite, in the line of Aquinas's later, more Neoplatonically inspired, metaphysics of participation. The third, and most heavily revised, lecture is a critique of Whitehead's process philosophy, distinguishing Aquinas more sharply and critically from Whitehead than in the first edition.
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To understand the roots of the early modern ancestor to our concept of laws of nature, this chapter examines the conceptual problem space from which Descartes’s distinctive characterization of his laws of motion as laws of nature grew. Descartes’s three laws of motion are 1) universal, 2) causal, and 3) determinative of all regularities in nature without exception. Aristotelian predecessors lay the metaphysical groundwork for 1) and 2) by incorporating Neoplatonic/Stoic commitments to a prior universal nature that manifests itself as an underlying fate/causal order governing all natural chains of causation. And Sebastian Basso’s reification of the ‘universal nature’ as the World Soul/ether gives him a concrete causal agent which executes the proportions or laws of motion in the divine mind through one universal local motion by means of direct contact with the passive material atoms. Hence Basso’s concept of a law of nature, like Descartes’s, encompasses 1), 2), and 3).
Article
This article analyses Aquinas's conception of divine impeccability, and replies to some contemporary objections to this view. The first three sections show that for Aquinas the proposition that expresses God's impeccability is necessary de re , since God's moral goodness is grounded in His ontological goodness. The fourth section presents the connection between God's will and God's power and explains the sense of Aquinas's claim that God cannot sin because He cannot will to sin. The last three sections address the objections based on the apparent incompatibility between omnipotence and impeccability, and between impeccability, free will, and praiseworthiness.