A Classification of Theories of Divine Action

We give a brief summary of each theory.The best way to compare them in detail is to ask - what, for each theory, is ‘the causal joint’ at which God - as a transcendent, immaterial world cause - interacts particularly with causative factors in the material world?

i) sceptical naturalism - Willem B Drees has surveyed the field with characteristic insight,but is reluctant to speak of particular divine action because this might seem to undermine the adequacy of naturalistic explanations, to which he is committed. For different reasons Bultmann and his school also insisted on the adequacy of the scientific description of events,as do non-realist theologians such as Don Cupitt. Drees’ view of the causal-joint question would be that to search for an extra ingredient at a causal joint is to neglect the self-sufficiency of naturalistic accounts, one of the premises he sets out so clearly at the beginning of Religion, Science and Naturalism.

ii) general providential action without particular gaps in the causal order - espoused by Gordon Kaufman in his God the Problem (1972)and even more radically by Maurice Wiles in God’s Action in the World (1986).Kaufman and Wiles both reject descriptions of divine action as particular to individual situations. God’s relation is to the-world-as-a-whole, and history-as-a-whole, the relation of creating and sustaining the cosmos from moment to moment. There is no particular causal joint, only the overall creator-creature relation. As Tracy points out, this is essentially to subsume providence into creation, and pays a heavy theological price in so doing.

iii) particular providential action without gaps in the causal order - in different ways this is proposed by

• neo-Thomists, such as Austin Farrer, [see neo-Thomist views of divine action]

• those strongly committed to the image of the cosmos as the body of God [see body-of-God theories of divine action]

• Arthur Peacocke with his concept of ‘top-down’ or ‘whole-part’ causation [see Peacocke’s view of divine action].

iv) particular providential action employing particular gaps in the causal order. Again there are three camps here

• John Polkinghorne, locating the relevant ‘gap’ as being the one offered (supposedly) by non-linear systems such as give rise to the phenomenon of chaos [see Polkinghorne’s view of divine action],

• those such as George Ellis, Nancey Murphy, Robert Russell and Thomas Tracy who follow a suggestion of Pollard’s that quantum theory offers the pertinent gaps [see quantum-based proposals on divine action]

• process theologians who postulate that the course of development of every entity is particularly exposed to the divine persuasion in a way which is outside the descriptions of science [see process models of divine action].

Email link | Feedback | Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate
Source: God, Humanity and the Cosmos  (T&T Clark, 1999)