I believe we can construct a new view of special providence
which holds both that God acts in the world objectively, and yet
that such action is not by intervening in or suspending the laws
of nature. I call this idea "non-interventionist objective
special divine action". Much of the current discussion in
the field of theology and science regarding divine action now
turns on this possibility.
The approach which I will take
depends on recent developments in both philosophy and science.
I cannot explore the philosophical arguments here, since that
would take us considerably afield in this short article.I will, however, suggest how quantum mechanics contributes to
the approach by changing our views of causality in nature. There
are even some very remarkable implications for the ‘creation
/ evolution’ debate which I will hint at here.
In the mid 1980s, I began to explore the implications of quantum
physics, and particularly Bell’s theorem, for the doctrines
of creation and providence. "From a theological perspective
we can add to the view that God creates the universe through chance
and law the claim that the order God is creating is in some sense
the order of quantum chaos. Rather than saying the God creates
order in place of (i.e., out of) chaos, from a quantum perspective
we could say that one way God creates order is through creating
the properties of chaos." This is continuous creation
indeed!
It is precisely this classical world in which God can act (without intervening) in specific events, if we recognize that the classical world is not an irreducible given but a result of the quantum world. Thus the laws which describe the classical world are approximations to the laws of quantum mechanics which describe how the classical world, with its Newtonian regularity, arises directly out of the quantum world, with its two kinds of statistics. If I adopt the interpretation that these quantum statistics reflect ontological indeterminism, then I may argue that God can act together with nature to bring about all events at the quantum level, and that these events give rise to the classical world.
What about a specific event in the classical world, one which would fall under the category of objective non-interventionist divine action? Here the response is that God acts in a particular quantum event which has the potential for a macroscopic effect within the ongoing macroscopic world. God acts in all quantum events, but in some cases the effect `matter’ in the classical world more than others. It turns out that there is a tremendously important case in which this kind of understanding of non-interventionist objective special providence is of critical importance, and it is precisely where the critics of Christianity have been the most vocal: neo-Darwinian evolution!
If the thesis is sustained, it can turn defeat into victory.
One of the key reasons for the rejection of Christianity by its
highly vocal critics is the charge that genetic variation is `blind’
and thus an anethma to God’s purposes. My argument reinterprets
genetic variation as essential for a non-interventionist special
divine action in nature; God acts in evolution precisely because
of and within genetic variation. Moreover, it undermines the declared
reason for scientific creationism, since there is now no reason
to seek to replace "atheistic" science by what is in
reality religious pseudo-science. Instead we can give a robust
Christian interpretation of science, showing that it is not science
per se but its atheistic interpretation that is the real challenge
for Christians. This move would also enable us theologically
to extend the domain of God’s special providence beyond
human history to include the biosphere out of whose several billion
years of evolution we have emerged.
A number of important challenges and criticisms arise immediately, and must be met fairly. Here I can only cite them briefly:
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