Download Divine Agency, Modern Physics, and the Autonomy of Nature

Divine Agency, Modern Physics, and the Autonomy of Nature1
William E. Carroll
Thomas Aquinas Fellow in Theology and Science, Blackfriars
University of Oxford
Gonzaga University
18 April 2007
During the past fifteen years the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and the
Natural Sciences in Berkeley, California sponsored a series of conferences on what they called
"scientific perspectives on divine action," which resulted in the publication of five impressive
volumes2, with a sixth, retrospective volume, to appear soon. The scientific subjects of these
books ranged from quantum mechanics and quantum cosmology to chaos theory, evolutionary
biology, and the neurosciences. What emerged as a major theme in the contributions of many of
the scholars in these volumes is how contemporary science points to a kind of metaphysical
space which can allow for divine agency in the world.3 Thus, for example, the fascination with
quantum mechanics and chaos theory, since each has been viewed as providing a kind of
metaphysical indeterminacy needed to provide an arena in which God can act without somehow
interfering with the laws of nature. Another feature of many of the essays in these volumes is the
view that contemporary science lends support to a process theology which challenges traditional
notions of divine omnipotence, immutability, and a-temporality.
Divine agency is crucial for believers since, not only has God caused all that is to be at
the very beginning of time, the universe depends on God's continuing creative act at every
moment of it existence. Furthermore, God is providential: He guides and directs the universe
towards the fulfilling of the purposes He has established. In addition to such a "general
providence," God acts in particular and special ways, either in history or in individual lives. For
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many theologians there is a real urgency in seeking to understand divine agency in the context of
what the natural sciences tell us about the world; the task is especially important since, according
to these theologians, modern science -- that is, science since the seventeenth century -- has
presented theology with a tremendous challenge: to find a place for God in a universe
increasingly susceptible to explanation in scientific terms. A widely accepted view is that, with
the rise of modern science, God has increasingly been pushed to the margins. A German
chemist, Heinrich Caro, writing at the end of the 19th century, remarked: “Science has conducted
God to its frontiers, thanking him for his provisional services.”4
What many theologians find so fascinating with contemporary science is a view of the
universe fundamentally different from a causally closed system operating according to the
prescriptions of Newtonian mechanics. So long as the universe was seen in deterministic
Newtonian terms, it was easy, so such an interpretation suggests, either to see God as interfering
with the laws of nature or to limit divine action to an initial act of creation.
Even the notion of God’s continual causing of the existence of things was thought to be
challenged by the principle of inertia, which seemed to entail the view that the universe was selfsufficient and thus required no appeal outside of itself, once it existed, to account for all motion
and change.5 Wolfhart Pannenberg, for example, claims that the acceptance of the principle of
inertia in the seventeenth century represents not only a radical break in the history of science6 but
also posed a fundamental problem for the Christian doctrine of creation. According to
Pannenberg, the principle of inertia lies behind the denial of the radical contingency of the world,
a contingency central to the doctrine of creation: "The emancipation from the creator God
entailed in the principle of inertia did not apply only to natural bodies and beings. . . . Even more
serious was the consequence that the system of the natural universe had to be conceived now as
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an interplay between finite bodies and forces without further need for recourse to God."7
For Pannenberg and others, the deterministic view of the universe, made famous by
Pierre Laplace (1749-1827),8 has been overturned by quantum indeterminism, and, as a result,
God could be thought of as acting at the quantum level. The most widely accepted interpretation
of quantum mechanics affirms that "indeterminism is a universal feature of the microworld,"9
and that "the probabilistic structure in quantum theory entails [a] radical departure from the
philosophical position of classical physics."10 "When science employs quantum mechanics and
philosophy points to ontological indeterminism, faith sees God's acting in and with nature to
create the future." [Russell, 205] In an important sense, God's action, so conceived, is not an
intervention in nature, since nature is fundamentally indeterministic. Robert Russell, Director of
the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at Berkeley, finds such "non-interventionist
divine action" attractive because he thinks it is a way of maintaining continuing divine agency
without sacrificing the integrity of nature.11 Writing in the recently published Oxford Handbook
of Religion and Science (2006), Russell notes the importance of what he terms NIODA [Noninterventionist objective divine action], the thesis that "God acts objectively and directly in and
through (mediated by) quantum events to actualize one of several potential outcomes; in short,
the collapse of the wave function occurs because of divine and natural causality working together
even while God's action remains ontologically different from divine agency." (586) The
universe which God creates is such that "some natural processes at the quantum level are
insufficiently determined by prior natural events." As a result, God's action is required to bring
about the quantum event.
Another contemporary theologian who has written extensively on what he considers to be
the positive theological implications of quantum mechanics is: Thomas Tracey. Tracey says that
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we should think of special divine action -- that is, the production of particular events in the world
as "the providential determination of otherwise undetermined events." God’s "governance at the
quantum level consists in activating or actualizing one or another of the quantum entity’s innate
powers at particular instants." God's action is pervasive in its effects on the world's structure, but
it remains hidden within that structure. God's action takes the form of realizing one of several
potentials in the quantum system: God does not manipulate subatomic particles as though He
were some type of physical force. Although God acts, He does not interfere.12
In the midst of considerable enthusiasm for the theological implications of quantum
mechanics, we need to remember that the philosophical interpretations which embrace an
ontological indeterminacy are just that -- philosophical interpretations, which continue to be the
subject of lively debate. What is evident, however, is the urgency which many thinkers claim is
needed in addressing the question of divine agency and modern science: to find adequate ways to
account for God's activity in the world without denying the appropriate autonomy of natural
processes nor reducing what we mean by God's activity merely to the subjective religious
experience of believers. One scholar who has written extensively on this topic, Philip Clayton,
thinks that how to understand divine agency ought to be at the center of contemporary
theological reflection. As he puts it: how can we attribute events to the causal activity of God
when science appears to be able fully to explain what happens in the world?
John Polkinghorne, although critical of the appeal to quantum indeterminacy as a way to
make room for divine action in the world, does think that contemporary chaos theory offers a
fruitful avenue for theological reflection. "The most obvious thing to say about chaotic systems
is that they are intrinsically unpredictable. Their exquisite sensitivity [to slight changes in initial
conditions] means that we can never know enough to be able to predict with any long-term
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reliability how they will behave." Polkinghorne argues that the epistemological limitations
which chaos theory presents point to a fundamental feature of the world, what he calls an
"ontological openness."
I want to say that the physical world is open in its process, that the future is not
just a tautologous spelling-out of what was already implicit in the past, but there
is genuine novelty, genuine becoming, in the history of the universe . . . . The
dead hand of the Laplacean Calculator is relaxed and there is scope for forms of
causality other than the energetic transactions of current physical theory. As we
shall see there is room for the operation of holistic organizing principles
(presently unknown to us, but in principle open to scientific discernment), for
human intentionality, and for divine providential interaction.13
For Polkinghorne, chaos theory offers us "a metaphysically attractive option of
openness, a causal grid from below which delineates an envelope of possibility . . . within
which there remains room for manoeuvre."14 This "room for manoeuvre," can be seen,
according to Polkinghorne, in the act of creation itself, understood as: " . . . a kenosis
(emptying) of divine omnipotence, which allows for something other than God to exist . .
."15 According to Polkinghorne: "The act of creation involves a voluntary limitation, not
only of divine power in allowing the other to be, but also of divine knowledge in
allowing the future to be open. . . . An evolutionary universe is to be understood
theologically as one that is allowed by God, within certain limits, to make itself by
exploring and realizing its own inherent fruitfulness. The gift of creaturely freedom is
costly, for it carries with it the precariousness inherent in the self-restriction of divine
control."16
One scholar, Nicholas Saunders, who has written an extensive analysis of the
claims of theologians and philosophers who use developments in contemporary science
to explain divine action, is very critical of their fascination with quantum mechanics.
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There is, according to Saunders, no credible account of divine action in the context of
contemporary science and the result is a major crisis for Christian theology in its attempt
to affirm God's special providential activity. Saunders shares with those whom he
criticizes the assumption that God's agency needs to be understood in new ways; he
differs, however, in that he thinks that there is as yet no adequate account available.17 All
these scholars tend to share the distinction between what they call general divine
providence (God's creating and sustaining all of reality) and special divine providence
(specific providential acts, "envisaged, intended, and somehow brought about in this
world by God"). They find the former category, God as cause of existence, to be far less
troublesome than the latter category, special acts by God which seem to be inconsistent
with the autonomy and integrity of nature. As we have seen, the indeterminism in the
quantum realm has proven to be especially attractive to those who wish to develop a
theory of non-interventionist divine action.
In many ways, however, the fundamental
problem concerns how to understand divine causality in its broadest sense, and, as we
shall see, by examining what it means for God to be cause of existence we can discover a
rich understanding of cause, useful for the theological project of understanding divine
agency.
It is one of the benefits of Nicholas Saunders' work to examine in some detail the
philosophical and scientific foundations of the arguments of those who are attracted to what is
called quantum special divine providence. The debate is highly complex, and I do not want to
address the multifaceted questions of how properly to interpret quantum mechanics or chaos
theory.18 What I should like to focus on is the concern for metaphysical space which informs the
arguments of so many contemporary writers on science and theology, and to show how a return
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to Thomas Aquinas’ discussion of divine agency is particularly fruitful, especially his
understanding of how 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.19 Indeed, I think that how to
understand divine action in a world explained increasingly in terms of or quantum mechanics, or
chaos theory, or evolutionary biology is really not so different from how to understand divine
action in a world explained either in terms of Aristotelian physics or Newtonian mechanics.
What I wish to do in the remaining part of this lecture is to argue that there is a philosophical and
theological way to discuss divine agency regardless of what scientific conceptions of the world
we might have. The concern to affirm both divine agency in the world and also to affirm the
integrity of nature -- so important for contemporary theologians who are attracted to
developments in recent science -- is hardly a new concern. In looking at this concern in a
broader historical context, we can take Thomas Aquinas as a guide. God’s creative act, for
Aquinas, is not an example of divine withdrawal20 but is, rather, the exercise of divine
omnipotence. Furthermore, Aquinas’ understanding of God's action, throughout the entire
course of cosmic history, affirms the integrity and relative autonomy of the physical world and
the adequacy of the natural sciences themselves to describe this world.
For some in the Middle Ages any appeal to the autonomy of nature, that is, any appeal to
the discovery of real causes in the natural order, seemed to challenge divine omnipotence. One
reaction, made famous by some Muslim thinkers was to protect God’s power and sovereignty by
denying that there are real causes in nature. Thus, they would say that when fire is burning a
piece of paper it is really God who is the true agent of the burning; the fire is but an instrument.
Accordingly, events that occur in the natural world are only occasions in which God acts.21 For
these theologians, there is a fundamental incompatibility between the view of God as the on7
going cause of all that is and the view that there are autonomous natural processes occurring in
the world. They thought that they had to deny the possibility of science (understood as the
discovery of real causes in nature) in order to defend God’s omnipotence.
A leading critic of this denial of real causes in nature, other than God, was the Muslin
philosopher, Averroes. Yet, in his defense of the natural sciences he came to reject the doctrine
of creation out of nothing, because he thought that to affirm the kind of divine omnipotence
which produces things out of nothing is to deny a regularity and predictability to the natural
world. Thus, for Averroes, to defend the intelligibility of nature, that is, of a world in which
there really are necessary connections between cause and effect one must deny the doctrine of
creation out of nothing.22
Contrary to the positions both of some Muslim theologians and of their opponent,
Averroes, Thomas Aquinas argues that a doctrine of creation out of nothing, which affirms the
radical dependence of all things upon God as their cause, is fully compatible with the discovery
of causes in nature. God’s omnipotence does not challenge the possibility of real causality for
creatures, including that particular causality, free will, which is characteristic of human beings.
Thomas would reject any notion of divine withdrawal from the world so as to leave room, so to
speak, for the actions of creatures. Thomas does not think that God "allows" or "permits"
creatures to behave the way they do.23 Similarly, Thomas would reject a process theology
which denies God’s immutability and His omnipotence (as well as His knowledge of the future)
so that God would be said to be evolving or changing with the universe and everything in it. For
process theologians, the source of conflict between science and religion, from the side of
religion, is the very doctrine of creation ex nihilo, since, according to them, this doctrine involves
a commitment to divine omnipotence which is incompatible with the discovery of any kind of
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causality or power inherent in nature. Such theologians find in the thought of Alfred North
Whitehead the key to a proper rapprochement between science and theology. Not only does
Whitehead highlight the importance of nature as a process of becoming, but he explicitly rejects
creation ex nihilo. Whitehead thinks that the kind of "extreme voluntarism" which sees God "as
the one supreme reality, omnipotently disposing a wholly derivative world" is absolutely
incompatible with a true science of nature.24 As David Griffin of the Claremont Graduate
School in California, one of the centers of process thought in the United States, observes: to
make "the very existence of a realm of finite actualities . . . contingent upon a divine decision," is
to deny the possibility of any kind of causal nexus within the world. According to Griffin, the
God who creates ex nihilo "can interrupt not only the law of gravity but also the very principle of
causation . . . . In Whitehead’s naturalistic theism, by contrast, there are beneath the contingent
laws of our particular cosmic epoch, some metaphysical principles, which obtain necessarily,
and, therefore, cannot be violated."25 The reasons for rejecting creation ex nihilo by process
thinkers are quite similar to the ones set forth by Averroes. For David Griffin, the universal web
of finite causation cannot be interrupted, even by God. "The implication is that the divine
causation in the world is always persuasive, never coercive in the sense of wholly determining."
Thus, God belongs to the same genus as all other actual entities, thereby exemplifying the same
metaphysical categories, and, significantly, Griffin concludes that the causal relations between
God and other entities "are not different in kind from the causal relations between [sic] finite
entities."26 In defense of the autonomy of the natural order and of the existence of real causal
connections in that order, process thinkers are willing to sacrifice both divine omnipotence as
well as a radical distinction between divine and creaturely causality.
Thomas’ understanding of divine action and the changes which occur in nature would
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allow us to avoid various attempts to accommodate the contingency affirmed in the natural
sciences by re-thinking divine omnipotence, omniscience, and God’s a-temporality. Keith Ward,
Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at Oxford, is a good example of this latter approach.
Ward thinks that the traditional attempt to make God the "efficient cause of all things, without
compromising the simplicity and unchangeability which are characteristics of the Aristotelian
picture of God" was "an heroic failure," since it "could not account for the contingency of the
universe." This is so because "[t]hat which is wholly necessary can only produce that which is
necessary. A contingent universe can only be accounted for if one makes free creativity a
characteristic of the First Mover, which entails placing change and contingency within the First
Mover itself." According to Ward, God’s omniscience "is the capacity to know everything that
becomes actual, whenever it does so. . . . The classical hypothesis [of a God who does not
change] does not . . . seem compelling."27
In a sense, God must wait to know what is actual
since there is an inherent contingency in nature itself, and as actualities change so does God’s
knowledge.28 Since modern science, [especially evolutionary biology,] discloses a fundamental
contingency in nature, the classical conception of God, inconsistent with nature so understood,
must be jettisoned. So, at least, is the argument of many contemporary theologians who think
that in rejecting classical theism they are honoring the insights of science. Some argue, in
addition, that the view of God-in-time, changing as the world and man change, neither
omniscient nor omnipotent in the classical sense, is far more consistent with the core of biblical
revelation than the God described by Thomas Aquinas and others.
In a Thomistic analysis, such a view of God, changing as the world changes, fails to do
justice either to God or to creation. Creatures are what they are (including those which are free),
precisely because God is present to them as cause. Were God to withdraw, all that exists would
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cease to be. Creaturely freedom and the integrity of nature, in general, are guaranteed by God’s
creative causality. Here is how Thomas expresses this view in the Summa theologiae:
Some have understood God to work in every agent in such a way that no created
power has any effect in things, but that God alone is the ultimate cause of
everything wrought; for instance, that it is not fire that gives heat, but God in the
fire, and so forth. But this is impossible. First, because the order of cause and
effect would be taken away from created things, and this would imply lack of
power in the Creator, for it is due to the power of the cause, that it bestows active
power on its effect. Secondly, because the active powers which are seen to exist in
things, would be bestowed on things to no purpose, if these wrought nothing
through them. Indeed, all things created would seem, in a way, to be purposeless,
if they lacked an operation proper to them, since the purpose of everything is its
operation . . . . We must therefore understand that God works in things in such a
manner that things have their proper operation . . . ..29
God’s will is so powerful that His causal agency also produces the modality of its effect:
the effect is assimilated to God’s will in every way so that not only what happens occurs because
God wills it to happen, but it happens "in that way which God wills it to happen."30 God’s will
transcends and constitutes the whole hierarchy of created causes, both causes which always and
necessarily produce their effects and causes which at times fail to produce their effects.
God’s will is to be thought of as existing outside the realm of existents, as a cause from
which pours forth everything that exists in all its variant forms. Now what can be and
must be are variants of being, so that it is from God’s will itself that things derive
whether they must be or may or may not be and the distinction of the two according to
the nature of their immediate causes. For He prepares causes that must be for those
effects that He wills must be, and causes that might cause but might fail to cause for those
effects that He wills might or might not be. And it is because of the nature of these
causes that these effects are said to be effects that must be and those effects that need not
be, although all depend upon God’s will as primary cause, a cause which transcends the
distinction between must and might not. But the same cannot be said of human will or
any other cause, since every other cause exists within the realm of must and might not.
So of every other cause it must be said either that it can fail to cause, or that its effect
must be and cannot not be; God’s will however cannot fail, and yet not all His effects
must be, but some can be or not be.31
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Since God’s will is the cause of being as such -- precisely what creation means, His
causation does not compete with the causation of creatures, but rather supports and grounds it.32
Since it is characteristic of secondary causes precisely to be causes, God’s causal determination
of them is not such as to deny their proper autonomy. God does not need a metaphysical
indeterminacy in nature so that His actions would not collide, so to speak, with other causes.33
God’s providence is such that when we speak of an explanation that a natural effect
occurs we can refer to a proximate cause. If we ask why wood is heated in the presence of fire,
we can explain the phenomenon in terms of the characteristics of both wood and fire. Thus, if a
person answers the question of why the wood is heated by saying that God wills it, the person
"answers appropriately, provided he intends to take the question back to a first cause; but not
appropriately, if he means to exclude all other causes."34 For Thomas, there is no question that
there are real causes in the natural order: "if effects are not produced by the action of created
things, but only by the action of God, it is impossible for the power of any created cause to be
manifested through its effects." If no created things really produced effects, then "no nature of
anything would ever be known through its effect, and thus all the knowledge of natural science is
taken away from us."35 Thomas thinks that to defend the fact that creatures are real causes, far
from challenging divine omnipotence, is a powerful argument for divine omnipotence. As he
says, "to detract from the perfection of creatures [that is, to deny their power to produce effects]
is to detract from the perfection of divine power."36
God is immediately active in all things and, as such, must be within them. In an important
sense, God is more intimate to each creature than a creature is to itself.37 God, as the cause of
each creature’s being, is present at the very center of each creature’s being. He is more interior
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to things than they are to themselves: not as an intrinsic principle entering into their constitution,
but as the abiding cause of their existence.38 Simon Tugwell aptly puts it: "The fact that things
exist and act in their own right is the most telling indication that God is existing and acting in
them."39
The source of most of the difficulties in grasping an adequate understanding of the
relationship between the created order and God is the failure to understand divine transcendence.
It is God’s very transcendence, a transcendence beyond any contrast with immanence, which
enables God to be intimately present in the world as cause. God is not transcendent in such a
way that He is "outside" or "above" or "beyond" the world. God is not different from creatures
in the way in which creatures differ from one another. We might say that God "differs
differently" from the created order. Kathryn Tanner, who has written persuasively on this
subject, observes: "This non-competitive relation between creatures and God is possible, it
seems, only if God is the fecund provider of all that the creature is in itself. . . . This relationship
of total giver to total gift is possible, in turn, only if God and creatures are on different levels of
being, and different planes of causality."40 Rudi te Velde puts it this way: "God operates
immanently in nature in such a way that He sets nature, so to speak, free in its own operation. . . .
Thomas [sees] . . . God as a cause which by its transcending immanence constitutes the causality
of nature in its own order."41
Proponents of what has been termed "panentheism" criticize "classical Western theism"
for understanding the world as being "ontologically outside of God," and, thus, as presenting
significant difficulties for making sense of God’s action in the world.42 Their concern is to
fashion a theology consistent with biblical revelation and the insights of contemporary science
and philosophy, but their criticism of classical theism does not do justice to the position of
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Thomas. If we follow Thomas’ lead, we can see that there is no need to choose between a robust
view of creation as the constant exercise of divine omnipotence and the causes disclosed by the
natural sciences. No matter how random one thinks evolutionary change is, for example; no
matter how much one thinks that natural selection is the master mechanism of change in the
world of living things; the role of God as Creator, as continuing cause of the whole reality of all
that is, is not challenged. We need to remember Thomas’ fundamental point that creation is not a
change, and thus there is no possibility of conflict between the explanatory domain of the natural
sciences -- the world of change -- and that of creation.
Thomas shows us how to distinguish between the being or existence of creatures and the
operations they perform. God causes creatures to exist in such a way that they are the real causes
of their own operations. For Thomas, God is at work in every operation of nature, but the
autonomy of nature is not an indication of some reduction in God’s power or activity; rather, it is
an indication of His goodness. It is important to recognize that divine causality and creaturely
causality function at fundamentally different levels. In the Summa contra Gentiles, Thomas
remarks that "the same effect 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 agent; rather, it is wholly done by
both, according to a different way, just as the same effect is wholly attributed to the instrument
and also wholly to the principal agent."43 It is not the case of partial or co-causes with each
contributing a separate element to produce the effect.44 God, as Creator, transcends the order of
created causes in such a way that He is their enabling origin. Yet the "same God who transcends
the created order is also intimately and immanently present within that order as upholding all
causes in their causing, including the human will." For Thomas "the differing metaphysical
levels of primary and secondary causation require us to say that any created effect comes totally
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and immediately from God as the transcendent primary cause and totally and immediately from
the creature as secondary cause."45 In response to the objection that it is superfluous for effects
to flow from natural causes since they could just as well be directly caused by God alone,
Thomas writes that the existence of real secondary causes "is not the result of the inadequacy of
divine power, but of the immensity of God’s goodness." God wills to communicate His likeness
to things, "not only that they might exist, but also that they might be causes for other things.
Indeed all creatures generally attain the divine likeness in these two ways. . . . By this, in fact, the
beauty of order in created things is evident."46
Thomas rejects any form of an emanationist scheme which views God’s causality in
necessitarian terms. God is a voluntary agent: He acts "not by a necessity of His nature, but by
His intellect and will."47 Furthermore, God "brings things into being by His wisdom," which
excludes the views of those who say that "all things depend on the simple will of God, without
any reason."48 Thomas thinks that it is a mistake to think that justice, goodness, and truth, for
example, depend only on God’s will. To make such a claim would be to deny that the will of
God proceeds from His wisdom: which denial is "blasphemy."49
God does not only give being to things when they first begin to exist, He also causes
being in them so long as they exist. He not only causes the operative powers to exist in things
when these things come into being, He always causes these powers in things.50 Thus, if God’s
creative act were to cease, every operation would cease; every operation of a thing has God as its
ultimate cause. As we have seen, Thomas does not think that such an affirmation of divine
omnipotence eliminates the real role of created causes.
As is apparent, the analysis of divine causality I have just sketched is a complex topic in
metaphysics. In fact, the very notion of cause, either as predicated of God or of things in the
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world of our experience, which Thomas uses is quite different from "cause" understood as a
temporal relationship. When Aquinas speaks of causality he employs a much richer sense of the
term than we tend to use today. Whereas contemporary thinkers have come to view causality in
terms of a kind of "necessary consequentiality" between events, Aquinas understood causality in
terms of metaphysical dependence.51 As part of the philosophy of nature connected to the rise of
"modern science," two of the four causes of Aristotelian science, the final and the formal, were
considered irrelevant. Furthermore, to the extent that the natural sciences came to be seen as
depending exclusively on the language of mathematics, only that which was measurable would
fall within their explanatory domains.52
Even the notion of agent or efficient causality underwent a profound change from the
Aristotelian sense. It was conceived "exclusively in terms of the force or energy that moved the
fundamental parts of the universe."53 In the eighteenth century, David Hume called into question
even this narrow idea of efficient causality. Since the supposed influence of a cause upon its
effect was not directly evident to sense observation, Hume concluded that the connection
between cause and effect was not a feature of the real world, but only a habit of our thinking as
we become accustomed to see one thing constantly conjoined to another.54 Causality, thus,
becomes not a property of things but of thought; it is "no longer an ontological reality in the
world outside ourselves, but an epistemological property of the way we think about the world.
[Thus,] . . . the hallmark of causality [is to be] . . . found in the epistemological category of
predictability rather than the ontological category of dependence."55
One of the consequences of viewing causality exclusively in terms of a physical force is
that divine causality, too, comes to be seen in such terms.56 To conceive God’s causality in this
way is to make God a kind of competing cause in the world, or, perhaps better put, just one more
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cause in the world, although considerably more powerful than any other. To view the world as
functioning in terms of an ordered regularity of mechanical causes seemed to mean that there
was no room for any kind of special divine action.57 As Albert Einstein observed: "The more
man is imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes his conviction that
there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularity for causes of a different nature. For
him neither the rule of human nor the rule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural
events."58 Starting from this kind of faulty analysis, several contemporary theologians, as we
have seen, have found such room for divine action, what Polkinghorne calls "room for divine
manoeuvre," in the new scientific view of the world set forth in quantum mechanics and chaos
theory.
In various contemporary accounts of divine action there is a special concern to locate the
"causal joint," that particular point or way that divine causality can be conceived of as interfacing
with the physical world.59 The concern for finding such a "causal joint" proceeds from
assumptions about divine causality which are problematic. For even if we grant that
contemporary physics affirms a radical indeterminism in nature, any analysis of God’s action in
the world will be impaired if we restrict our notion of cause to the categories of matter, energy,
and force. It is important to note, however, that the narrowing of the notion of causality, in the
thought of Hume and others, to which I have referred, has occurred in the philosophy of nature,
not in the empirical sciences themselves. When scientists adopt such limited or restricted notions
of cause, they are operating in a broader arena of analysis than that of the empirical sciences
themselves. In a sense, natural philosophy is a more general science of nature than any of the
specialized sciences; it examines topics such as the nature of change and time, the role of
mathematics in the investigation of nature, and related questions; thus one must be careful not to
17
draw too sharp a distinction between the philosophy of nature and the empirical sciences.
Conclusion
The complete dependence of all that is on God does not challenge an appropriate
autonomy of natural causation; God is not a competing cause in a world of other causes. In fact,
God’s causality is such that he causes creatures to be the kind of causal agents which they are. In
an important sense, there would be no autonomy to the natural order were God not causing it to
be so. Traditional conceptions of God's omnipotence need not be abandoned in order to embrace
an evolving universe in which real novelty and contingency are characteristic features of nature.
Nor ought we to think that divine agency requires a kind of indeterminism in nature in order to
have the metaphysical space for God to act without interfering. For Thomas, the natural sciences,
philosophy, and theology discover complementary, not competing, truths about nature, human
nature, and God. The account he offers of divine agency and the autonomy and integrity of
nature is not merely an artifact from the past, but an enduring legacy.
1
Sections of this essay were omitted in the public lecture on 18 April 2007.
2. Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature (1993); Chaos and Complexity (1995); Evolutionary and Molecular
Biology (1998); Neurosciences and the Person (1999), and Quantum Mechanics (2001). The subtitle of each is:
Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. For a synopsis and analysis of these works, see Wesley J. Wildman, "The
Divine Action Project, 1988-2003," Theology and Science 2:1 (2004), 31-75. Some of the participants in the
conferences responded in the October 2004 issue, and Wildman responded in 2005.
3. This would be a correlative to the need for a similar metaphysical space which allows for the causal agency of
creatures.
From the preface to the English version of Ernst Haeckel’s The Riddle of the Universe (1900) by Joseph McCabe,
ix.
4
5. This view has been set forth by Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age, translated by Robert
Wallace (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971) and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Toward a Theology of Nature, translated by
18
Ted Peters (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993) and in Metaphysics and the Idea of God,
translated by Philip Clayton (Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1990). For a discussion of these claims –
especially how to understand the principle of inertia – see William E. Carroll, “The Scientific Revolution and
Contemporary Discourse on Faith and Reason,” in Faith and Reason, edited by Timothy Smith (South Bend, IN: St.
Augustine's Press, 2000), 195-216.
6
The claim is that the principle of inertia contradicts Aristotle's claim that everything that is moved is moved by
another and thus the apparent need for a conjoined mover to account for motion.
7. Pannenberg, Metaphysics and the Idea of God, 20.
8. "The present state of the system of nature is evidently a consequence of what it was in the preceding moment,
and if we conceive of an intelligence that at a given instant comprehends all the relations of the entities of this
universe, it could state the respective position, motions, and general affects of all these entities at any time in the
past or future." Laplace, Recherches sur l’intégration des équations différentielles aux différences finies et sur leur
application à l’analyse des hasards, 1776, quoted and translated in Charles C. Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace
1749-1827. A Life in Exact Science (Princeton University Press, 1997), 26. Laplace was also the author of
Exposition du système du monde in which he argued that stability of the solar system did not require divine
maintenance. His book was the occasion for a famous, but likely apocryphal, anecdote: to Napoleon’s query about
the absence of God in Laplace’s system, Laplace was said to reply that he did not need that hypothesis.
9. P.C.W. Davies, Quantum Mechanics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 4.
10. Chris J. Isham, Lectures on Quantum Theory: Mathematical and Structural Foundations (London: Imperial
College Press, 1995), 131-132.
11. In an essay which applies such views to the field of genetics, Robert J. Russell adopts "the theological view that
God’s special action can be considered as objective and non-interventionist if the quantum events underlying genetic
mutations are given an indeterminist interpretation philosophically. If it can be shown scientifically that quantum
mechanics plays a role in genetic mutations, then by extension it can be claimed theologically that God’s action in
genetic mutations is a form of objectively special, non-interventionist divine action. Moreover, since genetics plays
a key role in biological evolution, we can argue by inference that God’s action plays a key role in biological
evolution. . . ." Russell, thus, presents a sophisticated form of theistic evolution. Robert J. Russell, “Special
Providence and Genetic Mutation: A New Defense of Theistic Evolution,” in Evolutionary and Molecular Biology:
Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, edited by Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, and Francisco J. Ayala,
191-223, at 213 and. 206, italics in original (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1998). Russell
provides an excellent summary of the views of two theologians, Nancey Murphy and Thomas Tracy, on the general
theological significance of quantum indeterminism. 214. Italics in original.
12. "Particular Providence and the God of the Gaps," in Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine
Action, 289-324. See, as well, Nancey Murphy, "Divine Action in the Natural Sciences," Chaos and Complexity:
Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, 324-357. Russell in The Oxford Handbook: NIODA allows for God's
special providence, which believers require, since, although God causes all the processes of the ordinary world
(general providence), some of those processes "genuinely convey special meaning because the choices God makes
in causing them, and not the other options available to God, bring them about." (592)
13. J. Polkinghorne, “The Laws of Nature and the Laws of Physics,” in Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of
Nature, edited by Robert J. Russell, Nancey Murphy, and C.J. Isham (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory
Publications, 1993), 441-2.
14. “How that manoeuvre is executed will depend upon other organizing principles, active in the situation, viewed
holistically. A chaotic system faces a future of labyrinthine possibilities, which it will thread its way through
according to the indiscernible effects of infinitesimal triggers, nudging it this way or that . . . [C]haos theory [is]
19
actually an approximation to a more supple reality, these triggers of vanishingly small energy input become nonenergetic items of information input (“this way”, “that way”) as proliferating possibilities are negotiated. The way
the envelope of possibility is actually traversed will depend upon downward causation by such information input,
for whose operation it affords the necessary room for manoeuvre.” ibid., 443. Italics in the original.
15. “I am suggesting that we need to go further and recognize that the act of creating the other in its freedom
involves also a kenosis of the divine omniscience. God continues to know all that can be known, possessing what
philosophers call a current omniscience, but God does not possess an absolute omniscience, for God allows the
future to be truly open. I do not think that this negates the Christian hope of ultimate eschatological fulfillment.
God may be held to bring about such determinate purpose even if it is by way of contingent paths.” ibid., 447-8 On
this final point see D. Bartholomew, God of Chance (London: SCM Press, 1984). The theme of kenosis is explored
in a series of essays edited by Polkinghorne in The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis (London: W.B. Eerdmans,
2001).
16. John Polkinghorne, “Chaos Theory and Divine Action,” in Religion and Science, edited by W. Mark Richardson
and Wesley J. Wildman (New York: Routledge, 1996), 250 and 249. I think that Polkinghorne moves far too easily
from claims in epistemology to claims in metaphysics. Various attempts by Polkinghorne, Arthur Peacocke, Nancey
Murphy, George Ellis [See their essays in Chaos and Complexity , edited by Robert J. Russell, Nancey Murphy, and
Arthur Peacocke (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1995)], and others to locate a venue for divine
agency in the indeterminism of contemporary physics really amount to the contention that any account of the
physical world in the natural sciences is somehow inherently incomplete. In other words, these authors must
maintain that the natural sciences cannot in principle provide a complete, coherent scientific account of physical
reality. This is a criticism aptly made by Willem B. Drees in “Gaps for God?” in Chaos and Complexity, op. cit., pp.
223-237. That Polkinghorne is particularly susceptible to this criticism can be seen in the following observation he
makes in this same volume: “For a chaotic system, its strange attractor represents the envelope of possibility within
which its future motion will be contained. The infinitely variable paths of exploration of this strange attractor are
not discriminated from each other by differences of energy. They represent different patterns of behavior, different
unfoldings of temporal development. In a conventional interpretation of classical chaos theory, these different
patterns of possibility are brought about by sensitive responses to infinitesimal disturbances of the system. Our
metaphysical proposal replaces these physical nudges by a causal agency operating in the openness represented by
the range of possible behaviors contained within the monoenergetic strange attractor. What was previously seen as
the limit of predictability now represents a ‘gap’ within which other forms of causality can be at work.”
Polkinghorne, “The Metaphysics of Divine Action,” in Chaos and Complexity. . ., 153-4.
17. Nicholas Saunders, Divine Action and Modern Science (Cambridge University Press, 2002). Saunders
concludes his analysis in this way: "Would it be correct to argue on the basis of the foregoing critique that the
prospects for supporting anything like the 'traditional understanding' of God's activity in the world are extremely
bleak? Largely the answer to this question must be yes. In fact it is no real exaggeration to state that contemporary
theology is in crisis." 215. Italics in the original. The traditional understanding Saunders has in mind refers to
special providential acts by God.
18. I am persuaded by those who argue that it is philosophically suspect to argue from the essentially mathematical
realm of chaos theory to reach conclusions about determinism or indeterminism in nature The philosophical issues
connected to a proper interpretation of quantum mechanics and chaos theory are extraordinarily complex. Robert J.
Russell and Wesley J. Wildman [“Chaos: A Mathematical Introduction with Philosophical Reflections,” in Chaos
and Complexity . . . , op. cit., 49-90], for example, note the use made by chaos theory in some theological circles:
“The development of chaos theory has been welcomed by some theologians as powerful evidence that the universe
is metaphysically open (i.e., not completely deterministic) at the macro-level. Metaphysical indeterminacy at the
quantum level does not even need to be assumed, on this view, for chaos theory makes room for human freedom and
divine acts in history that work wholly within nature’s metaphysical openness and do not violate natural laws. . . ..
[Such an interpretation is] without justification . . . since it makes little sense to appeal to chaos theory as positive
evidence for metaphysical indeterminism when chaos theory is itself so useful for strengthening the hypothesis of
metaphysical determinism: it provides a powerful way for determinists to argue that many kinds of apparent
20
randomness in nature should be subsumed under deterministic covering laws.” 84, 86.
19. Too often, those who examine the distinction Thomas draws between primary and secondary causality, read
Aquinas in the light of a Humean understanding of cause. See William A. Wallace, Causality and Scientific
Explanation, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1972), and Joseph De Finance, Conoscenza
dell’essere, translated by M. Delmirani (Roma: Editrice Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1993), 332-423.
20. This is what Polkinghorne calls “a kenosis (or emptying) of divine omnipotence.”
21. The best known representative of this position in Islam was al-Ghazali (1058-1111); see The Incoherence of the
Philosophers, trans. by Michael E. Marmura (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1997). Maimonides
(1135-1204), an ardent critique, describes the position of the kalam theologians in this way: "They [the theologians]
assert that when a man moves a pen, it is not the man who moves it; for the motion occurring in the pen is an
accident created by God in the pen. Similarly the motion of the hand, which we think of as moving the pen, is an
accident created by God in the moving hand. Only God has instituted the habit that the motion of the hand is
concomitant with the motion of the pen, without the hand exercising in any respect an influence on, or being
causative in regard to, the motion of the pen." The Guide of the Perplexed I.73; trans. by S. Pines (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1963), 202.
"[al-Ghazali’s] assertion [in defense of creation out of nothing]. . . that life can proceed from the lifeless and
knowledge from what does not possess knowledge, and that the dignity of the First consists only in its being the
principle of the universe, is false. For if life could proceed from the lifeless, then the existent might proceed from
the non-existent, and then anything whatever might proceed from anything whatever, and there would be no
congruity between causes and effects, either in the genus predicated analogically or in the species." Averroes,
Tahafut al-Tahafut, trans. by Simon Van den Bergh (London: Luzac, 1954), 452; also quoted in Barry Kogan,
Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1985), 353.
22
23. Thomas’ view of divine causality raises the specter of the so-called “problem of evil.” Thomas is able to
respond successfully to objections that his view of God’s causality makes God the source of evil; an exposition of
Thomas’ views on this matter are, however, well beyond the scope of my analysis here.
24. A.N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York, NY: Free Press,1967 [1933]), 166.
25. David Ray Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts (Albany, NY: State University
of New York Press, 2000). 93. “At the heart of the metaphysical principles is creativity, which Whitehead calls the
‘category of the ultimate.’ Creativity is the twofold power of every actual entity to exert both final and efficient
causation. This idea is embodied in Whitehead’s doctrine that every actuality is a momentary event, or actual
occasion, which creates itself out of the causal influences received from prior actual occasions, then exerts influence
upon subsequent occasions. In supernatualistic theism, this twofold creative power belonged essentially to God
alone; any creative power possessed by finite events was a wholly contingent gift of God, which could thereby be
overridden or canceled out at will, so that God could completely determine what occurs. This is the doctrine that
Whitehead rejects as a false metaphysical compliment. . . . According to his naturalistic theism, the ultimate
creativity in the universe is necessarily embodied in finite actualities as well as in the divine actuality. This means
that power is inherent in the world as well as in God. It means, more precisely, that every one of the world’s units is
inherently influenced by all prior units, that every unit inherently has some power of self-determination, and that
every unit inherently has the power to inflict itself upon others, for good or for ill.”
26. ibid., 96. Ian Barbour notes that what is characteristic of process theology is an affirmation of a God "of
persuasion rather than compulsion . . . who influences the world without determining it." Ian Barbour, Religion in an
Age of Science (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), 224.
27. Keith Ward, Religion and Creation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 202, 188. Italics added.
21
28. Ward’s arguments are far more sophisticated than can be adequately set forth here, but for the claim that the
Thomistic view of divine agency and the world of change is a great success, rather than “an heroic failure,” see
William E. Carroll, “Aquinas on Creation and the Metaphysical Foundations of Science,” Sapientia 54 (1999), 6991.
29. Summa theologiae I, q. 105, a. 5.
30. De veritate, q. 23, a. 5.
31. Commentary on Aristotle’s ‘De Interpretatione’, Book I, lectio 14. This translation is found in Timothy
McDermott (ed.), Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 282.
32. Harm J.M.J. Goris, Free Creatures of an Eternal God: Thomas Aquinas on God’s Infallible Foreknowledge
and Irresistible Will (Nijmegen: Stichting Thomasfonds, 1996), 299. Goris notes that the distinction between divine
causality and creaturely causality is based on the distinction between divine being and creaturely being: “Aquinas
distinguishes the being of the Creator from the being of the creature not in terms of necessary being versus
contingent being but more radically in terms of being versus non-being, while God causes the either necessary or
contingent being of the creature. Likewise divine causation differs from creaturely causation as being differs from
non-being. Without God’s causation there is no creaturely causation at all.” ibid. For a trenchant criticism of some
of the other features of Goris’ analysis, see the review of his book by Brian Shanley, O.P. in The Thomist (April
1998).
33. In discussing how the human will is free to choose, and yet caused to be so by God, Thomas notes that
the autonomy of the will does not require that it be the "first cause" of its activity: "Not every principle is a
first principle. . . . [A]lthough it is essential to the voluntary act that its principle be within the agent,
nevertheless it is not contrary to the nature of a voluntary act that this principle be caused or moved by an
extrinsic principle: because it is not essential to the voluntary act that its intrinsic principle be a first
principle." Summa theologiae I-II, q. 6, a. 1, ad 1. “If the Thomist solution to the reconcilability of finite
free action and divine causal power is to work . . . God cannot be inserted into the world’s causal chains,
the divine causal influence, as ex nihilo, cannot and must not be thought of as univocal with other causes.
As in all other things, God is not to be conceived of as a ‘cause’ in the categorical sense; He does not
belong to any categories precisely because He is the ‘cause’ of them all.” John C. Yates, The Timelessness
of God (Lanaham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1990), 252-6. In the Summa theologiae, Thomas
writes: "God is the first cause of both natural causes and voluntary agents. And just as His moving natural
causes does not prevent their acts from being natural, so also His moving voluntary agents does not prevent
them from acting voluntarily, but rather makes it be just that, for He works in each according to its nature."
Summa theologiae I, q. 83, a. 1, ad 3. Indeed, "every movement either of will or of nature proceeds from
God as the First Mover." ibid., ad 3. What is crucial for Thomas, however, is that we recognize that both
natural and voluntary movements proceed from an intrinsic principle, but that need not, indeed cannot, be
the truly first principle of action.
34. Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 94.
35. Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 69.
36. ibid.
37. In I Sent., 8, 1, ad 1.
38. In I Sent., 37, 1, 1 ad 1. Thomas draws an analogy from the sun. Just as the air is lighted as long as it is
illuminated by the sun, and falls into darkness when the sun does not shine at night, so creatures are caused to be by
the creative diffusion of God’s goodness. If God were to withdraw His presence all creatures would fall into nonbeing. (Summa theologiae I, q. 104, a. 1) Aquinas is influenced in this analysis by the works of Pseudo-Dionysius.
22
Referring to Thomas’ analogy of the sun’s illumination of light, Fran O’Rourke observes: “As the sun is naturally
luminous, while air is lighted by sharing in the light of the sun although it does not partake of its nature, so also God
alone is by his essence Being, while every creature is being through participation since its essence is not identical
with its esse. Beings do not share in divine essence but in the illuminative effusion of divine Being which emanates
from him. . . . God is present in all things not according to his essence but through a participation of his created
likeness . . . . Divine similitude is not just a gift bestowed upon beings, but is their very being itself. . . . Creatures
participate in God’s presence but God is not participated. Beings share in the similitude of God while God in no
manner resembles them.” Fran O’Rourke, Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (London: E.J. Brill,
1992), 257-258.
39. Simon Tugwell, Albert and Aquinas: Selected Writings (New York: The Paulist Press, 1988), 213.
40. Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity (London: Continuum, 2001), 3-4. For an excellent discussion
of the transition between a Thomistic understanding of divine transcendence and a modern sense, especially
beginning with Suarez, see William Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence (Louisville, KY: Westminster
Press, 1996).
41. Rudi A. Te Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas. Studien und Texte zur
Geistesgeschichte des Mittelaters, vol. 46 (Leiden, 1995), 164.
42. P. Clayton, God and Contemporary Science (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997), 100.
43. Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 70, 8.
44. “God and creatures are not two causes collaborating on the same level to produce a joint effect. God causes on
the transcendental level and He thereby constitutes the creatures’ causation on the categorical level.” Goris, op. cit.,
301.
45. Brian J. Shanley, O.P., “Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas,” American Catholic Philosophical
Quarterly 72:1 (1998), 100 and 108. Shanley argues that no real explanation of exactly how God’s causality
functions is possible, since God transcends the mundane world of causation. Recently, Michael Miller has argued
that Bernard Lonergan, following in the tradition of Aquinas, provides a more philosophically satisfying account of
divine causation without sacrificing divine transcendence: in “Transcendence and Divine Causality,” American
Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 73:4 (Autumn 1999), 537-554. David Burrell observes that the “terms ‘primary’
and ‘secondary’ [causality] come into play when we are faced with the situation where one thing is by virtue of the
other. So each can properly be said to be a cause, yet what makes one secondary is the intrinsic dependence on the
one which is primary. This stipulation clearly distinguishes a secondary cause from an instrument, which is not a
cause in its own right: it is not the hammer which drives the nails but the carpenter using it.” Burrell, Freedom and
Causation in Three Traditions (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993), 97. See also William E.
Carroll, “Aquinas and the Metaphysical Foundations of Science,” Sapientia, op. cit.
46. Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 70. Ian Barbour reflects a common criticism (which we have already seen in
Keith Ward’s analysis) of the position of Thomas Aquinas. This position, Barbour thinks, “does not fully represent
the biblical idea that God has a more active and responsive role in nature and history. Moreover, if all events are
predestined in the divine plan, then chance and human freedom are ultimately illusory, though they seem real to us
from our limited perspective. Alternatively, if the future is open even in God’s sight, we would have to say that not
all secondary causes are instruments of God’s will. In that case, creation is a greater self-limitation in God’s power
and in God’s knowledge than classical theism acknowledges. . . . [T]he concepts of primary and secondary
causality do not provide a coherent solution to the problem of God’s action in a world of scientific law and human
freedom.” When Science Meets Religion: Enemies, Strangers, or Partners? (San Francisco: Harper, 2000), 103,
161. I think that Barbour is not adequately attentive to the analogical notion of causality and the profound
metaphysical difference between divine and creaturely causality which are characteristic of Thomas’ thought.
23
47. Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 23.
48. Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 24.
49. De veritate q. 23, a. 6.
50. Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 67.
51. "Il titolo di questo libro richiama una nozione, 'causa,' che suggerisce al lettore contemporaneo contenuti
concettuali per qualche aspetto sostanzialmente diversi da quelli che evocava nel lettore medievale. Difatti per i
contemporanei il termine 'causa' indica per lo più la sola idea di consequenzialità necessaria... Per il lettore
medievale, invece, accanto all'idea di una connessione di fatto, il concetto di 'causa' trasmette quella di un
ordinamento metafisico. ... La causa, in questo modo, è superiore all'effetto; e poiché è principio della sua
sussistenza in essere, è principio anche della sua intelligibilità." Cristina D'Ancona Costa, "Introduzione," in
Tommaso D'Aquino, Commento al Libro delle Cause, Milano: Rusconi, 1986, 7.
52. Mario Bunge points out the important role that empirical science has played in this shift in our understanding of
causality: “The Aristotelian teaching of causes lasted in the official Western culture until the Renaissance. When
modern science was born, formal and final causes were left aside as standing beyond the reach of experiment; and
material causes were taken for granted in connection with all natural happenings... Hence, of the four Aristotelian
causes only the efficient cause was regarded as worthy of scientific research.” Mario Bunge, Causality and Modern
Science (New York: Dover, 1979), 32. See William A. Wallace, O.P., Causality and Scientific Explanation, 2 vols.
(Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), vol.2, 246. I do not think that Bunge adequately distinguishes
between developments in the empirical sciences and the philosophical reflection on such developments.
53. Michael J. Dodds, “The Doctrine of Causality in Aquinas and The Book of Causes: One Key to Understanding
the Nature of Divine Action,” paper delivered at the Thomistic Institute, University of Notre Dame, July 2000. I am
grateful to Professor Dodds for his analysis of the narrowing of the notion of causality, which I have used in this
section.
54. "[U]pon the whole, there appears not, throughout all nature, any one instance of connexion [i.e., between cause
and effect] which is conceivable by us. All events seem entirely loose and separate. One event follows another; but
we never can observe any tie between them. They seem conjoined, but never connected. And as we can have no
idea of any thing which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to
be that we have no idea of connexion or power at all, and that these words are absolutely without any meaning,
when employed either in philosophical reasonings or common life." David Hume, Enquiries concerning Human
Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals (1777), 3rd edition, edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge and P.H.
Nidditch (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975), 74. Italics in the original. Hume’s analysis of causality has been
especially influential for modern thought. An examination of the philosophical presuppositions which inform his
position is beyond the scope of this essay. Hume must deny the rather obvious experience we have of doing things
and having things done to us, as well as the insights we have into causal dependence in the natural order.
55. Dodds, op. cit.
56. As Philip Clayton has observed: “The present-day crisis in the notion of divine action has resulted as much as
anything from a shift in the notion of causality.” God and Contemporary Science, op. cit.,189.
57. "The scientific world-view seems to leave no room for God to act, since everything that happens is determined
by scientific laws.” Keith Ward, Divine Action (London: Collins, 1990), l. Langdon Gilkey explains this reluctance
of contemporary theologians to speak of divine intervention: “Thus contemporary theology does not expect, nor
does it speak of, wondrous divine events on the surface of natural and historical life. The causal nexus in space and
time which Enlightenment science and philosophy introduced into the Western mind and which was assumed by
liberalism is also assumed by modern theologians and scholars; since they participate in the modern world of science
24
both intellectually and existentially, they can scarcely do anything else.” Langdon Gilkey, "Cosmology, Ontology
and the Travail of Biblical Language," in Owen C. Thomas, ed., God's Activity in the World: the Contemporary
Problem (Chico, California: Scholar's Press, 1983), 31.
58. Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Wisdom Library, 1950), 32.
59. As Philip Clayton explains, "If one is to offer a full theory of divine agency; one must include some account of
where the 'causal joint' is at which God's action directly impacts on the world. To do this requires one in turn to get
one's hands dirty with the actual scientific data and theories, including the basic features of relativity theory,
quantum mechanics and (more recently) chaos theory." Philip Clayton, God and Contemporary Science, 192. The
difficulties of discovering such a "causal joint," however, are evident in the work of Arthur Peacocke who maintains
that "the continuing action of God with the world-as-a-whole might best be envisaged...as analogous to an input of
information rather than of energy." The problem with this notion, as Peacocke recognizes, is that in physics "any
input of information requires some input of matter/energy." Such matter/energy input on God's part, however,
smacks of interference with the order of the world. Peacocke concludes that he has located, but not solved, the
problem of the "causal joint": "How can God exert his influence on, make an input of information into, the world-asa-whole without an input of matter/energy? This seems to me to be the ultimate level of the 'causal joint' conundrum,
for it involves the very nature of the divine being in relation to that of matter/energy and seems to be the right place
in which to locate the problem..." Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming- Natural,
Divine and Human (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 149-151, 160-161, 164.
25