Carroll Divine Agency

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DIVINE AGENCY, CONTEMPORARYPHYSICS, AND THE AUTONOMY OF

NATURE

WILLIAM E. CARROLL

Thomas Aquinas Fellow in Theology and Science, Blackfriars

University of Oxford

Over the past fifteen years the Vatican Observatory and the Center forTheology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley, California sponsored a

series of conferences on what they called scientific perspectives on divineaction, which resulted in the publication of five impressive volumes,1

with a sixth, retrospective volume, to appear soon. The scientific subjectsof these books ranged from quantum mechanics and quantum cosmologyto chaos theory, evolutionary biology, and the neurosciences. Whatemerged as a major theme in the contributions of many of the scholars inthese volumes is how contemporary science points to a kind ofmetaphysical space which can allow for divine agency in the world.2

Thus, for example, the fascination with quantum mechanics and chaostheory, since each has been viewed as providing a kind of metaphysical

indeterminacy needed to provide an arena in which God can act withoutsomehow interfering with the laws of nature. Another feature of many ofthe essays is the view that contemporary science lends support to aprocess theology which challenges traditional notions of divine omnipo-tence, immutability, and a-temporality.

Divine agency is crucial for believers since, not only has God caused allthat is to be at the very beginning of time, the universe also depends onGods continuing creative act at every moment of its existence.Furthermore, God is providential: He guides and directs the universetowards 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 many theologians there is a realurgency in seeking to understand divine agency in the context of what thenatural sciences tell us about the world; the task is especially importantsince, according to these theologians, modern science that is, sciencesince the seventeenth century has presented theology with a tremendouschallenge: to find a place for God in a universe increasingly susceptible toexplanation in scientific terms. A widely accepted view is that, with therise of modern science, God has increasingly been pushed to the margins.

r The author 2008. Journal compilation r Trustees for Roman Catholic Purposes Registered 2008. Published byBlackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX42DQ, UK and350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

HeyJ XLIX (2008), pp. 582602


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A German chemist, Heinrich Caro, writing at the end of the nineteenthcentury, remarked: Science has conducted God to its frontiers, thankinghim for his provisional services.3

What many theologians find so fascinating with contemporary scienceis a view of the universe fundamentally different from a causally closedsystem operating according to the prescriptions of Newtonian mechanics.So long as the universe was seen in deterministic Newtonian terms, it waseasy, so such an interpretation suggests, either to see God as interferingwith the laws of nature or to limit divine action to an initial act ofcreation.

Even the notion of Gods continual causing of the existence of thingswas thought to be challenged by the principle of inertia, which seemed toentail the view that the universe was self-sufficient and thus required no

appeal outside of itself, once it existed, to account for all motion andchange.4 Wolfhart Pannenberg, for example, claims that the acceptanceof the principle of inertia in the seventeenth century represents not only aradical break in the history of science5 but also posed a fundamentalproblem for the Christian doctrine of creation. According to Pannenberg,the principle of inertia lies behind the denial of the radical contingency ofthe world, a contingency central to the doctrine of creation: Theemancipation from the creator God entailed in the principle of inertia didnot apply only to natural bodies and beings . . . . Even more serious wasthe consequence that the system of the natural universe had to be

conceived now as an interplay between finite bodies and forces withoutfurther need for recourse to God.6

For Pannenberg and others, the deterministic view of the universe,made famous by Pierre Laplace (17491827),7 has been overturned byquantum indeterminism, and, as a result, God could be thought of asacting at the quantum level. The most widely accepted interpretation ofquantum mechanics affirms that indeterminism is a universal feature ofthe microworld,8 and that the probabilistic structure in quantum theoryentails [a] radical departure from the philosophical position of classicalphysics.9 The commitment to ontological indeterminism, associated with

many philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics, has offered away for some to reaffirm Gods acting in nature. In an important sense,Gods action, so conceived, is not an intervention in nature, since natureis fundamentally indeterministic. Robert Russell, Director of the Centerfor Theology and the Natural Sciences at Berkeley, finds such non-interventionist divine action attractive because he thinks it is a way ofmaintaining continuing divine agency without sacrificing the integrity ofnature.10 Writing in the recently published Oxford Handbook of Religionand Science (2006), Russell notes the importance of what he termsNIODA [Non-interventionist objective divine action], the thesis thatGod acts objectively and directly in and through (mediated by) quantumevents to actualize one of several potential outcomes; in short, the

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collapse of the wave function occurs because of divine and naturalcausality working together even while Gods action remains ontologicallydifferent from natural agency.11 The universe which God creates is such

that some natural processes at the quantum level are insufficientlydetermined by prior natural events. As a result, Gods action is requiredto bring about the quantum event.

Another contemporary theologian who has written extensively onwhat he considers to be the positive theological implications of quantummechanics is Thomas Tracy. Tracy says that we should think of specialdivine action that is, the production of particular events in the world asthe providential determination of otherwise undetermined events. Godsgovernance at the quantum level consists in activating or actualizing oneor another of the quantum entitys innate powers at particular instants.

Gods action is pervasive in its effects on the worlds structure, but itremains hidden within that structure. Gods action takes the form ofrealizing one of several potentials in the quantum system: God does notmanipulate subatomic particles as though He were some type of physicalforce. Although God acts, He does not interfere.12

In the midst of considerable enthusiasm for the theological implica-tions of quantum mechanics, we need to remember that the philosophicalinterpretations which embrace an ontological indeterminacy are just that philosophical interpretations, which continue to be the subject of livelydebate. What is evident, however, is the urgency which many thinkers

claim is needed in addressing the question of divine agency and modernscience: to find adequate ways to account for Gods activity in the worldwithout denying the appropriate autonomy of natural processes norreducing what we mean by Gods activity merely to the subjectivereligious experience of believers. One scholar who has written extensivelyon this topic, Philip Clayton, thinks that how to understand divine agencyought to be at the center of contemporary theological reflection. As heputs it: how can we attribute events to the causal activity of God whenscience 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 fortheological reflection. The most obvious thing to say about chaoticsystems is that they are intrinsically unpredictable. Their exquisitesensitivity [to slight changes in initial conditions] means that we can neverknow enough to be able to predict with any long-term reliability how theywill behave. Polkinghorne argues that the epistemological limitationswhich 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 notjust a tautologous spelling-out of what was already implicit in the past, but

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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 forforms of causality other than the energetic transactions of current physicaltheory. As we shall see there is room for the operation of holistic organizing

principles (presently unknown to us, but in principle open to scientificdiscernment), for human intentionality, and for divine providential interac-tion.13

For Polkinghorne, chaos theory offers us a metaphysically attractiveoption of openness, a causal grid from below which delineates an envelopeof possibility . . . within which there remains room for manoeuvre.14 Thisroom for manoeuvre, can be seen, according to Polkinghorne, in the actof creation itself, understood as: . . . a kenosis (emptying) of divineomnipotence, which allows for something other than God to exist . . .15

According to Polkinghorne: The act of creation involves a voluntarylimitation, not only of divine power in allowing the other to be, but also ofdivine knowledge in allowing the future to be open . . . . An evolutionaryuniverse is to be understood theologically as one that is allowed by God,within certain limits, to make itself by exploring and realizing its owninherent fruitfulness. The gift of creaturely freedom is costly, for it carrieswith it the precariousness inherent in the self-restriction of divinecontrol.16 I think that Polkinghorne moves far too easily from claims inepistemology to claims in metaphysics. Various attempts by Polkinghorne,Arthur Peacocke, Nancey Murphy, George Ellis, and others to locate a

venue for divine agency in the indeterminism of contemporary physicsreally amount to the contention that any account of the physical world inthe natural sciences is somehow inherently incomplete. In other words,these authors must maintain that the natural sciences cannot in principleprovide a complete, coherent scientific account of physical reality.17

Nicholas Saunders, who has written an extensive analysis of the claimsof theologians and philosophers who use developments in contemporaryscience to explain divine action, is very critical of their fascination withquantum mechanics. There is, according to Saunders, no credible accountof divine action in the context of contemporary science and the result is a

major crisis for Christian theology in its attempt to affirm Gods specialprovidential activity. Saunders shares with those whom he criticizes theassumption that Gods agency needs to be understood in new ways; hediffers, however, in that he thinks that there is as yet no adequate accountavailable.18 All these scholars tend to share the distinction between whatthey call general divine providence (Gods creating and sustaining all ofreality) and special divine providence (specific providential acts,envisaged, intended, and somehow brought about in this world byGod). They find the former category, God as cause of existence, to be farless troublesome than the latter category, special acts by God which seemto be inconsistent with the autonomy and integrity of nature. As we haveseen, the indeterminism in the quantum realm has proven to be especially



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attractive to those who wish to develop a theory of non-interventionistdivine action. In many ways, however, the fundamental problem concernshow 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 candiscover a rich understanding of cause, useful for the theological projectof understanding divine agency.

It is one of the benefits of Nicholas Saunders work that it examines insome detail the philosophical and scientific foundations of the argumentsof those who are attracted to what is called quantum special divineprovidence. The debate is highly complex, and I do not want to addressthe multifaceted questions of how properly to interpret quantummechanics or chaos theory.19 What I should like to focus on is theconcern for metaphysical space which informs the arguments of so many

contemporary writers on science and theology, and to show how a returnto Thomas Aquinas discussion of divine agency is particularly fruitful,especially his understanding of how God is the complete cause of thewhole reality of whatever is and yet in the created world there is a richarray of real secondary causes.20 Indeed, I think that how to understanddivine action in a world explained increasingly in terms of quantummechanics, or chaos theory, or evolutionary biology is really not sodifferent from how to understand divine action in a world explainedeither in terms of Aristotelian physics or Newtonian mechanics. My pointis that there is a philosophical and theological way to discuss divine

agency regardless of what scientific conceptions of the world we mighthave. The concern to affirm both divine agency in the world and also toaffirm the integrity of nature so important for contemporarytheologians who are attracted to developments in recent science ishardly a new concern. In looking at this concern in a broader historicalcontext, we can take Thomas Aquinas as a guide. Gods creative act, forThomas, is not an example of divine withdrawal21 but is, rather, theexercise of divine omnipotence. Furthermore, Thomas understanding ofGods action, throughout the entire course of cosmic history, affirms theintegrity 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 bysome Muslim thinkers was to protect Gods power and sovereignty bydenying that there are real causes in nature. Thus, they would say thatwhen fire is burning a piece of paper it is really God who is the true agentof the burning; the fire is but an instrument without any causal efficacy.Accordingly, events that occur in the natural world are only occasions inwhich God acts.22 For these theologians, there is a fundamentalincompatibility between the view of God as the on-going cause of allthat is and the view that there are autonomous natural processes



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occurring in the world. They thought that they had to deny the possibilityof science (understood as the discovery of real causes in nature) in orderto defend Gods 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 naturalsciences he came to reject the doctrine of creation out of nothing, becausehe thought that to affirm the kind of divine omnipotence which producesthings out of nothing is to deny a regularity and predictability to thenatural world. Thus, for Averroes, to defend the intelligibility of nature,that is, of a world in which there really are necessary connections betweencause and effect one must deny the doctrine of creation out of nothing.23

Contrary to the positions both of some Muslim theologians and oftheir opponent, Averroes, Thomas Aquinas argues that a doctrine of

creation out of nothing, which affirms the radical dependence of all thingsupon God as their cause, is fully compatible with the discovery of causesin nature.24 Gods omnipotence does not challenge the possibility of realcausality for creatures, including that particular causality, free will, whichis characteristic of human beings. Thomas would reject any notion ofdivine withdrawal from the world so as to leave room, so to speak, for theactions of creatures. Thomas does not think that God allows orpermits creatures to behave the way they do.25 Similarly, Thomas wouldreject a process theology which denies Gods immutability and Hisomnipotence (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 andreligion, from the side of religion, is the very doctrine of creation ex nihilo,since, according to them, this doctrine involves a commitment to divineomnipotence which is incompatible with the discovery of any kind ofcausality or power inherent in nature. Such theologians find in thethought of Alfred North Whitehead the key to a proper rapprochementbetween science and theology. Not only does Whitehead highlight theimportance of nature as a process of becoming, but he explicitly rejectscreation ex nihilo. Whitehead thinks that the kind of extreme voluntarism

which sees God as the one supreme reality, omnipotently disposing awholly derivative world is absolutely incompatible with a true science ofnature.26 As David Griffin of the Claremont Graduate School inCalifornia, 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 ofcausal nexus within the world. According to Griffin, the God who createsex nihilo can interrupt not only the law of gravity but also the veryprinciple of causation . . . . In Whiteheads naturalistic theism, by contrast,there are beneath the contingent laws of our particular cosmic epoch, somemetaphysical principles, which obtain necessarily, and, therefore, cannotbe violated.27 The reasons for rejecting creation ex nihilo by process



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thinkers are quite similar to the ones set forth by Averroes. For DavidGriffin, the universal web of finite causation cannot be interrupted, even byGod. The implication is that the divine causation in the world is always

persuasive, never coercive in the sense of wholly determining. Thus, Godbelongs to the same genus as all other actual entities, thereby exemplifyingthe same metaphysical categories, and, significantly, Griffin concludes thatthe causal relations between God and other entities are not different inkind from the causal relations between [sic] finite entities.28 In defense ofthe autonomy of the natural order and of the existence of real causalconnections in that order, process thinkers are willing to sacrifice bothdivine omnipotence as well as a radical distinction between divine andcreaturely causality.

Thomas understanding of divine action and the changes which occur

in nature would allow us to avoid various attempts to accommodate thecontingency affirmed in the natural sciences by re-thinking divineomnipotence, omniscience, and Gods a-temporality. Keith Ward, RegiusProfessor of Divinity Emeritus at Oxford, is a good example of this latterapproach. Ward thinks that the traditional attempt to make God theefficient cause of all things, without compromising the simplicity andunchangeability which are characteristics of the Aristotelian picture ofGod was an heroic failure, since it could not account for thecontingency of the universe. This is so because [t]hat which is whollynecessary can only produce that which is necessary. A contingent universe

can only be accounted for if one makes free creativity a characteristic ofthe First Mover, which entails placing change and contingency within theFirst Mover itself. According to Ward, Gods omniscience is thecapacity to know everything that becomes actual, whenever it does so . . . .The classical hypothesis [of a God who does not change] doesnot . . . seem compelling.29 In a sense, God must wait to know what isactual since there is an inherent contingency in nature itself, and asactualities change so does Gods knowledge.30 Since modern science,especially evolutionary biology, discloses a fundamental contingency innature, the classical conception of God, inconsistent with nature so

understood, must be jettisoned. So, at least, is the argument of manycontemporary theologians who think that in rejecting classical theismthey are honoring the insights of science. Furthermore, there is thetemptation to think that the view of God-in-time, changing as the worldand man change, neither omniscient nor omnipotent in the classical sense,is more consistent with the core of biblical revelation than the Goddescribed by Thomas Aquinas and others.

In a Thomistic analysis, such a view of God, changing as the worldchanges, fails to do justice either to God or to creation. Creatures arewhat they are (including those which are free), precisely because God ispresent to them as cause. Were God to withdraw, all that exists wouldcease to be. Creaturely freedom and the integrity of nature, in general, are



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terms of the characteristics of both wood and fire. Thus, if a personanswers the question of why the wood is heated by saying that God willsit, the person answers appropriately, provided he intends to take the

question back to a first cause; but not appropriately, if he means toexclude all other causes.36 For Thomas, there is no question that thereare real causes in the natural order: if effects are not produced by theaction of created things, but only by the action of God, it is impossible forthe power of any created cause to be manifested through its effects. If nocreated thing really produced an effect, then no nature of anything wouldever be known through its effect, and thus all the knowledge of naturalscience is taken away from us.37 Thomas thinks that to defend the factthat creatures are real causes, far from challenging divine omnipotence, isa 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.38

God is immediately active in all things and, as such, must be withinthem. In an important sense, God is more intimate to each creature than acreature is to itself.39 God, as the cause of each creatures being, is presentat the very center of each creatures being. He is more interior to thingsthan they are to themselves: not as an intrinsic principle entering intotheir constitution, but as the abiding cause of their existence.40 Thomasdraws an analogy from the sun. Just as the air is lighted as long as it isilluminated 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 ofGods goodness. If God were to withdraw His presence all creatureswould fall into non-being.41 Thomas is influenced in this analysis by theworks of Pseudo-Dionysius.42 Simon Tugwell aptly puts it: The fact thatthings exist and act in their own right is the most telling indication thatGod is existing and acting in them.43

The source of most of the difficulties in grasping an adequateunderstanding of the relationship between the created order and God isthe failure to understand divine transcendence. It is Gods verytranscendence, a transcendence beyond any contrast with immanence,

which enables God to be intimately present in the world as cause. God isnot transcendent in such a way that He is outside or above or beyondthe world. God is not different from creatures in the way in whichcreatures differ from one another. We might say that God differsdifferently from the created order. Kathryn Tanner, who has writtenpersuasively on this subject, observes: This non-competitive relationbetween creatures and God is possible, it seems, only if God is the fecundprovider ofall that the creature is in itself . . . . This relationship of totalgiver to total gift is possible, in turn, only if God and creatures are ondifferent levels of being, and different planes of causality.44 Rudi te Veldeputs it this way: God operates immanently in nature in such a way thatHe sets nature, so to speak, free in its own operation . . . . Thomas [sees]



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. . . God as a cause which by its transcending immanence constitutes thecausality of nature in its own order.45

Proponents of what has been termed panentheism criticize classical

Western theism for understanding the world as being ontologicallyoutside of God, and, thus, as presenting significant difficulties formaking sense of Gods action in the world.46 Their concern is to fashion atheology consistent with biblical revelation and the insights ofcontemporary science and philosophy, but their criticism of classicaltheism does not do justice to the position of Thomas. If we followThomas lead, we can see that there is no need to choose between a robustview of creation as the constant exercise of divine omnipotence and thecauses disclosed by the natural sciences. No matter how random onethinks evolutionary change is, for example; no matter how much one

thinks that natural selection is the master mechanism of change in theworld of living things; the role of God as Creator, as continuing cause ofthe whole reality of all that is, is not challenged. We need to rememberThomas fundamental point that creation is not a change, and thus thereis no possibility of conflict between the explanatory domain of the naturalsciences the world of change and that of creation.47

In defending the relative autonomy of the natural sciences, Thomasshows us how to distinguish between the being or existence of creaturesand the operations they perform. God causes creatures to exist in such away 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 natureis not an indication of some reduction in Gods power or activity; rather,it is an indication of His goodness. It is important to recognize that divinecausality and creaturely causality function at fundamentally differentlevels. In the Summa contra Gentiles, Thomas remarks that the sameeffect is not attributed to a natural cause and to divine power in such away 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 sameeffect is wholly attributed to the instrument and also wholly to theprincipal agent.48 It is not the case of partial or co-causes with each

contributing a separate element to produce the effect.

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God, as Creator,transcends the order of created causes in such a way that He is theirenabling origin. Yet the same God who transcends the created order isalso intimately and immanently present within that order as upholding allcauses in their causing, including the human will. For Thomas thediffering metaphysical levels of primary and secondary causation requireus to say that any created effect comes totally and immediately from Godas the transcendent primary cause and totally and immediately from thecreature as secondary cause.50 In response to the objection that it issuperfluous for effects to flow from natural causes since they could just aswell be directly caused by God alone, Thomas writes that the existence ofreal secondary causes is not the result of the inadequacy of divine power,



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but of the immensity of Gods goodness. God wills to communicate Hislikeness to things, not only that they might exist, but also that they mightbe causes for other things. Indeed all creatures generally attain the divine

likeness in these two ways . . . . By this, in fact, the beauty of order increated things is evident.51

Thomas rejects any form of an emanationist scheme which viewsGods causality in necessitarian terms. God is a voluntary agent: He actsnot by a necessity of His nature, but by His intellect and will.52

Furthermore, God brings things into being by His wisdom, whichexcludes the views of those who say that all things depend on the simplewill of God, without any reason.53 Thomas thinks that it is a mistake tothink that justice, goodness, and truth, for example, depend only onGods will. To make such a claim would be to deny that the will of God

proceeds from His wisdom: which denial is blasphemy.54

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 theoperative powers to exist in things when these things come into being, Healways causes these powers in things.55 Thus, if Gods creative act were tocease, every operation would cease; every operation of a thing has God asits ultimate cause. As we have seen, Thomas does not think that such anaffirmation of divine omnipotence eliminates the real role of createdcauses.

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 aspredicated of God or of things in the world of our experience, whichThomas uses is quite different from cause understood as a temporalrelationship. When Thomas speaks of causality he employs a much richersense of the term than we tend to use today. Whereas contemporarythinkers have come to view causality in terms of a kind of necessaryconsequentiality between events, Thomas understood causality in termsof metaphysical dependence.56 As part of the philosophy of natureconnected to the rise of modern science, two of the four causes ofAristotelian science, the final and the formal, were considered irrelevant.

Furthermore, to the extent that the natural sciences came to be seen asdepending exclusively on the language of mathematics, only that whichwas measurable would fall within their explanatory domains.57

Even the notion of agent or efficient causality underwent a profoundchange from the Aristotelian sense. It was conceived exclusively in termsof the force or energy that moved the fundamental parts of theuniverse.58 In the eighteenth century, David Hume called into questioneven this narrow idea of efficient causality. Since the supposed influenceof a cause upon its effect was not directly evident to sense observation,Hume concluded that the connection between cause and effect was not afeature of the real world, but only a habit of our thinking as we becomeaccustomed to see one thing constantly conjoined to another.59 Causality,



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thus, becomes not a property of things but of thought; it is no longer anontological reality in the world outside ourselves, but an epistemologicalproperty of the way we think about the world. [Thus,] . . . the hallmark of

causality [is to be] . . . found in the epistemological category ofpredictabilityrather than the ontological category of dependence.60

One of the consequences of viewing causality exclusively in terms of aphysical force is that divine causality, too, comes to be seen in suchterms.61 To conceive Gods causality in this way is to make God a kind ofcompeting cause in the world, or, perhaps better put, just one more causein the world, although considerably more powerful than any other. Toview the world as functioning in terms of an ordered regularity ofmechanical causes seemed to mean that there was no room for any kind ofspecial divine action.62 As Albert Einstein observed: The more man is

imbued with the ordered regularity of all events the firmer becomes hisconviction that there is no room left by the side of this ordered regularityfor causes of a different nature. For him neither the rule of human nor therule of divine will exists as an independent cause of natural events.63

Starting from this kind of faulty analysis, several contemporarytheologians, as we have seen, have found such room for divine action,what Polkinghorne calls room for divine manoeuvre, in the new scientificview of the world set forth in quantum mechanics and chaos theory.

In addition to the narrowing of the notion of causality, at the beginningof the early modern era there was also a significant transformation in the

conception of God, so both divine and agency took on newconnotations. For Amos Funkenstein, at the onset of modernity, as Godcame to be described in unequivocal terms, or even given physical featuresand functions, [He] eventually became all the easier to discard. As ascientific hypothesis, he was later shown to be superfluous; as a being, hewas shown to be a mere hypostatization of rational, social, or psychologicalideals and images.64 Funkenstein points to what he calls the transparencyof God in the seventeenth century. He does not necessarily mean thatseventeenth-century thinkers always claimed to know more about Godthan medieval theologians. To some of them God remained a deus

absconditus about whom little can be known. What he means is that whatwas claimed to be known about God, be it much or little, was expressible inwhat Descartes calls clear and distinct ideas.65 For Thomas Aquinas,however, as we see in his doctrine of analogy, Gods transcendence is suchthat our language always falls short when we speak of God. We can onlyuse language about God in a highly qualified and provisional way. In theperceptive observation of Denys Turner, the negative theology of Aquinasdoes not mean that we fall short of things to say about God, but thateverything we say about God falls short of what God is.66

In the early modern era, for many thinkers, language came to bepredicated of God in the same unequivocal way that it is predicated ofthings in the world; the implication of this is that God is, in some sense,



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world.75 The concern for finding such a causal joint proceeds fromassumptions about divine causality which are problematic. For even if wegrant that contemporary physics affirms a radical indeterminism in

nature, any analysis of Gods action in the world will be impaired if werestrict our notion of cause to the categories of matter, energy, and force.It is important to note, however, that the narrowing of the notion ofcausality, in the thought of Hume and others, to which I have referred,has occurred in the philosophy of nature, not in the empirical sciencesthemselves. When scientists adopt such limited or restricted notions ofcause, they are operating in a broader arena of analysis than that of theempirical sciences themselves. This broader arena, the philosophy ofnature, is a more general science of nature than any of the specializedsciences; it examines topics such as the nature of change and time, the role

of mathematics in the investigation of nature, and related questions. Onemust be careful, however, not to draw too sharp a distinction between thephilosophy of nature and the empirical sciences. One must also be carefulnot to identify the philosophy of nature with either epistemology ormetaphysics.

The complete dependence of all that is on God does not challenge anappropriate autonomy of natural causation; God is not a competingcause in a world of other causes. In fact, Gods causality is such that Hecauses creatures to be the kind of causal agents which they are. In animportant sense, there would be no autonomy to the natural order were

God not causing it to be so. Traditional conceptions of Godsomnipotence need not be abandoned in order to embrace an evolvinguniverse in which real novelty and contingency are characteristic featuresof nature. Nor ought we to think that divine agency requires a kind ofindeterminism in nature in order to have the metaphysical space for Godto act without interfering. For Thomas, the natural sciences, philosophy,and theology discover complementary, not competing, truths aboutnature, human nature, and God. The account he offers of divine agencyand the autonomy and integrity of nature is not merely an artifact fromthe past, but an enduring legacy.

Notes

1 Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature, edited by Robert John Russell, NanceyMurphy, and C.J. Isham (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1993); Chaos andComplexity, edited by Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, and Arthur R. Peacocke (VaticanCity: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1995); Evolutionary and Molecular Biology, edited byRobert John Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J., and Francisco J. Ayala (Vatican City: VaticanObservatory Publications, 1998); Neurosciences and the Person, edited by Robert John Russell,Nancey Murphy, Theo C. Meyering, and Michael A. Arbib (Vatican City: Vatican ObservatoryPublications, 1999); and Quantum Mechanics, edited by Robert John Russell, Philip Clayton,

Kirk Wegter-McNelly, and John Polkinghorne (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publica-tions, 2001). The subtitle of each is: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action. For a synopsis and



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analysis of these works, see Wesley J. Wildman, The Divine Action Project, 19882003,Theology and Science 2: 1 (2004), 3175. Some of the contributors to these volumes responded inthe October 2004 issue, and Wildman responded in 2005.

2 This would be a correlative to the need for a similar metaphysical space which allows forthe causal agency of creatures.

3 From the preface to the English version of Ernst Haeckels The Riddle of the Universe(1900) by Joseph McCabe, ix.

4 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 Ted Peters (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John KnoxPress, 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 theprinciple of inertia see William E. Carroll, The Scientific Revolution and ContemporaryDiscourse on Faith and Reason, in Faith and Reason, edited by Timothy Smith (South Bend, IN:St. Augustines Press, 2000), 195216.

5 The claim is that the principle of inertia contradicts Aristotles claim that everything that ismoved is moved by another and thus the apparent need for a conjoined mover to account for motion.

6 Pannenberg, Metaphysics and the Idea of God, 20.

7 The present state of the system of nature is evidently a consequence of what it was in thepreceding moment, and if we conceive of an intelligence that at a given instant comprehends allthe relations of the entities of this universe, it could state the respective position, motions, andgeneral affects of all these entities at any time in the past or future. Laplace, Recherches surlintegration des equations differentielles aux differences finies et sur leur application a` lanalyse deshasards, 1776, quoted and translated in Charles C. Gillispie, Pierre-Simon Laplace 17491827. ALife in Exact Science (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), 26. Laplace was alsothe author ofExposition du syste`me du monde in which he argued that stability of the solar systemdid not require divine maintenance. His book was the occasion for a famous, but likelyapocryphal, anecdote: to Napoleons query about the absence of God in Laplaces system,Laplace was said to reply that he did not need that hypothesis.

8 P.C.W. Davies, Quantum Mechanics (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 4.9 Chris J. Isham, Lectures on Quantum Theory: Mathematical and Structural Foundations

(London: Imperial College Press, 1995), 131132.10 In an essay which applies such views to the field of genetics, Russell adopts the theologicalview that Gods special action can be considered as objective and non-interventionist if thequantum events underlying genetic mutations are given an indeterminist interpretationphilosophically. If it can be shown scientifically that quantum mechanics plays a role in geneticmutations, then by extension it can be claimed theologically that Gods action in geneticmutations is a form of objectively special, non-interventionist divine action. Moreover, sincegenetics plays a key role in biological evolution, we can argue by inference that Gods actionplays a key role in biological evolution . . .. Russell, thus, presents a sophisticated form oftheistic evolution. Robert J. Russell, Special Providence and Genetic Mutation: A New Defenseof Theistic Evolution, in Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientific Perspectives on DivineAction, edited by Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, and Francisco J. Ayala, 191223,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. Italicsin original.

11 Robert J. Russell, Quantum Physics and the Theology of Non-Interventionist ObjectiveDivine Action, in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, edited by Philip Clayton andZachary Simpson. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006) 586.

12 Particular Providence and the God of the Gaps, in Chaos and Complexity: ScientificPerspectives on Divine Action, 289324. See, as well, Nancy Murphy, Divine Action in theNatural Sciences, Chaos and Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, 324357.Russell in The Oxford Handbook: NIODA allows for Gods special providence, which believersrequire, 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 incausing 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 (VaticanCity: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1993), 4412.



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14 How that manoeuvre is executed will depend upon other organizing principles, active inthe 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] actually an approximation to a more supplereality, these triggers of vanishingly small energy input become non-energetic items ofinformation input (this way, that way) as proliferating possibilities are negotiated. The waythe envelope of possibility is actually traversed will depend upon downward causation by suchinformation input, for whose operation it affords the necessary room for manoeuvre. ibid., 443Italics in the original.

15 I am suggesting that we need to go further and recognize that the act of creating the otherin its freedom involves also a kenosis of the divine omniscience. God continues to know all thatcan be known, possessing what philosophers call a current omniscience, but God does notpossess an absolute omniscience, for God allows the future to be truly open. I do not think thatthis negates the Christian hope of ultimate eschatological fulfillment. God may be held to bringabout such determinate purpose even if it is by way of contingent paths. ibid., 4478 On this finalpoint see D. Bartholomew, God of Chance (London: SCM Press, 1984). The theme of kenosis isexplored 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 byW. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman (New York: Routledge, 1996), 250 and 249.

17 This is a criticism aptly made by Willem B. Drees in Gaps for God? in Chaos andComplexity, op. cit., pp. 223237. That Polkinghorne is particularly susceptible to this criticismcan be seen in the following observation he makes in this same volume: For a chaotic system, itsstrange attractor represents the envelope of possibility within which its future motion will becontained. The infinitely variable paths of exploration of this strange attractor are notdiscriminated from each other by differences of energy. They represent different patterns ofbehavior, different unfoldings of temporal development. In a conventional interpretation ofclassical chaos theory, these different patterns of possibility are brought about by sensitiveresponses to infinitesimal disturbances of the system. Our metaphysical proposal replaces thesephysical nudges by a causal agency operating in the openness represented by the range of possiblebehaviors 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 atwork. Polkinghorne, The Metaphysics of Divine Action, in Chaos and Complexity. . . ,1534.

18 Nicholas Saunders, Divine Action and Modern Science (Cambridge, U.K.: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2002). Saunders concludes his analysis in this way: Would it be correct to argueon the basis of the foregoing critique that the prospects for supporting anything like thetraditional understanding of Gods activity in the world are extremely bleak? Largely theanswer to this question must be yes. In fact it is no real exaggeration to state that contemporarytheology is in crisis. 215. Italics in the original. The traditional understanding Saunders has inmind refers to special providential acts by God.

19 I am persuaded by those who argue that it is philosophically suspect to argue from theessentially mathematical realm of chaos theory to reach conclusions about determinism orindeterminism in nature. The philosophical issues connected to a proper interpretation ofquantum mechanics and chaos theory are extraordinarily complex. Robert J. Russell and Wesley

J. Wildman, for example, note the use made by chaos theory in some theological circles: Thedevelopment of chaos theory has been welcomed by some theologians as powerful evidence thatthe 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 thisview, for chaos theory makes room for human freedom and divine acts in history that workwholly within natures metaphysical openness and do not violate natural laws . . . . [Such aninterpretation is] without justification . . . since it makes little sense to appeal to chaos theory aspositive evidence for metaphysical indeterminism when chaos theory is itself so useful forstrengthening the hypothesis of metaphysical determinism: it provides a powerful way fordeterminists to argue that many kinds of apparent randomness in nature should be subsumedunder deterministic covering laws. Chaos: A Mathematical Introduction with PhilosophicalReflections, in Chaos and Complexity . . ., op. cit., 4990, at 84 and 86.

20 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 WilliamA. Wallace, Causality and Scientific Explanation, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor: The University of



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Michigan Press, 1972), and Joseph De Finance, Conoscenza dellessere, translated by M.Delmirani (Roma: Editrice Pontificia Universita` Gregoriana, 1993), 332423.

21 This is what Polkinghorne calls a kenosis (or emptying) of divine omnipotence.22 The best known representative of this position in Islam was al-Ghazali (10581111);

see The Incoherence of the Philosophers, trans. by Michael E. Marmura (Provo, Utah:Brigham Young University Press, 1997). Maimonides (11351204), an ardent critic, describesthe position of the kalam theologians in this way: They [the theologians] assert that whena man moves a pen, it is not the man who moves it; for the motion occurring in the pen is anaccident created by God in the pen. Similarly the motion of the hand, which we think of asmoving the pen, is an accident created by God in the moving hand. Only God has instituted thehabit that the motion of the hand is concomitant with the motion of the pen, without the handexercising 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.

23 [al-Ghazalis] assertion [in defense of creation out of nothing] . . . that life can proceedfrom the lifeless and knowledge from what does not possess knowledge, and that the dignity ofthe First consists only in its being the principle of the universe, is false. For if life could proceedfrom 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 betweencauses 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 inBarry Kogan, Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation (Albany, NY: State University of NewYork Press, 1985), 353.

24 See my essay, Creation and Science in the Middle Ages, New Blackfriars 88 (November,2007), 678689.

25 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 Gods causality makes Godthe source of evil; an exposition of Thomas views on this matter are, however, well beyond thescope of my analysis here.

26 A.N. Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York, NY: Free Press, 1967 [1933]), 166.27 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 iscreativity, which Whitehead calls the category of the ultimate. Creativity is the twofold powerof every actual entity to exert both final and efficient causation. This idea is embodied inWhiteheads doctrine that every actuality is a momentary event, or actual occasion, which createsitself out of the causal influences received from prior actual occasions, then exerts influence uponsubsequent occasions. In supernatualistic theism, this twofold creative power belongedessentially to God alone; any creative power possessed by finite events was a wholly contingentgift of God, which could thereby be overridden or canceled out at will, so that God couldcompletely determine what occurs. This is the doctrine that Whitehead rejects as a falsemetaphysical compliment . . . . According to his naturalistic theism, the ultimate creativity in theuniverse is necessarily embodied in finite actualities as well as in the divine actuality. This meansthat power is inherent in the world as well as in God. It means, more precisely, that every one ofthe worlds units is inherently influenced by all prior units, that every unit inherently has somepower of self-determination, and that every unit inherently has the power to inflict itself upon

others, for good or for ill.28 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 withoutdetermining it. Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science (San Francisco: Harper, 1990), 224.

29 Keith Ward, Religion and Creation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 202, 188. Italicsadded.

30 Wards arguments are far more sophisticated than can be adequately set forth here, but forthe 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 theMetaphysical Foundations of Science, Sapientia 54 (1999), 6991.

31 Summa theologiae I, q. 105, a. 5.32 De veritate, q. 23, a. 5.33 Commentary on Aristotles De Interpretatione, Book I, lectio 14. This translation is found

in Timothy McDermott (ed.), Aquinas: Selected Philosophical Writings (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1993), 282.



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34 Harm J. M. J. Goris, Free Creatures of an Eternal God: Thomas Aquinas on Gods InfallibleForeknowledge and Irresistible Will (Nijmegen: Stichting Thomasfonds, 1996), 299. Goris notesthat the distinction between divine causality and creaturely causality is based on the distinctionbetween divine being and creaturely being: Aquinas distinguishes the being of the Creator fromthe being of the creature not in terms of necessary being versus contingent being but moreradically in terms of being versus non-being, while God causes the either necessary or contingentbeing of the creature. Likewise divine causation differs from creaturely causation as being differsfrom non-being. Without Gods causation there is no creaturely causation at all. ibid. For atrenchant criticism of some of the other features of Goris analysis, see the review of his book byBrian Shanley, O.P. in The Thomist (April 1998).

35 In discussing how the human will is free to choose, and yet caused to be so by God, Thomasnotes that the autonomy of the will does not require that it be the first cause of its activity: Notevery principle is a first principle . . . . [A]lthough it is essential to the voluntary act that itsprinciple be within the agent, nevertheless it is not contrary to the nature of a voluntary act thatthis principle be caused or moved by an extrinsic principle: because it is not essential to thevoluntary 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 towork . . . God cannot be inserted into the worlds 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 anycategories precisely because He is the cause of them all. John C. Yates, The Timelessness of God(Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1990), 2526. In the Summa theologiae,Thomas writes: God is the first cause of both natural causes and voluntary agents. And just asHis moving natural causes does not prevent their acts from being natural, so also His movingvoluntary 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, everymovement either of will or of nature proceeds from God as the First Mover. ibid., ad 3. What iscrucial for Thomas, however, is that we recognize that both natural and voluntary movementsproceed from an intrinsic principle, but that need not, indeed cannot, be the truly first principle ofaction.

36 Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 94.

37 Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 69.38 ibid.39 In I Sent., 8, 1, ad 1.40 In I Sent., 37, 1, 1 ad 1.41 Summa theologiae I, q. 104, a. 1.42 Referring to Thomas analogy of the suns illumination of light, Fran ORourke observes:

As the sun is naturally luminous, while air is lighted by sharing in the light of the sun although itdoes not partake of its nature, so also God alone is by his essence Being, while every creature isbeing through participation since its essence is not identical with its esse. Beings do not share indivine essence but in the illuminative effusion of divine Being which emanates from him . . . . Godis present in all things not according to his essence but through a participation of his createdlikeness . . . . Divine similitude is not just a gift bestowed upon beings, but is their very being itself. . . . Creatures participate in Gods presence but God is not participated. Beings share in thesimilitude of God while God in no manner resembles them. Fran ORourke, Pseudo-Dionysius

and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (London: E.J. Brill, 1992), 257258.43 Simon Tugwell, Albert and Aquinas: Selected Writings (New York: The Paulist Press,

1988), 213.44 Kathryn Tanner, Jesus, Humanity and the Trinity (London: Continuum, 2001), 34. For an

excellent discussion of the transition between a Thomistic understanding of divine transcendenceand a modern sense, especially beginning with Suarez, see William Placher, The Domestication ofTranscendence (Louisville, KY: Westminster Press, 1996).

45 Rudi A. Te Velde, Participation and Substantiality in Thomas Aquinas. Studien und Textezur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelaters, vol. 46 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 164.

46 Philip Clayton, God and Contemporary Science (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,1997), 100.

47 For a discussion of Thomas on creation, see Steven E. Baldner and William E. Carroll,Aquinas on Creation (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1997) and William E.

Carroll, La Creacion y Las Ciencias Naturales: Actualidad de Santo Tomas de Aquino (Santiago:Editorial Universidad Cato lica de Chile, 2003).



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48 Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 70, 8.49 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 causationon the categorical level. Goris, op. cit., 301.

50 Brian J. Shanley, O.P., Divine Causation and Human Freedom in Aquinas, AmericanCatholic Philosophical Quarterly 72: 1 (1998), 100 and 108. Shanley argues that no realexplanation of exactly how Gods causality functions is possible, since God transcends themundane world of causation. Michael Miller has argued that Bernard Lonergan, following in thetradition of Aquinas, provides a more philosophically satisfying account of divine causationwithout sacrificing divine transcendence: in Transcendence and Divine Causality, AmericanCatholic Philosophical Quarterly 73:4 (Autumn 1999), 537554. David Burrell observes that theterms primary and secondary [causality] come into play when we are faced with thesituation where one thing is by virtue of the other. So each can properly be said to be a cause, yetwhat makes one secondary is the intrinsic dependence on the one which is primary. Thisstipulation clearly distinguishes a secondary cause from an instrument, which is not a cause in itsown right: it is not the hammer which drives the nails but the carpenter using it. Burrell, Freedomand 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.51 Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 70. Ian Barbour reflects a common criticism (which we have

already seen in Keith Wards analysis) of the position of Thomas Aquinas. This position,Barbour thinks, does not fully represent the biblical idea that God has a more active andresponsive 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 ourlimited perspective. Alternatively, if the future is open even in Gods sight, we would have to saythat not all secondary causes are instruments of Gods will. In that case, creation is a greater self-limitation in Gods power and in Gods knowledge than classical theism acknowledges . . . . [T]heconcepts of primary and secondary causality do not provide a coherent solution to the problemof Gods 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 isnot adequately attentive to the analogical notion of causality and the profound metaphysical

difference between divine and creaturely causality which are characteristic of Thomas thought.52 Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 23.53 Summa contra Gentiles II, c. 24.54 De veritate q. 23, a. 6.55 Summa contra Gentiles III, c. 67.56 Il titolo di questo libro richiama una nozione, causa, che suggerisce al lettore

contemporaneo contenuti concettuali per qualche aspetto sostanzialmente diversi da quelli cheevocava nel lettore medievale. Difatti per i contemporanei il termine causa indica per lo piu lasola idea di consequenzialita` necessaria . . . Per il lettore medievale, invece, accanto allidea di unaconnessione di fatto, il concetto di causa trasmette quella di un ordinamento metafisico. . . . Lacausa, in questo modo, e` superiore alleffetto; e poiche e` principio della sua sussistenza in essere, e`principio anche della sua intelligibilita` . Cristina DAncona Costa, Introduzione, in TommasoDAquino, Commento al Libro delle Cause (Milano: Rusconi, 1986), 7.

57 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 Westernculture until the Renaissance. When modern science was born, formal and final causes were leftaside as standing beyond the reach of experiment; and material causes were taken for granted inconnection with all natural happenings . . . Hence, of the four Aristotelian causes only theefficient cause was regarded as worthy of scientific research. Mario Bunge, Causality andModern Science (New York: Dover, 1979), 32. See William A. Wallace, O.P., Causality andScientific Explanation, 2 vols. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), vol. 2, 246. I donot think that Bunge adequately distinguishes between developments in the empirical sciencesand the philosophical reflection on such developments.

58 Michael J. Dodds, The Doctrine of Causality in Aquinas and The Book of Causes: OneKey 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 thenarrowing of the notion of causality, which I have used in this section.

59 [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



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separate. One event follows another; but we never can observe any tie between them. They seemconjoined, but never connected. And as we can have no idea of any thing which never appeared toour outward sense or inward sentiment, the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have noidea 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, Enquiriesconcerning 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 inthe original. Humes analysis of causality has been especially influential for modern thought. Anexamination of the philosophical presuppositions which inform his position is beyond the scopeof this essay. Hume must deny the rather obvious experience we have of doing things and havingthings done to us, as well as the insights we have into causal dependence in the natural order.

60 Dodds, op. cit.61 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 ContemporaryScience, op. cit., 189.

62 The scientific world-view seems to leave no room for God to act, since everything thathappens 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, wondrousdivine events on the surface of natural and historical life. The causal nexus in space and timewhich Enlightenment science and philosophy introduced into the Western mind and which wasassumed by liberalism is also assumed by modern theologians and scholars; since they participatein the modern world of science both intellectually and existentially, they can scarcely do anythingelse. Langdon Gilkey, Cosmology, Ontology and the Travail of Biblical Language, in Owen C.Thomas, ed., Gods Activity in the World: the Contemporary Problem (Chico, California:Scholars Press, 1983), 31.

63 Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Wisdom Library, 1950), 32.64 Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the

Seventeenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986), 116.65 ibid., 25.66 Denys Turner, Faith, Reason, and the Existence of God (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge

University Press, 2004), 236.67 For a brief discussion of this point as well as an analysis of the history of modern atheism,see: Gavin Hyman, Atheism in Modern History, in The Cambridge Companion to Atheism,edited by Michael Martin, 2746 (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 39.

68 ibid.69 ibid., 39.70 ibid., 42.71 ibid., 423.72 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 5: The Realm

of Metaphysics in the Modern Age, translated by Oliver Davies et al. (Edinburgh: T & T Clark,1991), 16.

73 Jean-Luc Marion, The Essential Incoherence of Descartes Definition of Divinity, inEssays in Descartes Meditations, edited by Ame lie Oksenberg Rorty (Berkeley, CA: Universityof California Press, 1986), 306.

74 The French philosopher, E ric Alliez, writes that with Scotus denial of analogy what canbe seen to be constituted . . . is a thought whose moving edges end up leading to that scientificrevolution destined to make an epoch of our modernity. E ric Alliez, Capital Times: Tales

from the Conquest of Time, trans. by Georges Van De Abbeele (Minneapolis, MN: University ofMinnesota Press, 1996), 226.

75 As Philip Clayton explains, If one is to offer a full theory of divine agency; one mustinclude some account of where the causal joint is at which Gods action directly impacts on theworld. To do this requires one in turn to get ones hands dirty with the actual scientific data andtheories, including the basic features of relativity theory, quantum mechanics and (morerecently) chaos theory. Philip Clayton, God and Contemporary Science, 192. The difficulties ofdiscovering such a causal joint, however, are evident in the work of Arthur Peacocke whomaintains 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 ofmatter/energy. Such matter/energy input on Gods part, however, smacks of interference with



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the order of the world. Peacocke concludes that he has located, but not solved, the problem of thecausal joint: How can God exert his influence on, make an input of information into, theworld-as-a-whole without an input of matter/energy? This seems to me to be the ultimate level ofthe causal joint conundrum, for it involves the very nature of the divine being in relation tothat of matter/energy and seems to be the right place in which to locate the problem . . . ArthurPeacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming- Natural, Divine and Human(Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 149151, 160161, 164.



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