3 - Divine Action and Mind

Summary

In the previous chapter, I surveyed the current state of contemporary divine action theories and the role that the causal joint has played in their development. It became clear that not only is the standard model of divine action largely committed to noninterventionism and incompatibilism but that it has also exhibited a significant confusion around the laws of nature. In addition to the scientific and metaphysical problems attending the standard causal joint approach, it is evident that the problem of suffering is an immensely difficult theological challenge to any proposal suggesting that God can and does respond to created beings within the temporal natural world. As a representative test case, I outlined the debate surrounding divine action and QM, concluding that standard divine action models often fail to be scientifically plausible or theologically adequate. In fact, the entire contemporary divine action dialogue is framed by terms and metaphysical commitments that may be question begging and insufficient for Christian theism, presupposing a quasi-deistic God–world model that lacks a robust understanding of God’s immanence in, and involvement with, all Creation. This being the case, science and religion has been effectively hamstrung into producing theories that either disallow any meaningful divine action, or confine it to specific areas of the natural world (thus committing the theological faux pas of “God of the gaps” thinking). Nicholas Saunders, I suggested, is not far off in suggesting that theology is in a state of crisis – at least, that is, so far as the standard divine action model is concerned.