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On The Meaning of “Act of God”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Gordon D. Kaufman
Gordon D. Kaufman
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School
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Extract

The concept, “act of God,” is central to the biblical understanding of God and his relation to the world. Repeatedly we are told of the great works performed by God in behalf of his people and in execution of his own purposes in history. From the “song of Moses,” which celebrates the “glorious deeds” (Ex. 15:11) through which Yahweh secured the release of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, to the letters of Paul, which proclaim God's great act delivering us “from the dominion of darkness” (Col. 1:13) and reconciling us with himself, we are confronted with a “God who acts.” The “mighty acts” (Ps. 145:4), the “wondrous deeds” (Ps. 40:5), the “wonderful works” (Ps. 107:21) of God are the fundamental subject-matter of biblical history, and the object of biblical faith is clearly the One who has acted repeatedly and with power in the past and may be expected to do so in the future.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 61 , Issue 2 , April 1968 , pp. 175 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1968

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References

1 Cosmology, Ontology, and the Travail of Biblical Language, Journal of Religion 41 (1961), 203Google Scholar, 200.

2 Cf. the well-known book of that title by G. Ernest Wright (London: SCM Press, 1952).

3 It should be recalled here that according to his own testimony in the First Critique KANT had “found it necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith” (B xxx [Kemp Smith trans.], cf. B xxivff.).

4 There are, of course, many other contributing factors to contemporary unbelief, e.g., the experience of massive evil in our time. But the problems with which we are concerned in this paper have a certain logical, if not existential, priority over such difficulties.

5 See my two papers, Two Models of Transcendence, in The Heritage of Christian Thought, ed. Cushman, R. E. and Grislis, E. (New York: Harper & Row, 1965)Google Scholar, and Transcendence without Mythology, Harvard Theological Review 59 (1966), 105–32Google Scholar.

6 When “act”-language is used in this way to interpret ultimate reality, freedom and creativity are given significant place on the metaphysical ground floor, in contrast with cosmologies that make either causal or teleological order (or some form of chance or indeterminism) fundamental. Thus, such a position can provide a metaphysical grounding for human freedom and creativity which is simply unavailable to other cosmological or theological positions.

7 We can still sense something of this meaning even in the conventional or legal usage of the phrase to designate a terrible catastrophe — such as being struck by lightning or destroyed by storm — even though such events are now understood o t be due entirely to impersonal natural causes; their unexpectedness, man's powerlessness before them, their terrifying impact on human affairs may still evoke some sense of a powerful and inscrutable will working his way through the events of nature.

8 It may be observed here that though AQUINAS worked out an elaborate doctrine of “second causes” which he held were the usual media of God's work, he maintained that God could and sometimes did work directly and immediately, and this possibility was regarded by him as theologically indispensable (Summa Theologica, I, Q 105), as indeed it is if one works with a theory of second causes like Thomas'. But it is precisely this way of conceiving God's direct and immediate action in particular events that is no longer plausible or intelligible.

9 Though I would not be inclined simply to adopt A. N. Whitehead's or Charles Hartshorne's organismic models for rendering intelligible God's impingement on the world, certainly much is to be learned from their careful and detailed treatments of this matter. The principal difficulty with them, it seems to me, is that God's effective initiative and autonomous agency are rendered highly problematical, and I am concerned to keep these at the very center.

10 E.g., is it even possible, any more, to think clearly what is meant by the “virgin birth”? It might be supposed that this idea is clear enough: it involves conception without the activity of a male partner. But how are we to think of such conception? Are we to suppose that at some point a male sperm appeared within Mary's womb, there fertilizing an egg? If so, how are we to think of this? Were the requisite number of atoms and molecules created instantaneously and out of nothing within Mary's body and somehow infused with life? How is it possible to conceive this in view of the assumptions (indispensable to science) about the conservation of mass-energy, and of the slow evolution of life? If we do not suppose a male sperm was somehow created in Mary's womb, do we think of this conception as without benefit of fertilization at all? Or did the egg fertilize itself? I am far from contending that any or all of these questions can be or need be answered; my point is that the way we have come to think of conception and birth under the tutelage of modern biology makes it inevitable that such questions will arise. For we cannot clearly think (though we can, perhaps, imagine) what an event without prior finite causes and conditions would be (and in many cases, as in conception, we know a good deal about what these essential conditions are), and so, no matter at what point in the process of conception and birth we begin, we inevitably and necessarily inquire about the antecedent conditions. The very definition or concept of event implies for us such connection with indispensable antecedent (finite) conditions, and it is no longer possible for us to think an “event” as simply supernaturally caused. That is, for us all chains of events, such as the growth of the boy Jesus, presuppose preceding chains of events, such as the development of Mary's pregnancy, and these in turn presuppose other chains; and this continuous recursive movement may not be halted simply arbitrarily. The question, then, is whether it is even possible to think clearly the idea of a supernaturally caused event, or (what is the same thing) the occurrence of a finite event without adequate finite causes, or whether such a notion is not quite as self-contradictory as the notion of a square-circle. Cf. SCHLEIERMACHER: “… every absolute miracle would destroy the whole system of nature. … Since … that which would have happened by reason of the totality of finite causes in accordance with the natural order does not happen, an effect has been hindered from happening, and certainly not through the influence of other normally counteracting finite causes given in the natural order, but in spite of the fact that all active causes are combining to produce that very effect. Everything, therefore, which had ever contributed to this will, to a certain degree, be annihilated, and instead of introducing a single supernatural power into the system of nature as we intended, we must completely abrogate the conception of nature.” (The Christian Faith [Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928]Google ScholarPubMed, § 47, 2.)

11 A good recent analysis which shows clearly why this must be the case, as well as how theologians and biblical historians have often sought to evade the full implications of this matter, will be found in Harvey, Van A., The Historian and the Believer (New York: Macmillan, 1966)Google Scholar.

12 See the essay, Ueber historische und dogmatische Methode in der Theologie, Gesammelte Schriften (Tübingen: Mohr, 1913)Google Scholar, II, 729–53.

13 It is, of course, A. N. Whitehead who has worked out most fully both the necessity of conceiving events in this way and also the full cosmological implications of such a conception. (See, e.g., Science and the Modern World [New York: Macmillan, 1925]Google Scholar, esp. ch. 7; and the doctrine of “actual occasions” in Process and Reality [New York: Macmillan, 1929]Google Scholar.) Without committing oneself to Whitehead's theology, one may learn much from his ontological and cosmological analysis and construction.

14 For some suggestion of my way of treating some of the problems (though by no means all) connected with conceiving God as Agent see my two papers on personalistic conception of divine transcendence (Two Models of Transcendence, po. cit., and Transcendence without Mythology, op. cit.) Much remains to be done, however, especially on the problem of conceiving God as effecting his purposes within and for history. Resolution of this issue will depend in part on the success with which one is able to conceive how a human agent effects purposes, and then drawing out the analogy to interpret the divine activity.

15 John Macmurray even argues that the “only way” in which we can conceive the world as a unified whole is by thinking it as “one action” (The Self as Agent [London: Faber & Faber, 1957], 204Google ScholarPubMed). For if the overarching unity of the world were conceived simply in terms, for example, of the category process, it would be “a world in which nothing is ever done; in which everything simply happens; a world, then, in which everything is matter of fact and nothing is ever intended. We should have to assert, in that case, that there are no actions; that what seem such are really events” (219). That is, the concept of process cannot comprise the unity of the entire world because it cannot contain our own actions as part of that overall unity.

16 It is not consistent, of course, with the assumption that nature is not grounded in anything beyond herself; but that is a different point from the one I a m making in this paper, and one which deserves full discussion in its own right, though it cannot be pursued here.

17 I cannot here go into the complicated question of whether God has revealed himself and, if so, how this is to be understood. Suffice it to recall that precisely this is the Christian claim: the knowledge of God and of his purposive activity in and for the world is not attained primarily through observation of nature but rather through his self-disclosure. “For he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Eph. 1:9–10).

18 It will be evident from this description that God's act must not be conceived under only one image of activity, e.g., the carpenter making a table or the farmer cultivating a field or the parent educating his child. Within the schema of God's act we are including: (a) his creation and maintenance of the material orders of nature, and also his ordering them in such a way that life can emerge from them; (b) his creation of life and his ordering it through an evolutionary process in which higher and more complex forms gradually emerge from lower and simpler forms, ultimately producing self-conscious life; and (c) his creation of the culture-producing being, man, his guidance of man's historical development so as to make possible the emergence of a genuinely free and responsible being, and his dealing with free (and sinful) man in such a way as to redeem him from his self-imposed bondage and enable him to become what had been originally intended. Obviously the forms of “act” appropriate to all the diverse forms of finite being here represented — ranging from bare matter to free spirits — and appropriate to the objectives God is seeking to accomplish with each will be quite various, and it would be a gross error in our theological construction if we attempted to assimilate them all to one form of (human) act, e.g., that of man the maker. It is essential that we develop our analogies from the full range of human activities if we are going to render God's relation to his world intelligible by means of the basic schema, act.