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On the distinction between creation and conservation: a partial defence of continuous creation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2009

TIMOTHY D. MILLER
TIMOTHY D. MILLER*
Affiliation:
Lee University School of Religion, PO Box 3450, Cleveland, TN37320
*
e-mail: tmiller@leeuniversity.edu
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Abstract

The traditional view of divine conservation holds that it is simply a continuation of the initial act of creation. In this essay, I defend the continuous-creation tradition against William Lane Craig's criticism that continuous creation fundamentally misconstrues the intuitive distinction between creation and conservation. According to Craig, creation is the unique causal activity of bringing new patient entities into existence, while conservation involves acting upon already existing patient entities to cause their continued existence. I defend continuous creation by challenging Craig's intuitive distinction and by showing that the alternative account of creation and conservation he bases upon it is fraught with serious internal difficulties.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , December 2009 , pp. 471 - 485
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

Notes

1. Pannenberg, Wolfart ‘The doctrine of creation and modern science’, Zygon, 23 (1988), 8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologiae (New York NY: McGraw-Hill, 1964), Ia.104.1.

3. Francisco Suarez On Creation, Conservation, and Concurrence: Metaphysical Disputations 20, 21, and 22, Alfred J. Freddoso (tr.) (South Bend IN: St Augustine's Press, 2002), 21.2.3.

4. Ibid., 21.2.7.

5. See René Descartes The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, 2 vols, John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (trs) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984–1985), I, 33, 254; II, 133, 200, 243; G. W. Leibniz Theodicy, Austin Farrer (ed.), E.M. Huggard (tr.) (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1952), 139; George Berkeley ‘Philosophical correspondence between Berkeley and Samuel Johnson’, in Berkeley Philosophical Works (Totowa NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975), 345–346; and Jonathan Edwards The Works of Jonathan Edwards, I (Carlisle PA: The Banner of Truth Trust, 1995), 989–990 (available online at http://www.ccel/edwards/works1.pdf).

6. See Philip Quinn ‘Divine conservation, continuous creation, and human action’ [hereafter ‘Conservation and human action’] in Alfred J. Freddoso (ed.) The Existence and Nature of God (Notre Dame IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 55–79; idem ‘Divine conservation, secondary causes, and occasionalism’ [hereafter ‘Conservation and occasionalism’] in Thomas V. Morris (ed.) Divine and Human Action: Essays in the Metaphysics of Theism (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 50–73; and idem ‘Creation, conservation, and the big bang’ [hereafter ‘Conservation and the big bang’] in John Earman (ed.) Philosophical Problems of the Internal and External Worlds: Essays on the Philosophy of Adolf Grünbaum (Pittsburgh PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1993), 589–612. Other contemporary proponents of continuous creation include Jonathan L. Kvanvig and Hugh J. McCann ‘Divine conservation and the persistence of the world’ [hereafter ‘Divine conservation and persistence’] in Morris Divine and Human Action, 13–49; McCann, Hugh J. and Kvanvig, Jonathan L. ‘The occasionalist proselytizer: a modified catechism’ [hereafter ‘The occasionalist proselytizer’], Philosophical Perspectives, 5 (1991), 587–615CrossRefGoogle Scholar; John Polkinghorne Science and Creation: The Search for Understanding (Boston MA: New Science Library, 1989), 54; David Braine The Reality of Time and the Existence of God (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1988), 180; Christopher Menzel ‘God and mathematical objects’, in Russell W. Howell and W. James Bradley (eds) Mathematics in a Postmodern Age: A Christian Perspective (Grand Rapids MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2001), 71–73; and Thomas V. Morris Our Idea of God: An Introduction to Philosophical Theology (Vancouver BC: Regent College Publishing, 2002), 154–158.

7. See Craig, William Lane ‘Creation and conservation once more’, Religious Studies, 34 (1998), 177–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar All subsequent references to Craig's arguments refer to this article. However, see also his ‘Creation, providence and miracles’, in Brian Davies (ed.) Philosophy of Religion: A Guide to the Subject (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 1998), 136–162; and ch. 4 of William L. Craig and Paul Copan Creation out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientific Exploration (Grand Rapids MI: Baker Academic, 2004).

8. For a very recent statement of these first two objections see Pavelich, Andrew ‘On the idea that God is continuously re-creating the universe’, Sophia, 46 (2007), 7–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9. This single-axiom summary is based upon Quinn ‘Conservation and occasionalism’, 54; Quinn's own wording is slightly different but equivalent.

10. Quinn ‘Conservation and the big bang’, 598. Quinn's own wording of these definitions is slightly different, but equivalent. I should also note that I am glossing over a potentially significant difference between the accounts in Quinn's second and third essays. In ‘Conservation and the big bang’ Quinn actually replaces the axiom (CC) with the following modally weakened postulate, (P): For all x and t, if x is contingent and x exists at t, then God's willing that x exists at t brings about x's existing at t. CC entails P, but not vice versa. According to CC, it is a necessary truth that every moment of the existence of all contingent beings is caused by the divine will. P, on the other hand, is non-committal concerning the modal status of the claim. That is, P is consistent with supposing that God could have created contingent beings that persisted on their own, without any need of continuous divine conservation; but P is also consistent with the stronger position of axiom CC. Unfortunately, Quinn offers no explanation for the change, so its significance is unclear. Perhaps it signals a shift in his conception of the modal status of the conservation doctrine, or perhaps he switched to P only because it is less committal and hence, less contentious. In any case, I will ignore the issue; for present purposes, I am concerned not with the question of whether things must necessarily be continuously conserved, but rather with how we should understand the assumption that they are continuously conserved. Nothing we shall say about conservation depends in any essential respect on our assuming CC rather than P.

11. Craig ‘Creation and conservation once more’, 183.

12. Ibid., 183, 187; I have made some minor changes to render E3 consistent with the notation used throughout this essay.

13. While he mostly tries to emphasize the difference between creation and conservation, Craig at one point tries to downplay the intrinsic difference. He writes, ‘The act itself (the causing of existence) may be the same in both cases, but in one case may be instantaneous and presupposes no prior object, whereas in the other case occurs over an interval and does involve a prior object’ (ibid., 187). But I am unable to reconcile this with everything else he says about creation and conservation. How can the instantaneous act of bringing a new being into existence be ‘the same’ as that of acting upon an existing being? I do not see how they can; it seems clear to me that these must be fundamentally different kinds of acts.

14. John Duns Scotus God and Creatures: The Quodlibetal Questions, Felix Alluntis and Allan B. Wolter (tr.) (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1981), 276.

15. In fact, Quinn cites the passage to this very effect; see his ‘Conservation and the big bang’, 598.

16. Duns Scotus God and Creatures, 274.

17. Vallicella, William ‘The creation–conservation dilemma and presentist four-dimensionalism’, Religious Studies, 38 (2002), 187–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 191.

18. Ibid., 190.

19. I borrow the term ‘existential inertia’ from Ibid.

20. Ibid., 190–191.

21. Ibid., 191.

22. In the paragraph immediately preceding this criticism of Craig, Vallicella explicitly notes that ‘the act of creation’ in Craig's account ‘is simultaneous with its effect’ (ibid., 190). Since the effect of an act of creation is the existence of that which is created, it is indeed quite puzzling why Vallicella then denies that the created object exists at the moment of its creation.

23. Similarly, Kvanvig and McCann argue that no distinction can be drawn between the world's ‘coming to be’ and its ‘being’; see their ‘Divine conservation and persistence’, 19. See also Hugh McCann ‘Creation and conservation’, in Philip L. Quinn and Charles Taliaferro (eds) A Companion to Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge MA: Blackwell, 1999), 307.

24. Aspects of the argument presented below are modelled upon aspects of the arguments for the impossibility of self-sustenance and for the impossibility of a diachronic causal nexus found in Kvanvig and McCann's ‘Divine conservation and persistence’ and in their ‘The occasionalist proselytizer’.

25. Strictly speaking, the objection I am raising requires only the weaker assumption that time is dense. For a discussion of discrete, dense, and continuous conceptions of time see ch. 6 of W. H. Newton-Smith The Structure of Time (Boston MA: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980).

26. Quinn, for example, is open to the possibility that this is how we should understand the Christian doctrine of the resurrection. See Quinn ‘Conservation and human action’, 76–77. However, it is not a possibility that Craig is willing to consider; indeed, he criticizes Quinn's account for being compatible with such gaps in existence. See Craig ‘Creation and conservation once more’, 184–185.

27. Robin Le Poidevin discusses very briefly, but also very accessibly, some of the strange consequences of taking space and time to be discrete; see his Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 2003), 119–121. For more detailed discussions of discrete versus dense and continuous conceptions of time, see ch. 1.6 of J. R. Lucas A Treatise on Time and Space (London: Methuen & Co., 1973); ch. 5 of J. R. Lucas Space, Time, and Causality (New York NY: Oxford University Press, 1984); and ch. 6 of Newton-Smith The Structure of Time. Lucas and Newton-Smith both reject discrete time in favour of either dense or continuous time.

28. See William Lane Craig Time and Eternity: Exploring God's Relationship to Time (Wheaton IL: Crossway Books, 2001), 158–159.

29. I am assuming here that time is continuous. There is no point in distinguishing between internally and externally bounded intervals on a discrete view of time since, if time were discrete, either type could be defined in terms of the other. For example, if time were discrete and t→t were an II-interval, it would be identical to EE-interval, t–1→t+1; likewise, if t→t were an EE-interval, it would be identical to II-interval, t+1→t′−1. Discrete time does away with topologically open boundaries – every interval has a first and a last moment regardless of whether it is internally or externally bounded.

30. As an anonymous referee for the journal pointed out, the problems I have raised for Craig's agent–patient approach to conservation seem to pose a more general problem for any instance of diachronic causation. If an agent entity acts upon a patient entity at t, when does the effect of that act occur? Unless time is discrete, it will not be possible for it to occur at the next moment. And if the effect occurred over an interval internally bounded at the beginning, the act and its effect would be separated by a temporal interval. Apart from adopting a discrete view of time, the only way for the act and its effect to be temporally contiguous is for the effect to occur over a temporal interval externally bounded at its beginning by t. McCann and Kvanvig reject this approach to secondary causation as part of their case for occasionalism (roughly, the view that God alone is a true cause); see their ‘The occasionalist proselytizer’. However, I believe the externally bounded interval solution is more plausible in the context of secondary causation than it is in the context of Craig's theory of conservation. I hope to discuss this issue more fully in the context of a discussion of the compatibility of continuous creation and secondary causation.

31. See, for example, Quinn ‘Conservation and occasionalism’, and Vander Laan, David ‘Persistence and divine conservation’, Religious Studies, 42 (2006), 159–176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32. I would like to thank Monte Cook, Reinaldo Elugardo, Jim Hawthorne, Linda Zagzebski, and an anonymous referee for the journal for helpful suggestions on earlier drafts of this essay.