ABSTRACT

This book discusses various aspects of God’s causal activity. Traditional theology has long held that God acts in the world and interrupts the normal course of events by performing special acts. Although the tradition is unified in affirming that God does create, conserve, and act, there is much disagreement about the details of divine activity. The chapters in this book fruitfully explore these disagreements about divine causation.

The chapters are divided into two sections. The first explores historical views of divine causal activity from the Pre-Socratics to Hume. The second section addresses a variety of contemporary issues related to God’s causal activity. These chapters include defenses of the possibility of special acts of God, proposals of models of divine causation, and analyses of divine conservation.

Philosophical Essays on Divine Causation will be of interest to researchers and graduate students working in philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, and metaphysics.

chapter |13 pages

Introduction

chapter 3|18 pages

Aquinas on Divine Causality

chapter 4|16 pages

Three Competing Views of God's Causation of Creaturely Actions

Aquinas, Scotus and Olivi

chapter 7|19 pages

Leibniz on Divine Causation

Continuous Creation and Concurrence Without Occasionalism

chapter 8|17 pages

Berkeley on Divine and Human Agency

A Teleological Reconstrual

chapter 10|22 pages

Defending Special Divine Acts

chapter 13|18 pages

Theistic Conferralism

Consolidating Divine Sustenance and Trope Theory

chapter 14|17 pages

The Timing of Divine Conservation

Pushes, Nudges, and Merry-Go-Rounds