ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes Robert John Russell's theory of divine action. Russell's proposal has exercised significant influence on others working in the area of science and religion with interests in Christian systematic theology. It focuses on Russell's contributions to the Divine Action Project, a series of research conferences and publications jointly sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and Russell's own organization, the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS) in Berkeley, California. Like other theories of the incompatibilist, non-interventionist, objective, bottom up type, Russell's method is to locate ontological openness in nature, realms within which God might work without violating natural laws, understood as mathematical descriptions of ontologically basic structures of reality. Newtonian physics offered more possibilities for ontological indeterminism than many realized at the time. All of these possibilities turn on imagining that Newton's laws of motion were very close but not infinitely accurate approximations to the ontologically basic laws of nature.
