ABSTRACT
I have complained that theists have had almost nothing to say about the mechanisms by means of which divine volitions are translated into mundane events. In consequence, there is a real poverty of content in theistic claims about divine activity, both with respect to explanatory detail and with respect to available strategies for verifi cation or confi rmation. But perhaps this complaint is unfair. Theists commonly distinguish between direct divine causation and indirect infl uence that makes use of physical instrumentalities. What is clearly pivotal is direct divine causation-that is to say, those points at which divine volitions serve as the proximate causes of physical events. It is at these nexuses that the natural and supernatural worlds are connected. But here it would be misguided to demand a mechanism, for A being the proximate cause of B precisely excludes the existence of any intervening mechanism.
