ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 analyzes the current terrain regarding divine action. The first question is, Why not intervention? Theologians point to a variety of issues, including conflicts with science, inconsistency on God’s part, and making the problem of evil worse. These concerns motivate models of special divine action that avoid violating the laws of nature, five of which are discussed. Thomism relies heavily on the distinction between primary and secondary causes. Thomists argue that God works as primary cause only in and through natural processes. Panentheism presents a different relation between God and nature than the Creator–creation view of classical theism, one that makes violating the laws of nature impossible. Pneumatological naturalism takes the immanent presence of God’s Spirit to be responsible for both lawlike and miraculous events, allowing the laws to change under the Spirit’s guidance. Emergence takes nature to be organized along levels from fundamental physics upward, with higher-level causes sometimes having effects on lower levels. As a model of divine action, it entails that God’s action is a matter of downward causation from the highest ontological level. Finally, quantum indeterminism takes God to be at work within the fundamentally random events of quantum mechanics.
