Ignacio Silva

Many innovative proposals have been offered over the last few years to solve the problem of divine action in nature, looking mainly at ontological causal gaps in nature, which would allow God to act in nature. Analysing these proposals I argue that they reduce God to a cause among causes. In order to avoid this conclusion, I suggest revisiting Aquinas’ doctrine of providence and God’s interplay with contingent created causes. Muchas propuestas innovadoras se han ofrecido en los últimos años para solucionar el debate acerca de la providencia divina en la naturaleza, centrándose sobre todo en el indeterminismo causal natural que parecería permitir a Dios obrar en la naturaleza. Al analizar estas propuestas, sin embargo, se concluye que Dios es reducido a una causa entre causas. Para evitar esta conclusión, sugiero analizar la doctrina de Tomás de Aquino acerca de la providencia y el obrar de Dios a través de las causas contingentes creadas.

Various authors within the contemporary debate on divine action in nature and contemporary science argue both for and against a Thomistic account of divine action through the notions of primary and secondary causes. In this paper I argue that those who support a Thomistic account of divine action often fail to explain Aquinas' doctrine in full, while those who argue against it base their objections on an incomplete knowledge of this doctrine, or identify it with Austin Farrer's doctrine of double agency – again failing to do Aquinas justice. I analyse these objections, indicating how they do not address Aquinas' doctrine by offering a brief but full account of the latter

© 2013 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyThe volume that Kelly James Clark and Raymond J. VanArragon have put together is excellent. The question about evidence for religious belief has been raised in recent times particularly within Reformed epistemology, and the authors writing in this volume face these issues with vigorous and persuasive arguments. The book includes eleven essays, and is divided into three parts. The first part is devoted to exploring whether religious belief needs to be based on evidence. The second explores different factors and circumstances which may influence our acquisition of evidence. The final part presents arguments considering actual evidence for and against religious belief.The first part includes four essays. James Ross kicks off by arguing that the rationality of Christian faith is an issue of reliance rather than of evidence. Christian faith as a form of life,...

In the first part of this paper I argue that even if at first Alvin Plantinga’s reasons for allowing special divine action seem similar to those of Thomas Aquinas, particularly in De Potentia Dei for allowing miracles, the difference in their metaphysical language makes Aquinas’ account less prone to the objections raised against Plantinga’s. In the second part I argue that Plantinga errs when recurring to quantum mechanics for allowing special divine action, making God to be a cause among causes. Thomas Aquinas, by speaking of primary and secondary causality when referring to God’s activity, avoids taking this step, evading the conclusion that God could be seen as a cause among causes. Aquinas, however, maintains in a statement which goes beyond Plantinga’s, that God’s providence requires the universe to be indeterministic because this indeterministic feature makes the universe more perfect.

© 2013 The Editors of The Philosophical QuarterlyHerman Philipse sets out in this book an extremely detailed and thorough case for dismissing the claims of natural theology in the age of science. His main strategy is to refute the arguments of Richard Swinburne, claiming that Swinburne presents the strongest case for natural theology in a scientific age; hence if Swinburne fails, natural theology generally is discredited. Whether or not the broader conclusion is warranted, that we should all become atheists, the wide‐ranging and detailed arguments and analyses should serve as useful material for teaching and debate.The structure of the book is commendably straightforward. The first part deals with the primacy and rationality of natural theology. The second part investigates the extent to which theism can be treated as a theory in the manner of scientific theories and how well it performs in this capacity, with Philipse concluding that...

In this paper, I present and analyse the theological reasons given by contemporary authors such as Robert J. Russell, Thomas Tracy and John Polkinghorne, as well as thirteenth‑century scholar Thomas Aquinas, to admit that the created universe requires being intrinsically contingent in its causing, in particular referring to their doctrines of providence. Contemporary authors stress the need of having indeterminate events within the natural world to allow for God’s providential action within creation, whereas Aquinas focuses his argument on the idea that a universe which includes contingent causes is a more perfect universe. I compare these two approaches, concluding that Aquinas’ seems to be better suited to account for true indetermination within the natural world, claiming that divine causality is not required to complement natural causality in its own level.

Contemporary debates on divine action tend to focus on finding a space in nature where there would be no natural causes, where nature offers indeterminacy, openness, and potentiality, to place God’s action. These places are found through the natural sciences, in particular quantum mechanics. God’s action is then located in those ontological ”causal-gaps’ offered by certain interpretations of quantum mechanics. In this view, God would determine what is left underdetermined in nature without disrupting the laws of nature. These contemporary proposals evidence at least two unexamined assumptions, which frame the discussion in such a way that they portray God as acting as a secondary cause or a ”cause among causes’. God is somewhat required to act within these ”gaps’, binding God to the laws of nature, and placing God’s action at the level of secondary causes. I suggest that understanding God’s action, following Thomas Aquinas, in terms of primary and secondary causation could help dissolve this difficulty. Aquinas moves away from this objection by suggesting to speak of an analogical notion of cause, allowing for an analogical understanding of God’s causality in nature. With a radically different understanding of the interplay between secondary causes and God, Aquinas manages to avoid conceiving God as a cause among causes, keeping the distinctive transcendent character of God’s causality safe from objections.