Attributability and Divine Concurrence

2017 ◽  
pp. 92-113
Author(s):  
Julia Jorati
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
William J. Abraham

This book builds upon the groundwork laid in the first volume, where it was established that no generic concept of action will suffice for understanding the character of divine actions explicit in the Christian faith. This volume argues that in order to understand divine action rightly, one must begin with the array of specific actions predicated of God in the Christian tradition. The author argues, in a way, that one must do theology in order to analyze properly the concept of divine action. Thus the book offers a careful review and evaluation of the particularities of divine action as they appear in the work of biblical, patristic, medieval, and Reformation-era theologians. Particular attention is given to the divine inspiration of Scripture, creation, incarnation, transubstantiation in the Eucharist, predestination, and divine concurrence. The motive here is not simply to repeat the doctrinal formulations found in the Christian tradition, but to examine them in order to find fresh ways of thinking about these issues for our own time, especially with respect to the contemporary debates about divine agency and divine action.


2019 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-482
Author(s):  
Mariusz Tabaczek ◽  

Many enthusiasts of theistic evolution willingly accept Aquinas’s distinction between primary and secondary causes, to describe theologically “the mechanics” of evolutionary transformism. However, their description of the character of secondary causes in relation to God’s creative action oftentimes lacks precision. To some extent, the situation within the Thomistic camp is similar when it comes to specifying the exact nature of secondary and instrumental causes at work in evolution. Is it right to ascribe all causation in evolution to creatures—acting as secondary and instrumental causes? Is there any space for a more direct divine action in evolutionary transitions? This article offers a new model of explaining the complexity of the causal nexus in the origin of new biological species, including the human species, analyzed in reference to both the immanent and transcendent orders of causation.


2014 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 659-682
Author(s):  
Andreas Blank

ArgumentThis article examines the conception of elements in the natural philosophy of Nicolaus Taurellus (1547–1606) and explores the theological motivation that stands behind this conception. By some of his early modern readers, Taurellus may have been understood as a proponent of material atoms. By contrast, I argue that considerations concerning the substantiality of the ultimate constituents of composites led Taurellus to an immaterialist ontology, according to which elements are immaterial forms that possess active and passive potencies as well as motion and extension. In Taurellus's view, immaterialism about elements provides support for the theological doctrine of creationex nihilo. As he argues, the ontology of immaterial forms helps to explicate a sense in which creatures are substances, not accidents of the divine substance. In particular, he maintains that immaterial forms stand in suitable relations of ontological dependence to God: creation dependence (since forms would not exist without the divine act of creation), but neither subsistence dependence (since forms continue to exist without continued divine agency) nor activity dependence (since forms are active without requiring divine concurrence).


Author(s):  
Andréa Faggion ◽  

Leibniz is well known as an opponent of the theories of causation which have to support causal relationships between created substances. But he was also an opponent of occasionalism, theory that sustain all reality would be produced solely be God. Denying that God produces only substances, leaving totally dependent of those the production of their states, as the conservationists would want, Leibniz proposed a complex theory of divine concurrence to explain metaphysically the changes of states of substances through a causal participation between God and his creatures. This article proposes some suggestions to clarify the concept of divine concurrence, as a third option between occasionalism and mere conservatism.


2018 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-225
Author(s):  
Edward Ryan Moad ◽  

Occasionalism is the doctrine that relegates all real causal efficacy exclusively to God. This paper will aim to elucidate in some detail the metaphysical considerations that, together with certain common medieval theological axioms, constitute the philosophical steps leading to this doctrine. First, I will explain how the doctrine of divine conservation implies that we should attribute to divine power causal immediacy in every natural event and that it rules out mere conservationism as a model of the causal relation between God and nature. This leaves concurrentism and occasionalism as the only compatible options. Then I will explain the argument that since no coherent conception of divine concurrence is possible, occasionalism emerges as the only model of the causal relation between God and nature compatible with the doctrine of divine conservation.


1924 ◽  
Vol 4 (46) ◽  
pp. 1328-1341 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ælred Whitacre
Keyword(s):  

2004 ◽  
Vol 113 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Lee
Keyword(s):  

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