Divine Holiness and Divine Action

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark C. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Divine Action ◽  
General Theme ◽  
Moral Perfection ◽  
The World

Holiness is the attribute most emphatically ascribed to God in Scripture. But there has been little attention devoted to characterizing and considering the entailments of divine holiness. This book defends an account of holiness indebted to Rudolf Otto’s description of the experience of the holy as that of a mysterium tremendum et fascinans. God’s being holy consists in God’s being someone with whom intimate union is both extremely desirable for us and yet something for which we—and indeed any limited beings—are unfit. This notion of divine holiness is useful for addressing disputed theological questions regarding divine action. In contrast to standard accounts of divine action that begin with assumptions regarding God’s moral perfection or God’s maximal love, the appeal to divine holiness supports a rival framework for explaining and predicting divine action—the holiness framework—according to which God is motivated to act in ways that are a response to God’s own value by keeping distance from that which is deficient, defective, or in any way limited in goodness. The book exhibits the fruitfulness of a reorientation from the morality and love frameworks to the holiness framework by showing how such a reorientation suggests distinct approaches to perennial problems of divine action regarding creation, incarnation, atonement, and salvation. From the treatment of these perennial problems, a general theme regarding divine action emerges: that God’s interaction with the world exhibits a radical sort of humility.

scholarly journals A Vindication of Desire: St Anselm, with C. S. Lewis

2021 ◽  
pp. 001258062110167
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Mills
Keyword(s):  
Christian Life ◽  
Gregory The Great ◽  
Moral Perfection ◽  
Dynamic Relationship ◽  
Anselm Of Canterbury ◽  
The World ◽  
Mutual Interest

Despite different starting points, in the cloister and the world respectively, Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) and C. S. Lewis (1898–1963) enjoyed a mutual interest in the concept and experience of spiritual desire. Inspired by Lewis’ famous sermon, ‘The Weight of Glory’ (1941), but principally guided by Anselm’s reflections, this essay argues that desire exists in a dynamic relationship with love and that, as a journey of desire, the Christian life is extremely challenging, since it is a journey into mystery and towards moral perfection, but also contains and ultimately fulfils God’s promise of eternal joy. It is hoped that one by-product of this exploration may be to accord greater recognition to Anselm as a spiritual, even mystical, theologian, recognising him in Jean Leclercq’s description of an earlier monastic leader, Gregory the Great (d. 604), as a ‘doctor of desire’.

Theism, Evil and the Onus of Proof – Reply to F. J. Fitzpatrick

1983 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
David O' Connor
Keyword(s):  
Traditional Theism ◽  
Moral Perfection ◽  
The World

The theism which I consider in this paper is one which affirms each of the three following propositions: ‘God exists’, ‘Omnipotence, omniscience and moral perfection are all defining traits of God’ and ‘Evil exists in the world’. I will not be concerned at all with any variety of theism which might deny the truth of any of the foregoing propositions. Broadly put, my concern, therefore, is with orthodox, traditional theism.

Atonement and the Work of Christ

2018 ◽  
pp. 84-97
Author(s):  
William J. Abraham
Keyword(s):  
Human Action ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
The Core ◽  
The World ◽  
Action Theories ◽  
Core Meaning

In sorting through how best to understand the work of Christ we need a narrative that captures the core meaning of “atonement” and a way to deploy the various theories that abound in the tradition. At the root of the issue is a narrative of reconciliation that highlights the serious alienation that exists between human agents and God. Fixing this problem requires both divine and human action. Theories of atonement seek to spell out the divine action involved. Each has its own advantage in developing complementary descriptions of what has gone wrong with the world and how to fix it.

On the possibility of special divine action in a deterministic world

2012 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 315-336
Author(s):  
LEIGH C. VICENS
Keyword(s):  
Divine Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Potential Benefits

AbstractIs it possible for God both to create a deterministic world and to act specially, to realize his particular purposes within it? And if there can be such ‘particular providence’ or ‘special divine action’ (SDA) in a deterministic world, what form can it take? In this article I consider these questions, exploring a number of different models of SDA and discussing their consistency with the proposition that the world is deterministic; I also consider how the various consequences of each model accord with traditional theistic assumptions about God's action in the world. I argue that, although SDA is possible in a deterministic world, none of the models that have been offered are entirely unproblematic, but accepting any of them commits one to certain consequences that may be found objectionable; thus the potential benefits of each model of SDA must be weighed against the costs of accepting such consequences.

scholarly journals Chance in a Created World: How to Avoid Common Misunderstandings about Divine Action

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 151-165
Author(s):  
Lydia Jaeger
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Specific Question ◽  
Ability To Act ◽  
The World ◽  
Chance Events

In the article ‘Against Physicalism-plus-God: How Creation Accounts for Divine Action in the World’ (Jaeger 2012a), I defined a framework which allows us to make some progress in our understanding of how God acts in the world. In the present article, I apply this framework to the specific question of chance events. I show that chance does not provide an explanation for special divine action. Nevertheless, chance does not hamper God’s ability to act in the world, and creation provides a framework for the understanding of chance, which is akin to what we see in modern science.

Divine Activity

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 79-103
Author(s):  
Thomas Schärtl
Keyword(s):  
Divine Action ◽  
Self Sufficiency ◽  
The World ◽  
Divine Activity

The paper discusses basic models of divine action and intervention. However, the most part of the article is dedicated to the question whether or not there are theistic reasons to stick to some sort of non-interventionism. Therefore, Schleiermacher’s argument is put under scrutiny and presented in a way that could substantiate some version of non-interventionism. Additionally, the paper explores an argument in favor of non-interventionism coming from a specific notion of divine aseity and self-sufficiency. Ultimately the paper votes for a broader notion of the God-world-relationship alluding to the idea of the world being God’s body.

Is the Notion of a Divine Basic Act a Necessary and Sufficient Way of Talking about God's Actions in the World?

1994 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-192
Author(s):  
Frank G. Kirkpatrick
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Divine Power ◽  
Basic Action ◽  
Physical Universe ◽  
Physical Action ◽  
The World ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

It has seemed to a number of recent scholars that God's acts in the world must have the fundamental character of being ‘basic acts’. Grace Jantzen has argued that ‘a theist wants to say that all of God's actions in the world are direct and basic…he does everything directly, without intervening apparatus…God can perform any physical action, and any such action on God's part is direct, basic’. Robert Ellis has claimed that ‘if we limit “basic” action to action upon/within one's body then God's immediate action upon the physical universe may qualify under such a description whether or not one holds to a view of the world as the body of God [a view endorsed by Jantzen] … All God's actions would [therefore] seem to be “basic”. And William P. Alston has suggested that ‘it is a live possibility that all God's actions are basic’. The question to be addressed is what theological and/or philosophical reasons can be advanced to make the case for regarding all divine action as basic? Would there be any significant diminution in affirming divine power if most or many of God's actions were non-basic?

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