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

Abstract

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.