Divine Action: A Neo-Byzantine Model

Abstract

Briefly stated, the problem of divine action has, in recent thought, been that of whether and how God can affect the workings of a world characterized usually at least by obedience to "laws of nature." There have, essentially, been two kinds of answer to this question. One of these has relied on a traditional conceptual scheme, which speaks of a "special" mode of God's action which is analogous, in many respects, to that of any other personal agent. In this understanding, a very clear distinction is made between "general" providence which arises straightforwardly from what the cosmos will do "on its own" and what will happen if God chooses to perform some "special" providential action by interfering with the normal workings of the cosmos.1 The other main kind of response to the problem of divine action is conceptually different from this interference model (though it is sometimes combined with aspects of it.) Here the focus is on a distinction between primary and secondary causes, and God's action is not seen as that of an agent working "from the outside", as in the interference model. The fact that this approach has given rise to outlooks as varied as a traditionalist neo-Thomism and an essentially deistic kind of naturalism indicates, however, that the model, in itself, has no specific answers to the questions of how God's will is brought about through "natural" causes, and of what the scope of this mode of divine action is.