Divine Moral Assistance and Modern Science: Kantian Ethics in Dialogue with Pentecostal Participatory Ontology and Theology of Divine Action

Abstract

This paper contributes toward an interdisciplinary Renewal moral theology that deals with this (apologetic) question: how do we speak of divine assistance in human moral life in a modern scientific context that shuns the idea of God intervening and acting in this world? In answering this question, it is argued that, while John Hare’s Kantian ethics makes a persuasive and meaningful case for divine moral assistance as providence and grace against a naturalistic context, through James K.A. Smith’s Pentecostal participatory ontology that provides a robust framework for articulating any kind of divine action in the modern scientific world, divine assistance for human moral life, using the work of Amos Yong and Frank Macchia, is construed as non-interventionistic, miraculous, human moral transformation caused by the Spirit of God through free-willed, creaturely participation in God via faith, in step with the nature and ‘laws’ of God’s coming kingdom.