Divine Causation Research Articles

Enhancing Awareness and Understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorder in Minchinabad A Participatory Action Research Approach

This study investigates the effectiveness of interventions aimed at enhancing awareness of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in Minchinabad through a participatory action research approach. A total of 100 participants were included in this research. They were Community Leaders, Healthcare Professionals, Religious Leaders, and Educators picked through Convenience Sampling. Initial data collection reveals prevalent misconceptions and barriers surrounding ASD awareness. Among them, 89% of respondents expressed a lack of sufficient awareness and 85% attributed ASD to divine factors. Subsequently, community-led workshops, social media campaigns, and Religious institutions-based awareness activities were implemented to address these challenges. Evaluation indicates a significant improvement in awareness levels. Improvement with 53% acknowledging adequate awareness. However, more than 40% still perceive a stigma associated with seeking an ASD diagnosis. While cultural beliefs persist, such as 60% to 68% believing in the divine causation of ASD. The interventions have contributed to a positive shift in community perceptions. The findings underscore the importance of sustained efforts to promote understanding and acceptance of ASD within the community, emphasizing the need for continued engagement and advocacy for ASD Awareness.

Concurrentism as a Theory of Divine Causation

Bu makale ilahi nedensellik tartışmaları içinde evrendeki bir sonuç üzerinde hem Tanrı’nın hem de yaratılmış varlıkların birlikte etkide bulunduğunu iddia eden konkürentizm hakkındadır. Konkürentizm, temelde Orta Çağ Aristotelesçilerce savunulmuş ve yaratılmış varlıklara nedensel güçler atfederek okasyonalizmin karşısında durmuştur. Bu çalışmada konkürentizmin ne olduğuyla birlikte onun okasyonalizmi nasıl eleştirdiği ele alınmış ve değerlendirilmiştir. Bu bağlamda konkürentizmin; okasyonalizmin duyuma aykırı bir görüş olduğu, doğa bilimini imkânsız kıldığı ve maddi tözlerin doğasını ya inkâr ederek ya da değersizleştirerek tutarsızlık sergilediği iddiaları incelenmiştir. Bunun sonucunda duyuma aykırı oluşun güçlü bir eleştiri olmadığı ayrıca doğa biliminin imkânsızlığının maddi tözlerin doğasını inkâr etmekle ilişkili olduğu görülmüştür. Bu durumda konkürentizmin elindeki en güçlü argümanın yaratılmış varlıkların kendilerine ait bir doğaya sahip oldukları iddiası olduğu söylenebilir. Bununla birlikte sürekli yaratmayı kabul ettikleri için okasyonalistlerce de eleştirilmiştir. Sonuç olarak konkürentizmin ilahi nedensellik konusunda dikkate değer bir açıklama sunduğu, bazı zorluklarına rağmen teolojik ve felsefi problemlerin çözümünde bazı açılımlar sağlayacağı söylenebilir.

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus

Analogical Perspectives on the Comparison between Vǫlundr and Daedalus

W. Matthews Grant's Dual Sources Account and Ultimate Responsibility.

A number of philosophers and theologians have recently challenged the common assumption that it would be impossible for God to cause humans actions which are free in the libertarian or incompatibilist sense. Perhaps the most sophisticated version of this challenge is due to W. Matthews Grant. By offering a detailed account of divine causation, Grant argues that divine universal causation does not preclude humans from being ultimately responsible for their actions, nor free according to typical libertarian accounts. Here, we argue that the kind of divine universal causation that Grant proposes is incompatible with a plausible interpretation of Robert Kane's influential conception of ultimate responsibility. This conclusion is significant since Grant seeks to harmonize his divine causal account with Kane's articulation of ultimate responsibility.

Divine Causation

This essay introduces Philosophia Christi’s symposium on the book, Philosophical Essays on Divine Causation, edited by Greg Ganssle. A short review of each essay in the symposium follows. A call is given for Christian philosophers to take divine causation into account while doing research in their primary area of philosophy. These updated and expanded essays were first presented in a more limited form at the 2023 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association.

Causation and Divine Agency

God’s regular causal activity is traditionally held to include his creation of the world, his conserving all created things in being and his concurrence with the causal activities of finite causes. Divine causation requires that God is an agent. In this paper, I apply E. J. Lowe’s view of human agency to God. This application requires certain adjustments. Lowe takes it that when a person acts for reasons, these reasons are lacks of some kind. I argue that his account can apply to God if we think of the reasons for God’s action as connected to purposes rather than to needs.

Miracles, Causation, and Critical Biblical Scholarship

Most historical Jesus scholars agree that Jesus was regarded by his contemporaries as a great miracle worker. However, many of these same scholars deny that they can pronounce on the truth of the miracle stories as historians. There are at least two arguments for this position. One is based on an alleged empirical constraint on historical practice, which excludes divine causation. The other argument is rooted in the presumption that it is anachronistic to impose modern understandings of miracles on ancient authors. I argue that both objections are unsuccessful.

Divine Causation and Analogy

Quentin Smith’s idea is that God being the originating cause of the universe is logically inconsistent with all extant definitions of causation, and thus logically impossible. Thus, for example the God of the Philosophers couldn’t have created the Universe, not even in both its senses, in both literal and analogical senses. The thesis is advanced by accounts of the usual views of “cause”. It is maintained these is successful. Such I shall then offer an account of divine causation of my own, and thus attempt to argue that Smith has not shown that the relation that God has to the universe is not a causal relation. Such as a Humean or that of David Lewis sense and of the “singularist” view of C. J. Ducasse would fail the analogical. And Malebranche’s “occasionalism” is surely an exception. If we turn to the other kind then it seems to be a case of “if the data are analogical-in, then the data will be that too”. Finally, it is argued that it is more productive to consider particular individual theistic powers and perfections, for these are mongrels which literality and of analogy are compounded.

Thomas Aquinas on Reprobation: The Arbitrariness Problem and Some Quiescence Solutions

Given certain anti-Pelagian assumptions he endorses, Aquinas faces an “arbitrariness problem” explaining why God predestines and reprobates the particular individuals he does. One response to the problem that Aquinas offers—biting the bullet and conceding God’s arbitrariness—has a high theoretical cost. Eleonore Stump proposes a less costly alternative solution on Thomas’s behalf, drawing on his notion that our wills may rest in a state of “quiescence.” Her proposal additionally purports to answer the general question why God reprobates anyone at all. I argue that Aquinas’s understanding of the relationship between divine causation and human freedom prevents him from accepting Stump’s proposal as she herself puts it forward; he couldn’t accept it as an answer to the general question. Nevertheless, I claim, granted one controversial but widely accepted assumption—that he isn’t a divine determinist—Aquinas could accept a slightly modified version of her quiescence solution to the arbitrariness problem. Indeed, there is evidence that he did accept some of its key components.

The Athenian Plague andErosas a Deadly Disease in Euripides’Hippolytus

This article argues that Euripides’ Hippolytus of 428 bc may be read as a metaphorical response to the first outbreak of the plague at Athens in 430–429 bc. Some Athenians attributed the plague to a divine cause, others to natural causes. Similarly, Hippolytus allows the audience to view Aphrodite either as an interfering deity or as a natural force in human lives. Thucydides describes the plague as a nosos, which is the main thematic term found in Hippolytus. Eros, a form of madness, is the disease Aphrodite inflicts on Phaedra to punish Hippolytus. This nosos primarily affects the mind; it is passed on to the other main characters by a kind of chain reaction and manifests itself in different forms of deranged speech. In this process the nurse provides a vital link through Aphrodite instilling, in her mind insidious notions of magic. In Hippolytus, sophrosyne, which etymologically means “safe-mindedness,” serves as an antonym to nosos. On stage, in two long episodes, the disease motif is presented visually, first through Phaedra’s sickbed and then through her deathbed. As Aphrodite is the source of the disease, the arrival of her enemy Artemis, appearing as a deus ex machina and representing, as she does, the pure air of the countryside, signifies that the plague is over, though its harmful after effects will long be remembered.

EVOLUTION, ORIGINAL SIN, AND RACE

This issue's Symposium is dedicated to the topic of “Evolution, Original Sin, and the Fall,” with five articles and an introduction by the Symposium's guest editors, Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt. As De Cruz and De Smedt point out, original sin and the Fall have taken a central place in Christian contributions to the religion and science discussion. The first two articles reflect on Aquinas, who is still central to the Roman Catholic tradition; the third article stems from the presbytarian tradition; and the fourth and fifth articles draw on literary science and sociology, respectively—this Symposium definitely includes an interesting mix of disciplines. Paul Macdonald shows how traditional Thomistic claims about the creation and fall of the first human beings—or “Adam”—are compatible with the claims of evolutionary science concerning human origins. He defends Aquinas's claims that God created Adam in a state or condition of original justice, wholly subject to God and so fully virtuous, as well as internally immune to bodily corruption, suffering, and natural death. Julie Loveland Swanstrom finds space in Aquinas's thinking for evolutionary thought. She argues that individual or original sin is an inadequate explanation for variation within kinds of creatures and she shows that the existence of argumentative parallels between Aquinas’s treatment of women and mules challenges presumptions about what medievals meant by “static kinds.” Hans Madueme maintains that although the search for a post-Darwinian doctrine of sin has prompted fascinating areas of research, coming up with an evolutionary theology of sin remains a remarkably difficult project. He critically surveys recent theodicies that aim to explain why evolution results in so much suffering. Austin Freeman argues that because God is the author of history and has a purpose for his creation, evolution has a plot and can be analyzed with tools drawn from literary criticism. He engages with the “epic of evolution” genre of scientific literature, distinguishing between a purely naturalistic epic of evolution and a goal-oriented Christian epic of evolution. Finally, Jack Mulder addresses ways in which one important view of racism parallels the Christian doctrine of original sin. Using an epistemology of ignorance, he argues that the dichotomy between two main strands of Christian thinking about original sin, Augustinian versus Irenaean, is short-sighted, and he proposes a model of original sin similar to an epistemology of racist ignorance. In this issue's Comment section, Daniel Lim offers a fresh comment on Mikael Leidenhag's (2019) article in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science and on Leidenhag's (2020) response to an earlier comment. Lim critically assesses the way that Leidenhag uses Jaegwon Kim's work on causal exclusion to critique what he calls “Natural Divine Causation” (NDC). Although he agrees with Leidenhag that questions about divine action can fruitfully be posed in terms of Kim's so-called “Causal Exclusion Argument,” the technical way that this is done requires amendment. The comment provides new possibilities for those who wish to construe a noninterventionist picture of divine action based on emergence theory or nonreductive physicalism. This issue contains six contributions in the Articles section. John Calvin Chatlos proposes a “framework of spirituality” for the future of naturalism; this framework identifies part of the “unseen order” of religion as opening a “spiritual core” within persons as a source of healing and happiness. Libby Osgood delves into interpretations of Teilhard de Chardin, in order to address ecological eschatological questions; she disentangles the “nature of nature” in his work by distinguishing thirteen distinct definitions of “nature” that can be summarized into five categories. Harvey Cawdron develops a model of panentheism in which God's embodiment in the cosmos allows all, including all nonbelievers, to have a relationship with God; his model does not require subjects to recognize that they are in a relationship with God. Robbert Zandbergen writes about antinatalism—the conviction that existence is not intrinsically more valuable than nonexistence—and the “death of God”; he describes how antinatalism is the most modern outgrowth of the death of God and represents the most radical face of secular humanism. Hussein Ali Agrama discusses the reports and results of recent official studies of UFOs and argues they may pose a challenge to contemporary science, religion, and secularity; current knowledge on UFOs renders both science and religion uncanny, placing them in a domain where they become irreducibly strange while unshakably familiar. Lari Launonen calls out “debunking arguments”—that belief-forming processes underlying belief in supernatural agents are unreliable—based solely on cognitive science of religion; he highlights that in conjunction with claims about evolutionary epistemology and religious diversity, cognitive science of religion can provide an explanation of why people might believe in gods even if gods did not exist. The issue ends with Lluis Oviedo's review of Gavin Flood's Religion and the Philosophy of Life.

NATURAL DIVINE CAUSATION, CAUSAL EXCLUSION, AND OVERDETERMINATION: COMMENT ON MIKAEL LEIDENHAG

AbstractIn his article “The Blurred Line between Theistic Evolution and Intelligent Design” and his response “The Problem of Natural Divine Causation and the Benefits of Partial Causation”, Mikael Leidenhag uses Jaegwon Kim's work on causal exclusion to critique what he calls “Natural Divine Causation” (NDC). Although I agree with Leidenhag that questions about divine action can fruitfully be posed in terms of Kim's so‐called Causal Exclusion Argument, I take issue with the way he attempts to carry out this task and the reasons he offers against the overdetermination response to the Causal Exclusion Argument.

Providence, Chance, Divine Causation, and Molinism: A Reply to Łukasiewicz

Opatrzność, przypadek, boska przyczynowość i molinizm: odpowiedź Łukasiewiczowi
 Esej Dariusza Łukasiewicz Opatrzność Boga a przypadek w świecie ma dowodzić, że silne tradycyjne rozumienie opatrzności nie da się utrzymać, zwłaszcza w świetle współczesnego naukowego obrazu świata. W jego miejsce Łukasiewicz proponuje koncepcję Opatrzności, która dopuszcza autentycznie przypadkowe zdarzenia, których Bóg nie kontroluje. Argumentuję, że argument Łukasiewicza jest nieudany. Następnie rozważam dwa sposoby, w jakie chrześcijanin mógłby uwzględnić większość atrakcyjnych składników rewizyjnej koncepcji Łukasiewicza, unikając filozoficznych i teologicznych wad jego stanowiska.

Preemption and a counterfactual analysis of divine causation

This paper aims to outline a counterfactual theory of divine atemporal causation that avoids problems of preemption. As a result, the presentation of the analysis is structured such that my counterfactual analysis directly addresses preemption issues. If these problems can be avoided, the theist is well on her way to proposing a usable metaphysical concept of atemporal divine causation. In the first section, I outline Lewis’ original counterfactual analysis as well as how these cases of preemption cause problems for his analysis. In particular, two cases of preemption have proven problematic for counterfactual analyses: late preemption and trumping preemption. In the second section, I propose a counterfactual analysis of divine causation that is not subject to these problems of preemption. I present a counterfactual analysis of timeless divine causation, supplemented by a definition of what it means for God to allow an event to happen. In the third section, I argue this analysis is not prey to problems of preemption.

SCIENCE FICTION AND METHODOLOGY

SCIENCE FICTION AND METHODOLOGY

I WALK THE LINE: COMMENT ON MIKAEL LEIDENHAG ON THEISTIC EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN

AbstractIs theistic evolution (TE) a philosophically tenable position? Leidenhag argues in his article “The Blurred Line between Theistic Evolution and Intelligent Design” that it is not, since it, Leidenhag claims, espouses a view of divine action that he labels “natural divine causation” (NDC), which makes God explanatory redundant. That is, in so far as TE does not invoke God as an additional cause alongside natural causes, it is untenable. Theistic evolutionists should therefore “reject NDC and affirm a more robust notion of divine agency.” However, this will, Leidenhag claims, have the effect that theistic evolutionists “will move their position significantly closer to Intelligent Design,” and so the line between TE and intelligent design is (or ought to be?) blurred. If successful, the criticism by Leidenhag would be bad news for theists who want to take science seriously and good news for those scientistic atheists according to whom there simply is no scientifically respectable way of combining theism and modern natural science in an overarching worldview. So, is TE stuck between a rock (of redundancy) and a hard place (of pseudo‐science)? No, at least not due to the criticism offered by Leidenhag—but maybe religious naturalism is?

THE PROBLEM OF NATURAL DIVINE CAUSATION AND THE BENEFITS OF PARTIAL CAUSATION: A RESPONSE TO SKOGHOLT

AbstractIn this article, I defend my previous argument that natural divine causation suffers under the problem of causal overdetermination and that it cannot serve as a line of demarcation between theistic evolution (TE) and intelligent design (ID). I do this in light of Christoffer Skogholt's critique of my article. I argue that Skogholt underestimates the naturalistic ambitions of some current thinkers in TE and fails, therefore, to adequately respond to my main argument. I also outline how partial causation better serves as a model for the relationship between God's providence and evolution.

Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations ed. by Steven A. Long et al.

Reviewed by: Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations ed. by Steven A. Long et al. Simon Francis Gaine O.P. Thomism and Predestination: Principles and Disputations. Edited by Steven A. Long, Roger W. Nutt, and Thomas Joseph White, O.P. Ave Maria, Fla: Sapientia Press, 2016. Pp. 336. $39.95 (paper). ISBN: 978-1-9325-8979-5. This collection of thirteen essays, with an introduction by Steven A. Long, examines the principles of the Thomist theology of predestination and the disputes that have arisen about it among Aquinas's disciples. While the promotion of the book might lead one to suppose that the volume delivers a coherent and complete defense of the classical Thomist account, the limitations arising from the fact that it is the product of papers given at a conference mean that the collection is not entirely that. Nevertheless, it deserves a warm welcome, because the issues connected with predestination that are debated among Catholic theologians have never been solved to general satisfaction, and the loss of interest in Thomism during the twentieth century hindered theological progress in them. Two essays (chaps. 1 and 4) offer a general orientation around the central questions, although Thomas Joseph White, O.P.'s "Catholic Predestination" would have been more usefully placed first overall. White prescribes a retrieval of a balanced medieval Augustinianism, in contrast to the Calvinist and Barthian versions of the modern period, with Calvin's elision of divine causation and permission, the irresistibility of grace and its restriction to the elect, and Barth's subordination of Calvinism to what effectively amounts (claims White) to universal salvation in Christ. For a Catholic theology of predestination that avoids these extremes, he offers six principles from Aquinas: (a) that everything morally good in a human being comes from God's creative power and providential assistance; (b) that moral "evil stems from a … free, … culpable, and naturally defective" human act (103); (c) the primacy of divine grace over free human cooperation; (d) the offer of "the possibility of salvation to all human persons," where "the mystery of perdition originates from the free defective resistance to or refusal of … grace" (109); (e) God's eternal foreknowledge of all the saved, where "his divine will for their salvation is the effective cause of their predestination to divine glory" (114); and (f) God's innocence of moral evil, where "reprobation occurs in light of the antecedent permissive decree of God, which is in no way causal of sin" (116). What, however, is the status of the classical Thomism that White favors? Does it genuinely represent Aquinas, and is it sound? In the first and most significant chapter, Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., places the current state of the question on predestination in the context of the shift among Thomists away from the classical interpretation found in Réginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P. Bonino goes through the different factors that have contributed to a general rereading of Aquinas: scriptural and patristic renewal, the "demonization" of Aquinas's commentators (36), and the tendency to find diverging lines of thought in his corpus. Bonino concludes against several theologians that it [End Page 485] cannot be inferred from scriptural teaching on communal and "economic" predestination that the traditional question of individual predestination to eternal life is a false problem. As for Aquinas's appropriation of the Fathers, which has recently enjoyed enthusiastic appreciation, Bonino notes that, paradoxically, its progress brought Aquinas's mature doctrine in the Summa theologiae closer to the very Augustinian position on predestination with which theologians now feel uncomfortable. While many believe that the later Thomist tradition dealt in debates foreign to Aquinas and introduced concepts like "physical premotion" that distort our understanding of him, Bonino confirms the presence within Aquinas's mature thought of the classic positions articulated by such commentators as Domingo Báñez, O.P., and Garrigou-Lagrange. In contrast, the revisionist approaches are found wanting because they sacrifice some element of Aquinas's teaching, striving to retain grace's primacy and divine knowledge of sin without God's sovereign causality through physical premotion and his antecedent permissive decree of sin. If they do not reject physical...

Causation and the Origin of Suboptimal Design in Biology

This paper seeks to demonstrate why the existence of suboptimal design in biology does not offer a reason for Christians to reject the biological case for Intelligent Design (ID). In it, I argue that Christians who critique ID based upon alleged deficiencies within biology fail to imagine the various ways in which a divine designer might bring about certain biological effects. That is, such critics presumably envision a simplistic notion of divine causation—where God either directly brings about every biological effect, or is not involved in any biological effect. Such either or thinking, I maintain, is theologically unnecessary.

THE BLURRED LINE BETWEEN THEISTIC EVOLUTION AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN

AbstractIt is often assumed that there is a hard line between theistic evolution (TE) and intelligent design (ID). Many theistic evolutionists subscribe to the idea that God only acts through natural processes, as opposed to the ID assertion that God, at certain points in natural history, has acted in a direct manner; directly causing particular features of the world. In this article, I argue that theistic evolutionists subscribe to what might be called Natural Divine Causation (NDC). NDC does not merely provide a nonsupernaturalist and noninterventionist model of divine action, it provides a line of demarcation between TE and ID. I make the critique that NDC is philosophically untenable and argue, consequently, that the line between TE and ID is blurred.