ALTRUISM IN NATURE AS MANIFESTATION OF DIVINE ENERGEIA

Abstract. Christian theological attempts to integrate scientific claims about altruism in nature have not been completely successful largely because Western theologies—particularly some Protestant versions—lack a theologically grounded ontological basis for speech about altruism, agape, and other forms of love. Patristic theologies of divine essence, energeia and logoi, most fully developed in Eastern Orthodox thought, provide just such an ontological basis upon which Christian thought can stand in order to demonstrate that altruism in nature does not challenge religious claims that moral behavior has transcendent meaning but rather suggests that it is itself a manifestation of the divine will.     

DIVINE ACTION: IS IT CREDIBLE?

Abstract. The concept of God's acting in the world has been seen to be problematic in light of the claims of scientific knowledge that the regularity of a law like universe rules out divine action. There are resources in both scientific knowledge and religion that can render meaningful and credible divine action. The new physics, chaos theory, cognitive psychology, and the concept of top-down causation are used to understand how God acts in the world. God's action is not an intervention, but is understood on the model of how the mind influences the brain in a downward causative manner. Suggestions for imagining God's actions are discussed.     

On the Argument for Divine Timelessness from the Incompleteness of Temporal Life

A promising argument for divine timelessness is that temporal life is possessed only moment by moment, which is incompatible with the existence of a perfect being.
Since the argument is based on the experience of time's passage, it cannot be circumvented by appeal to a tenseless theory of time.
Neither can the argument be subverted by appeals to a temporal deity's possession of a specious present of infinite duration.
Nonetheless, because the argument concerns one's experience of time's passage rather than the objective reality of temporal becoming itself, it is considerably weakened by the fact that an omniscient being possessing perfect memory and foreknowledge, need not find such experience to be an imperfection.     

GOD IN THE CAVE

When Finite and Infinite Goods was published in 1999, it took its place as one of the few major statements of a broadly Augustinian ethical philosophy of the past century. By “broadly Augustinian” I refer to the disposition to combine a Platonic emphasis on a transcendent source of value with a traditionally theistic emphasis on the value‐creating capacities of absolute will. In the form that this disposition takes with Robert Merrihew Adams, it is the resemblance between divine and a finite excellence that makes the finite excellence objectively of value, and it is the correspondence of an obligation to a divine command that makes the obligation objectively obligatory. I look closely at the complexity of this ethical division of labor—between the good and the right—mainly as it appears in the context of Finite and Infinite Goods, but also with attention to the broader corpus of Adams's writings, particularly his work on Leibniz and the essays of his that have been gathered together in The Virtue of Faith. I argue that there is a creative tension in his work between his desire to secure an objective basis for ethics and his affirmation of the value of grace, a love that is not proportioned to the excellence of its object. This tension, I further argue, ought to be resolved in the direction of grace.     

THE CONCEPT OF CONTINUOUS CREATION PART I: HISTORY AND CONTEMPORARY USE

The concept of continuous creation is now widely used in the context of reflections on the dialogue between science and religion. The first part of this research work seeks to understand its meaning through a twofold elaboration: (1) the historical setting of the three philosophical trends in which this concept was developed: scholastic (conservation), Cartesian (conservation through repetition of the creative act at each instant), and dynamic (interpreting the emergence of radical and contingent novelty in nature as a sign of the continuity of creation); (2) a philosophical and theological critique of the concept of continuous creation regarding the question of the relationship between change and creation, in the light of its highly polymorphous contemporary use, and, in opposition, its absence within the Catholic Magisterium. This work opens the field a further step toward reflection on a renewed concept of continuous creation.     

The Solubility of Salt: A Divine Action Account

In the burgeoning literature on dispositions, solubility is a standard example. In this paper we give a rigorous theistic divine action account of the simple mechanism of the dissolving of salt, NaCl, into the ions Na⁺ and Cl^?. We explore this reaction in terms of an alternative view of divine action, Divine Compositionalism, which holds that the functioning of every physical, chemical, and biological mechanism in the universe is a manifesting complex disposition, which is nothing other than ways God acts according to plan.     

The Life and Works of a Bottom-Up Thinker

A brief account is given of the author's life as a physicist and then a priest. The twin foundations of the author's theological endeavors have been a respect for traditional Christian thinking, though not exempting it from revision where this is needed, and a style of argument termed bottom-up thinking, which seeks to proceed from experience to understanding. The diversity of the world faith traditions is perceived as a major source of perplexity. A revised and modest natural theology and the issue of divine action have been at the top of a science and theology agenda. A defense is sketched in realist terms of the metaphysical strategy of using an ontological interpretation of the unpredictabilities of chaos theory to support a notion of top-down causality through active information. The success of Christian theology as a resource of total explanation depends on a credible account of eschatological hope. Reference is made to practical experience of ethics in the public square.     

Commands as Divine Attributes

Theories of ethics that attempt to incorporate divine speech or commands as necessary elements in the construction of moral obligations are often viewed as vulnerable to a challenge based on the so‐called Euthyphro dilemma. According to this challenge, opponents of theistic ethics suppose that divine speech either informs one of a preexisting set of values and obligations, which makes it inconsequential, or is entirely arbitrary, which makes it irrational. This essay analyzes some of the debates on the nature of divine commands in eleventh‐century works of Islamic jurisprudence (u?ūl al‐fiqh). I show that Mu?tazilī jurisprudents advanced the view that divine commands were actions performed in time that had concrete manifestations, while Ash?arīs argued that divine speech in general, and commands in particular, were eternal divine attributes. After exposing certain weaknesses in the Euthyphro‐inspired objections to theistic ethics, I argue that the Ash?arī idea of commands as divine attributes is a promising move for scholars interested in defending a divine command view of moral obligation.