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- Title
Science, Causality, and God: Divine Action and Thomas Aquinas.
- Authors
DODDS, MICHAEL J.
- Abstract
The notion of causality narrowed significantly with the advent of modern Newtonian science, but has broadened once again in contemporary science through the theory of emergence and developments in biology and quantum mechanics. This has had a fundamental influence on the discussion of divine action, which requires a language of causality. When causality was reduced to a univocal notion (the force that moves the atoms), it became difficult to speak of God's causality in the world. If God were to act, it could be only as a "force," but science and its laws had already accounted for all the forces and their effects, leaving no "room" for a divine force. As one univocal cause among others, God's causality appeared to interfere with natural causes. The theological response was either to deny divine causality (deism), or limit it, or try to insert it into the world in a way that would not interfere with natural causes. As contemporary science now names a variety of causes, causality can again be understood as an analogous concept, inviting us to retrieve the analogous notion of causality in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Recognizing divine action as transcendent analogous causality, we can affirm God's influence in the world as final, formal exemplar, and efficient cause and see that God does not interfere with creaturely causality, but it rather its source.
- Subjects
ATTRIBUTION (Social psychology); SCIENCE; GOD; THOMAS, Aquinas, Saint, ca. 1225-1274; QUANTUM mechanics; DEISM
- Publication
Angelicum, 2014, Vol 91, Issue 1, p13
- ISSN
1123-5772
- Publication type
Article