Abstract

CULWICK, Arlyn. An empirically testable causal mechanism for divine action. STJ [online]. 2020, vol.6, n.4, pp.247-282. ISSN 2413-9467.  http://dx.doi.org/10.17570/stj.2020.v6n4.a10.

A form of special divine action often considered central to the everyday experience of Christianity is that of a personal interaction with God. For example, in The Second Person Perspective in Aquinas's Ethics, Andrew Pinsent characterises this interaction in terms of mutually empathic relations that serve to "infuse" virtues and other attributes into a person. Such interaction requires that causal relations exist between a necessary being and the contingent universe. This paper addresses a central problem of special divine action: that the empirically identifiable causes of physical events are modally ill-suited for (and epistemically distinct from) the action of an eternal, non-composite, necessary being. Accounts of what brings about physical events are standardly empirical accounts, grounded upon experience of the world. In contrast, accounts ofhow God acts are standardly non-empirical exercises of reason. But as a result, theories about the causality of divine action usually bear no clear relation to the empirical causal modes that, judging by our experience, function to bring about events which God somehow also causes. This is a modal problem in the causal relations of divine action. To solve this problem, I make an (empirical) distinction between material and merely intelligible mind-independent being. From this develops an account of a novel type of causality definitively clarified by the scholastic philosopher John Poinsot, extrinsic formal specification, which is as empirically observable as it is amenable to speculative reason, particularly sacramental and Trinitarian theology.

Keywords : divine action; kenosis; empirical method; semiosis; Ralph Austin Powell.

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