Abstract

This dissertation is a study in philosophical theology devoted to the subject of God's action in the world. It evaluates two different models for divine action that exploit indeterministic physics, one developed by William Pollard, and the other, elaborated in different ways, by John Polkinghorne and Arthur Peacocke. The motivation behind these models is the perceived difficulty that the natural sciences present of the belief that God acts in the world. The question this difficulty raises is: how can God act in a world governed by scientific laws? Each of these theologian-scientists argues that divine action in the world is indeed incompatible with deterministic causality, but then proceeds to argue that the deterministic-mechanistic worldview of the past has been overthrown in the twentieth century, both by the quantum mechanics, and more recently--and controversially--by the science of chaos. The two models for divine action exploit indeterminism by showing how God acts in a world containing indeterministic processes without violating natural laws. ;The dissertation is divided into three parts. Chapter 1 examines and rejects Pollard's model for divine action, which teeters between interventionism and occasionalism. Chapters 2 through 4 are expository, examining the model for human action via downward causation that Polkinghorne and Peacocke develop and then apply to divine action in a world containing macroscopic indeterminism. Chapters 5 through 7 evaluate three different aspects of this model. Chapter 5 finds unpersuasive the case made for macroscopic indeterminism, especially in chaotic systems. Chapter 6 evaluates the model for human action via downward causation, examining traditional philosophical problems involving freedom and action, and developing a coherent understanding of downward causation. Finally, Chapter 7 finds unsuitable the model of divine action as downward causation, ultimately because it envisions God acting "on" rather than "in" the world in a way that entails "intervention" after all. An alternative understanding of divine action, according to which God acts in the world as its creator, is then sketched, a model, inspired by Thomas Aquinas, which does not pin the credibility of divine action on scientific discovery