Reframing Providence New Perspectives from Aquinas on the Divine Action Debate Clearance Cheapest Pice

The doctrine of providence, which states that God guides his creation, has been widely conceived in action terms in recent theological scholarship. A telling example is the so-called navine action debate, which is largely based on two principles: (i) providence is best conceptualised in terms of navine action; and (ii) navine action is best modelled on human action. By examining this debate, and especially the Divine Action Project (1988-2003), which led to the
‘scientific turn’ of the debate, this study argues that theo-physical incompatibilism, as a corollary of this ‘framing’ of providence, can be identified as the main reason for the current deadlock in
navine action theories-namely, the assumption that just as human (libertarian) free action presupposes causal indeterminism, so, too, does navine action in the world presuppose causal indeterminism. Instead of recalibrating the much-discussed non-interventionist objective navine action (NIODA) approaches, Simon Maria Kopf advocates a ‘reframing’ of providence in terms of the virtue of prudence. To this end, this book examines the ‘prudential-ordinative’ theory of Thomas
Aquinas and contrasts it with the prevalent ‘actionistic’, or action-based, model of providence. In this process, Kopf discusses, among other topics, the doctrine of navine transcendence, primary and
secondary causation, natural necessity and contingency, and teleology as essential features of this ‘prudential-ordinative’ theory. The final part of the book addresses how these two approaches fare when applied to the question of biological evolution, which includes the revisiting of the controversy between Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris over what would happen if one were to rerun the tape of life.