Disputatio XII: De Providentia et Continuatione Causalitatis Divinae

On Providence and the Continuity of Divine Causality

Providentia Dei est continua causalitas, qua Deus non solum mundum creavit ex nihilo sed ipsum conservat et gubernat in esse. Haec causalitas non est actio extrinseca sed praesentia interna, qua Spiritus Sanctus perpetuo coniungit Verbum creatum et creatorem, ut universum manere possit intelligibile et bonum.

Divine providence is the continuous causality by which God not only created the world from nothing but also sustains and governs it in being. This causality is not an external intervention but an inner presence, whereby the Holy Spirit perpetually unites the created word and the Creator, so that the universe may remain intelligible and good.

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Thesis

Providence (providentia) is the ongoing act of divine causality by which the world persists and moves toward its end in God. Creation is not a completed event but a continuous relation; the same Word that brought all things into being sustains them in being. The Spirit mediates this continuity, causing creatures to act freely while remaining within the scope of divine purpose.

Locus classicus

“He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” — Colossians 1:17

Here Paul speaks not of a distant deity but of the Logos as the ongoing bond of being. Creation’s coherence is not self-sustaining; it abides in Christ’s continuous causality. Providence, therefore, is the persistence of creation’s dependence upon divine Word and Spirit.

Explicatio

In Disputatio XI, we affirmed that the world’s intelligibility arises from its creation by the Word. We now consider how that intelligibility endures. If creation were a single, past act, the world would dissolve into nothingness the moment divine attention ceased. Providence is therefore creation continued—the abiding act of God’s causality by which the creature’s being remains actual.

To clarify this theologically:

• Let C(x) denote that x is a creature, and E(x) that x exists.

• The relation ∀x (C(x) → E(x) because D(x)) means: for every creature x, its existence is caused and sustained by divine causality D(x).

• This symbol does not refer to an occasional miracle but to the metaphysical structure of existence itself: creatures exist because God continuously wills and causes them to exist.

Providence therefore implies not intervention but continuation. God’s causal activity is in esse, not merely in fieri: He does not push the world forward and then withdraw; He is the cause of its very being at every moment.

The Spirit (Spiritus Sanctus) mediates this ongoing causality by joining divine intention to creaturely action. Through the Spirit, the will of God becomes the vitality of creation. Hence, the world’s ongoing order—its stability, intelligibility, and teleology—is nothing less than the temporal manifestation of providence.

Divine causality in providence operates in three modes:

1. Conservatio – preservation of being (keeping creatures in existence).

2. Concursus – cooperation with secondary causes (working through creaturely action).

3. Gubernatio – direction of all things to their end (ordering the whole to divine goodness).

These three are distinct in concept but one in divine act.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According to deistic naturalism, if divine causality is continuous and all-encompassing, every event and choice is predetermined by God’s will. The doctrine of providence, so conceived, annihilates contingency and renders creaturely freedom illusory. What appears as secondary causation is but divine efficiency extended through nature, leaving no genuine autonomy to creatures.

Obiectio II. Conversely, deistic autonomy holds that if God truly endowed the world with natural laws and rational freedom, continuous divine causality is unnecessary. To say that God must sustain creation at every instant implies a defect in the creative act. A perfect Creator would make a world capable of independent persistence—self-sufficient once brought into being.

Obiectio III. With regard to the problem of evil, if providence extends to all things, then evil too must fall within divine causality. Either God causes evil directly—contradicting His goodness—or He merely permits it—contradicting His omnipotence. The notion of providence as continuous divine causation thus seems incompatible with both divine holiness and power.

Obiectio IV.  Epicurean or Existential Indifference opines that the world exhibits randomness, suffering, and moral ambiguity. If divine providence truly governs all things, its presence should be evident. The apparent absence of order suggests either that providence is a projection of human meaning or that divine causality, if real, is indistinguishable from blind natural process.

Obiectio V.  Modern process and evolutionary theology maintains that divine causality evolves with the world. God persuades rather than determines, luring creation toward novelty. To call providence a continuous causality of preservation is to freeze the dynamism of divine–world interaction into static ontology. True providence must be relational and temporal, not immutable and timeless.

Responsiones

Ad I. Determinism confuses divine causality with mechanical compulsion. God’s causality is not competitive with creaturely causality but constitutive of it. The Spirit enables the creature to be a genuine cause. Divine providence grounds contingency rather than abolishes it: because God continuously gives being, the creature’s free act truly is its own. Were God not present in every act, freedom would dissolve into chaos or nothingness. Continuous causality, far from destroying freedom, makes it possible.

Ad II. Deism misconstrues perfection as detachment. Dependence is not imperfection but participation. A self-sustaining world would be a second god, not a creation. The Spirit’s conserving causality does not repair a defect but expresses the fullness of divine generosity—the ever-renewed “Let there be.” Providence means that creation never stands apart from its source; it is God’s ongoing communication of being. The world’s endurance is not independence but grace prolonged.

Ad III. Providence encompasses evil without authoring it. God’s causality provides the being of every act, but the privation of good within those acts arises from finite freedom. The Spirit does not cause the defect but permits it for a greater teleological order in which love overcomes disorder. Evil’s inclusion within providence does not indict God but magnifies His redemptive wisdom: the same continuous causality that sustains freedom redeems its misuse.

Ad IV. The apparent randomness of nature reveals not the absence but the subtlety of providence. Divine causality is not always manifest as intervention but as intelligibility itself—the order by which events cohere. The Spirit’s presence is discerned not in spectacle but in the persistence of meaning, beauty, and moral orientation amid flux. Providence is not an empirical hypothesis but a metaphysical condition: without it, the world’s very intelligibility would collapse into noise.

Ad V. Process thought rightly emphasizes dynamism but mistakes temporality for becoming in God. Divine causality is eternally active yet temporally manifest. The Spirit’s governance is not static but vivifying: God’s constancy is the ground of change. Providence is not a closed determinism but an open teleology—an eternal act that gives time its direction. The world evolves precisely because divine causality continuously bestows being and novelty in one act of faithful presence.

Nota

Providence (providentia) and creation (creatio) are two aspects of one divine motion: creatio continua. The divine Word, who once spoke being into existence, continues to speak it every moment. This uninterrupted act is not temporal repetition but eternal presence. God’s causality, though immanent, remains transcendent; it permeates all finite operations without becoming one among them.

From a model-theoretic viewpoint, we can describe the relation between divine and creaturely causation as cross-sorted dependency. In formal terms (and then explained):

• Let the domain of divine properties be Dᴳ, and that of creaturely states be Dᶜ.

• A function f: Dᴳ → Dᶜ indicates that each creaturely act derives its being from participation in a divine causal correlate.

• This is not an efficient sequence but an ontological dependency: divine causality constitutes finite efficacy without displacing it.

Thus, providence is the metaphysical condition under which creation remains intelligible and free simultaneously. Without it, the world would be a self-enclosed mechanism; with it, the world is a living communication.

The Spirit’s presence within providence ensures that divine causality is not mechanical necessity but personal faithfulness. God does not merely sustain the cosmos as a machine; He accompanies it as a promise. Every moment of being is a continuation of the creative “Let there be,” renewed through the Spirit’s fiat.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Providence is the continuous act of divine causality (creatio continua) by which all things are preserved, governed, and perfected in God.

2. The Spirit mediates this causality, joining divine intention to creaturely action without competition or coercion.

3. Continuous causality affirms that dependence upon God is not a limitation but the very structure of creaturely freedom.

4. Evil and disorder do not originate in divine causality but are permitted within its teleological order for the sake of greater good.

5. The doctrine of providence completes the theology of creation: the world’s existence and intelligibility are not static products but living effects of God’s eternal act.

Disputatio XI: De Creatione et Intellegibilitate Mundi

On the Creation and Intelligibility of the World

Mundus est creatus per Verbum Dei, et propterea in ipso est ratio et ordo intelligibilis. Intellegibilitas mundi non est proprietas naturalis aut autonomus logos, sed participatio in ipsa ratione divina, per quam omnia facta sunt. Spiritus Sanctus est causa per quam haec participatio manet viva et cognoscibilis.

The world was created by the Word of God, and therefore within it lies reason and intelligible order. The intelligibility of the world is not a natural property or autonomous logic but participation in the divine reason through which all things were made. The Holy Spirit is the cause by which this participation remains living and knowable.

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Thesis

Creation is intelligible because it proceeds from the divine Word. The order of reason in the world reflects the eternal Logos by which it was created and in which it is sustained. The Spirit preserves this intelligibility as the ongoing mediation between divine wisdom and creaturely understanding.

Locus classicus

“By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” — Psalm 33:6

This verse reveals that creation is not a brute event but an act of speech: God’s Word gives being; His Spirit gives life and understanding. The world, therefore, bears a rational and linguistic structure because it originates in divine utterance.

Explicatio

In previous disputations, revelation and knowledge were shown to occur as acts of divine self-communication. Creation is the cosmic expression of that same principle. To create “by the Word” is to bring forth being through meaning.

The intelligibility of the world (intelligibilitas mundi) is not an afterthought but the imprint of divine reason (ratio divina) within creation itself. The divine Logos does not merely impose order externally; He is the internal ground of all order. Hence, the world is not a mute mechanism but a spoke reality—a creation articulated in the very act of divine utterance.

To express this symbolically (and then immediately explain):

• Let C(x) mean “x is a creature,” and L(x) mean “x participates in the Logos.”

• The theological claim ∀x (C(x) → L(x)) can be read: “For every creature x, to be created is to participate in the Logos.”

• This does not mean that creatures possess divinity, but that their very structure reflects divine rationality.

• The world’s coherence, its capacity to be known, is therefore the sign of its origin in divine speech.

The Spirit (Spiritus Sanctus), proceeding from the Father through the Word, maintains this participation dynamically.
The Spirit is not merely a past cause of order but the ongoing agent of intelligibility: He makes the world not only ordered but understandable. Thus, creation’s rational form is continually animated by pneumatological presence.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. Autonomous Rationalism holds that if the world’s intelligibility depends upon divine participation, then human reason is heteronomous. Science and philosophy must be autonomous to retain credibility. To posit that intelligibility is “borrowed” from divine Logos is to undermine the independence of human knowledge and reduce rational inquiry to theology.

Obiectio II. To claim that the Logos is the inner rationality of creation risks a pantheistic collapse of the Creator and creature into one order of being. If all order, ratio, and structure in the world are divine, then the world itself becomes divine in substance. The distinction between participation and identity vanishes, and theology slides toward pantheism.

Obiectio III. The natural world exhibits randomness, entropy, and moral indifference (empirical chaos). Disease, suffering, and death pervade the biological order. If creation truly participates in the divine Logos, these features appear inexplicable or scandalous. The presence of irrationality and evil in nature seems to contradict the claim that the world is inherently intelligible.

Obiectio IV. According to scientific naturalism, science explains intelligibility through natural law and mathematical regularity without invoking divine speech. The assumption of an underlying Logos is unnecessary. Order arises from self-organizing processes, symmetry breaking, and evolution. To ascribe intelligibility to divine participation is to import metaphysics where empirical explanation suffices.

Obiectio V. Postmodern hermeneutic skepticism claims that language and reason are historically contingent human constructs. To say that the world itself is “linguistic” or “spoken” is a metaphor, not an ontology. Meaning is produced by interpreters, not embedded in being. The idea of the cosmos as divine utterance confuses human interpretation with the structure of reality itself.

Responsiones

Ad I. Autonomy in reason does not mean isolation from its source. Human rationality is genuine precisely because it participates in the divine Logos. The dependence of intelligibility on God is not servitude but vocation: reason becomes most itself when illumined by its origin. The sciences retain autonomy in their proper domain, but their very capacity for intelligibility is derivative—a finite echo of the Word through whom all things were made. Participation in the Logos grounds freedom, it does not annul it.

Ad II. Participation does not imply identity but communion across an ontological distinction. The Logos is present in creation as cause, not as substance. The world’s order reflects divine wisdom without exhausting or containing it. To speak of creation as “worded” does not mean that it is the Word, but that its being bears the trace of the Word’s utterance. The infinite remains transcendent even while immanent in the finite. Thus, the doctrine of participation preserves both dependence and distinction.

Ad III. Chaos and disorder mark creation’s finitude, not its absence of divine order. The Logos grants intelligibility even to imperfection: finitude includes the potential for failure, limitation, and conflict. Yet these apparent irrationalities become meaningful within the teleological horizon of providence. The cross remains the archetype: what appears as negation of order is, in divine wisdom, the means of a higher reconciliation. Creation’s intelligibility, therefore, is not the denial of mystery but the assurance that mystery itself is ordered to meaning.

Ad IV. Scientific explanation presupposes the intelligibility it cannot generate. The discovery of order through empirical method already assumes that the world is rationally structured and consistent—a condition theology explains as participation in the divine Logos. Natural law, symmetry, and mathematics are not self-originating; they are the formal vestiges of divine reason. Theology does not compete with science but interprets the precondition of its success. The Logos is the ground of intelligibility that science explores but cannot explain.

Ad V. Postmodern skepticism rightly observes that human language mediates all understanding, but it errs in treating meaning as purely subjective. The world is intelligible because it is spoken—not by humans first, but by the divine Word. The analogy between creation and language is not metaphorical but metaphysical: both are acts of signification. The Spirit mediates this relation by translating divine speech into created order and human comprehension. Thus, while interpretation is human, meaning is divine. The cosmos is not a text we invent but a text we inhabit.

Nota

The doctrine of creation through the Word entails a profound theological epistemology. The human capacity to know the world is itself a participation in the divine act of speech. To understand is to retrace, in thought, the creative grammar by which God called things into being.

Thus, the sciences—when rightly ordered—are not profane but theological activities: they read the grammar of creation written by the Logos. This is why the world is intelligible at all: its being is linguistic before it is material. Every true discovery is a translation of the Word’s creative logic into human comprehension.

The Spirit’s role is central. Without the Spirit, intelligibility would decay into abstraction. The Spirit causes the correspondence between human reason and divine reason—the very possibility that meaning in the world can meet meaning in the mind. We might say that the Spirit is the hermeneutical bond of creation: the one who makes the world readable and reason receptive.

Therefore, creation’s intelligibility is neither self-explanatory nor imposed from outside.It is an ongoing relation of divine communication: the Logos speaks, the Spirit interprets, the creature understands.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Creation is not a silent fact but a spoken act: esse arises from dicere.

2. The intelligibility of the world derives from its participation in the divine Logos, not from autonomous rational structure.

3. The Spirit preserves and animates this intelligibility, making the world perpetually communicative to human reason.

4. Human knowledge of creation is itself participatory—an act of re-speaking what God has already said in being.

5. The doctrine of creation and intelligibility thus completes the movement begun in revelation: the world is revelation extended into matter, speech made visible, and intelligibility the trace of God’s continuing Word.

Disputatio VI: De Causalitate Divina et Loquela Theologica

On Divine Causality and Theological Speech

Causalitas divina non est externa actio super mundum, sed interna ratio essendi et loquendi. Spiritus Sanctus, qui est amor subsistens, causat non solum esse rerum sed etiam recte loqui de Deo. Sic omnis loquela theologica est participatio in causatione divina.

Divine causality is not an external action imposed upon the world but the inner reason both for being and for speaking. The Holy Spirit, who is subsistent love, causes not only the existence of things but also the right speaking of them. Every theological utterance is thus a participation in divine causality itself.

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Thesis

The Spirit’s causality extends from being to language. The God who causes things to exist also causes them to be spoken truly. Hence, theological language is not merely a human representation of divine acts but itself a divinely caused act of participation in those same realities.

Locus classicus

“For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” — Philippians 2:13

Here Paul affirms that divine causality penetrates human willing and acting. The same holds for speech: God works in us not only to do but to say according to His good pleasure.

Explicatio

In the preceding Disputationes, we established that theological speech (T) is syntactically ordered, Spirit-authorized, and rendered true through its correspondence with divine reality. Yet this correspondence itself presupposes a causal link: the reality that theology names exists only because God brings it into being, and the speech that names it exists only because God causes it to be spoken.

Divine causality therefore operates on two planes:

1. Ontological causality, whereby God gives being to creatures.

2. Linguistic causality, whereby God gives utterance to truth-bearing speech.

Both forms of causation are united in the Holy Spirit, the divine causa principalissima — the first and inner cause through whom all other causes act.

To express this relation in our earlier symbolism:

• Let D_G represent a property belonging properly to God (for example, divine wisdom).

• Let D represent the creature’s participated share in that property (human wisdom given by grace).

When theology speaks of “wisdom,” its words participate in the same causal current by which divine wisdom communicates itself to creatures. Thus, the correspondence D_G → D (read: “from God’s wisdom to creaturely wisdom”) does not indicate a metaphor but a causal transmission—the Spirit’s act of sharing divine properties across the Creator–creature divide.

Accordingly, theology’s language is not neutral description but theophysical communication—a speech that exists because God causes it to exist as part of His ongoing self-disclosure.

Objectiones

Obiectio I. According to Aristotelian naturalism, divine causality, operates only through the natural order as its first cause. Human speech, being a voluntary act of rational creatures, belongs to the realm of secondary causes. To make God the cause of theological language would collapse creaturely agency and render human discourse a mere divine puppet show.

Obiectio II. According to late medieval nominalist voluntarism, God’s will alone determines what is true, but human language cannot share in that causality. The words of theology are human signs that express obedience, not divine acts themselves. To attribute causal efficacy to them confuses sign with thing and diminishes God’s absolute freedom.

Obiectio III. If God directly causes every act as in occasionalism, then human beings contribute nothing real to theological speech. But if humans truly speak, then divine causality cannot determine their words without destroying their freedom. The doctrine of divine causation in theological discourse thus faces an insoluble dilemma: either language is divine and not human, or human and not divine.

Obiectio IV. Contemporary analytic philosophy of language regards meaning as determined by social-linguistic conventions and intentions, not metaphysical causes. “Causality” has no place in semantic explanation. To describe divine causality in theological speech is therefore a category mistake, a misuse of causal vocabulary in the domain of meaning.

Responsiones

Ad I. Aristotle’s distinction between primary and secondary causes provides the very structure theology must preserve. The Holy Spirit acts as the primary cause of theological language, not by replacing human agency but by enabling it. Just as God moves creatures to act according to their own natures, so the Spirit moves theologians to speak according to their own intellects and tongues. Divine causality grounds, rather than negates, the freedom of theological speech.

Ad II. Nominalism rightly guards divine sovereignty, yet by confining causality to decree it denies God’s intimate presence in creation. The Spirit’s causality in theological language is not competitive but participatory: divine agency establishes the very possibility that human words can signify God. Theological language is not deified but divinely grounded—the Spirit makes creaturely signs transparent to divine reality without abolishing their created nature.

Ad III. The dilemma between occasionalism and autonomy arises only when divine and human causality are conceived as rival forces within the same ontological plane. In theology, however, divine causality is in esse—it grounds the creature’s act without competing with it. The human theologian truly speaks, yet that speech is what it is by virtue of the Spirit’s enabling presence. Divine causality does not override secondary causes but constitutes their being and efficacy.

Ad IV. Analytic semantics rightly locates meaning within communal use, but this use itself presupposes a deeper ontological ground. In theology, the relation between word and referent is not purely conventional but pneumatic: the Spirit causes words to bear determinate reference to divine reality. Theological meaning therefore involves both human convention and divine causation—the Spirit as the transcendent condition of linguistic signification in the domain of revelation.

Nota

The connection between causality and language clarifies theology’s realism. If “to be is to have causal powers,” as philosophers often say, then to speak truly of God requires that theological terms participate in divine causal power. The Spirit ensures this participation by joining word and world in a single act of communication.

We might say that felicity is the form of divine causality in speech. When the Spirit authorizes an utterance within T, He does more than declare it permissible; He makes it effective as a bearer of divine power. The felicitous word, therefore, is not merely correct but causal—it accomplishes what it signifies because it lives in the Spirit’s energy.

This understanding also guards against theological irrealism. A theology that speaks of God without causal reference—without affirming that God’s acts truly bring about what is said—would empty divine predicates of power. The Spirit, as cause of both being and saying, guarantees that theological truth is not detached commentary but participation in divine action.

Determinatio

From the foregoing it is determined that:

1. Divine causality operates not only in the order of being but also in the order of speaking.

2. The Holy Spirit is the principal cause of all felicitous and truthful theological utterance.

3. To speak truly of God is to participate causally in God’s own self-communication; theology is therefore a theophysical act.

4. Felicity represents the formal aspect of divine causality in language, while truth represents its ontological fulfillment.

5. The Spirit thus binds ontology and discourse in a single causal order: the God who causes being to exist also causes His praise to be spoken.

Musings on Causality, Divinity and Resurrection

It took a very long time before I could see things clearly.  

Growing up, I contemplated both God and science.   They always seemed in tension.  It did not help, of course, that my eighth grade confirmation pastor made me recite Luther's explanation to the First Article in from of the church with the prefix added, "In defiance of the theory of evolution, I believe that God has created me and all creatures . . . "

Although I did not know it at the time, I was already struggling with some pretty deep issues in the logic of explanation.   If one could explain why something was the case by pointing to laws and antecedent physical events and processes, what exactly was there left for God to do?  If I explained x both by divine intentionality D and some set of physical events E coupled with physical laws L, then in what sense is D, or perhaps E and L superfluous?  If x would not have happened without D, then surely E and L cannot form a complete explanation of x.   But E and L do form a complete explanation of x, therefore by modus tollens, x would have happened without D, and thus D is causally irrelevant.

The general problem is one of causal overdetermination, and confronts us as well in the philosophy of mind.  If mental event M1 explains M2, and M1 is physically realized by a set of brain events P1, and P1 causes a set of brain events P2, and P2 is the physical realization of M2, then in what sense is M1 qua M1 -- that is, M1 in so far as it is M1 -- causally efficacious in producing M2?  Does not the mental become merely epiphenomenal on neurophysiology, a "wheel idly turning" (Wittgenstein) as it were?  Is this not clearly a situation in which mental explanation fails to articulate the deepest causal map of the universe, and thus is in principle reducible to brain explanation or, better yet, can be eliminated in favor of the latter?

Consider the healing of Mary from stage four liver cancer.  This event -- let's call it m -- is supposedly effected by God's intentionality and power D.  If God healed Mary, then clearly D causally produces m.  But Mary's healing is physically realized as some set of micro-physical actualizations S.   While there was once a time -- e.g., in pre-physicalist ages -- when one might have said that D causally produces S without means, that option is not available to most people today.   Our time assumes the principle of the causal closure of the physical,  for each and every physical event p, there is some set of physical events E that causally produces p, and for each and every physical event p, p cannot and does not produce events that are not physical.  But if D does not produce m without means, then there is some set of physical events that is the physical realization of D such that these events cause m.  

It has been axiomatic in theology since the late Enlightenment to conceive God-talk non-causally.   What I mean by this, is that the giving of an interpretation to theological language such as 'God creates the universe' does not involve one in the drawing of a causal relation across the disparate ontological domains of supernature and nature.  The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America slogan, "God's work, our hands," nicely captures the situation:  Divine agency is physically realizable!   God's working of Y is realizable through the means of some set of individuals P acting in particular ways -- let's say that the set of individuals P instantiates a complex set of relations Q.   Thus, when P instantiates Q -- or perhaps when P acts Q-ly -- then Y obtains.   But the question is obvious: How is Y qua Y a divine act when it is physically realizable as P acting Q-ly?   More simply put, how is divine agency possible in means, when causal explanations in terms of the means is sufficient?   Do we not have a case of causal overdetermination here when allowing the divine explanation to track alongside the physical?  

The solution to all of this is to offer a model of theological language in which prima facie causal terms are given a non-causal analysis.  This worked very well in ages dominated by idealist pre-suppositions.  Accordingly, 'God creates' is a way of talking about some reality deeper than the causal.  Perhaps there is a reality of "Being-itself" that is deeper than the realm of particular beings, a realm that is somehow more profound than the causal, an ontological depth of being presupposed by the ontic structure of being in which beings are causally related to other beings.  Maybe although causal talk here is in some sense misapplied, the language of the causal somehow illuminates the depth dimension of the human such that the language is nonetheless theologically vindicated.  Thus, while God does not really cause the bringing about of Mary's healing, the saying of 'God healed Mary' does illuminate or make sense out of one's existential situation and the seeming mystery of grace, the getting of that which one is ultimately not earned or deserved.   Saying that 'God healed Mary' seems to say more than there is some set of physical events that occurred -- though they cannot be fully specified -- that when instantiated brought about some set of physical events in Mary such that the term 'healed' could be applied to her.

One might, of course, complain that my concerns with 'God heals Mary' are somehow merely a problem for the philosopher.  While philosophers are concerned with semantics, the meaning of terms and the truth-values of the propositions comprised by them, semantics is not a problem for the believer reading the Bible.  Why allow the abstractions of fundamental theology (proto-theology), a theology that is most immediately relatable to First Article concerns, to transgress upon the hallowed domain of Christology and the proclamation of Christ's life giving death and resurrection?   Why not simply preach Christ and let semantics take care of itself?

Imagine listenting to preacher Pete proclaim that Christ is risen from the dead and that because of this the future has been conquered and that salvation is at hand.   One could, I suppose, simply listen to Pete and not think deeply about what his pronouncements mean and what the truth-conditions of the propositions he utters are.  (The truth-conditions of a proposition are those which must obtain in order for the proposition to be true.)  One might somehow be able to say, "OK, I don't know exactly what Pete's meaning when he talks of Christ's resurrection, but I will regard the resurrection to be true."  But this strategy does not work well when Molly asks what is meant by 'resurrection'.   At this point, one must either give some truth-condition for 'Christ is resurrected', or simply say that one does not know.  But if the latter, then Molly will say, "If you don't know what is meant by 'Christ is resurrected', then you don't know what it would mean for Christ not to be resurrected, and if you don't know that, then clearly to say "'Christ is resurrected' is true" is to say nothing at all."

To this, one simply has to change the subject.   While one might hope that one is meaning something even if one is not sure what one is meaning, there is no basis for the hope: Without knowing precisely what situation must obtain for 'Christ is resurrected' to be false, one knows not what 'Christ is resurrected' means.  Therefore, despite emotions to the contrary, to be told 'Christ is resurrected' is not to be told anything in particular -- and thus a fortiori not anything at all.  Sometimes for the sake of the Gospel one must say things as they are.  What is at stake is too important to do otherwise.

In the early days of Christianity, disciples knew that Christ's resurrection was tied to an empty tomb.  'Christ is resurrected' is false if the tomb is not empty.  The assertion had falsifiability conditions.   While the tomb being empty is not sufficient for Christ's resurrection, it is nonetheless necessary for it.  Christ's resurrection thus had a physical realization, and because that resurrection was tied to both the future and salvation, there was a physical dimension to both the future and salvation as well.   Just as Jesus Christ was physically raised from the dead, so too will all who sleep in the Lord be physically resurrected as well.   The coherence of soteriology depended up the physical realization of salvation.  While death was real, Christ's resurrected life could conquer it.

What I am saying is something quite sensible: Christ's physical resurrection and God's causal action producing it was itself understood in the tradition as causally-productive of human salvation.   Human salvation was an effect of divine agency, a causal action drawn across disparate ontological domains.  After all, there is no physical realization of 'Molly is dead' that in itself can causally produce 'Molly is alive'.  While 'God's work' can be realized perhaps in the work of human hands, 'Molly is being raised from the dead' has no known physical realization.

Simply put, while 'God creates the heavens and the earth' can be given a non-causal analysis it is not clear that a similar non-causal strategy can be given for 'God resurrects Jesus'.  The latter connects with the notion of salvation in a very intimate way -- as long as salvation is thought to be physically realized.  Of course, we are living in a time in which people are increasingly thinking that death is not an enemy.  If 'death' and 'life' are taken as descriptions of how we live rather than the fact that we live, then there may come a time when 'Mary's salvation' in no way depends upon the fact that she will live.  That time, which is increasingly our time, does truly recall the time of the Gnostics and their heresies.  

The first step in seeking treatment is realizing that one is sick.  If we do not realize the importance of semantics in theology, we shall not grasp the important theological work that must now be done.  It is irrational to hope for something of which it can be said that one does not know if one has it.

Thinking about Causation

I have recently written a paper entitled 'Creatio ex Nihilo in Luther's Genesis Commentary and the Causal Question'.  The paper argues, inter alia, that the most straightforward way of reading Luther in the Genesis Commentary is to claim that he holds: 'God causally brought about the creation of matter from nothing'. 

In itself this does not seem a particularly controversial claim.  However, when understood within the dominant theological paradigm since Kant, this statement seems highly suspect.   "Of course," the paradigm claims, "God created the heavens and the earth.  Everyone believes that.  It is just that God did not cause the earth to be.  To claim that would be a pernicious category mistake!"

But why should this be?  Why would it be problematical to claim that God causally brought about the universe from nothing?   Is this not straightforward?

It is only straightforward, it seems, if one does not think too deeply about the notion of causality.  Prior to the Enlightenement, it seems, philosophers often mistook reasons and causes.   Within and after the Enlightenment, philosophers have tended to understand causality empirically.  Physical things causally bring about other physical things.  This is the causal game properly played.   To say that the game itself was caused is to violate the rules of the game.  

Thinking about causality has tended to cluster around three views:  1)  Regular theories of causation, 2) Subjunctive and countracausal theories of causation, and 3) Intrinsic relational theories of causation. 

Accordingly, (1) claims 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'A precedes B', 'A-things are constantly conjoined to B-things' and some other conditions about which there is disagreement.  (2) holds that 'A causes B' is analyzable into 'if A were not to occur, B would not occur', or many other candidates.   Finally, (3) holds that there is some intrisic connection between A and B such B is directly produced from A.  (Let us not attend to the air of circularity at this point.) 

Clearly, if one were to want to claim that the universe was brought about by God, they could not hold a regularity theory of divine causation because the production of the universe is a singular event.  This leaves only option (2), (3) or some hybrid thereof.   Now the question arises as to what general tactic is better:  Is divine creatio ex nihilo best understood counterfactually or intrinsically?   My purpose in this blog is to explore a bit the notion of an intrinsic causal relation and ask whether it is possible for it to be utilized as the best analysis of divine causality creatio ex nihilo.  I will leave discussion of counterfactual divine causation to another time. 

The notion of an intrinsic causal relation takes aim at any Humean account of causation claiming that causality must be understood in terms of constant conjunction, temporal priority and spatio contiguity.   Accordingly, such an "externalist" account presupposes a widespread patterns of occurances.  In contravention to this, an intrinsic view of causality holds that cause is an intrinsic relation of power, energy or necessary connection.  I believe that the distinction between intrinsic/extrinsic relationality matter maps well to the distinction between singular causal statements versus "non-singularist" proposals.

According to a singularist approach the truthmaker for a single causal claim is a local relation holding between singular instances.   On this reading, the causal relation does not depend upon occurence of events in the neighborhood of the event in question; the causal relation is intrinsic to the relata and their connecting processes.  Instead of regularities as the truth makers of singular causal statements, local connections are.

The critical point in thinking about an intrinsic relation is this:  'A is intrinsically related to B' if and only if 'the relation is wholly determined by A and B'.   Over and against accounts that would unpack a relationship between A and B as determined by the regularities among a wide set of events and processes, the intrinsic connection of A and B supposes that there is something in A and something in B such that 'A causes B' cannot help but obtain.  

But now let us think about 'God causally brings about the existence of the universe'.   What properties of God and the universe obtain such that it is indeed necessary that 'God causally produces the universe'?

The obvious answer, of course, is that God has as God's very nature -- one might say His natural property -- a production of initial matter/energy and the subsequent formation thereof.  One might then say of the universe that is has its natural property of being produced by divine agency.   Accordingly, 'God creates the universe' is true because there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create, and a universe whose nature it is to be created.  To claim that 'God creates the universe ex nihilo' is simply to claim that there is a being that is God whose nature it is to create all things from absolute nothing, and a universe whose nature it is to be causally produced by the divine from absolute nothing. 

Now all this at one level might seem trivial.   Have we not simply performed some crude semantic joke?  Is it not the cause that we simply have moved the causal problem of divine/universe interaction from relations and placed it in entities having properties? 

At this point one must remember what the point is.   The point is to try to give an account of causality that is philosophically defensible.   Clearly if cause is an extrinsic relation, then we cannot give an account of the singular causal statement 'God creates the universe.'   What I have suggested is that this singular causal statement is captured by appeal to an intrinsic relation which itself is captured by the natural properties of the relata.  

The question whether or not their are any philosophical grounds for asserting the truth of the single causal statement is not one I wish to entertain here.   I take it that theology has always claimed that 'God creates the heavens and the earth'.  My point here is simply to show that it is conceptually coherent to think such divine/universe causality.   As it turns out, it is no category mistake.  

Singular Divine Causal Statements

To say that 'John wrecked the car' is to make a causal statement. It is to say that 'John caused the wrecking of the car'. To make such causal statements truthfully demands that there is some state of affairs (or some states of affairs), on the basis of which, it is true that 'John caused the wrecking of the car.' So what is the "stuff" that makes true the statement? What are the truth-conditions of 'John caused the wrecking of the car'?

One answer is to say that there is a substance (object or entity) John who has a particular set of properties necessary (or necessary and sufficient) for the existence of the set of properties the car has. Here the basic ontological category is that of substance, with the change of properties that substances have being causally determined by the properties other substances possess. The properties of the relevant entities can include times and places such that 'A causes B' is true on the basis of some substance S having property set P - - picked out by 'A' - - being necessary and sufficient for some substance S* having property set P* - - picked out by 'B'.

An alternate analysis construes the basic ontological facts of causation as a relation of events. On this view 'John causes the wrecking of the car' is really elliptical for something like 'John doing x causes the wrecking of the car'. Accordingly there is event E (John doing x) and event E* (the car wrecking) such that E causes E*.

One of the problems of understanding causality has been our infatuation with the Humean account of causation and the "covering law" models that derive from him. Famously, Hume argued that a statement like 'John doing x caused the wrecking of the car' must be analyzed in this way: i) John doing x temporally proceeded the wrecking of the car; ii) John doing x is contiguous with the wrecking of the car; iii) and events (or substances having properties) like John doing x are constantly conjoined with events (or substances having properties) like the car wrecking. This regularity theory of causation was regnant through much of the last century, giving rise to the notion of "covering laws." Accordingly E causes E* if and only if there is a universal generalization to the effect that 'for all y if y instantiates E then y instantiates E*. This cannot merely be an accidental universal generalization, however. It must be a nomic regularity. It must carry the force of necessity of a particular kind.

Ignoring all the important details, one might claim that the analysis of a singular causal statement presupposes universal hypotheticals, on the basis of which the singular causal statement is true. Accordingly, singular statement S is true if and only if S can somehow be seen as an instance of L: S is true by virtue of L. Of course, the standard Humean regularity theorist wants to go no further than the existence of the regularity. It is unexceptional that force between two objects equals the gravitational constant times the product of the mass of those objects over the square of their distance. This is a bare fact about the universe. That in some particular instance referred to by singular causal statement S, the mass of the two objects times the gravitation constant over the square of their distance gives the observed force is not surprising because, of course, this happens all of the time and this situation is an instance of what happens all of the time.

There are many problems with Humean accounts, but they are still held in favor by very empirically-minded philosophers who are not wont to ascribe ontological status to those entities quantified over in their theories. Anti-realists here can simply point to the fact that "this happens." This is the way that things are, and while we can have theories that might explain how those things are, those things will finally reference other "brute facts" about the way that things are. Of course, any one seriously interested in allowing 'God' to be a term in a singular causal statement cannot subscribe to a Humean or neo-Humean position on causation. If it is true that 'God caused the universe to be', this is a singular event. There is no covering law that this statement can instance. When it comes to talking about God and God's relationship to the world, we must - - if we allow truth-conditions at all to such statements - - understand the statements as both irreducibly singular and causal.

So to say that 'God's word caused the universe to be' is to claim that some state of affairs exists such that that statement is true. This state of affairs seems, plausibly, either to have to be the existence of a divine substance with properties, or an irreducible event. But clearly, God speaking cannot be ingredient in an event, if we mean by 'event' what is standardly meant by 'event'. Presumably, time began with the creation of the universe. Accordingly, so did events. Before time there could not have been events - - whatever could be meant here by 'before' - - for the precondition for eventhood was not present. Thus, it seems, we must give an analysis of the divine in terms of substance and properties. There seems to be no other way than this to proceed.

So to say that 'God spoke the universe into being' is to say that 'God's speaking caused the universe to be', and this is to presuppose as truth-conditions a substance God having the property of speaking - - whatever might be meant by that - - the existence of which is both necessary and sufficient for the world to be. This view nicely supports the counterfactual that if there were not a universe, God would not have spoken it into being.

Of course, in the contemporary theological discussion, few want any longer to analyze the semantic conditions of 'God created the heavens and the earth' in the way I have just suggested. While many would talk about the meaningfulness of the statement, they would have difficulty in specifying precisely the conditions that would make it true or false. But meaning and truth stand together. One can't have one without the other, it seems. To the degree that theologians have divorced the two, to that degree the language of theology has become, to use Wittgenstein's phrase - - a "wheel idly turning.'

The necessary condition of theological language not becoming moribund is for it to reassert its traditional commitment to truth-conditions. Such a recommitment to truth presupposes a determinate ontological situation, and it is this situation that must be investigated. What I have suggested here is very simple: To claim that "God created the heavens and the earth' is true is to claim that there is some being God exhibiting certain properties on the basis of which the universe, which might have not existed, does indeed exist. But making assertions like this takes considerable courage. Lamentably, there has been far too little courage in recent decades on the part of those within the theological guild.