[PDF] Providence And Science In A World Of Contingency eBook

Author : Ignacio Silva
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 10,39 MB
Release : 2021-09-30
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1000437418

GET BOOK

Providence and Science in a World of Contingency offers a novel assessment of the contemporary debate over divine providential action and the natural sciences, suggesting a re-consideration of Thomas Aquinas’ metaphysical doctrine of providence coupled with his account of natural contingency. By looking at the history of debates over providence and nature, the volume provides a set of criteria to evaluate providential divine action models, challenging the underlying, theologically contentious assumptions of current discussions on divine providential action. Such assumptions include that God needs causally open spaces in the created world in order to act in it providentially, and the unfitting conclusion that, if this is the case, then God is assumed to act as another cause among causes. In response to these shortcomings, the book presents a comprehensive account of Aquinas’ metaphysics of natural causation, contingency, and their relation to divine providence. It offers a fresh and bold metaphysical narrative, based on the thought of Thomas Aquinas, which appreciates the relation between divine providence and natural contingency.

Author : Ignacio Silva
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 156 pages
File Size : 11,47 MB
Release : 2020-11-19
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1000227308

GET BOOK

This volume offers an original perspective on divine providence by examining philosophical, psychological, and theological perspectives on human providence as exhibited in virtuous human behaviours. Divine providence is one of the most pressing issues in analytic theology and philosophy of religion today, especially in view of scientific evidence for a natural world full of indeterminacies and contingencies. Therefore, we need new ways to understand and explain the relations of divine providence and creaturely action. The volume is structured dynamically, going from chapters on human providence to those on divine providence, and back. Drawing on insights from virtue ethics, psychology and cognitive science, the philosophy of providence in the face of contingent events, and the theology of grace, each chapter contributes to an original overall perspective: that human providential action is a resource suited specifically to personal action and hence related to the purported providential action of a personal God. By putting forward a fresh take on divine providence, this book enters new territory on an age-old issue. It will therefore be of great interest to scholars of theology and philosophy.

Author : Terrance L. Tiessen
Publisher : InterVarsity Press
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 42,85 MB
Release : 2009-09-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 083087660X

GET BOOK

From the view that God does not intervene in the world to the view that God is the only effective agent in the working of his will, Terrance Tiessen identifies ten views of providence and adds his own.

Author : David Fergusson
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 391 pages
File Size : 34,33 MB
Release : 2018-08-30
Category : History
ISBN : 1108475000

GET BOOK

An exploration of the theology of divine providence that is both critical and constructive in its outcomes.

Author : Karl W. Giberson
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 377 pages
File Size : 24,62 MB
Release : 2016-04-18
Category : Religion
ISBN : 0190277173

GET BOOK

Most of us believe everything happens for a reason. Whether it is "God's will","karma", or "fate," we want to believe that nothing in the world, especially disasters and tragedies, is a random, meaningless event. But now, as never before, confident scientific assertions that the world embodies a profound contingency are challenging theological claims that God acts providentially in the world. The random and meandering path of evolution is widely used as an argument that God did not create life. Abraham's Dice explores the interplay between chance and providence in the monotheistic religious traditions, looking at how their interaction has been conceptualized as our understanding of the workings of nature has changed. This lively historical conversation has generated intense ongoing theological debates, and provocative responses from science: what are we to make of the history of our universe, where chance and law have played out in complex ways? Or the evolution of life, where random mutations have challenged attempts to find purpose within evolution and convinced many that human beings are but a "glorious accident"? The enduring belief that everything happens for a reason is examined through a conversation with major scholars, among them holders of prestigious chairs at Oxford and Cambridge Universities and the University of Basel, as well as several Gifford lecturers, and two Templeton prize winners. Organized historically, Abraham's Dice provides a wide-ranging scientific, theological, and biblical foundation to address the question of providence and divine action in a world shot through with contingency.

Author : Robert John Russell
Publisher : Templeton Foundation Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 21,6 MB
Release : 2019-02-11
Category : Religion
ISBN : 1599475685

GET BOOK

In October 2014, a group of mathematicians, physicists, ecologists, philosophers, and theologians gathered at a special conference in Berkeley, California to present the results of a two-year research program dubbed “Project SATURN”. This program explored many of the rich avenues of thought found at the intersection of modern science and Christian theology. Chief among them is the possibility that certain processes in nature might be so complex that they do not have sufficient physical causes. Known as “ontological indeterminism”, this idea has profound implications for theology. Specifically, it allows God to be thought of as acting providentially within nature without violating the laws and processes of nature. Such a momentous insight could influence how we understand free will, natural evil, suffering in nature, and the relation between divine providence and human evolution. The essays collected here discuss each of these topics and were originally presented at the 2014 conference. Part I establishes the scientific basis for conceptualizing certain process in the universe as inherently random and possibly indeterministic. Part II discusses the philosophical and theological issues that spring from this understanding. Together they represent the cutting edge of thought in the increasingly productive dialogue between science and theology. Short for the “Scientific and Theological Understandings of Randomness in Nature”, Project SATURN was created by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, a Program of the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley. It was funded with a grant administered by Calvin College and provided by the John Templeton Foundation.

Author : Mikko Posti
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 303 pages
File Size : 30,41 MB
Release : 2020-04-20
Category : History
ISBN : 9004429727

GET BOOK

In Medieval Theories of Divine Providence 1250-1350 Mikko Posti presents a historical and philosophical study of the doctrine of divine providence in 13th- and 14th-century Latin philosophical theology.

Author : Paul Kjoss Helseth
Publisher : Zondervan
Page : 274 pages
File Size : 40,98 MB
Release : 2011
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0310325129

GET BOOK

Questions about divine providence have preoccupied Christians for generations: Are people elected to salvation? For whom did Jesus die? This book introduces readers to four prevailing views on divine providence, with particular attention to the question of who Jesus died to save (the extent of the atonement) and if or how God determines who will be saved (predestination). But this book does not merely answer readers' questions. Four Views on Divine Providence helps readers think theologically about all the issues involved in exploring this doctrine. The point-counterpoint format reveals the assumptions and considerations that drive equally learned and sincere theologians to sharp disagreement. It unearths the genuinely decisive issues beneath an often superficial debate. Volume contributors are Paul Helseth (God causes every creaturely event that occurs); William Lane Craig (through his 'middle knowledge, ' God controls the course of worldly affairs without predetermining any creatures' free decisions); Ron Highfield (God controls creatures by liberating their decision-making); and Gregory Boyd (human decisions can be free only if God neither determines nor knows what they will be). Introductory and closing essays by Dennis Jowers give relevant background and guide readers toward their own informed beliefs about divine providence.

Author : Mark W. Elliott
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 501 pages
File Size : 40,13 MB
Release : 2015-04-24
Category : Religion
ISBN : 3110382970

GET BOOK

This book will offer an account not so much of God’s Providence an sich, but rather of divine providence as experienced by believers and unbelievers. It will not ask questions about whether and how God knows the future, or how suffering can be accounted for (as is the case in the treatments by William Lane Craig, Richard Swinburne, or J. Sanders), but will focus on prayer and decision-making as a faithful and/or desperate response to the perception of God as having some controlling influence. The following gives an idea of the ground to be covered: The patristic foundations of the Christian view of Providence; The medieval synthesis of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ views; Reformational and Early Modern: the shift towards piety; Modern Enlightenment: Providence and Ethics; Barth and the Sceptics; The sense of Providence in the Modern Novel and World.