Download or read book Providence and Science in a World of Contingency written by Ignacio Silva and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Divine and Human Providence written by Ignacio Silva and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-11-19 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book The Providence of God written by David Fergusson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-08-30 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the theology of divine providence that is both critical and constructive in its outcomes.
Download or read book Providence and Prayer written by Terrance L. Tiessen and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2009-09-20 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Divine Providence and Natural Contingency written by Simon Maria Kopf and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Abraham s Dice written by Karl W. Giberson and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-18 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Medieval Theories of Divine Providence 1250 1350 written by Mikko Posti and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-04-20 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book God s Providence and Randomness in Nature written by Robert John Russell and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2019-02-11 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Providence Perceived written by Mark W. Elliott and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2015-04-24 with total page 501 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Fate Providence and Moral Responsibility in Ancient Medieval and Early Modern Thought written by Pieter d’Hoine and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-05 with total page 809 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays on key moments in the intellectual history of the West This book forms a major contribution to the discussion on fate, providence and moral responsibility in Antiquity, the Middle Ages and Early Modern times. Through 37 original papers, renowned scholars from many different countries, as well as a number of young and promising researchers, write the history of the philosophical problems of freedom and determinism since its origins in pre-socratic philosophy up to the seventeenth century. The main focus points are classic Antiquity (Plato and Aristotle), the Neoplatonic synthesis of late Antiquity (Plotinus, Proclus, Simplicius), and thirteenth-century scholasticism (Thomas Aquinas, Henry of Ghent). They do not only represent key moments in the intellectual history of the West, but are also the central figures and periods to which Carlos Steel, the dedicatary of this volume, has devoted his philosophical career.
Download or read book Four Views on Divine Providence written by Paul Kjoss Helseth and published by Zondervan. This book was released on 2011 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Abrahamic Reflections on Randomness and Providence written by Kelly James Clark and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-09-27 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This open access book addresses the question of how God can providentially govern apparently ungovernable randomness. Medieval theologians confidently held that God is provident, that is, God is the ultimate cause of or is responsible for everything that happens. However, scientific advances since the 19th century pose serious challenges to traditional views of providence. From Darwinian evolution to quantum mechanics, randomness has become an essential part of the scientific worldview. An interdisciplinary team of Muslim, Christian and Jewish scholars—biologists, physicists, philosophers and theologians—addresses questions of randomness and providence.
Download or read book Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy written by Margaret J. Osler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-07 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The difference between Pierre Gassendi's (1592-1655) and René Descartes' (1596-1650) versions of the mechanical philosophy directly reflected the differences in their theological presuppositions. Gassendi described a world utterly contingent on divine will and expressed his conviction that empirical methods are the only way to acquire knowledge about the natural world. Descartes, on the contrary, described a world in which God had embedded necessary relations, some of which enable us to have a priori knowledge of substantial parts of the natural world. In this book, Professor Osler explores theological conceptions of contingency and necessity in the world and how these ideas influenced the development of the mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century. She examines the transformation of medieval ideas about God's relationship to the Creation into seventeenth-century ideas about matter and method as embodied in early articulations of the mechanical philosophy. Refracted through the prism of the mechanical philosophy, these theological conceptualizations of contingency and necessity in the world were mirrored in different styles of science that emerged in the second half of the seventeenth century.
Download or read book Progress in Theology written by Gijsbert van den Brink and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-10 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the intriguing relationship between theology, science, and the ideal of progress from a variety of perspectives. While seriously discussing the obstacles and pitfalls related to the notion of progress in theology, it argues that there are in fact many different kinds of progress in theology. It considers how this sheds positive light on what theologians do and suggests that other disciplines in the humanities can equally profit from these ideas. The chapters provide tools for making further progress in theology, featuring detailed case studies to show how progress in theology works in practice and connecting with the role and place of theology in the University. The book rearticulates in multiple ways theology’s distinctive voice at the interface of science and religion.
Download or read book Theistic Evolution written by Mariusz Tabaczek and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-11-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deeply rooted in the classical tradition, this book develops a contemporary, re-imagined proposal of an Aristotelian-Thomistic perspective on theistic evolution.
Download or read book Chance or Providence written by Louise Hickman and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-10 with total page 170 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belief in some sort of providence is widespread, even among those who do not profess any kind of conventional religious faith. The belief that some sort of benevolent divine force directs the events of the universe is one that has shaped our philosophical and theological convictions, together with our economic and social political landscape. The 2013 conference of the Science and Religion Forum was convened to discuss some of the most pressing questions that arise from a consideration of providence: Is a belief in providence compatible with freedom? What of the suffering of non-human creatures? Should providence be thought of as general or as special intervention? How might a belief in providence be squared with the challenges raised by scientific naturalism and the theory of evolution? This book presents chapters that originated from that conference, and explores a variety of responses to these critical questions. Insights from both science and theology are drawn together by some of the leading thinkers in this field. The result is a contribution to the theology of providence which will be of substantial value to all those interested in the conversation between science and religion.
Download or read book Providence Made Flesh written by Terry J. Wright and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2009-11-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Traditional discussions of the Christian doctrine of providence often center on the relation between divine agency and human freedom, seeking to offer an account of the extent to which a person is free before God, the first cause of all things. Terry J. Wright argues that such riddles of causation cannot determine the content of providence, and suggests a unique and alternative framework that depicts God's activity in terms of divine faithfulness to that which God has made. Providence is not God as first cause acting through creaturely secondary causation; rather, providence is God's sovereign mediation of the divine presence across the whole world, achieved through creaturely faithfulness made possible and guaranteed by his own faithful action in Jesus Christ.
