PHD Discussions Logo

Ask, Learn and Accelerate in your PhD Research

Question Icon Post Your Answer

Question Icon

How do philosophical and theological perspectives conceptualize the relationship between God (as creator) and the laws of nature?

In my philosophy of religion class, we're wrestling with divine action. If God created the universe with laws of nature, does God then "intervene" to perform miracles, implying a flaw in the design? Or are the laws merely descriptive of God's regular action (concurrentism)? Does a deistic view, where God sets the laws and then doesn't interfere, render God irrelevant? How do thinkers like Aquinas, Newton, or modern theologians reconcile an omnipotent God with a seemingly autonomous, law-governed cosmos?

All Answers (1 Answers In All)

By Govind Answered 1 month ago

The relationship is conceptualized in several key models: 1) Interventionism: God normally lets nature run by laws but occasionally "intervenes" to suspend them (a common but philosophically problematic view, as it implies law-breaking). 2) Deism: God establishes laws and then withdraws, making God causally absent from ongoing history. 3) Concurrentism (Aquinas): God is the primary cause who continuously sustains all secondary (natural) causes. Laws describe God's regular, sustaining action; miracles are rare instances where God acts as sole primary cause, not a law-violation. 4) Non-Interventionist Special Divine Action (NIDA): A modern project suggesting God acts in ontologically "open" aspects of nature (e.g., quantum indeterminacy, chaos theory) without violating laws. These models try to balance divine sovereignty with the regularity of nature, with concurrentism and NIDA being the most philosophically sophisticated attempts to avoid the problems of interventionism and deism.

Your Answer