Divine Action and the Human Mind Current Issues in Theology Series

Is the human mind uniquely nonphysical or even spiritual, such that divine intentions can meet physical realities? As scholars in science and religion have spent decades attempting to identify a 'causal joint' between God and the natural world, human consciousness has been often privileged as just such a locus of divine-human interaction. However, this intuitively dualistic move is both out of step with contemporary science and theologically insufficient. By discarding the God-nature model implied by contemporary noninterventionist divine action theories, one is freed up to explore theological and metaphysical alternatives for understanding divine action in the mind. Sarah Lane Ritchie suggests that a theologically robust theistic naturalism offers a more compelling vision of divine action in the mind. By affirming that to be fully natural is to be involved with God's active presence, one may affirm divine action not only in the human mind, but throughout the natural world.

Part I. Divine Action and the 'Hard Problem of Consciousness': 1. Introduction; 2. Contemporary divine action theories and the causal joint; 3. Divine action and mind: Philip Clayton's emergentist thesis; 4. The philosophy and science of the mind; 5. Physicalist approaches to consciousness; Part II. The Theological Turn: Divine Action in the Naturalised Mind: 6. Naturalism(s) and the theological turn in divine action; 7. Theistic naturalism part one: Thomistic divine action; 8. Theistic naturalism part two: panentheistic naturalism; 9. Theistic naturalism part three: a pneumatological assist; 10. Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Sarah Lane Ritchie is Lecturer in Theology and Science at the University of Edinburgh.