Central to the western theistic understanding of divine providence is the conviction that God is the sovereign Lord of nature. He created the physical universe and continually conserves it in existence. What's more, He is always and everywhere active in it by His power. The operations of nature, be they minute or catastrophic, commonplace or unprecedented, are the work of His hands, and without His constant causal influence none of them would or could occur.

Originally published in 1958. Occasionalism is generally associated in the history of philosophy with the name of Malébranche. But long before this time, the Muslim Theologians of the ninth and tenth centuries had developed an occasionalist metaphysics of atoms and accidents. Arguing that a number of distinctively Islamic concepts such as fatalism and the surrender of personal endeavour cannot be fully understood except in the perspective of the occasionalist world view of Islam, the volume also discusses the attacks on Occasionalism (...) made by Averroes and St. Thomas Aquinas. (shrink)

Plausibly, if an object persists through time, then its later existence must be caused by its earlier existence. Many theists endorse a theory of continuous creation, according to which God is the sole cause of a creature's existence at a given time. The conjunction of these two theses rather unfortunately implies that no object distinct from God persists at all. What strategies for resolving this difficulty are available? (Published Online April 7 2006).

The thesis that dualism is a Greek import into Christianity and that the Christian hope of eternal life does not presuppose dualism has recently begun to win adherents. This paper is a defense of this thesis. One philosophical argument for dualism (that dualism best explains the phenomenon of sensuous experience) is briefly discussed and is rejected. The body of the paper addresses the relevant creedal and biblical data. The paper closes with a discussion of the question whether the doctrine of (...) the Resurrection of the Dead, on which the Christian hope of eternal life is founded, presupposes dualism. (shrink)

On traditional theism, God is not only a creator but also a conserver. The doctrine of conservation, however, appears to face a dilemma. Either conservation is continuous re-creation with consequences inimical to diachronic identity, or conservation is an operation upon a pre-existent entity, which, because it is pre-existent, is in no clear need of conservation. This article first makes a case for the dilemma, and then proposes a way between its horns. Safe passage is possible if we adopt presentist four-dimensionalism, (...) i.e. the conjunction of presentism, according to which temporally present items alone exist, and four-dimensionalism, the doctrine that individuals are not continuants but wholes of temporal parts. (shrink)

Many theists believe that God is continuously acting to sustain the universe in existence. One way of understanding this act of sustenance is to see God as actually creating the universe anew at each moment. This paper argues against the coherence of this view by drawing out some of its consequences. I argue that the re-creationist must deny the causal efficacy of created f things, as well as the identity of things across time. Most problematically, I argue that re-creationism ultimately (...) denies the reality of time itself. (shrink)

The traditional view of divine conservation holds that it is simply a continuation of the initial act of creation. In this essay, I defend the continuous-creation tradition against William Lane Craig's criticism that continuous creation fundamentally misconstrues the intuitive distinction between creation and conservation. According to Craig, creation is the unique causal activity of bringing new patient entities into existence, while conservation involves acting upon already existing patient entities to cause their continued existence. I defend continuous creation by challenging Craig's (...) intuitive distinction and by showing that the alternative account of creation and conservation he bases upon it is fraught with serious internal difficulties. (shrink)

One standard criticism of the doctrine of continuous creation is that it entails the occasionalist position that God alone is a true cause and that the events we commonly identify as causes are merely the occasions upon which God brings about effects. I begin by clearly stating Malebranche's argument from continuous creation to occasionalism. Next, I examine two strategies for resisting Malebranche's argument – strong and weak concurrentism – and argue that weak concurrentism is the more promising strategy. Finally, I (...) argue that weak concurrentism requires a necessitarian approach to secondary causation. (shrink)

Principles of Philosophy was written in Latin by Rene Descartes. Published in 1644, it was intended to replace Aristotle's philosophy and traditional Scholastic Philosophy. This volume contains a letter of the author to the French translator of the Principles of Philosophy serving for a Preface and a letter to the most serene princess, Elizabeth, eldest daughter of Frederick, King of Bohemia, Count Palatine, and Elector of the Sacred Roman Empire. Principes de philosophie, by Claude Picot, under the supervision of Descartes, (...) appeared in 1647 with a letter-preface to Queen Christina of Sweden. (shrink)

Against the historically widespread view that divine conservation is a continuation of the act of creation, William Lane Craig argues that conservation is a different kind of act since, unlike creation ex nihilo, it is diachronic and it acts on a patient. Timothy Miller poses a timing objection against Craig's view, arguing that on such a view either the existence of a conserved entity is discontinuous, or the conserving activity overdetermines its effect, or the conserving activity is not continuous. The (...) present paper explores the options that remain for a diachronic, agent-patient account of conservation. It includes several models of conservation on which divine activity is continuous but not overdetermined since its effect at each time is something less specific than the existence of a created being at a time. (shrink)