Divine Immutability, Divine Action and the God–World Relation

Abstract

In his thought‐provoking critique of classical Christian theism, Isaak Dorner argues that a traditional understanding of God's immutability precludes any diversity in God's action and presence in the world. Dorner reasons that the view of God developed in scholastic thought entails a ‘uniform’ divine causality in which God cannot act in new and distinct ways according to the various circumstances of his creatures. This sort of critique elicits the question of whether God's immutability, if taken to include his pure actuality, flattens out his action such that he is no longer truly engaged in the lives of his creatures. In this article, I propose that a development of the virtual distinction found in scholastic theology proper will enable us to integrate (1) the pure actuality of God and (2) what we may call the formal and temporal diversity of God's action pro nobis that confirms his authentic involvement in the world. Unfolding the explanatory power of the virtual distinction will require considering its relationship to the concept of God's pure actuality and analyzing different aspects of divine action in which the diversity of that action might be located.