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Divine Action, Resurrection, and the Transformation of the Universe

Nearly twenty years ago I spent a sabbatical with Bob Russell at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, and since then his lectures and publications, the conversations shared, and my participation in research conferences he has initiated have all been important in shaping my own theology. So my approach to this book is not impartial. It begins with gratitude to, and real respect for, the author. I come to this book, as well, from a particular theological perspective on divine action, one that owes much to Aquinas’s metaphysics of a God who acts through created causes, and that builds on the evolutionary theology of Karl Rahner. Cosmology—from Alpha to Omega is a dense and rich book, and in this brief review I will focus only on aspects of Russell’s three chapters on divine action and his two chapters on the transformation of the universe in the light of the resurrection. The search for an approach to divine action that is both non-interventionist and objective has long been central to Russell’s work. What is required, he has argued, is a scientific theory that can describe a location where God might be thought of as influencing the outcome of events, without intervening—that is, without overturning or bypassing the laws of nature. What is needed is a scientific theory that supports the idea that the universe is open—in philosophical terms, ontologically indeterminate. Russell finds just such a theory in quantum mechanics, in an important form of its Copenhagen interpretation. Here, he proposes, God can be thought of as acting by bringing to realization quantum states which give rise, in the macroscopic world, to what theology describes as God’s ongoing creation and special providence. The initial response to this theory by many who, like me, stand in the tradition of Aquinas is not only great interest, but also a question as to whether there is a danger that God is being reduced to a secondary cause, and whether creation’s integrity is being compromised. What I see as one of the important developments of this book is that Russell responds more fully than before to these concerns. He seeks explicitly to protect the radical otherness and unknowability of God in his theology of divine action with comments like these: