Divine Action and the Human Mind

DIVINE ACTION AND THE HUMAN MIND by Sarah Lane Ritchie. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2019. 373 pages. Hardcover; $120.00. ISBN: 9781108476515. *Imagine a medieval castle within which rests not one but two keeps. One keep is tall and strong, seemingly impenetrable. The other, short, rather shabby, and in some disrepair. For years, the inhabitants of the shabby keep have tried to communicate with the strong tower. They have built bridges, thrown ropes, shot arrows with messages, all to no avail. One day, it is discovered that both keeps rest on the same foundation, and that foundation has passageways from one tower to the other. The possibility of communication is free and open, always has been, but the blueprints were lost, so no one knew. In the discussion of science and theology, much has been made of the power and regularity of the laws of nature and the belief that the laws stand free of theological influence. The laws are the tall keep, protecting the august authority of the scientific method. Theologians often lose heart before the keep's thick walls, retreating to their rather shabby tower. Sarah Lane Ritchie argues that we are just discovering the shared foundation between the two keeps and that theology need not quake at the foot of the tall tower. There have been, all along, the resources in theology to show how the two keeps are related. *Ritchie's work focuses on the recent past, and argues for a "theological turn" in divine action theorizing. She notes the influence of the Divine Action Project (held over the course of 15 years, ending in 2003), most of whose publications found themselves searching for a "causal joint" where the power of God to act could touch the created world without interfering with the laws of nature. Theologians have been wary to question the power and correctness of the metaphysical foundations of those laws. The result manifests itself in three key beliefs: (1) noninterventionism (God doesn't or can't intervene in the working of the laws of nature); (2) incompatibilism (God and nature cannot both cause the same events); and (3) prescriptive accounts of the laws of nature. These key beliefs summarize the "standard model." Ritchie takes on the standard model through considering the work of Philip Clayton as well as the "hard problem" (of consciousness) theorists who reject the notion that mind can be reduced to nature (or at least to the material or the physical). Ultimately, she ferrets out the areas in whic