Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T09:02:11.651Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

‘The metaphysical objection’ and concurrentist co-operation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 August 2021

Timothy D. Miller*
Affiliation:
Department of Theology, Lee University, 1120 N. Ocoee St, Cleveland, TN 37311, USA
*
Corresponding author: Timothy D. Miller, email: [email protected]

Abstract

The foundation of W. Matthews Grant's project in Free Will and God's Universal Causality is his Non-Occasionalist version of Divine Universal Causality (NODUC), which affirms the traditional concurrentist idea that God and secondary causes cooperate non-superfluously in such a way that they both produce the entire effect. Grant defends NODUC's concurrentist account by responding to ‘The Metaphysical Objection’, which alleges that concurrentism places an inconsistent set of demands upon secondary causes. I argue that Grant's responses to that objection are unconvincing, and thus, he fails to demonstrate that NODUC is a stable foundation for the rest of his project.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Freddoso, AJ (1991) God's general concurrence with secondary causes: why conservation is not enough. Philosophical Perspectives 5, Philosophy of Religion, 553585.10.2307/2214109CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freddoso, AJ (1994) God's general concurrence with secondary causes: pitfalls and prospects. American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 68, 131156.10.5840/acpq199468224CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, WM (2017) Divine universal causality without occasionalism (and with agent-causation). In McCann, H (ed.), Free Will and Classical Theism: The Significance of Freedom in Perfect Being Theology. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 175200.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190611200.003.0010CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, WM (2019) Free Will and God's Universal Causality: The Dual Sources Account. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.10.5040/9781350082939CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, EJ (2010) On the individuation of powers. In Marmodoro, A (ed.), The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and their Manifestations. New York: Routledge, pp. 826.Google Scholar
McKitrick, J (2003) A case for extrinsic dispositions. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81, 155174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McKitrick, J (2010) Manifestations as effects. In Marmodoro, A (ed.) The Metaphysics of Powers: Their Grounding and their Manifestations. New York: Routledge, pp. 7383.Google Scholar
McKitrick, J (2018) Dispositional Pluralism. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, T (2011) Continuous creation and secondary causation: the threat of occasionalism. Religious Studies 47, 322.10.1017/S003441251000020XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Molina, LD (1988) On Divine Foreknowledge: Part IV of the Concordia. Freddoso AJ (trans.). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Molnar, G (2003) Powers: A Study in Metaphysics. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mumford, S (2009) Causal powers and capacities. In Beebee, H, Hitchcock, C and Menzies, P (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Causation. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 265278.Google Scholar
Park, S (2017) Against extrinsic dispositions. Review of Contemporary Philosophy 16, 92103.Google Scholar
Platt, AR (2020) One True Cause: Causal Powers, Divine Concurrence, and the Seventeenth-Century Revival of Occasionalism. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suárez, F (2002) On Creation, Conservation and Concurrence: Metaphysical Disputations 20–22. Freddoso AJ (trans.). South Bend, IN: St. Augustine's Press.Google Scholar