One of the most important and controversial themes in the contemporary dialogue among scientists and Christian theologians is the issue of "divine action" in the world. This volume brings together contributions from leading scholars on this topic, which emerged out of the Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action project, co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and Natural Science. This multi-year collaboration involved over 50 authors meeting at five international conferences. The essays collected here demonstrate the pervasive role of philosophy in this dialogue.

Provides a sustained account of how the thought of Aquinas may be used in conjunction with contemporary science to deepen our understanding of divine action and address such issues as creation, providence, prayer, and miracles.

The debate between divine action, or faith, and natural selection, or science, is garnering tremendous interest. This book ventures well beyond the usual, contrasting American Protestant and atheistic points of view, and also includes the perspectives of Jews, Muslims, and Roman Catholics. It contains arguments from the various proponents of intelligent design, creationism, and Darwinism, and also covers the sensitive issue of how to incorporate evolution into the secondary school biology curriculum. Comprising contributions from prominent, award-winning authors, the book also contains dialogs following each chapter to provide extra stimulus to the readers and a full picture of this ?hot? topic, which delves into the fundamentals of science and religion.

Quantum Mechanics, a collection of fifteen essays, explores the creative interaction among quantum physics, philosophy, and theology. This fine collection presents the results of the fifth international research conference co-sponsored by the Vatican Observatory, Rome, and the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Berkeley. The overarching goal of these conferences is to support the engagement of constructive theology with the natural sciences and to investigate the philosophical and theological elements in ongoing theoretical research in the natural sciences. In the first section of this collection, contributors examine scientific and historical context. Section two features essays covering a wide range of philosophical interpretations of quantum mechanics. The final set of essays explores the theological implications of quantum theory. Abner Shimony, Raymond Y. Chiao, Michael Berry, Ernan McMullin, William R. Stoeger, S.J., James T. Cushing, Jeremy Butterfield, Michael Redhead, Chris Clarke, John Polkinghorne, Michael Heller, Philip Clayton, Thomas F. Tracy, George F.R. Ellis, and Robert John Russell all contributed essays to this volume.

Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action is a collection of essays assessing the series of the same name, which advances the engagement of constructive theology with the natural sciences.

In order to preserve contemporary understandings of the sciences, many figures of the Divine Action Project (DAP) held that God could never violate or suspend a law of nature, causing the marginalization of miracles from scholarly theology–science dialogue. In the first substantive entry of interreligious dialogue on the topic, this book provides fresh, contemporary accounts of Said Nursi and Thomas Aquinas on miracles and science, challenges contemporary noninterventionist presuppositions, and explores rich, untapped avenues in the theology, metaphysics, and epistemology of miracles and laws of science. Through an exploration of Nursi’s Ash’arite, Quranic interpretation of the sciences, and St. Thomas’s neglected doctrine of obediential potency, this volume marshals powerful tools from the world’s two largest religions to elucidate the foundations of God’s interaction with creatures. As well as contributing to the contemporary debate, this volume provides Muslim and Christian readers alike substantive intellectual frameworks in which to think about the sciences from the heart of their own intellectual traditions, while at the same time giving them as alternatives to mainstream contemporary approaches for scientists and other readers engaged in theology–science dialogue.