Notes on a Reformational approach to the meaning of causality:

...are so governed as to move exactly in the course which he has destined. What, then, you will say, does nothing happen fortuitously, nothing contingently? I answer, it was a true saying of Basil the Great, that Fortune and Chance are heathen terms; the meaning of which ought not to occupy pious minds. For if all success is blessing from God, and calamity and adversity are his curse, there is no place left in human affairs for Fortune and chance..." (Calvin, Inst.I,16,8). Even though Calvin goes on to speak of God as a "cause", the universe of his positive discourse is not that of "causal determinism" but that of the Bible as I hope ... Part IV The Omnipotence of God in the Affairs of Men from Arthur C. Custance, Time and Eternity and other biblical studies (Zondervan, 1977) will indicate. <http://www.custance.org/old/time/4ch1.html> As Nicholas Rescher points out, "the causal order does not point to something transcendent that lies beyond. The task of "natural theology" of drawing inferences about God's nature from the order of nature by somehow linking him up with the world's causal order is a hopeless proposition. God's connection with the world is not a causal one: he is not a "maker" in that way. He "stands in back" of the causal order in some sense but is not part of it" (Pascal's Wager, pp.128-129). So also Kathryn Tanner: "God's creating a world without sufficient created causes for what happens is also a possibility according to our rule for talk of God's agency as immediate. In a certain sense God never works with created causes; in a certain sense God always brings about the created effects of divine agency without the help of created causes. Secondary creative causes never intervene in the creative operation by which God brings the non-divine in its entirety to be; no created causes work to bring about that relation of dependence upon divinity that constitutes created beings in their entirety... It is never appropriate, then, to bring in created causes when talking about the very constitution of the creature in its relation of dependence upon divinity...the sort of immediacy we have been discussing holds whether or not the world God creates is said to include creatures with power and efficacy... Created causes that do exist are not the intermediaries, then, for God's creative establishing of their created effects... God can do what is impossible within the created order but not absolutely impossible..." (Kathryn Tanner, God and Creation in Christian Theology Tyranny or Empowerment?, Great Britain / New York: Basil Blackwell, 1988, pp.98-100. I have the impression that this intriguing study is very compatible with High Calvinism, and also with Patristic Orthodoxy, as Kathryn Tanner suggests See p.37 and p.37n.3. Indeed, it could be said that here is the ancient Apophatic Theology translated into, and transforming, the current "Western" universe of discourse.) So also Dooyeweerd: "God can never be the ultimate cause in a mechanical or other modal series of causes and effects. Rather He is the Origin of causality in the temporal coherence and radical unity of all its modal aspects. A purely modal causality cannot refer to a real process, but only to a theoretical abstraction... Any one who thinks he can solve such a speculative antinomy by granting man a certain measure of independence and freedom in his relation to God as 'prima

causa' has not understood the true origin of this antinomy in speculative philosophy... If God, as a supposed unmoved Mover, is thought of as the ultimate cause in a purely mechanical series of causes and effects, His causal activity must be conceived in an absolute mechanical sense. And the same consequence, viz. the exclusion of human responsibility, is implied in the absolutization of any other non-normative aspect of a causal process.. The source of the contradiction lies in this absolutizing itself. For human thought it is absolutely impossible to form a defined concept of causality in the supertemporal fulness of meaning or in the sense of God's creative act. Impossible, because human thought is bound within the limits of the temporal coherence of meaning.. [This is what seems to scare Thomas Molnar who misses, or is not consoled by, Dooyeweerd's further point that /mmm] Only in the transcendental Idea referring to the totality of meaning and to the can human thought be concentrated towards that which passes beyond its immanent boundaries.. That's why St Paul's words are full of wisdom when he answers those who speculate on causality with reference to the will of God. "Thou wilt say then unto me, why doth He yet find fault? For who hath resisted His will?" "Nay, but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God?" This answer is a direct dismissal of speculative thought and it does not enter into the false method of posing problems used by speculative philosophy.. To philosophical thought, concentrating on Christ and on God Who reveals Himself in Christ, this speculative way of posing the problem of causality is simply impossible. Only abstract speculative theoretical thought can take it seriously" (New Critique II, pp.40-42). [Kathryn Tanner: "No references to Eastern Orthodox writings occur in this chapter. A reading of Gregory Palamas's The Triads, trans. N. Grendle (New York: Paulist Press, 1983) convinces me, however, that an analysis of God's transcendence and creative agency similar to the one found here can be made of Gregory's distinction between the essence and energies of God. This impression is confirmed by the interpretation of that distinction provided in the works of John Meyendorff, A Study of Gregory Palamas (London: faith press, 1974); St. Gregory Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality (Crestwood: New York: St. Vladimir's, 1974); Byzantine Theology (New York, 1979)" (p.174n.3).]