Wednesday 11 March 2015

Causation, Cooperation, and Concursus

The issue of concurrence, or concursus, continues to interest and perplex me in near-equal measures. I’ve just finished reading Joshua Reichard’s article on the topic (‘Beyond Causation’) and found it to be a useful summary of recent accounts, mostly from within the field of science–religion, of concursus. Reichard’s own conclusions to an extent match some of my own: that the search for a causal joint is not especially important (I’d say it’s impossible); that recognising divine action is primarily a retrospective, interpretative, even revelatory exercise; and that (linear) causation in connection with divine action is something to move beyond. He also makes two other points:

God’s future actions can only be prospected in light of reliable patterns of past experiences of God’s cooperative action with human beings.

A contemporary theology of concursus need not ask if God and human beings cooperate. Instead, the question is whether human beings recognize and identify with God’s cooperative activity.

Joshua D. Reichard, ‘Beyond Causation: A Contemporary Theology of Concursus’, American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 34:2 (2013), pp. 117–134; quotations from p. 133

I don’t really agree with the first quotation from Reichard here. If God’s future actions can be prospected at all, then it’s surely only in connection with God’s own revealed promises, in Scripture and through the Spirit’s gift of prophecy, about what God will do. If I understand him correctly, what Reichard’s suggesting seems to imprison God within the web of creaturely causation, such that future divine action can be predicted on the basis of an extrapolation from past events.

The second quotation is more interesting, and it reminds me of Karl Barth’s point in Church Dogmatics III/3 that Christians willingly participate in God’s actions through faith, obedience, and prayer. It means that the more general issue – which could be phrased as: ‘Is there such a thing as divine concurrence?’ – is automatically assumed to have a positive answer, meaning that the precise dynamic of the God–world relation becomes the focus; its possibility, its actuality, is taken for granted. Of course, some might say that this focus has always been a feature of these debates, no matter how they’re framed. And, in many respects, this is why I hold that conceiving of God’s providence in terms of divine presence is a way forward for portraying this dynamic; see my ‘Divine Presence as a Framework for God’s Providence’, which was published online as part of Epworth Review 36 (2009), for my further reflections on this if you’re interested.

Now that that shameless plug is out of the way, I want to pick up on another feature of Reichard’s article: the idea that concursus equals cooperation. Granted, concursus or concurrence is often defined as ‘cooperation’, but I’d suggest that our understanding of ‘cooperation’ has to differ according to the context in which we’re employing the term. For example, Reichard writes that ‘concursus is the cooperation of God and humanity as the causal forces of some particular effect’ (‘Beyond Causation’, pp. 117–18). Leaving aside the causal language, which, I maintain, is ambiguous, and really doesn’t help elucidate the doctrine of providence, the use of ‘cooperation’ piques my interest because I’m not sure if Reichard means it to be understood as a word or more technically as a concept. If ‘cooperation’ here is no more than an abstract noun, I suppose it’s not a huge concern. But if ‘cooperation’ here is a concept, then we push for a deeper outline of what such ‘cooperation’ means in this context. To me, at least, it implies some form of synergism, whereby God and the creature cooperate or work together to bring about an effect in much the same way as my wife and I cooperate when putting together an infernal piece of flat-pack furniture. This is not what the traditional treatment of concursus indicates, and I find it significant that, for example, neither Richard Muller in his excellent Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms, nor Ian McFarland in The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology, use the word ‘cooperate’ in their entries on concursus. Perhaps concursus needs to be distanced from ‘cooperation’.

9 comments:

  1. Well Terry, this is where I become painfully aware that you are a published post-graduate academic theologian, and I'm a worm ;)

    I've never even *heard* of concursus before, and the only half-decent definition I could find online was in this Catholic dictionary: http://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=32700

    "The divine activity in its relation to finite causes in the preservation and development of the world. Also called divine co-operation, it is immediate and universal because on it absolutely depends the continued activity of all creation. The inherent reason for the divine concursus lies in the active dependence of creatures on the Creator, not only for their being but for the power that flows from the being that they have."

    So for Catholics at least, looks like concursus and co-operation are almost one and the same... maybe that's where Reichard is coming from?

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    1. The thing with concursus is that if it's fair to emphasise its definition as 'cooperation', then it should be remembered that any cooperation is unequally yoked, so to speak. The point of concursus is that God provides the various conditions for creaturely being and action, so that for any action you or I do, God is intimately involved at least as the one who enables us to do it. (There are, of course, debates about the extent of God's involvement and/or enabling.) So, for me, talk of 'cooperation', without careful qualification, goes beyond this and makes God and creatures equal partners. Not everyone will have an issue with that, I appreciate.

      By the way, you may not be 'a published post-graduate academic theologian' (and I find it difficult to regard myself as such, anyway, even though I suppose it's true), but you've got a blinkin' sharp mind. And I still think you should look to getting some of your own stuff published.

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    2. Terry, I shall genuinely forever treasure your comment - "blinkin' sharp mind" from you may be one of the greatest compliments anyone's ever paid me!

      And as for the implications of concursus vs co-operation, that's something to which I'm going to need to apply every bit of sharpness my mind may or may not have! ... as God enables, of course ;-)

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  2. From a statisticians view, causation is an entirely different idea. Interesting to think how the nature of something changes depending on which academic leg you're standing on, so to speak.

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    1. Yes - 'causation' is an extremely elastic word!

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    2. Thinking about it, I'm sure there is more of a link than meets the eye between the mathematical approach to statistics and probability - and indeed the nature of randomness - and the theological ideas around how God works.

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    3. I reviewed a book - 'God, Chance and Purpose - for a journal a few years ago. It's by David Bartholomew, who's Professor Emeritus of Stats at LSE. Here's a link to the book if you're interested: https://wordery.com/god-chance-and-purpose-david-j-bartholomew-9780521707084

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  3. M.J. Bosma using the word "cooperation" in the chapter on "Providence" in his Exposition of Reformed Doctrine, p. 79-80 (5th 1927 Edition. It seems pretty clear he has in mind the concursus model. By pure providence I came on a copy of this book in a thrift store last week just as I was learning about "Calvinian Thomism" from Neal Judisch's blog on it. Here's a paragraph on Bosma cribbed from a footnote of a paper I've been working on this week
    "Finally, let me register my belated discovery that the Reformed Concurrentist model seems to have been well-known within my own denomination (the Christian Reformed Church) well into the 20th century. A few weeks ago I stumbled by accident on the 1927 fifth edition of a dusty book by one Reverend M. J. Bosma entitled Exposition of Reformed Doctrine: A Popular Explanation of the Most Essential Teachings of the Reformed Churches. Opening to the section on divine providence, I read that providence includes “divine preservation, divine cooperation, and divine government.” Bosma then defines divine cooperation as “that act of God whereby he cooperates in every action of the creature,” so that “his divine energy acts with the action of the creature, even determines the action of the creature.” And Rev. Bosma then writes:
    We must not think that God has given the creature a certain amount of power and now lets the creature act with this power independently as it wills. Neither must we think that God does part and the creature part of every act. The creature acts and does the whole act, and yet God also does the whole act. God’s action precedes and conjoins the creature’s action.

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    1. I'd not come across Bosma before; thanks, anon. Very interesting.

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