Polkinghorne on Metaphysics of Divine Action: Presuppositions and Implications

This article is an effort to evaluate the epistemological and ontological presuppositions of John Polkinghorne s interpretation of the mechanism of God’s special action. Briefly, it can be said that in his view, God forms and models the world s processes with His act of injecting pure active information, but neither determines nor devolves them to energetic causality. His formulation is based on some presuppositions, such as a personal account of God, seeing the world as a chaotic system, ontological monism, and a critical realist approach in epistemology. The article has tried to answer four main questions: Is Polkinghorne s formulation of divine action based on a mere iteration of the god of deism? Is his formulation of divine action a mere pointless rework of a causal system which rules the world? Does this interpretation of divine activity mean divine intervention? And is his formulation an iteration of natural theology?