Radical Transcendence and Radical Immanence: Convergence Between Eastern Orthodox Perspectives and Strong Theistic Naturalism?

Abstract

Strong theistic naturalism is the understanding in which the distinction between ‘special’ and ‘general’ modes of divine action is rejected. I describe a version of this approach which reflects two key aspects of Eastern Orthodox theology: Gregory Palamas’s understanding of the divine ‘essence’ and ‘energies’ and Maximos the Confessor’s use of the notion of the logoi of created things. The miraculous may be understood within this framework in terms of the paranormal rather than of the ‘supernatural’. The theological counterpart to this analogy is the notion that the miraculous is a proleptic anticipation of the eschatological state. Central to this model is a teleological-christological vision of the cosmos, comparable to that of Maximos, and I link the teleological element of this to both the anthropic cosmological principle and convergent evolution. This approach is discussed in terms of what Sarah Lane Ritchie – examining parallels between my own understanding and that of others working within other traditions – has called a ‘theological turn’ in discussions of divine action. In these understandings, what is called into question is the assumption of an autonomous cosmos which God must somehow enter from ‘outside’ if events usually ascribed to special divine action are to occur.