Divine Action and Collective Intentionality

Abstract

Over the past decades, the majority of research on divine action has been devoted to identifying a causal joint for divine action in the world – the precise location where some sort of divine causal influence and the causal structure of the world interlock. In this article, I discuss several objections to the necessity of identifying such a causal joint. I then introduce the concept of “collective intentionality” to formulate an alternative approach to divine action. Collective intentionality allows ascribing a single action to more than one agent if they share the same intention to act. The theory of collective intentionality offers an alternative to causal joint theories of divine action, since it does not aim to squeeze some form of divine causality into an otherwise causally closed system but rather locates divine action in God’s communicative interaction with human beings, enabling them to share God’s intentions of action.