Angelicum Thomistic Institute – Science & Religion Online Series “Divine Action”
Lecture by Dr. Robert Russell
GTU Professor Emeritus of Theology and ScienceI first present “NIODA: Non-Interventionist Objective Divine Action” and the reasons why some forms of Christian theology that are in conversation with the natural sciences need it. I then briefly describe the series of five international research conferences created by the Vatican Observatory and CTNS in 1988-2003 in which NIODA, among many other key topics, was developed in light of physical cosmology, chaos theory, quantum mechanics, evolutionary biology and neuroscience. I argue in particular that quantum indeterminacy offers an appropriate basis for developing a theology which employs NIODA. I close with an assessment of the potential value of NIODA for Thomistic theology.



