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Terry J Wright, Divine Agency and Divine Action. Volume 3: Systematic Theology. By William J. Abraham, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 71, Issue 1, April 2020, Pages 407–408, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flz155
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Extract
This is the third volume in William J. Abraham’s Divine Agency and Divine Action tetralogy. His earlier volumes (see JTS, ns 70 [2019], pp. 489–91) argued that since ‘action’ is a closed concept, the so-called ‘problem of divine action’ (a phrase Abraham himself eschews) is best addressed not by constructing a schema either to explain how God acts in the world or to accommodate divine action in a world inhabited by genuinely free human agents, but by attending to God’s specific actions in all their variety as recorded in Scripture and experienced in life. Phenomena such as prophecy and inspiration, for example, are just as important for a theology of divine agency and action(s) as the more conventional topics of creation and providence, which means that there can be no uniform approach to conceptualizing divine action. In this third volume, Abraham attempts to build on his earlier convictions by exploring the diversity and specificity of God’s actions as found in the standard doctrinal loci.