When God Is to Blame

If not humans, is God to blame for recent natural disasters? What are the limits of divine and human agency? The New Yorker explains a philosophical twist whereby divinity is expressed through free will. “A half century ago, the Oxford theologian and philosopher Austin Farrer, a friend of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, advanced the concept of “double agency,” which has nothing to do with Russian spies pretending to be Portuguese. Oversimply put, the idea seeks to reconcile faith and science, and divine agency and free will. In Farrer’s rendering, God creates creatures and phenomena, which, as agents themselves, then create and act freely.”