There are two philosophical commitments requisite to Christian belief: that God is the ultimate mystery and that God is present and active in the world. Attempting to avoid the trappings of a radical distantiation and the immanent collapse of God and world, Frank Kirkpatrick argues for a theory of agency and action that preserves the mystery of God while providing a philosophically robust account of divine action in created time and space. Kirkpatrick proposes a way around the stalemates that have stymied thought on divine agency and enters into conversation with significant figures in systematic theology.

Frank G. Kirkpatrick is the Ellsworth Morton Tracy Lecturer and Professor of Religion at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. He is author of Together Bound: God, History and the Religious Community, The Ethics of Community, and A Moral Ontology for a Theistic Ethic.