The chapter argues that quantum mechanics (QM), which superseded classical physics in the early 20th century, poses even fewer problems for special divine action than classical physics does. QM is fundamentally indeterministic: Rather than predicting a unique future state from initial conditions, the Schrödinger equation yields a wave function that, via Born’s Rule (a formula for deriving probabilities from that wave function), distributes probability across many possible outcomes. No hypothetically unlimited calculator could predict specific future states, undermining the Laplacean Picture entirely.

The author reports that expert opinion is divided on the compatibility of QM with the more dramatic miracles. Philosopher-physicists John Earman and Bradley Monton argue that events such as raising the dead or changing water into wine are not excluded by QM—merely highly improbable. Others, including philosopher Bas van Fraassen and physicist Katherine Brading, are skeptical. For the author, the ambiguity itself is significant: It is far from established that miracles violate quantum-mechanical law, especially since the same proviso from classical physics applies—QM’s laws describe causally closed systems.

Despite QM’s permissiveness, the Divine Action Project (DAP)—a major interdisciplinary conference series from 1988 to 2003 involving scholars including Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorne, Philip Clayton, and George Ellis—concluded that any credible account of divine action must be non-interventionist. The author identifies three objections to intervention advanced by DAP members. First, George Ellis raises the problem of evil: If God can intervene to raise Lazarus, why not to prevent “the evils of Auschwitz?” (100). Plantinga counters that demanding a rock-solid criterion for God’s choices is unreasonable; God’s reasons may simply exceed human understanding, much as Job could not comprehend his own suffering. Second, Ellis argues that fixed natural laws are a precondition for creatures to exercise free will and make rational decisions. Plantinga counters that free action requires sufficient regularity and predictability, not the total absence of divine intervention—a point illustrated by a rock-climbing scenario in which a climber can make rational risk assessments even while believing God occasionally intervenes to prevent fatal falls. Third, and most widely agreed upon among DAP members, is what the author calls “the divine consistency objection” (104): Paul Tillich, Ernan McMullin, and Philip Hefner argue that a God who establishes natural regularities and then overrides them is acting capriciously or inconsistently. Plantinga responds that such acts are only arbitrary if God lacks a good reason for them; in the case of the resurrection, marking Christ’s unique status is precisely such a reason. He also contrasts the DAP’s preferred image of God as a classical artist who prizes economy and restraint with the image of a hands-on God who delights in relentless creative engagement—and finds nothing in either image that compromises divine greatness.

The author then poses a more fundamental question: Under quantum mechanics, what does intervention even mean? The classical definition is an act that causes an event that breaks the laws of nature. Yet Plantinga argues this definition collapses under QM’s indeterminism, which predicts almost no specific outcomes. Based on that definition, every routine act of divine conservation would qualify as an intervention. Alternative formulations from the DAP—such as violating the laws or the created structures of order—fare no better in a quantum-mechanical context.

As a constructive alternative, the author revives a 1958 proposal by physicist William Pollard and develops it into the “divine collapse-causation” (DCC) model (116). Plantinga posits that, according to the Ghirardi-Rimini-Weber (GRW) spontaneous collapse interpretation of quantum mechanics, quantum systems undergo regular, spontaneous collapses to specific states. No physical cause determines why a collapse settles on one particular outcome rather than another. The author proposes that God is the nonphysical cause of these specific outcomes. He also asserts that because God would be constantly acting in this way—not alternating between intervention and non-intervention—DCC sidesteps the inconsistency objection to divine action. By controlling microscopic collapse-outcomes, God could also guide macroscopic events, including evolutionary history. DCC further accommodates human free will: if humans are immaterial souls capable of causing quantum events in their own brains, God could cause some collapse outcomes while leaving others, thereby making free will a smaller-scale analog of divine action.

The author concedes that DCC is provisional and tied to a specific interpretation of quantum mechanics, which may be revised. He argues, however, that the “warrant” for believing in special divine action is theological, not scientific, and need not be abandoned every time scientific consensus shifts. 

Plantinga briefly addresses two further alleged conflicts between science and theism. He rejects the claim that science as a whole supports naturalism, since no scientific theory (QM, relativity, or evolution) entails the non-existence of God. He also rebuts John Worrall’s argument that science and religion differ irreconcilably in their epistemic styles—scientists being tentative, believers being dogmatic. Plantinga asserts that scientists are often neither tentative nor dispassionate, citing Werner Heisenberg’s account of the passionate Bohr-Schrödinger debates. He also states that many perceptual beliefs can be firmly held without the support of scientific evidence, particularly religious faith. Part 1 concludes that neither evolutionary theory nor classical or contemporary physics poses any genuine obstacle to belief in special divine action.