Acts of God - an article in New Yorker

Nick Paumgarten's article in New Yorker is concise but does have thoughtful punch lines and musings. A few hours ago I heard about the death of three of my acquaintances in a tragic car accident, husband, wife and the mother died on the spot, while the father is in critical condition, and the four month old baby girl was not hurt. And then this New Yorker article caught my eyes. Like the author, and perhaps like many simple minded souls I also find these types of accidents and misfortunes sad and hard to explain by any philosophical or theological wordings. Is this the act of God? "When God acts, apparently, the rest of us do not. He is a little like the Balladeer". Hmmm...

Here is another example from New Yorker article:

Last month after a limb fell from an elm tree near the Central Park Zoo, critically injuring a woman and killing her infant daughter, citizens wondered, as citizens will, how such a thing could be allowed to happen. When trees kill, as trees will, you blame it either on the tree pruners or on “an act of God.”.......Questions of agency, divine or otherwise, dog us these early-summer days, amid a pileup of ill tidings: an intractable war; hints, once again, of economic depression; the deep-sea oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Who’s to blame? Who’s in charge?

Philosopher Austin Farrer mused about "Act of God" about half a century ago, and observed the following: 

God creates creatures and phenomena, which, as agents themselves, then create and act freely. In “Saving Belief: A Discussion of Essentials,” he wrote, “God not only makes the world, he makes it make itself; or rather, he causes its innumerable constituents to make it.” In other words, it’s a collaborative effort. God is Phil Spector, and we are the Ronettes.

Author Nick Paumgarten raised the correct question: "But what about the world’s destruction? Are we collaborating with God on that album, too?" One plausible answer comes from a philosophy professor Edward Hugh Henderson who states, 

"“God does not smash in from outside to overthrow creatures, to put out of gear the order of nature that God has over eons of evolution brought to its present state,” Henderson said. “What the oil is doing to the Gulf and its denizens is what oil, being oil, would do.” “In one sense, divine agency is everywhere,” Henderson went on. “In another, you wouldn’t want to say that accidents and carelessness are examples of double agency.” “It’s at the level of human freedom that you can distinguish between action that is or isn’t underwritten by the pervasiveness of divine will," he said."

Not sure if I fully agree with this explanation yet. Need divine grace to have that enlightenment more to understand the senseless tragedies, violence, wars and endless poverty.

Link: Acts of God