Divine premotion

According to divine premotionism, God does not merely create and sustain the universe. He also moves all secondary causes to action as instruments without undermining their intrinsic causal efficacy. I explain and uphold the premotionist theory, which is the theory of St Thomas Aquinas and his most prominent exponents. I defend the premotionist interpretation of Aquinas in some textual detail, with particular reference to Suarez and to a recent paper by Louis Mancha. Critics, including Molinists and Suarezians, raise various objections to the view that premotion is compatible with genuine secondary causation. I rebut a number of these objections, in the course of which I respond to the central challenge that premotionism destroys free will. I also offer a number of positive reasons for embracing the premotionist theory.

The serialization and publication of 'The return of the native': a new Thomas Hardy letter

This article presents and contextualises a newly-discovered letter by Thomas Hardy, housed in the Chatto & Windus archive at the University of Reading. The letter sheds new light on the publishing history of Hardy's novel 'The return of the native'