Consider this quote from the philosopher, John Searle.
For us [naturalists], if it should turn out that God exists, that would
have to be a fact like any other. To the four basic forces of the
universe—gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces—we
would add a fifth, the divine force . . . [I]t would still be all
physics, albeit divine physics. If the supernatural existed, it too
would have to be natural. [Searle, 1998, p. 35] HT: William
Is this the only way that God could act in the world? Indeed there is a far deeper question than this. Is this the only way that God could be a sustaining Cause in the world?
Based on the way I have proposed we should think about form and matter, I would say 'no'. My idea of a form is to think of it as the abstract organisation of the matter that inheres in a substance. A chair is just a bunch of wood organised in a particular way and that 'particular way' is not something physically tangible that could be detected scientifically and it would be a gross category fallacy to say that it must.
Likewise one could say that God's work in the world is metaphysically present via the abstract forms that exist and organise the matter of each respective substance or natural kind. So there is no new matter or energy present when water is formed out of oxygen and hydrogen but it is organised in such a way as to produce something new and ontologically significant none the less.
Where do these forms exist? In the mind of God, perhaps?
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