This will provide an example, although edited, of the technical nature of aspects of my PhD. I have discussed this topic in previous posts. I discussed Process theism with panentheism previously.
This section is more so philosophy of religion as opposed to theology.
Process Theism: Alfred North Whitehead
Process theism refers to a general group of theological concepts attributed to Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)[1] and Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000).[2] Whitehead is the more preeminent exemplar and within Process and Reality (1927-1929)(1957) explains he desired to complete an account of humanity and its experience in relation to philosophical problems.[3] In Religion In The Making (1926) Whitehead explains it is legitimate to attempt with a more definite knowledge of metaphysics, to interpret human experience, but these general principles must be amplified and adapted into one general system of truth.[4] Whitehead disagreed with a traditional view of a ‘transcendent creator, at whose fiat the world came into being, and whose imposed will it obeys.’[5] The nature of God needed to be philosophically constructed anew.[6] A balance is sought between God’s immanence[7] and transcendence,[8] and a concept of static transcendence is rejected as instead God is understood to have a evolutionary transcendence.[9] God and the physical realm are immanent with each other and God’s transcendence means their realities are not identical and not always determined by each other.[10] God is fully reasoned to be involved and influenced by temporal events and processes.[11] These processes unfold as sequences of events over time.[12] God, contrary to classic and traditional Christian theism is finite, temporal, changeable[13] and experiences intense emotion, pain and sadness.[14] Whitehead explains that ‘It is not true that God is on all respects infinite.’[15] Process theology is a philosophical approach that does not rely on any kind of divine revelation.[16] Instead it relies on a process of change over time as a theory of metaphysics.[17] God’s actual concrete nature is responsive and influenced by the processes that take in the world, and therefore God is limited.[18] Some things are unknowable for God, that he only can realize as they happen,[19] and as these new things develop God’s knowledge processes over time.[20] Divine sovereignty is questionable and certainly no longer absolute within this system.[21]
Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher,[22] established a speculative philosophy of metaphysics within a scientific non-metaphysical reality.[23] This system is an attempt to adequately explain all individual beings in existence, including God.[24] Basically a system of metaphysics needed to be developed that would work with modern scientific theories and reality, and therefore God was not a ‘static essence’ but a process.[25] The ‘actual entities’[26] that make up this process are non-permanent and transient and each action and activity is dipolar having a physical pole of the past and a mental pole which is a possibility that can be achieved.[27] The physical pole feels the physical reality of actual entity, while the mental pole feels or prehends as Whitehead calls it, the eternal objects by which actual entities have conceptual definiteness.[28] These physical and mental poles are an aspect of every real being/actual entities although they are not real things themselves.[29] Prehends is the feeling of grasping the physical and conceptual information concerning actual entities.[30] This will occur within a stream and series of occasions.[31] All occurrences take place within the process of these actual entities.[32] Each event is partially self-created and partially influenced by other occasions and entities.[33] God is also dipolar[34] and his nontemporal pole is where God conceives the infinite variety of external objects and sees the possibilities and provides the opportunity for the process of becoming.[35] God is an actual entity and being.[36] God has a primordial nature and consequent nature, with the primordial being conceptual, while the consequent nature is God as conscious.[37] Whitehead explains that the ‘consequent nature is the weaving of God’s physical feelings upon his primordial concepts.’[38] God’s primordial conceptual nature is infinite and does not have negative prehension/feelings, and is eternal and unconscious.[39] This nature is permanent as God works out endless possibilities.[40] God in his vision can determine every possibility and adjust details where needed.[41] The consequent nature of God originates with physical experience with the material temporal world and it is integrated with the primordial conceptual nature.[42] The consequent nature as conscious is determined, finite and incomplete.[43] These two aspects of God’s deity can be distinguished but are inseparable.[44] This consequent conscious nature had God constantly acquiring new experiences.[45] A problem arises that if God’s primordial nature is eternal and unconscious[46] it precedes the consequent nature that is temporal[47] and has consciousness. I question whether an unconscious deity would in any way proceed to a conscious temporal reality. Where did God’s consciousness come from? I reason consciousness would have to exist eternally to lead to a finite reality of consciousness.[48]
[1] Viney (2008: 1).
[2] Viney (2008: 1).
[3] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: vi).
[4] Whitehead (1926: 149).
[5] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 404).
[6] Whitehead (1926: 150).
[7] God is actively present within reality and creation. Erickson (1994: 302).
[8] God by nature is beyond and separate from his material creation. Grenz, Guretzki, and Nordling (1999: 115).
[9] A balance needed to be sought as there were extreme views concerning God as impersonal force behind the universe as in deism and also the view that God has absolute sovereignty as the sole creator of matter. Whitehead (1926: 150).
[10] Viney (2008: 10).
[11] Viney (2008: 1). Diehl (1996: 880).
[12] Blackburn (1996: 305). The process is not according to a motion of changeless matter. Diehl (1996: 881).
[13] God is not immutable as is classically defined.
[14] God is not impassible according to this view.
[15] Whitehead (1926: 153). Whitehead claims that if God was infinite in all ways this would make him as infinitely evil as he is good. I doubt logically and reasonably that an infinitely holy and good God could at the same time be infinitely evil and so I can grant Whitehead half a point here. I definitely agree with Whitehead that an infinitely good and evil God would be a God of nothingness. Whitehead (1926: 153). I doubt this being could logically exist.
[16] Viney (2008: 1). Diehl (1996: 881).
[17] Viney (2008: 1).
[18] Erickson (1994: 280).
[19] Erickson (1994: 280).
[20] Erickson (1994: 280).
[21] Erickson (1994: 280).
[22] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 135). Diehl (1996: 881).
[23] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 135).
[24] Diehl (1996: 881).
[25] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 135).
[26] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 135). Diehl (1996: 881).
[27] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 136). Diehl (1996: 881).
[28] Diehl (1996: 881). Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[29] Viney (2008: 8).
[30] Diehl (1996: 881). Viney (2008: 9).
[31] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 136).
[32] Diehl (1996: 881).
[33] Diehl (1996: 881).
[34] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407). Viney (2008: 8).
[35] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 137).
[36] Viney (2008: 9).
[37] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[38] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[39] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[40] Viney (2008: 9).
[41] Whitehead (1926: 153-154).
[42] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[43] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[44] Viney (2008: 9).
[45] Viney (2008: 9).
[46] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[47] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[48] An eternal reality of unconsciousness should lead to a finite reality of unconsciousness.
BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
ERICKSON, MILLARD (1994) Christian Theology, Grand Rapids, Baker Book House.
DIEHL, DAVID W. (1996) ‘Process Theology’, in Walter A. Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Grand Rapids, Baker Books.
GRENZ, STANLEY J., DAVID GURETZKI AND CHERITH FEE NORDLING (1999) Pocket Dictionary of Theological Terms, Downers Grove, Ill., InterVarsity Press.
GRENZ, STANLEY J. AND ROGER E. OLSON (1992) Twentieth Century Theology, Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press.
VINEY, DAVID (2008) ‘Process Theism’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Palo Alto, California, Stanford University.
WHITEHEAD, ALFRED NORTH (1926) Religion in the Making, New York, The MacMillan Company.
WHITEHEAD, ALFRED NORTH (1927-1929)(1957) Process and Reality, New York, The Free Press/MacMillan Publishing Company, Incorporated.
WHITEHEAD, ALFRED NORTH (1967)(1986) ‘Adventures of Ideas’, in Forest Wood JR., Whiteheadian Thought as a Basis for a Philosophy of Religion, University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, University Press of America, Inc.
