Panentheism Revisited
Preface
London, Greenwich (trekearth.com
Panentheism
2010 Theodicy and Practical Theology: PhD thesis, the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, Lampeter
Process theism approaches are sometimes referred to as being panentheistic.[1] The two approaches are not identical but process theism moves in the direction of panentheism.[2] David H. Nikkel (2003) defines panentheism as from the Greek meaning ‘all is in God.’[3] Both God’s transcendence and immanence are accepted, as the world and matter is in God, and God is ‘all-encompassing with respect to being.’[4] Panentheism is not identical to pantheism which postulates that ‘God is identical with everything’[5] or that God is in everything and that God and the universe are one.[6] The difference being that panentheism understands ‘God is in all things’[7] but not identical with all things as with pantheism.[8] As example, God in pantheism may be considered to be equal with a tree. God in panentheism may be considered beyond the tree, but the vital force within it, where as in my traditional Christian theistic understanding God is beyond a tree and sustains it, but is not the vital force within it.[9] Panentheism attempts to ‘avoid the pitfalls’ of traditional theism.[10] God is prohibited from having a true and genuine relationship with matter and the universe because of traditional theistic views such as that God is immutable, impassible, and eternal and timeless.[11] Panentheism is an intellectual compromise between traditional theism and pantheism.[12] God is more than just the material universe, as there is an unchanging aspect to God’s being and also a dynamic aspect to God as the divine being changes as matter and the universe do.[13] German philosopher, F.W. J. Schelling [14] (1845)(1936) reasons: ‘As there is nothing before or outside of God, he must contain within himself the ground of his existence.’[15] He reasons God’s nature is inseparable from God and yet can be distinguished.[16] Panentheism can reasonably be understood as an overarching view within many process theism approaches[17] which I have contrasted with my own views.[18]
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[1] Geisler (1975: 153).
[2] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 142). I am not stating that this is the case in every documented view of process theism, but it is generally true that the two views are closely related.
[3] Nikkel (2003: 1).
[4] Nikkel (2003: 1).
[5] Martinich (1996: 556).
[6] Blackburn (1996: 276). Blackburn also explains Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677) is noted for this view within Western philosophy
[7] Martinich (1996: 556). The doctrine that all things exist in God. Kreeft and Tacelli (1994: 94).
[8] Martinich (1996: 556).
[9] This is my example based on Erickson’s presentation. Erickson (1994: 303-307).
[10] Nikkel (2003: 1). Many modern theologians and philosophers now question the concept of an eternal God. Kreeft and Tacelli (1994: 94).
[11] Nikkel (2003: 1). God is not eternal within this view. Kreeft and Tacelli (1994: 94).
[12] Kreeft and Tacelli (1994: 94).
[13] Kreeft and Tacelli (1994: 94).
[14] Schelling lived (1775-1854). Blackburn (1996: 341).
[15] Schelling (1845)(1936: 32).
[16] Schelling (1845)(1936: 32). Schelling sought to deflect criticisms that he was a pantheist. ‘Unity is of essence, but so is diversity.’ Gutmann (1845)(1936: xxxi). However, his comments make it possible that he had views which were perhaps panentheistic. Material things are dependent on God and yet independent.
[17] Including that of Whitehead. Nikkel (2003: 2-3). Grenz and Olsen (1992: 142).
[18] My views are Reformed but not strictly within a certain camp such as Presbyterian or Baptist. I have primarily come to my Reformed views through MPhil and PhD research.
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BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
ERICKSON, MILLARD (1994) Christian Theology, Grand Rapids, Baker Book House.
GEISLER, NORMAN L. (1975) Philosophy of Religion, Grand Rapids, Zondervan Publishing House.
GRENZ, STANLEY J. AND ROGER E. OLSON (1992) Twentieth Century Theology, Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press.
GUTMANN, JAMES (1845)(1936) ‘Introduction’ in SCHELLING, F.W.J. (1845)(1936) Schelling, Of Human Freedom, Translated by James Gutmann, The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago.
KREEFT, PETER and RONALD K. TACELLI (1994) Handbook of Christian Apologetics, Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press.
MARTINICH, A.P. (1999) ‘Pantheism’ in Robert Audi, (ed.), The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
NIKKEL, DAVID H. (2003) ‘Panentheism’, in Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, MacMillan Reference USA, New York.
SCHELLING, F.W.J. (1845)(1936) Schelling, Of Human Freedom, Translated by James Gutmann, The Open Court Publishing Company, Chicago.
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Process Theism: Alfred North Whitehead
2010 Theodicy and Practical Theology: PhD thesis, the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David, Lampeter
David Viney (2008) suggests that Edgar Sheffield Brightman is one of the twentieth century proponents of Process theism.[1] Although Brightman’s views were primarily independently made, process theism refers to a general group of theological concepts attributed to Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947)[2] and Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000).[3]
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.[4] 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.[5]
Whitehead disagreed with a traditional view of a ‘transcendent creator, at whose fiat the world came into being, and whose imposed will it obeys.’[6] The nature of God needed to be philosophically constructed anew.[7] A balance is sought between God’s immanence and transcendence, and a concept of static transcendence is rejected as instead God is understood to have a evolutionary transcendence. 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.[8] God is fully reasoned to be involved and influenced by temporal events and processes.[9] These processes unfold as sequences of events over time. God, contrary to classic and traditional Christian theism is finite, temporal, changeable and experiences intense emotion, pain and sadness. Whitehead explains that ‘It is not true that God is on all respects infinite.’[10] Process theology is a philosophical approach that does not rely on any kind of divine revelation.[11] Instead it relies on a process of change over time as a theory of metaphysics.[12] God’s actual concrete nature is responsive and influenced by the processes that take in the world, and therefore God is limited. Some things are unknowable for God, that he only can realize as they happen, and as these new things develop God’s knowledge processes over time. Divine sovereignty is questionable and certainly no longer absolute within this system.
Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher, established a speculative philosophy of metaphysics within a scientific non-metaphysical reality.[13] This system is an attempt to adequately explain all individual beings in existence, including God.[14] 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.[15] The ‘actual entities’[16] 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.[17] 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.[18] These physical and mental poles are an aspect of every real being/actual entities although they are not real things themselves.[19]
Prehends is the feeling of grasping the physical and conceptual information concerning actual entities.[20] This will occur within a stream and series of occasions.[21] All occurrences take place within the process of these actual entities.[22] Each event is partially self-created and partially influenced by other occasions and entities.[23] God is also dipolar[24] 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. God is an actual entity and being.[25] God has a primordial nature and consequent nature, with the primordial being conceptual, while the consequent nature is God as conscious.[26] Whitehead explains that the ‘consequent nature is the weaving of God’s physical feelings upon his primordial concepts.’[27] God’s primordial conceptual nature is infinite and does not have negative prehension/feelings, and is eternal and unconscious.[28] This nature is permanent as God works out endless possibilities.[29] God in his vision can determine every possibility and adjust details where needed.[30] The consequent nature of God originates with physical experience with the material temporal world and it is integrated with the primordial conceptual nature.[31] The consequent nature as conscious is determined, finite and incomplete.[32] These two aspects of God’s deity can be distinguished but are inseparable.[33] This consequent conscious nature had God constantly acquiring new experiences.[34]
A problem arises that if God’s primordial nature is eternal and unconscious[35] it precedes the consequent nature that is temporal 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.
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[1] Viney (2008: 35).
[2] Viney (2008: 1).
[3] Viney (2008: 1).
[4] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: vi).
[5] Whitehead (1926: 149).
[6] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 404).
[7] Whitehead (1926: 150).
[8] Viney (2008: 10).
[9] Viney (2008: 1).
[10] 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. However, God could still be infinite completely in nature and willingly allow evil to exist within his creation. 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.
[11] Viney (2008: 1).
[12] Viney (2008: 1).
[13] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 135).
[14] Diehl (1996: 881).
[15] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 135).
[16] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 135).
[17] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 136).
[18] Diehl (1996: 881). Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[19] Viney (2008: 8).
[20] Diehl (1996: 881). Viney (2008: 9).
[21] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 136).
[22] Diehl (1996: 881).
[23] Diehl (1996: 881).
[24] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[25] Viney (2008: 9).
[26] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[27] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[28] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[29] Viney (2008: 9).
[30] Whitehead (1926: 153-154).
[31] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[32] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[33] Viney (2008: 9).
[34] Viney (2008: 9).
[35] Whitehead (1927-1929)(1957: 407).
[36] Grenz and Olsen (1992: 142). I am not stating that this is the case in every documented view of process theism, but it is generally true that the two views are closely related.
[37] Nikkel (2003: 1).
[38] Nikkel (2003: 1).
[39] Blackburn (1996: 276). Blackburn also explains Benedictus de Spinoza (1632-1677) is noted for this view within Western philosophy
[40] Nikkel (2003: 1).
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BLACKBURN, SIMON (1996) Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
DIEHL, DAVID W. (1996) ‘Process Theology’, in Walter A. Elwell (ed.), Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Grand Rapids, Baker Books.
GRENZ, STANLEY J. AND ROGER E. OLSON (1992) Twentieth Century Theology, Downers Grove, Illinois, InterVarsity Press.
NIKKEL, DAVID H. (2003) ‘Panentheism’, in Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, MacMillan Reference USA, New York.
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.
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'God in pantheism may be considered to be equal with a tree. God in panentheism may be considered beyond the tree, but the vital force within it, where as in my traditional Christian theistic understanding God is beyond a tree and sustains it, but is not the vital force within it.'
Pantheism is a form of monism, as in reasoning the theistic is of a single substance, nature and entity. This is error as God is infinite, eternal and necessary, in contrast to created things which are finite, non-eternal, potentially everlasting, contingent, entities.
Panentheism views God in all things, but not identical with all things. It understands the existence of both the infinite/necessary and finite/contingent within reality and within God. God therefore, within panentheism would be understood as having both a necessary aspect and a contingent aspect. From my Reformed theological, worldview, I view this as contradictory as the finite is not divine and cannot be divine. Note that the classic understanding of the incarnation of Jesus Christ is that his divine (infinite) nature and human (finite) nature cannot logically mix, and do not mix.
My Reformed theological perspective views the infinite, eternal God as creating and sustaining the finite. God is not the vital, infinite, force within the finite, but is the vital, infinite force sustaining the finite.
'Whitehead explains that ‘It is not true that God is on all respects infinite.’[10]' '[10] 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. However, God could still be infinite completely in nature and willingly allow evil to exist within his creation. 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.'
God is in all respects, infinite. God is at the same time, in all respects logical. God is not contradictory within infinity. God is perfectly good and not evil. Everything God causes is for the good, with good motives, even when evil is secondarily caused.
A classic example is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross and the resulting atoning and resurrection work of Jesus Christ applied to believers. The triune God, as the primary cause, had perfectly good motives for the gospel. Secondary causes include, Satan that had evil motives in persuading Judas to betray Jesus Christ. Satan desired his own worship, see Matthew 4 and Luke 4, even from Jesus Christ himself. The Jewish and Roman authorities, crucified him with evil motives, which based on the New Testament could be reasoned were primarily religious/political in the first case and political in the second case.
Links
Friday, January 01, 2010
Does God evolve?
Wednesday, August 10, 2016 The Trinity: Panentheism & Pantheism
Saturday, July 25, 2020 Pantheism, Panentheism, The Trinity II: Non-exhaustive
