Therefore, the difference between process theism and traditional theism is not in whether something necessarily exists, but in the nature of the necessarily existent. Process theism refuses to give a privileged metaphysical status to the one over the many. Taking creativity as the category of the ultimate is an attempt to keep the one and the many on equal metaphysical footing by taking reality itself as necessarily social.
God, considered as the ultimate reality in any version of process metaphysics, necessarily exists as a social being in dynamic interaction with all non-divine entities. Process theists usually regard the distinction between the supernatural and the natural as a by-product of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In process thought, there is no such thing as a realm of the natural in contrast to that which is supernatural.
Process theists generally regard the notion of creation ex nihilo , as explained above, as going hand-in-hand with the idea that the relations between God and the world are one-way relations. God creates, but the creatures lack all creative power, the one wholly uncreated, the other wholly uncreative Hartshorne , 9. It is not within the ability of any creature, according to this view, to make a difference to God. To say that God is pure act is to say that anything God could be, God already is—there is no potentiality in God for any type of change.
To say that God is the unmoved mover is to say that the divine moves others but is unmoved by another—this includes the idea that God is impassible, literally, without feeling or emotion. In the view of process theism, the denial of real relations in God renders classical theism paradoxical to the point of incoherence. According to classical theism, God has perfect knowledge of a contingent and changing world, yet nothing in God could be other than it is.
The one condition, however, contradicts the other cf. Hartshorne , 13—14; Shields ; Viney An infallible knower necessarily knows whatever exists; it does not follow, however, that what exists is necessary unless one adds the premise, taken from classical theism, that nothing in God could be other than it is. Process theism jettisons the premise that there is nothing contingent in God.
The only other non-atheistic alternatives, say process theists, are to follow Aristotle and deny that God knows the world or to follow Spinoza and deny that nothing in God or in the world could be other than it is Hartshorne , What is impossible is a God with no contingent aspects knowing a contingent world. The denial of real relations in God also has paradoxical consequences for the concept of divine goodness.
If God is unaffected by the creatures, then God is impassible, not moved by their suffering. Anselm, in Proslogion chapter VIII, asks how God can be compassionate towards the creatures without feeling sympathy for them. His answer—in effect a kind of theological behaviorism Dombrowski , —is that the creatures feel the effects of divine compassion but that God feels nothing. This leaves unanswered how non-sympathetic compassion is possible. Aquinas provides a less obviously question begging reply. He says that to love another is to will the good of the other; God necessarily wills the good of the other, so God is love Summa Theologica I, Q 20, a.
Process theists do not deny that love requires willing the good of the other, but they maintain that it requires something more, or at very least that there are greater forms of love of which willing the good of the other is a necessary aspect. Divine love is more than beneficence; it includes sensitivity to the joys and sorrows of the beloved. The denial of real relations in God, coupled with the concept that the world and its creatures have no value except as it is borrowed from God, implies that that total reality described by God-and-the-world contains no more value than that described by God-without-the-world.
This view has two unhappy consequences. Process theists point out that these ideas do not square with analogies drawn from human experience. Yet, one cannot love another unless the other exists, or once existed. Thus, if there is a value in love, it requires the existence of the other , not merely the idea of the existence of the other. Process theism rejects the counter-intuitive claim that the world as actually existing has no more value than the world as possibly existing. By parity of reasoning, process theism rejects the view that it is no better for God to create the world than to contemplate the possibility of creating it.
Perhaps the most disastrous consequences of the denial of real relations in God, as far as process theists are concerned, are the problems that it poses for free will and creaturely suffering. The creative or causal relation flows one way only, from God to the world. The world and its creatures are products of a unilateral divine decision that things should be one way rather than another. Hartshorne poses a dilemma for this view.
Either biological parents are part creators of their children or they are not. If they are then God alone is not the creator. Classical theists accept precisely the implication that Hartshorne finds absurd, namely, that the creatures never create anything. Strictly speaking, for Aquinas, what God creates is your-parents-having-you. Your parents had no part in your creation. The reality described by your-parents-having-you includes the decisions they make in having you.
God, in creating that reality, also creates those decisions. Would this view of decision making jeopardize human freedom? Aquinas, representing classical theism, says no, but Hartshorne, representing process theism, says yes. In other words, God brings it about not only that one freely decides something, but what one freely decides Summa Theologica I, Q 19, a. Process theists counter that multiple freedom whether between God and the creatures or among the creatures implies the possibility of wills coming into conflict or being in harmony.
If this is true, then it must be possible for the will of the creatures to be at cross purposes with the divine will.
Exploring Mormon Thought
We have already seen that classical theists and process theists agree that God wills the good of the creatures. Human beings, however, do not always will their own good, or the good of other people. In those cases, on the classical view, God brings it about that people freely decide not to will the good of others. Process theists argue that this makes God responsible for evil and suffering in a way that contradicts divine goodness. Classical theists are not without responses to these criticisms. One well-known reply, used by Augustine and Aquinas, is to invoke the distinction between divine permission and divine causation of human wickedness and suffering.
On this view, the evil in the world is permitted by God in order to bring about a greater good. For example, the Exultet of the Easter Vigil, sometimes ascribed to Ambrose of Milan, speaks of the sin of Adam and Eve as a blessed fault O felix culpa! Process theists argue that there can be no distinction between permitting and causing in a being that creates the universe ex nihilo.
Griffin , 63—64 and 82—83 —this is one of the few points on which process theism agrees with John Calvin Case-Winters, , On the process view, creaturely decisions are themselves acts of creation, which means that the universe is a joint product of God and the creatures. Process theists do not see how, in creation ex nihilo , creaturely decisions that God permits are not orchestrated by God so as to fulfill the purposes God has for them.
Albert Einstein is reported to have said that God does not play dice with the universe. Although he was not a classical theist, his view on this issue is in accord with that philosophy.
,445,291,400,400,arial,12,4,0,0,5_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
God may, as it were, allow or permit the dice to fall where they may, but only if they fall as God desires them to fall; this seems different in name only from playing with loaded dice. The dominant theological position in the West, which we have been referring to as classical theism, denies all relativity to God. One might suppose that the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation of God in Christ would temper disbelief in divine relativity. The trend, however, was to argue that these doctrines do not conflict with the denial of real relations in God. Claims of revealed truth aside, the core doctrine has been that God, to be God, must be in all respects absolute and in no respects relative.
As goes the contrast between absolute and relative, so go other metaphysical contrasts. Theists traditionally held that God is in all respects creator, active, infinite, eternal, necessary, independent, immutable, and impassible and in no respects created, passive, finite, temporal, contingent, dependent, mutable, or passible. This view can be interpreted either as a doctrine about the nature of God or as a thesis about the parameters of responsible discourse about God in the latter case it is called the via negativa , or negative path.
It is monopolar insofar as deity is characterized by only one side of each pair of contrasts; it is prejudicial insofar as it holds to the invidious nature of the contrasts. Classical theists certainly made provisions for speaking of God in ways that suggested divine passion and even mutability. In a similar vein, Michael Dodds emphasizes that Aquinas did not construe divine immutability as an attribute of God nor did he think that it implies inertness or stagnation.
Process theists also emphasize our limitations in knowing the reality of God, but they are not persuaded that it is best signified by only one pair of the metaphysical contraries.
Hartshorne notes that ordinary language provides scanty support for and abundant evidence against the superiority of one pole over the other. He sums this up in the principle of the non-invidiousness of the metaphysical contraries Hartshorne , If this principle is correct, and if God is conceived as the eminent embodiment of value and supremely worshipful being, then God must be conceived not in monopolar terms but as dipolar, exemplifying the admirable forms of both pairs of metaphysical contrasts.
For example, rather than saying that God is in all respects active and in no respects passive, the alternative is to say that God is active in some respects and passive in other respects, each in uniquely excellent ways. The most elegant statement of dual transcendence is in the closing pages of Process and Reality , a line of which we have already quoted. The complete quotation reads like a litany:. It is as true to say that God is permanent and the world fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent. It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently.
We saw above in the discussion of divine creativity that Whitehead indulges in poetic expression and that understanding his meaning requires looking more closely at his metaphysical categories. Above all, however, what is required is a way of making principled distinctions between different aspects of God so that the doctrine of dual transcendence does not collapse into contradiction.
Let us examine the different ways in which Whitehead and Hartshorne attempt to save the doctrine of dual transcendence from incoherence. The physical and mental poles are aspects of every real being actual entities but they are not real beings themselves. In other words, Whitehead is not a mind-body dualist. It is also important to note that, for Whitehead, human consciousness is a higher form of mentality but not the only form.
Thus, Whitehead does not claim that every real being is a conscious entity. As with Leibniz, Whitehead recognizes a continuum of mind-like qualities ranging from very primitive feelings to the most advanced form of self-awareness. Whereas Leibniz speaks of every real being—he calls them monads—as having apperception and appetition, Whitehead speaks of every actual entity as prehending , or grasping or taking account of, its environment and as striving to realize the subjective aim of coordinating its prehensions in some determinate fashion.
For example, the frontal cortex of a human brain allows for more advanced mentality than one finds in a chimpanzee, whose brain is not as complex. Whitehead is fully aware that there is an imaginative leap in applying these categories to God, but he believes the application can be done in a disciplined and systematic fashion. Whitehead conceives God as an actual entity.
In God, the physical and mental poles are called the consequent nature and the primordial nature respectively. That is to say, neither can exist apart from the other and each requires the other. It is logical space, deficient in actuality apart from the consequent nature says Whitehead.
See a Problem?
The deity receives the world of actual occasions into its experience; then, comparing what has actually occurred with the realm of pure possibility, God informs the world with new ideals new aims , customized for each actual entity, for what realistically could be achieved. Whitehead sometimes refers to this aspect of the process as the superjective nature of God. God is fluent in constantly acquiring new experiences of the world and the world is fluent in the rhythm of the birth and death of actual occasions.
God is one in being a single actual entity; but God is many in the graded relevance of possibilities provided for each emergent occasion. God and the world are immanent in each other in that each experiences the other; yet God and the world transcend each other by being realities whose experiences are not entirely determined by the other. The world creates God, not by bringing God into existence, but by creating something in God, namely the material for what shall become objectively immortal. The relation of entailment between the sentences is a function of the information provided in them.
Existence, says Hartshorne, is abstract compared to actuality, which is the concrete. Unless strict determinism is the case—which would require that there is only one future that is genuinely possible—the ornithologist can exist tomorrow without hearing a blue jay call at noon perhaps he will hear another bird, or none at all. In effect, Hartshorne lays out a three-fold distinction between what a thing is its essence or defining characteristics , that a thing is its existence , and the particular manner in which it exists its actual states or actuality.
Hartshorne maintains that this distinction, familiar enough in ordinary experience, is applicable to God and is the basis for speaking of dual transcendence in deity. Between the cases of God and the creatures, however, there are important differences. Human existence and character are fragile and subject to variation. Hartshorne agrees with traditional theism that God exists without the possibility of not existing sometimes called necessary existence or existence a se and that God is necessarily supreme in love, knowledge, and power.
A closely related point is that, in the divine case, existence and essence are identical, whereas they are not the same thing in the creatures. Hartshorne agrees with Aquinas about this. Since, in God, existence and essence are the same, Hartshorne customarily abbreviates the distinction among existence, essence, and actuality to that between existence and actuality. The importance of the distinction between existence and actuality is to demonstrate that the necessary aspects of deity do not preclude God having contingent aspects, provided they do not conflict with the necessary ones.
We saw previously, in the discussion of real relations, that there must be contingent aspects of the divine being if it is to have perfect knowledge of contingent things. Aquinas resists this conclusion, in part, because he sees contingency as a kind of metaphysical virus that infects the very existence of the one of which it is a characteristic.
He says that a being whose substance has any admixture of potency is subject to decay as in physical creatures or annihilation as in the case of angels Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. Thus, the contingencies in the divine actuality do not include the possibilities of God being selfish, cruel, or wicked as they do in the human case. The mention of angelic existence in the previous paragraph brings up a point seldom noticed in discussions of process theism.
Aquinas approximates the Hartshornean distinction between immutable existence and mutable actuality in what he says about the nature of angels. Thomists might say that Hartshorne approximates Aquinas. Aquinas holds that angels are not subject to natural decay or destruction for they are incorporeal. Like God, their existence is not affected by the flow of time. They are, however, capable of certain kinds of change. While their existence is constant, they have free will and their knowledge can increase, and in a certain sense, they can move from place to place.
Classical theism holds to the necessity, eternity, infinity, independence, immutability, and impassibility of God. Hartshorne agrees that God can be so characterized, but only with respect to the divine existence and essence. Indeed, Hartshorne agrees with Whitehead that all achieved value is necessarily finite in the sense of not exhausting all that can be.
It is noteworthy that Whitehead does not say that God is not infinite, but that God is not infinite in all respects. Thus, dual transcendence does not entail that God is in no sense infinite. Hartshorne locates the infinity of God primarily in the unlimited capacity to influence, know, and care for the creatures in any conceivable world. One may rightly demand an answer to the question: If God is finite in some respects, what prevents there being a reality that surpasses God?
This is what Hartshorne calls R-perfection for relative perfection , a form of perfection that permits a contingent actuality in God that is unsurpassed by all others, excluding self. This is by way of contrast with A-perfection for absolute perfection —which applies to the divine existence and essence—which is to be unsurpassable by all others, including self. To speak of God as having dual transcendence is to say that God is both R-perfect and A-perfect, but in different respects.
- Process Theism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy);
- Process Theism.
- Exploring Mormon Thought by Blake T. Ostler.
- Diapers Dirty.
To be sure, Whitehead and Hartshorne are in firm agreement, and are at pains to emphasize, that the relations between God and the world are symmetrical. In addition, both philosophers regard God as supremely worshipful not only with respect to the divine absoluteness but also with respect to the divine relativity. Nevertheless, Hartshorne conceives God as an individual who endures through various actual states. All enduring objects are societies of actual entities; moreover, no actual entity endures through various states. This argument is curious, for it would seem to apply to actual entities as well as to societies.
No non-divine actual entity preserves its entire past without distortion and loss; yet Whitehead attributes to deity—in the doctrine of objective immortality of the past in God—what no other actual entity can accomplish. Hartshorne notes that the unique excellence of retaining the past perfectly in memory must be no less true if God is an actual entity than if God is a society Hartshorne , He argues that the consequent nature of God is itself abstract, for it is the generic property of being somehow actual or affected by others Hartshorne , 75— Thus, Hartshorne proposes that Whitehead would be more true to his own metaphysics by conceiving God as an enduring object, and thus as a society, rather than as a single actual entity.
Hartshorne acknowledged that his own theory is not without its problems. Not least of these is how to coordinate the concept of a divine temporal world-line with the relativistic view of space-time in contemporary physics Hartshorne , —; Sia , ; cf. Suffice it to say that the question whether God is best conceived as a single actual entity or as an enduring object is a major parting of the ways between process theists. The doctrine of prehension, developed by Whitehead but also enthusiastically endorsed by Hartshorne, insures that the world is, in some sense , part of God.
Actual entities, by virtue of their prehensions of one another, are internally related to their predecessors and externally related to their successors. This generalization applies equally to God, but with differences that allow for a clear distinction between the divine and the non-divine. Whitehead maintains that events in the world have a specific locus with reference to God, but God has no locus with reference to the world Johnson , 9.
Hartshorne says that God is the one individual conceivable a priori —God is individuated by, though not exhausted by, concepts alone Hartshorne , To be God is to causally affect and be affected by every real being; to be a non-divine entity is to causally affect and be affected by some, but not all , creatures. Whitehead and Hartshorne also say that God and the creatures differ in the quality of interaction. While both philosophers deny that God has location within the universe, they consider God to be in some sense a physical or material being.
Since process thought affirms the goodness of God, it is clear that it denies the ancient Manichean and Gnostic ideas that there is something inherently evil in being material. Thus, in process thought, being physical does not mean having no mind-like qualities. In one sense this is true, but in another sense it is false. It is true that, in process metaphysics, the structure of reality is social, and necessarily so. Thus, it promotes a social view of God—God as necessarily related to non-divine actualities.
On the other hand, the process God does not require any particular universe in order to exist. Is it, or is it not, social in nature? Trinitarians sometimes argue that a social concept of ultimate reality can be formulated if God is necessarily related to the divine self. Process theists, especially those who are Christians, are not averse to this suggestion. That is to say, a genuinely social concept of reality is one in which the multiple identities of each of the interrelated and interacting entities are not absorbed into each other. Whitehead and Hartshorne claim to do this apart from the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, but there is no reason a priori to suppose that Trinitarian metaphysics cannot be one version of process metaphysics, or that the latter could not be adapted to the former Boyd ; Inbody , ch.
Whitehead and Hartshorne part company concerning the proper analogy for conceiving the God-world relation. Hartshorne argues that the best philosophical interpretation of the myth is to consider the demiurge and the world-soul as two aspects of the same deity Hartshorne , If this is correct, then Plato affirms a version of dual transcendence, with one aspect of God being the universe. This is not to say that God has a location within the universe, but that the location of the universe is in God, for the divine being-in-becoming is all-inclusive.
Hartshorne borrows a word invented by Karl Krause — to express this view: Panentheism is a mediating position between pantheism and classical theism. For pantheism, the world is identical to God; for classical theism, the world is completely external to God; for panentheism, the world is within God. Whereas Plato apparently conceives the soul-body or mind-body relationship as a one-to-one relation, Hartshorne, following modern biology, argues that it is more plausible to construe it as a one-to-many relation. The human body is a hierarchical society of thousands of kinds of cells. Thus, Hartshorne maintains that God is related to the universe in a manner similar to the way that a person is related to the cells of his or her body.
In an important respect, Whitehead can make a better claim than Hartshorne that the relationship of God to the World is one-to-many. God, a single enduring object, is related to every non-divine actual entity and society. Clarity on this point brings out another comparison.
By conceiving God as an actual entity, Whitehead weakens the analogy between God and a person. Auxier and Gary L. According to Auxier and Herstein, one cannot be a person or experience temporal passage apart from negative prehensions, which, they say, allow distinctions both between what was and what might-have-been and between what will-be and what might-be Auxier and Herstein , and Hartshorne consistently rejected the idea of negative prehensions in God whereas Whitehead, at least in some of his statements, seemed to allow for them.
The metaphysical issues run deep; suffice it to say that Hartshorne distinguished the actual and the possible in ways that diverged significantly from Whitehead see Ramal , — The analogy of God to a person is, of course, an analogy. In a similar fashion, God is affected by what affects the creatures. Another difference, as we have seen, is that God is not located within the universe as are non-divine individuals. Hartshorne turns this difference to his advantage by following a suggestion in Plato. Bodily organs in the creatures, including a central nervous system, are needed to mediate with an external environment, but there is nothing external to the universe Hartshorne , Thus, the world-soul analogy does not entail that God has a brain or any other bodily organ that one finds in the creatures.
In addition, the lack of an external environment for God means that there can be no threat to the divine existence from such a source. His remarks on the topic are entirely negative.
Exploring Mormon Thought podcast
It is clear that Whitehead and Hartshorne take the Timaeus in very different directions. Whitehead read the dialogue through the lens of neo-Platonism, conceiving the world-soul as an emanation from a wholly transcendent demiurge. Hartshorne agrees that this is not the solution to the problem of permanence and flux. Late in his career, Hartshorne saw other advantages to the world-soul analogy that touch on the problem of God and gender. He was sympathetic to feminist complaints about the male bias in traditional theology and he made a concerted effort in the closing decades of his life to use inclusive language Hartshorne , Hartshorne goes further than simply worrying about pronouns.
Hartshorne never expressed his thoughts on feminism systematically, but it is instructive that Carol P. Generally speaking, feminist theologians have been friendly to process thought, seeing Whitehead and Hartshorne as articulating ideas about the divine that speak to feminist concerns Christ , 4—5. Hartshorne counters that this is true, but not in a sense that compromises divine goodness.
As a point of logic, wholes do not necessarily share the characteristics of their parts. God sympathizes with the sufferer and grieves for the criminal in losing an opportunity for creating the good. God can feel the contrast between what could have been and what is. For this reason, Hartshorne, following Berdyaev, speaks of tragic and sublime aspects of divine love cf. Hartshorne , chapter 8. Process theism provides unique, if controversial, thoughts on the traditional problem of evil. Simply stated, the problem of evil comes to this: The argument can be taken in at least two ways.
According to one interpretation, the problem of evil poses a challenge to belief in God. In other words, it is a stepping stone towards atheism. Another interpretation is that it is a challenge to rethink the attributes of God. In this case, if one considers the argument sound, it is not belief in God that one should abandon, but belief in certain concepts of God. Process theists generally approach the problem of evil in the spirit of the second interpretation.
Moreover, they point out that to assume the first interpretation—that the problem of evil is an argument against the existence of God—is an invitation to beg the question against alternative proposals about the nature of God such as process theism offers. A central contention of process theism is that the problem of evil is aggravated by flawed accounts of omnipotence commonly assumed by theists and their critics.
Most theists agree with Aquinas that God cannot bring about logically impossible states of affairs, like creating a circle with unequal radii Summa Contra Gentiles II, ch. This is not, Aquinas argues, a limitation on God but a condition of responsible theological discourse. To say, as Descartes does, that God could have made such irregularly shaped circles, is to utter nonsense according to Aquinas Cottingham , Indeed, process theism has no quarrel with Aquinas on this point.
It is rather, the stronger claim that God can bring about any state of affairs the description of which is not contradictory, with which process theism takes issue. Nevertheless, it is a widely accepted view of omnipotence as Griffin makes clear Griffin , chapter In a deliberate play on J.
Griffin represents all process theists in considering it a fallacy, for it is their contention that there are logically possible states of affairs that no being, including God, could bring about by itself. For example, a contractual agreement between two individuals or parties is impossible unless each agrees to keep the conditions of the contract. Arguably, the logic of contracts, agreements, and covenants, does not change when one of the parties is divine. These examples are evidence that there are logically possible states of affairs that require something more than the decisions of God.
Hartshorne argues the case as follows. Suppose X and Y are agents who make decisions A and B , respectively. The conjunction, AB , is something that neither X nor Y , individually, decided, even if one of the agents is God. Suppose, however, for the sake of argument, that this reasoning does not apply in the divine case.
Hartshorne responds that this view divorces the concept of decision making from any meaningful connection with lived experience. Each analogy faces the dilemma that either the decisions of the person are not fully determined e. In a similar vein, Whitehead speaks of the idolatry of fashioning God in the image of imperial rulers: James Keller argues that the traditional concept of omnipotence can only be justified by appealing to metaphysical schemes or intuitions that are no better established than omnipotence itself Keller , Hartshorne goes further and says that the traditional concept of omnipotence was not coherent enough to be false Hartshorne , Unfortunately, the slogan has often been misinterpreted, even by process thinkers.
It does not mean that, according to Whitehead and Hartshorne, God acts only as a final cause and never as an efficient cause, as Griffin has shown Griffin , 98— In process metaphysics, no individual possesses this ability. Thus, in a metaphysical sense, it is not only God that acts persuasively and not coercively, but every actual being.
To persuade is to convince others to do something of their own will. The italicized phrases are important, for they demonstrate that persuasion and coercion presuppose the ability of the individual who is being persuaded or coerced to make decisions. Even in the case of coercion, the person being coerced retains the power to resist, even if only mentally. This indicates that coercion is an inferior form of power, used either out of ignorance or when persuasion has failed. David Basinger presses the following objection. Coercion in the ordinary sense may be an inferior form of power, but there is sometimes a moral imperative to use it, otherwise we would never have a police force.
Thus, a deity that possesses both coercive and persuasive power is greater than a deity that possesses only persuasive power Basinger Hartshorne, who argues against strict pacifism, agrees that the use of brute force can sometimes be morally justified. In process theism, however, coercion in the ordinary sense represents an indirect form of power that is available only for localized beings within the cosmos Hartshorne , That there should be this form of divine power—which is also a form of efficient causation—providing for an ordered world that no creature has decided, is a necessary condition for any creaturely activity, Hartshorne believes.
Theists of a more traditional bent may view this as an indication of the inadequacy of process metaphysics, for there is no provision for a run-of-the-mill coercive power in its concept of God. The idea that persuasion plus coercion is a greater form of power than persuasion alone ignores, however, a significant difference between God and the creatures. Every person has the power of persuasion and coercion in their ordinary senses , but neither of these powers involves a violation of the laws of nature. In order to attribute both forms of power to God seems to require that God have the power to violate the laws of nature.
That may not seem unreasonable since God, as traditionally conceived, acts miraculously in ways that break or suspend the laws of nature. Nevertheless, to speak, as Basinger does, of a moral imperative to act coercively is tantamount, in the divine case, to demanding that the deity contravene the very laws that, according to traditional theism and process theism, it imposed in the first place.
There is an additional irony where the problem of evil is concerned. Traditional theists fault process theists for, in effect, not attributing to God the power to prevent gratuitous suffering. Traditional theists, on the other hand, attribute this power to God but are obliged to argue that God is not at fault for not using it or for using it in ways that we find utterly baffling.
The felt contrast between what could have been the case and what is the case is the scaffolding on which the problem of evil is built. Things do not always work out for the best and it seems that there are events that the world would have been better without. A hallmark of process theism is to draw attention to the value inherent in the twin probabilities of genuine good and evil. Process thought raises the question—and answers it in the affirmative—whether a world with a probability, not merely a possibility, of genuine good and evil is preferable to a world without it.
In the closing pages of Pragmatism , James raises this question by means of a thought experiment. If God asked you before the creation of the universe if you would agree to be part of a world that was not certain to be saved—where there was real adventure and real risk—what would you say? Hartshorne says that a universe with multiple freedom or creativity is a universe where the non-identical twins of opportunity and risk are inevitable. As already noted, process theists do not believe in a God that plays with loaded dice.
We have already seen that process theism affirms tragedy in God. The silver linings on this cloud are: The problem of evil is often presented primarily as an ethical concern, but there is an aesthetic dimension to the problem that is emphasized by process theism cf. If a perfectly good deity would have the motive to overcome discord and wickedness, it would also have a motive to avoid triviality and boredom.
This is especially the case in the universe as conceived by process theism where feeling prehension is a metaphysical category. Moreover, the experiencing subject, in most cases, is not human. This fact is evident not only by looking at the contemporary world with its countless varieties of species, but also when one considers the nearly unfathomable stretches of time on this planet when humans did not exist.
Process theism takes the non-anthropocentric, and non-relativist, stance that the experiences of non-human creatures are valuable whether or not humans value them. This is not to say that all experience is equally valuable—the experience of a cockroach can have value without being fully comparable to human experience. Process metaphysics provides for an aesthetic theory that recognizes objective criteria of value such as unity amid contrast and intensity amid complexity see Dombrowksi The long process of evolution can be charted on a curve of ever increasing varieties and complexities of organisms with augmented capacity for valuable types of experience.
The Preacher in Ecclesiastes gives eloquent expression to world-weariness by saying that there is nothing new under the sun. Nevertheless, process thought reminds us that there was once a time when the sun itself was new. We noted earlier that in process metaphysics, time is the process of creation. The universe is not a totality, fixed once and for all, but a dynamic vector growing from a determinate past into an open partly indeterminate future.
We have also seen that process theism conceives God as being really related to the world through prehensions or feelings. If divine knowing is considered perfect, then it follows from these premises that God knows the past as fully determinate as created , the present as the process of determination as being created , and the future as partly indeterminate as yet to be created. Some have criticized process theism for advocating a limited God who is ignorant of the future.
Process theists reply that this is incorrect and represents a subtle begging of the question. The question is not whether God knows a fully determinate future but whether there is a fully determinate future to know. It is the nature of time, not the nature of divine knowing, that is at issue. If the future exists as partially indeterminate, unsettled, or uncreated, then a perfect knower must know it as such. This is not to say that God does not have this information, but it is well to keep in mind that omniscience, for process theism, is more akin to what Bertrand Russell calls knowledge by acquaintance than it is to knowledge by description Hartshorne , This issue highlights a tension between Whitehead and Hartshorne.
Process theism provides an account of the mechanics of omniscience—that is, an account of how God knows the world—that fits well with analogies drawn from experience. Apart from complications introduced by quantum physics, events do not occur because we know about them; we know about them, in part, because they occur. Process theism applies the same logic to God. This account differs from traditional views in two important ways. First, many theists follow Aquinas in reversing the cognitive relation in God. This allows Aquinas to affirm omniscience while denying real relations in God; however, it also makes an unambiguous affirmation of the contingency of creaturely decisions difficult if not impossible, as we have already seen in our discussion of God and creativity.
Second, the process view contradicts the Boethian concept of eternity as a non-temporal viewpoint on temporal events. For Boethius and for Aquinas events in time are related to God as the points on the circumference of a circle are related to its center Consolation of Philosophy , bk 5, prose 6; Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. For process thought, time is more like a line being added to from moment to moment, but never complete, so there is no vantage from which it can be taken in all at once Hartshorne , There are peculiarities in traditional metaphors for omniscience that process thought rejects.
It is noteworthy, however, that process theism retains one element of the traditional view. We have seen that Hartshorne attributes the laws of nature to an act of God. For this reason, God knows the extent to which the future is open—what the laws allow and what they do not allow. The process God must also be aware of the conditions that creaturely decisions set upon future actualization, opening up some possibilities and closing others. Process theists were not the first to notice the problems that the Thomistic account poses for human freedom.
William of Ockham, for example, despaired of explaining how God could come to know the future free decisions of the creatures Shields , Molina claims that there are true statements about what any possible creature would freely do in any situation in which that creature existed. Using free knowledge, in conjunction with middle knowledge conditionals, God can deduce what any actual creature will freely do. The deduction has the form: Thus, it poses as much of a challenge to process theism as does Thomism which claims for itself the same advantages.
One objection is that Molinism endows God with an innate knowledge of an elaborate set of contingent truths which have no explanation. Yet, contingent truths are precisely the sorts of truths for which we legitimately seek explanations—indeed, this is one of the marks of contingency Hartshorne , A related problem is that the distinction between the possible and the actual is finessed. To refer to what a possible individual would do is entirely different. Possible individuals are either fictional like Sherlock Holmes or they are tied to the creative powers of the actual world like a child yet to be conceived.
Arguably, persons yet to be conceived can only be said to have the properties that link them to the reproductive potentialities of actual persons. Thus, most babies have the capacity to grow up to become parents themselves.
What may the first child call it Chris of a particular newborn call it Kim be like? Molina verbally accepts the idea that one is significantly free only if one could have done otherwise in the same circumstances in the literature this is called incompatibilist freedom. The events, however, that can become actual, that are actually possible, are events in universes created by God. The argument is apparently straightforward. If the disjunction itself is not true then some tautologies are false.
He argues that the commitment that God loves us and respects our dignity as persons entails that God must leave us free to choose whether to have a saving relationship with him. He explores the "logic of love" and argues that the LDS doctrine of a "war in heaven" embodies the commitment that God leaves us free to choose whether to enter into relationship with God. He explores the nature of inter-personal prayer and the contributions of LDS beliefs to a robust prayer dialogue. He offers a view consistent with LDS commitments that makes sense out of asking God to assist others, to alter the natural environment and to grow in relationship with God.
He then turns to the concept of grace and argues that the traditional views lead to insurmountable problems. He argues that though God does not owe any obligation to us to give us grace, God does so out of love. However, because divinity arises from loving relationships, he argues that God could not fail to give sufficient grace to all persons and remain a loving God.
Praise for the Exploring Mormon Thought series: There is nothing currently available that is even close to the rigor and sophistication of these volumes. Roberts and John A. Widtsoe may have had interesting insights in the early part of the twentieth century, but they had neither the temperament nor the training to give a rigorous defense of their views in dialogue with a wider stream of Christian theology.
Sterling McMurrin and Truman Madsen had the capacity to engage Mormon theology at this level, but neither one did. Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University. Overview Music Video Charts.