Category: Theology & Faith

Last night I finished Cobb and Griffin’s introduction to process theology, so I wanted to get some thoughts down on the general Whiteheadian perspective. I think the expanded name sometimes used – process-relational theology – is actually more helpful because both elements, process and relation, are key to understanding what this school of thought is trying to say.

First, let’s talk about process. For Whitehead, the basic constituents of reality are not things (“substances” in much traditional philosophical parlance), but moments, or occasions, of experience. The things we encounter in the world–rocks, trees, birds, people–are actually collections of occasions spread out in space and extended through time. Each occasion is an event in which influences of past experience are incorporated and synthesized into a new moment of experience (Whitehead calls this a concrescence). So, instead of thinking of myself as a thing (whether it be a body or a soul, or some combination) that has experiences, I am a series of experiences, each of which has a “mental” and “physical” pole, with no underlying substratum needed.

Whitehead’s view differs from that of, say, David Hume (who similarly characterized the human self as a series of experiences) in a few ways. First, unlike much classic empiricism, Whitehead’s view is that experience comes to us already value-laden. The elements of the past which are incorporated in each new occasion of experience come with certain affective or emotional tones. Second, the act whereby these elements are incorporated into a new occasion involves a genuine element of novelty or creative synthesis. Cobb and Griffin call this creative transformation. The present is influenced, but not determined, by the past; each occasion is an opportunity for synthesizing elements of the past into a higher harmony that reconciles seemingly opposed values into something new. In Whitehead’s terminology, each occasion prehends its environment, which is comprised of past occasions, and synthesizes the elements of that environment in light of its subjective aim of coordinating those elements into a genuinely new moment of experience. Reality consists of these ongoing processes of incorporating the past and creating novelty.

Turning to relational, the important point here is that, because what we have, according to Whitehead, is not a world of independent substances bumping up against each other, but a world of porous occasions of experience, relationships are fundamentally constitutive of the entities that make up reality. Each occasion is influenced by, and in fact incorporates influences from, prior occasions. Not only is there no bright boundary between “me” and “my body” (because my soul and body are both streams of mutually influencing occasions), but there is similarly no bright boundary between “me” and “you” or “me” and “the environment.” (As has often been pointed out, Whitehead’s thought has affinities with Buddhism.) Because of the thorough-going relational character of existence, no one entity is able to exert unilateral unconditional power over others; we are all interpenetrated and influenced by everything else, at least to some extent.

Which brings us to theology. According to Whitehead, although God plays a special role in the world, God is not exempt from the general metaphysical principles exemplified by other entities. This puts him at odds with a lot of theology, which has placed God beyond all human categories and conceptualizations. For Whitehead, God is the ground of order in the world and of novelty. This happens through God’s persuasive “lure” of occasions into new and better forms of creative synthesis. Whitehead calls this God’s initial aim, which correlates to the subjective aims of creatures. God contains in God’s eternal nature all conceptual possibilities; by presenting these to the world, God influences occasions into realizing new forms of existing.

Cobb and Griffin describe the process of creation as God enticing very primitive elements into higher and more complex forms, eventually resulting in the long evolutionary development of the cosmos. Because God’s power is exercised in this persuasive fashion, it is also limited. Even God can’t unilaterally determine the outcome of events, a fact which plays a pivotal role in process thought’s response to the problem of evil. Nevertheless, God is present in each moment, as the lure that calls each occasion to higher forms of harmony and intensity of experience.

According to process thought, God, like all other existents, is related to everything else that is and is genuinely affected by it. Contrary to the tradition, which holds God to be impassible, or unaffected by anything that happens in the world, process thinkers sees God as experiencing what creatures experience. Whiteheadian theism is sometimes referred to as “dipolar” because it sees God as having two aspects: an eternal aspect that Whitehead refers to as God’s primordial nature (and which, as mentioned above, includes God’s eternal apprehension of all the possibilities that can be realized in existence) and a temporal aspect that he calls God’s consequent nature. This consequent aspect is comprised of God’s experience of what happens in the world. As creatures realize new and higher forms of creativity, God’s life is enriched. As a corollary, as creatures suffer or inflict suffering, God suffers. (God is the “fellow-sufferer who understands” to use Whitehead’s oft-quoted phrase.)

It’s difficult to assess Whitehead’s thought because it constitutes a unique metaphysical perspective, comparable in scope to Platonism or Aristotelianism. And I’m not familiar enough with the Whitehead corpus (particularly his magnum opus Process and Reality) to provide a particularly informed critique. But I think I can say a few things about its appeal and some possible limitations.

First, Whitehead’s perspective allows us to see the universe as a unitary whole of interrelated and mutually influencing entities. This is more consistent with contemporary evolutionary and ecological thought than much traditional metaphysics and theology. It’s no coincidence that process theologians, and those influenced by process thought, have been at the forefront of the science-religion dialogue and the promotion of environmental consciousness in Christian theology. Second, the view of God propounded by process thought avoids many of the pitfalls of traditional forms of theism, particularly with respect to the problem of evil. And this view portrays a God whose character is in some ways more consistent with the God of the Bible, particularly in God’s nature as “creative-responsive love.” This resonance of process thought with the biblical view of God is the response of process theologians to accuastions that they’re more philosophical than theological. And Whitehead himself saw the life of Jesus as one of the pivotal events in history revealing a God of persuasive love rather than domineering power.

As far as weaknesses go, two stand out to me. First, the Whiteheadian system, with its forbidding jargon and abstruse speculations, can be difficult for outsiders to penetrate, and one wonders about the usefulness of yoking Christian theology to a seemingly esoteric form of metaphysics. Second, the process-relational model of God has elements that seem to clash with what many have taken to be essential points of Christian orthodoxy. Primarily these are in relation to its views of divine power and passibility. Critics have wondered, for example, if the process God has the resources to ensure the ultimate triumph of God’s purposes–a victory that is indicated by the Bible and the consensus of Christian tradition.

I’m not sure either of these weaknesses is fatal to the process-relational project, though. Regarding the first, it is possible to incorporate Whiteheadian insights without adopting wholesale process thought’s metaphysical apparatus. For example, the scholar of science and religion Ian Barbour has been influenced by process thought, but largely avoids the Whiteheadian jargon in offering a metaphysical description of the universe as an evolutionary process characterized by emerging levels of complexity and the interplay of necessity and creativity. Similarly, Keith Ward has incorporated elements of dipolar theism into his conceptualization of God, such as passibility and God’s responsiveness to what occurs in the world, without accepting in its entirety the process view of God’s power. In sum, I’d say that process thought has provided a helpful and necessary impetus to re-thinking inherited notions about God and God’s power and relationship to the universe, a necessity also imposed by developments in modern thought that theology hasn’t always been willing to seriously grapple with.

References:

Ian G. Barbour, Science and Religion

John Cobb, Jr., and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition

Keith Ward, Pascal’s Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding

Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas

Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making

“Process Theism” at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I don’t know why I’ve suddenly been interested in reading Whitehead, but after Adventures of Ideas I turned to an earlier work–Religion in the Making. Here you can see the germs of a “Whiteheadian” doctrine of God, particularly in his critique of traditional notions of omnipotence and transcendence:

This worship of glory arising from power is not only dangerous: it arises from a barbaric conception of God. I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the bones of those slaughtered because of men intoxicated by its attraction. This view of the universe, in the guise of an Eastern empire ruled by a glorious tyrant, may have served its purpose. In its historical setting, it marks a religious ascent. The psalm quoted [Ps. 24] gives us its noblest expression. The other side comes out in the psalms expressing hate, now generally withdrawn from public worship. The glorification of power has broken more hearts than it has healed. (p. 55)

And another passage on the notion of a completely “transcendent” God, which Whitehead refers to as the “Semitic” concept of God:

The main difficulties which the Semitic concept has to struggle with are two in number. One of them is that it leaves God completely outside metaphysical rationalization. We know, according to it, that He is such a being as to design and create this universe, and there our knowledge stops. If we mean by his goodness that He is the one self-existent, complete entity, then He is good. But such goodness must not be confused with the ordinary goodness of daily life. He is undeniably useful, because anything baffling can be ascribed to his direct decree.

The second difficulty of the concept is to get itself proved. The only possible proof would appear to be the “ontological proof” devised by Anselm, and revived by Descartes. According to this proof, the mere concept of such an entity allows us to infer its existence. Most philosophers and theologians reject this proof…. (pp. 70-71)

Interestingly, Whitehead argues that Christianity has modified the pure “Semitic” concept of God by introducing a degree of genuine immanence in the doctrines of the incarnation and the Trinity. The logos is a principle of God’s immanent presence in the world. “The Semitic God is omniscient; but, in addition to that, the Christian God is a factor in the universe” (p. 73).

However, he says, the transcendent, omnipotent God gradually became Christian orthodoxy, albeit modified by “tri-personality.” He suggests that a more thorough rethinking of the concept of God is necessary, one that’s consistent with our best science and our best metaphysics.

I think we see Whitehead struggling here to find a conception of God that is both intelligible and moral. (I read something suggesting that Whitehead’s loss of his son in World War I was one cause of his struggle with notions of omnipotence.) A God of absolute power and inscrutable will no longer makes sense to him.

As it happens, Marvin recently posted on Gordon Kaufman’s revisionist theological project, which takes a subtly different course from Whitehead’s. Kaufman argues against a personal, creator God, on the grounds that it doesn’t seem to fit with a scientific understanding of the nature of the universe or our experience of evil. By contrast, theologians working in the Whiteheadian tradition have picked up on the latter’s critique of omnipotence and transcendence (criticisms echoed by the other most important “process” philosopher, Charles Hartshorne) and developed it into an influential school of Christian theology.

It seems that Kaufman leans toward a more impersonal “ground-of-being” type of theism that is willing to jettison God’s personal and moral character, while process theologians sacrifice omnipotence and transcendence to uphold God’s nature as “creative-responsive love” (to use John Cobb and David Griffin’s term from their introduction to process theology). Granted, more traditionally minded theologians have tried to preserve God’s transcendence, omnipotence, and personal-moral nature, but they have a harder time dealing with the problem of evil. Maybe the best conclusion we can come to is that these are all avenues worth exploring, since it’s far from clear which is right–if any.

In his book Adventures of Ideas, Alfred North Whitehead criticizes “liberal clergy and laymen” of the 18th and 19th centuries for rejecting systematic theology. The problem with the old theology wasn’t its intellectual or systematic character, Whitehead says, but its insistence on “dogmatic finality.” Metaphysics–or systematic, rational thought about the universe rooted in our deepest intuitions–is necessary to keep religion from veering off into emotionalism and superstition.

The task of Theology is to show how the World is founded on something beyond mere transient fact, and how it issues in something beyond the perishing of occasions. The temporal World is the stage of finite accomplishment. We ask of Theology to express that element in perishing lives which is undying by reason of its expression of perfections proper to our finite natures. In this way we shall understand how life includes a mode of satisfaction deeper than joy or sorrow. (p. 221)

The progress of religion is defined by the denunciation of gods. The keynote of idolatry is contentment with the prevalent gods.

– Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas