Counting the Cost

(This is part four of a series on process theology. Here are links to parts one, two, and three.)

The first sign of trouble with process theology for me was Hartshorne’s understanding of immortality. He makes the very good point that concern for one’s continued subjective existence after death is inherently selfish. If one loved God and all other persons and things with a perfect love, impartial but not disinterested, then it would really make very little difference whether one’s own existence continues forever as long as the whole show goes on and is enriched for one’s having been a part of it. To be without end is the property of God alone, and we should not hope to rival God, but be content and consoled that we will always exist objectively in God. He makes the secondary point that we would eventually be bored, so the finite duration of our subjectivity is a blessing.

Frankly, I find this weak in several respects. First, it would seem that Hartshorne has no sense of mystery or imagination on this point. How could he possibly know that we would get bored? Does God suddenly cease being the source of novelty?

Other process theologians have differently nuanced views, but the ones I read back in college usually play some variation on the objective immortality theme. John Cobb suggests that after death, God may allow our subjective existence to continue as long as we wish it, but we would continue to grow in love, and would eventually care no more for the series of occasions that is us than for every other future occasion, especially for God. At that time, one would cease to have subjective experience and would simply be immortal as a beloved memory of God.

Now maybe it’s just my idiosyncratic reading of scripture, but I find this account inadequate for three reasons, the first of which is unique to this point, while the second and third reappear in different forms in all of my objections to most process theologies with which I am acquainted. First, I thought that much of the benefit of a process understanding of God lies in the fact that it relieves us of an understanding of love that is disinterested. Perfection in love (my, aren’t we sounding Methodist) may mean impartial love, by which I would not love myself more than other beings. But I would still love myself. In fact, my love of myself and my love of others would enhance one another. I would therefore desire what is good for me. Perhaps subjective immortality isn’t, but I don’t find this business about rivaling God all that persuasive. Second, if process theologians claim that their theology is a better way of making sense of the biblical witness than classical theism (whatever that is), then it is rather odd that their account of immortality has nothing to do with the promise of the resurrection that is so important in so much of the New Testament. Objective immortality would be better than just being forgotten, but it does not induce the hope that is so characteristic of the early Christian witness. But it is the lack of imagination and mystery that is my chief complaint. It is this latter objection that I will raise again and again. Perhaps the best verse in the Bible that pertains to the resurrection is 1 John 3:2: “Beloved, we are now children of God. What we shall be has not been revealed, but we know that when it is revealed, we shall be like him, for we shall see him just as he is.” Saying anything more than that is dangerous, but this would seem to indicate some sort of subjective experience.

Process theology also has difficulties accounting for the Trinity. Now any metaphysical view of God is likely to have difficulties here, and the patristic and medieval witness is usually at its most compelling when it is its least metaphysical (I think Augustine has the most compelling version of the doctrine, and he pretty much says that the terms used for the godhead and the three persons are just placeholder terms, since we don’t know what else to say). Still, the standard process understanding of the Trinity seems to focus on various aspects of God’s activity in the world rather than a real distinction (however mysterious) in the godhead itself. On the process and faith website, Cobb points to Augustine as a precedent for this way of thinking about the Trinity, but he misreads Augustine (it’s the same misreading on account of which the Orthodox are always accusing Western Christians of modalism). Now I haven’t really written about the Trinity on this blog, though it is one of my main interests. On another occasion, I will write about why the Trinity is important, but since I can’t do it in a single sentence, I’m simply going to presume that the reader already knows.

Here’s one reason though: lacking a Trinitarian godhead, one will have a very difficult time with the Incarnation. In this sort of theology, Christ usually gets identified with the principle of creative transformation, and as such, process theologians can say that the Word is partially incarnate in every actual occasion. Now at least some process theologians, Cobb being an example, do also hold that there was something unique about the person of Jesus of Nazareth, but they usually more or less follow the example of Schleiermacher, and locate the divinity of Christ in Jesus’ perfect actualization of the initial aim. Cobb has been known to claim that this puts him firmly within the camp of St. Athanasius against Arius. I think that’s disputable, though he’s certainly no Arian. However, he might be something of a Nestorian (the parallel isn’t perfect, but who cares). The man Jesus has a very close association with the Word (or creative transformation), that it is fitting to speak of Jesus as divine and his life has salvific effects. He holds that Christ’s life created what he frequently calls a “field of force” that exerts an influence on all subsequent occasions, especially the church. I give him a A for effort, but again, I think that the witness of the Christian tradition (especially in scripture) seems to be getting at something a little more robust than a the force.

In summary, I think that defining God as the chief actual occasion has disastrous effects for Christian theology, though it does look nice. The comment left by Quodvultdeus on the previous post basically hits the nail on the head. In the theology of the Greek fathers in particular, God is related to every creature precisely because God is radically different from all creatures. It is in that framework that the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation make sense (allow me to take this moment to plug Kathryn Tanner’s book Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity, especially the first chapter). Divinity and humanity can be joined in the same subject (hypostasis, if one prefers) because they are not two sorts of being located at different places on a continuum, such that one takes up where the other leaves off. Process theology has gained something by thinking of God as a sort of thing, but I’m not sure it’s worth what is lost. In the next (and tentatively final) post in this series, I will explore ways of keeping some of those gains without forfeiting the insights of the traditional emphasis on divine transcendence.

God in Process Theology

(This is the third installment of a series which begins here and continues here.)

Those lines that I before have writ do lie,
Even those that said I could not love you dearer;
Yet then my judgment knew no reason why
My most full flame should afterwards burn clearer.
But reckoning Time, whose millioned accidents
Creep in twixt vows and change decrees of kings,
Tan sacred beauty, blunt the sharp’st intents,
Divert strong minds to th’ course of altering things–
Alas, why, fearing of Time’s tyranny,
Might I not then say, “Now I love you best,”
When I was certain o’er incertainty,
Crowning the present, doubting of the rest?
Love is a babe; then might I not say so,
To give full growth to that which still doth grow.
–William Shakespeare, Sonnet CXV

Charles Hartshorne begins his snarky little book Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes by offering a critique of the doctrine that God is perfect and unchanging. The classical doctrine of divine perfection holds that God must be unchanging, because if God could in some way grow or improve, then God presently lacks something which would be gained. But all of God’s attributes must be such that nothing greater could be conceived (Hartshorne is sympathetic to a version of the ontological argument. Indeed, he wrote a book called Anselm’s Discovery, which is on my shelf but not yet read). Fine, says Hartshorne, but this way of understanding divine perfection is incoherent because at least some attributes do not have an upper limit. He gives the example of beauty. It simply makes no sense to say that anything is so beautiful that a greater beauty cannot be conceived (it would be like referring to the greatest possible number). One could only speak of infinite beauty abstractly. But God is not an abstraction. God is beautiful.

Capacity for growth, Hartshorne argues, is not an imperfection (unlike, for instance, capacity for diminishment). Even an infinite richness might be capable of increase (remember that there are different infinities, some of which are greater than others–the set of real numbers is greater than the set of integers, though both are infinite). The ability to increase in beauty is perhaps a perfection after all. And if beauty, perhaps knowledge or love. God’s perfections are such that they could never be equaled by anyone or anything else, but are capable of increase (though not diminishment).

Now as this business about divine growth implies, God is temporal in process theology. One of Whitehead’s big things was his insistence that “God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification” (PR p. 343). God is therefore an actual occasion (or for Hartshorne, a series of actual occasions). God provides an aim to all other occasions, desiring to increase the beauty of reality through greater novelty within continuity and greater complexity in simplicity. But the aim is not coercive. God cannot override the freedom of any occasion. Occasions can therefore resist the initial aim and act in ways that create discord (owing in large part to the fact that our prehension of other occasions is imperfect, so we don’t feel the full impact of our actions). The possibility of discord is necessary to overcome triviality. God is not only felt by but also feels all occasions, and thus experiences both the beauty and the discord immediately. Hartshorne is fond of the metaphor of the universe as the body of God (you have a certain amount of control over your body, but as you’ll discover if you try to bend your arm backwards, you can’t make it do something. You also have an immediate feeling of every cell in your body, just as God immediately experiences the feelings of everything in the universe).

Being in process, like the rest of reality, God’s omniscience is the perfect knowledge of all reality, but the future is not yet real. God conceives of all possibilities and recognizes some as better than others, but does not know what choice any actual occasion will make until that occasion completes itself. God then provides the subsequent occasions with a new aim. God is constantly urging us on toward new possibilities. God’s knowledge of completed occasions is also entire. Once completed, an occasion no longer exists as a subject, but it endures as an object in its effects on the universe and in the memory of God.

I’ve never been quite content with this understanding of God, though I believe it has a few insights for which I am grateful. God, understood in this way, is fundamentally related to all other realities. Creation is not an arbitrary decision, but an act of love. Which brings me to the second thing I appreciate about it: the love of God is not disinterested as in some traditional theology, which has held that God’s life must be maximally beatific in itself in such a way that nothing can be added to it, making creation purely gratuitous. I appreciate the understanding of grace in the traditional account (pretend there’s only one for a moment), but what kind of love has no stake in the beloved? In process theology, we are not worshiping and loving a God whom we believe loves us in some abstract sense, but a God who loves like we love, only less partially (in both senses of the word). Furthermore, because God’s creative power is persuasive rather than coercive, it is not possible to use God as a model for human tyranny (or human tyrants as a model for God). God leads by example, as it were, and lures us into the sort of behavior that will bring about the greatest amount of blessing for us and all of creation.  Finally, I think I might be persuaded by the argument that some perfections can have no upper limit.

It had been my original plan to move on to the things I dislike about process theology in the next post. I may yet do that, but there may also be an interlude on prevenient grace and sanctification. After all, this is a Methodist blog, but there has been far too little Wesley on it so far. Then again, the Methodist stuff could wait until a final post in which I will try to plunder the Egyptians and outline some ways in which a more traditional understanding of God might appropriate some of the insights of process. You can always comment or email and let me know what you want to read next.

“The many become one and are increased by one.”

The Philosophical Background of Process Theology
(Second in a series. The introduction is here.)

Process thought began with Alfred North Whitehead, an Anglo-American philosopher and mathematician of the first half of the 20th century. His philosophical magnum opus is a book called Process and Reality, which was adapted from his Gifford Lectures in 1927-28 (if you purchase or check out a copy, be sure to get the corrected edition). Whitehead was brilliant, but he was no pedagogue, and his text is pretty much incomprehensible unless you have some help. Should you decide you want to read Whitehead, you will find yourself greatly aided by Sherburne’s Key to Whitehead’s Process and Reality. I hate to say it, but unless you’re reading PR with a class or something, it’s probably not worth the considerable effort it will require.

A student of Whitehead’s named Charles Hartshorne articulated a theology based on Whitehead’s metaphysics. It wasn’t a specifically Christian theology (Hartshorne himself was raised Episcopalian but became a Unitarian). The University of Chicago was the first real center of process theology, though that was a couple generations ago (Franklin Gamwell being a notable holdout). Since the days when Hartshorne taught here, the major centers have been Perkins School of Theology at Souther Methodist University, where Schubert Ogden taught, and Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, where John B. Cobb Jr. (my preferred exponent of process theology), David Ray Griffin, and Marjorie Suchocki taught. Ogden, Cobb, Griffin, and Suchocki are all United Methodists, by the way, and as I will try to explain below, process theology is particularly conducive to several traditional Methodist emphases. That generation is also retired, but Claremont remains an active center.

There are many different directions one can go with Whitehead, and different people who call themselves process theologians may part with Whitehead to various degrees. I will not be able to represent the breadth of process theology in this series, so I will focus on the strand that most influenced me in the past, which is largely from Cobb and Griffin, with a little Hartshorne for good measure. This post, about the philosophical background, is pretty much paraphrased Whitehead.

Process philosophy (or as Whitehead preferred to call it, the philosophy of organism) holds that the final real things are not substances, but occasions. Every occasion is partially determined by every previous occasion (by some much more than others), but always has an element of choice, however trivial. Every occasion, from you in this moment to the occasions that make up your body, to those that make up rocks, have a subjective experience, though this experience is only conscious in humans and perhaps some animals. When each occasion chooses how to complete itself, it becomes a datum for all subsequent occasions, and in some cases, the dominant occasion (for example, the occasion that was you a moment ago is the dominant cause of the occasion that is you in this instant. When you choose what to become in this instant from the options available, you will be a datum in the coming-to-be of all future occasions, especially the one that is yourself in the next moment. To closely paraphrase Whitehead, you are what the universe is for you, including your own reaction.

A few things to point out: First, everything impacts everything else in the universe. This is a fundamentally relational metaphysic. In every moment, you and every other being inherit everything that has ever happened, choose how you will express what you are beyond yourself. “The many become one and are increased by one,” as Whitehead famously wrote. Second, most things that seem like individuals are actually societies. This shouldn’t be too much of a shock to us, having grown up with atomic theory. Third, all occasions are both physical and mental. Physically, they are informed by all previous occasions (or in process-speak, they prehend all previous occasions), with varying degrees of relevance. Mentally, they prehend all possibilities for their actualization (more about where these come from in a minute), and given these data, they complete themselves. This occurs almost instantaneously. “Mental” here is not to be confused with conscious. Consciousness in some occasions is an extension of the mental phase in which the various possibilities are contrasted with one another. The point here is that this is not materialistic, but nor is it dualistic. Finally, every finally real thing in the whole universe, whether conscious or not, has some element of subjective experience and some freedom, however trivial. As Whitehead also said, “Consciousness presupposes experience, not experience consciousness.”

Now, you may ask, where is God in this? God is an occasion (or in Hartshorne, a series of occasions). God is the source of creativity in the universe (which is somewhat different from being the creator of the universe). God conceives of all of the possibilities for every occasion, and gives each occasion what Whitehead called a subjective aim, which is an impulse or an appetite toward the highest relevant possibility in the mind of God. The subjective aim is one datum among many in each occasion’s becoming, and the occasion chooses how closely to actualize it. This means that God is present to every item in the universe in every instant. God then perfectly feels the result of every choice, and therefore seeks to enrich God’s own experience by enriching the experience of everyone and everything.

I know some of you are cringing now. If that’s the case, try to get inside of this for a minute. It could explain so much. It could explain change and continuity over time. It accounts for prevenient grace and our sense of calling. It accounts for freedom and determination, and gives us a perfect reason to love God and our neighbors, and all creation. Moreover, it means that when we say that God loves us and cares about us, that this is not something radically different than what we normally mean by these words. If, rather than cringing, you find this exciting, then good for you. I’ll give you cause to cringe later.

Next post in series: God in process theology. In the meantime, does this make sense? Any questions?