From time to time I become confronted with the traditionalism of my past to the facts of the world as they actually are. Usually what I have held true is not true at all which then causes me to rethink how this new knowledge may help or hinder my previous perspectives of things I had considered true in my Christian faith.
As Christians, we face these events nearly every day, especially if we are absorbed in knowing more about something we find important to us, such as our faith. It is part of what it means to being "a student of the bible unwilling to be content with a "casual traditionalist" view of bible holding the mindset that what we once had learned in the past was true for all time. Many times this is not true. As example, simple mathematics can be learned but the more we study it the more complex it can become. So too with biblical doctrines, dogmas, and beliefs. It can be simple but it can also be vastly complex. And depending on the theorems and axioms you assume (or establish) so goes the entirety of the formula built upon. Great mathematicians became great because they were unwilling to be content with simple mathematics. And so may the disciples of God as they explore His wisdom, ways, and forms of being in this world.
Long years ago I had begun taking the view that what I was taught and believed true may change as I grew older, as the world grew older, and as academia grew older. For those of us trying to make sense out of the bible we each, in our own way, must adapt and change with every succeeding new year of discovery, knowledge and understanding. When we don't we become effectively "stuck in time" and find ourselves "defending our (sacred) positions" rather than asking how this new knowledge might aid us in our assessments, comportments, responses, and comprehensive apprehensions.
For the Christian - and especially for those like me who have grown up in the pious traditions of fundamentalism (and later, conservative evangelicalism) - I find myself nearly daily confronted with my past. I am haunted by it. It lingers upon me and can weigh me down but for the Spirit of God who delivers, protects, and urges me forward. My choices is whether I should reject new things which come to light, or take them in, reconsidering how this new knowledge might broaden my faith, my idea of God, and witness of His Word. In a large part, Relevancy22 is my journey through the lands of enlightenment as I try to pick my way through the lands of devotional circumspection.
Yes, it can be challenging. But when done in a spirit of wonder and Spirit-led investigation can be a clear-eyed projection of just what the biblical faith might become. Mostly, I would like my faith to be as objective as possible to the discoveries being made without being waylaid in its journey by misleading forms of gnosticism (contemporary forms of mysticism comes to mind), unhelpful philosophies (I've lately been choosing Process Philosophy's influence upon Continental Philosophy), or dithering hermeneutics more interested in protecting the faith than projecting the faith. Now whether I understand how to reconcile all these elements or not is another subject for another day though this site here gives testimony of how this might be done as I try to sort through it. For many of my friends they do not wish to think as deeply or allow their faith to be disturbed so thoroughly under the categories of "doubt and uncertainty". For myself, this form of patient investigation and comparative study hopes to obtain a kernel of truth gleaned from the vast history of faith's journey through human history even as it is developing today in its complexity and burgeoning doctrines smashing against one another. Moses the Lawgiver
Today's subject will be one of those times. Here we have the hallowed traditions of the lawgiver cum prophet Moses writing out God's 10 Commandments to the tribes of Israel - as opposed to very serious questions of whether this event actually occurred or not. Was Moses a real person? Was he visited by God and given a code of conduct to transcribe? Was the totality of this event true or not?
For some of us it must be more true for us to trust the bible than man's speculations. But as I've said on many occasions, the bible is not what we suppose it to be as an ancient collection of oral traditions and legends. Regardless of the historicity of its biblical characters or "actualized" events, in some way the bible is true and testifies to the self-revealing God who tells us what He has done in the past, is doing now in the present, and intends to do in the future. And importantly, how we might respond to His revelation.
If you've had any studies in biblical doctrines this can be a tricky thing to answer as whole doctrinal systems may topple down in our hearts should we admit even one new idea which might destroy the entirety of the structure we had learned, embraced, and believed. But this doesn't have to be the case.
Assuming that God is more real than He is not - which is an important assumption to make, but one I have made in the past, arguing the impossibility of being a true atheist at a philosophical or theological level (cf. Alvin Platinga's discussion on atheism somewhere in this website). As someone committed to the divine faith it behooves us to think rightly about our faith than to force upon it, or even God Himself, constructs which are not true.
Such is the problem of Moses. For myself, whether he is a historical personage or isn't is no matter. Or whether he did or didn't give to Israel God's laws is no matter. Somehow, someone or some group, through some process, came to an idea about God which later became canonized amongst an ancient tribe of peoples living in the lands of Canaan who were going through some kind of sorting out process which brought to them a concept of God which was importantly different from the gods of the peoples they observed around them.
As this body of conviction grew so did their legends, either rightly or wrongly. Which is where we then begin reading in the bible of the many kinds of interpretations Israel and her teachers debated about. This becomes especially noticeable between the "false prophets" and the "true prophets" in the lands of Israel. Each opposing group had an idea of God which impacted how they lived and worshipped. Over time these disagreements divided Israel into two nations.
Israel proper, the older nation with a much greater history of religious worship, eventually came under Assyrian rule and was scattered by defeat and exile (the "ten lost tribes"). Judah, the newer nation, lasted nearly as long as Israel once had, but was also similarly defeated and exiled under the rule of another conquering power, Babylon. When later recomposed as a shell of itself under Ezra and Nehemiah, Judah's holistic idea of canonical law and what it meant to live by it also broke down into a thousand pieces. This then presented to its people as many choices as there were priests. Those early priests who may have first followed the Ezra tradition later, in the absence of any further "divine revelation" during a time of "Intertestmental Silence" birthed as many Hebrew sects as we now have today in the Christian church (... well a few more, I would admit).
This especially came into sharp reveal when Jesus came across the stricter interpretations of the Hebrew religion which later birthed a corrected "Rabbinic form" of the Hebrew faith a hundred years later to offset the corruption which had pervaded it. By doing this Jesus declared to Jewish religious leaders of His day that they had misapprehended and misappropriated God's truth of love and grace for judgment and works. A truth which when denied disassembled into a more "religious code" of conduct and beliefs which said, "If you do this, and believe that, and do these things, than God will approve you." To this Jesus said this kind of faith was false, wholly worthless, and deeply misleading.
At which point Christianity arose on the very last remaining remnants and surviving strands of the Hebraic faith delved from the best traditions of Ezra many years earlier to birth a whole new religion. One bourne not only upon Jesus' teachings but upon His very atonement itself. Now does all this historical movement require that Moses be real or his legacy be true? Does it require that Moses actually transcribed God's 10 Commandment on Mt. Sinai? Or rather, perhaps in some way, God set down a codification of divine faith which was birthed within a small gathering of pious people granted a greater ken of fellowship by the Spirit with Himself and His desires for their lives? In the long view of things I think we must admit that however this ancient faith developed and came to be, it now is, and is as powerful now as when it first formed so many long years ago in yesteryear's deep legacies irrespective of our greater academic and cultural awareness of today. God is real, He is present, and He moves with us towards redeeming our lives and the world we live in.
Which also means we should reserve the right to restructure the Christian faith should it stray from the simplicity of its first principles even as Jesus did in His day - especially in light of a fundamental conviction that today's more popular forms of faith are misleading many through the false idea of who God is, what He expects, and who we must be in order to earn His allegiance. These kinds of faith-pictures do not help in apprehending the God of Salvation. From a religious sociological perspective it seems more truthful to say, "There is a God who is influencing His creation in such a way that our redemption - and that of creation - may grow and thrive in the lands of sin and evil in which we daily live."
Conclusion
As a theist - especially a metaphysical and ontologic theist - this makes more sense to me than the oft-times senselessness of preachers preaching a literalized bible out of time, out of sense, and out of mind. If I were to hold to these more traditional ideas than as a thinking Christian I would lose my faith rather than gain back to my faith the richness of its long developmental history gleaned from the sociobiological and evolutionary history of its human species as it adapts to its environment that it might survive. I think this is one reason we see so many leaving the church. Christianity has become outdated to the understanding of the world asking questions the faithful are forbidden to ask. I also think that should we begin answering those questions many would similarly return.
For some of the church it can hold to a mythical bible and be content. In fact, I must allow this, if not even encourage it for those who do not have the same strong faculties of faith others may have. Paul says this is the difference between those who drink milk or eat meat; or those who wish to mature in the faith in ministries and teachings beyond where they could quite naturally stop. But for others of us, we must pull back the withholding curtain of religion to evolve our own God-ward faith lest we become like the Jews of Jesus' day and lose our faith altogether through misunderstanding and false beliefs.
In final analysis, God is all around us. His revelation speaks daily - if not moment by moment - to us. We are not left without the divine witness either of God or His Spirit. In this our hearts and minds and souls rejoice in God's presence even as we are sadden by the oppression of sin or heartlessness of religion. We stand together as a faith legion, and together seek to grasp the simplicity of God's love in the sublimeness of its power. Here is where we stand and on no other bedrock as living testaments to the faiths of our forefathers, to Christ's redemption, and verily, to God's self-revelation. Amen.
As you may have noticed, on a number of occasions I get asked questions that I simply can’t answer. I received one such question this week, about the history of the Hebrew language. Here is how the questioner phrased it:
What is our earliest evidence for Hebrew as a written language? I’ve been to apologetic seminars where they say it’s long been said by atheists that the Hebrew Bible can’t be trusted because the Hebrews didn’t have a written language until well after the stories in the OT would’ve taken place. The evidence that the Hebrews had a written language in close proximity to the Biblical stories is based on pottery evidence and things of that nature. I’m sure these are topics you are very familiar with and I’d appreciate your take.
It’s actually amazing how many topics I’m not familiar with at all! So, not knowing the answer, I asked a colleague of mine who is an expert in Hebrew philology, Joseph Lam (he teaches courses in my department in Hebrew and other Semitic languages, and on the religion, culture, and literature of the Ancient Near East, and in Hebrew Bible; his office is across the hall from mine). I simplified the question to get the heart of it. This is what I said in an email to him.
Joseph,
Someone has asked me the question below. Damn if I know! I don’t need a long exposition, just a basic answer will do (some kind of inscription?)
What is our earliest evidence for Hebrew as a written language?
Here is his very helpful response.
It depends on what you define as Hebrew. We have a number of inscriptions from Palestine in the late 2nd millennium/early 1st millennium BCE (which is when Hebrew mostly likely branched off as a distinct language from the broader “Canaanite” family of languages), but early Hebrew and Canaanite are difficult to distinguish from one another, especially in short inscriptions (sometimes a single word). For a long time the standard answer was the Gezer Calendar from the late 10th century (900’s) BCE, but I now think that text is better described as Phoenician or common Canaanite. Others would say the more recently discovered Khirbet Qeiyafa ostracon (11th/10th century), but there are various oddities to that text that make it difficult to classify. There are also a number of short inscriptions from Tel Rehov that have been dated archaeologically to the 10th/9th centuries. The upshot is, there are a number of candidates from the 10th/9th centuries, but certainly by the 8th century we have many more unambiguously “Hebrew” inscriptions.
For more detail, I would recommend to your readers the following online article (and the article to which it responds):
Fantastic. Just what I needed. The questioner was not a scholar, but an interested lay person, who was especially interested in the question of whether, if there was a Moses living in say the 13th c BCE, he would have been able to write. Do you have an opinion? (I myself don’t think there *was* a Moses, but still, assuming there was…)
Here is Joseph’s short and very interesting response.
If there was a Moses, raised in the Egyptian court, he probably would have learned to write in Egyptian! The texts of the Pentateuch, whoever wrote them, are NOT in 13th century language; they are in classical 1st millennium Hebrew. Whatever a hypothetical 13th century Moses wrote, whether in Egyptian or Canaanite or something else, that’s NOT what we have preserved in the Pentateuch.
Yesterday's post showed a solid response to Process Philosophy. Curious readers "dropped in" from around the world. Small in numbers but promising a great beginning. In contrast, where I live in West Michigan there was no response. Perhaps even indifference, which was sad to contemplate. Which I suspect may be due to the lack of suffering we live with here in the Great Lakes States far from the destructive forces of hurricanes and flooding, corrupt government and with an abundance of green earth, fresh water, and ample food supplies. But isn't it curious that without suffering there can never be fundamental questions raised to a present system of capitalism which can so easily blind societies to the needs of those it harms, denigrates, steps on, or uses. As good as capitalism is it has its failures when not imposing upon itself a "generosity" of governance, business, or help to societies at large. Thankfully many capitalists I know in my area are consciously aware of the help they can bring to the school systems, the jails, the non-profits, churches, and colleges. Their generosity of spirit has left indelible marks of goodness, wholeness, and restoration throughout the lives of our community and it shows.
But if I were asked where forward thinking may now be occurring in the world it seems from the perspective of the responses I received to my process post that it is coming from those countries which suffer - and especially those which are non-Western, if not non-American. And yet, this is also where the greatest revival to the Christian faith is coming from: the non-white, non-European churches of God. And it is fascinating to behold as oppressed societies become enlivened by the Spirit of God to rise up against their misfortune to restore benevolent governments enacting merciful judgment, bring healing to war-torn or famished communities, and seek out the good and beautiful in their own way. However hard the experience amazingly humanity continually rises against its worst elements seeking life the way it was meant to be.
No less have I been amazed by the new Christian theologies of tomorrow attempting to sort out the deficiencies of yesterday's old-line beliefs, creeds, and commitments. These past recent decades have found many souls searching for a more open-and-embracing character of the kingdom of God on this earth. At present, under either capitalistic or socialistic forms of government, societal power rises on the behest of militarism or aggressive trade policies of domination. "To the winner goes the spoils," as they say. But it rings hollow in my ears, as it does to many, knowing those spoils came at the expense of lives lost to enslavement, misuse, or aggrieved when obtaining them. In a Process System of Governance and Economy power may now come to reside within a society through postmodern-liberation forms moving away from an old world system of non-process thinking. This is noticeably evidenced in the remaining residual forms of old-line modernity rejuvenated and modelling beggarly neo-modern forms of chaos and anarchy. Known as post-postmodernism, it can be seen in the results found within Post-Truth societies telling lies to their people through propaganda programs supporting corrupt, oppressive forms of government and economy.
In the world of ideas, culture and global co-mutuality, lies the continuing strength of postmodernism as it casts off the evil twins of modernity - one old and the other evolving (this latter form is known as post-postmodernism as mentioned immediately above). And it may be through the capture of the best ideas found in Process Philosophy coupled with the best of the world's religions (broadly described as "Process Religion" or "Process Theology") that humanity may discover new forms of society which might replenish the human spirit in ways never seen before in goodness and love.
Moreover, it should encourage us that the wisdom of the Spirit of God has never left the possession of the kingdom of God to the thieves of this world. Those societies which would bend all resources to their self-serving will. But to the humble and meek of this earth so harmed and oppressed through the centuries from lives which could've been magnified, meaningful, blessed, and giving back blessings to others. Human government has shown itself to be the harshest of taskmasters - one thoroughly distasteful and unblessed by the God who would heal our wounds, bind our hearts, and make whole the sickness of the world which lays upon us all. It is the desire of God that we do not possess but restore; do not take but give; do not live selfishly but bountifully with one another. That the new society of tomorrow had better first take stock of its ugly past driven by its lust for greed, power, money, and control. To understand the world envisioned by Jesus is the one that embraces the Beatitudes of His gospel, the gracious love held deep within its core, and the merciful justice required to represent all members of society (including the animals and this earth) rather than some.
To build a new society must be to build upon something better than what we have seen in either capitalism and socialism's failed structures formed under the ideals of modernism and more recently, neo-modernism. Both systems of economy and governance have collapsed spectacularly in their own separate ways. It is in their failure the world has yet been given another chance to reclaim a better idea of a liberal democracy or shared communistic system which would place the ideals of Jesus' gospel into action within society. So I think Process Philosophy might help in this area of societal restoration using the tools of peace, harmony, balance, respect, care, and love as its foundation stones. And thus my interest in helping people around the world grasp Process Thought. Learn it. And build upon it into the present day government and community structures within respective economies of societies. It seems to hold within it the Jesus principle of healing, and the God principal of restoration, through partnership with one another and with this earth.
To simply live the best of Process Philosophy as an attitude and way of being with one another by embedding the best of the Christian faith or World Religions into societies destroyed by its very hand neglecting Process Thought. In essence, it is a way to show others how God exists in a very different way than what we have perceived Him to be through our Western societies of dominance, imperialism, individualism, and unwise destruction of the earth. Its a way of living with one another and with this earth as we seek healing within ourselves and back to the land we have destroyed.
I think the quiet environmentalist, Aldo Leopold (of Wisconsin and the US Dept. of Forestry) would be very glad of this renewed effort should it be applied back to the land and into the lives of the people we have harmed. It cannot be stated strongly enough that God's creation, and more sublimely, the earth's care-restoration-healing, is the path back to the caring and healing of ourselves and our sick societies and religions. From "without to within". This is the principle of the "inter/intra" which is fascinating to envision and to watch reclaim the destruction we have brought upon ourselves.
As a Western Christian let me say that the Christian heaven is not the one after death so many patiently wait and hope upon. Rather, the Christian heaven is the one here on this earth. The Christian motto must be: "As to the earth so with one another." We find renewal through learning how to restore the earth. We find restoration through discovering how nature is tightly interlinked within itself. Any other form of Christian heaven is worthless in this life. It simply doesn't matter. As Jesus observed, the afterlife is not where you build God's kingdom but here on this earth. This is what Jesus taught. Not the popular teachings of today that say otherwise.
Nor did Jesus teach a Greek view of eschatology or creation-management in Stoic terms (sic, Stoicism) denying this life to build upon the hope of the next. Nor to deny the body so that the spirit might find spiritual release. These are Greek ideas propagating from its binary systems of thought which are not the Hebrew understanding of creational soul-spirit-body wholeness, oneness, or unity. Unfortunately, it is this Greek-Hellenistic form of philosophy the Christian church picked up on and built into its early Christian doctrines using (Cartesian) dualism as it next seeped into medieval church doctrines speaking to the separation of natural theology from the spiritual, and then into its present day creeds of living for the next life rather than caring for this one.
This kind of Christian faith has been destructive to the world and needs to be replaced for a more humane, eyes-on-the-ground, kind of faith that sees in the present tense both earth and humanity. Thus I find Process Philosophy to be a very good system restating the broad democratic principles of freedom, justice, and liberty in forms that can receive a very different interpretation and outcome than what capitalism and socialism's deficient structures have shown. A new Age of Globalism is dawning and it would be well that we learn how to live bountifully with one another and with this wrecked earth than we have demonstrated over the eons of our existence.
In summary, Truth will out post-truth. Love will dig deeper into the soils of the human breast than fear and oppression. Care of one another will provide a stronger societal justice than mere laws and rules. Vision will build a better civilization than its lack of wisdom. Truly Wisdom cries in the streets of humanity to hear her voice yet none answer (Proverbs 1). Sadly, it may continue to be this way as climate change, human turmoil, economic inequities, and the human Anthropocene Age of ecological destruction march steadily onwards. But we are faced with a better choice. A choice to change using a better form of societal philosophy or religious gospel lest our next efforts at creational restoration be all for nought eventuating in the destruction of our species. It will be the "nuclear test" of the Global Age that we no longer destroy all we possess but learn to give back all we have taken from one another and from this earth. This is the God/Jesus principle of co-mutuality, self-sustenance, peace, and goodwill.
Back in 2009 I began what now seems to be a ten year project of which I am nearly done. It was undertaken to update a traditional Christianity I had grown up with from a classically Reformed tradition (in this case, Baptist) from the influences of Fundamentalism and later, Conservative Evangelicalism, through a series of churches, schools, and eventuating in my graduation from a Baptist Seminary which favored Covenantal Reformed Theology over Dispensationalism. My roots were in Arminianism as a Baptist but by education (even in those Baptistic churches I attended) was Calvinistic.
Around this time I began to transition in a very personal way. A deeply personal way as if the Holy Spirit came upon me then suddenly placed me into a wilderness of rocks and heat far far away from all human help. I discovered very quickly it was a spiritually dark place that did not hear the voice of God. It was as if I was placed apart from God's presence which left me asking a defening "why" without answer. This then began my training and orientation out of a pious past. I now lived in an uncircumcised land where I could ask the foundational questions which needed asking while learning to listen in a new way apart from the echoes of my past training and education, readings and teachings.
Nevertheless, it was a disquieting place to spiritually live. I felt very much like the prophet Jeremiah thrown roughly into a miry pit of clay to be left their to rot and decay. And it was of the Spirit's own making. Not mine, as I intended nothing so severe, so complete, so withdrawing. And there was no help. No one to turn to. Even family failed to understand. And if they did it was surprise and alarm without ability to understanding. It was a very singular event which seems even now to haunt me in a good way rather than in a threatening way.
From that deeply felt personal experience it was as if I was reborn again. Through that time I never doubted God's existence even though I asked if He were real, if His Bible was true, if my life's work was meaningless. But there was no booming speech from the Divine. Only silence. A deep silence. And this silence did not lift. It was a place of spiritual aloneness. A joyless pit I did not seek to escape but to allow this time given to me to form me for fear that I would leave its lessons too soon. And so I stayed in the silence and prayed and searched. To move towards a new spiritual understanding I could not get from my past faith travels. In response, when finally discovering none could help I began to read with an attitude of skepticism, allowing uncertainty to be my guide without wishing to escape its cold heart.
And then, nearly a year to the day, I was delivered from this spiritual pit of great darkness and could see afresh. It was as if looking for the first time with a new set of spiritual eyes. Even though God's presence had fled from me right from the onset, in a curious way His Spirit did not leave mine own. How the two experiences can be separated I cannot explain. It just was. As such, the Spirit filled me, directed my thoughts, moved my soul to form this present website and share my experiences so that others might learn of God in a new way. One that would resonate with my classical training but move more deeply towards significant, contemporary forms, of understanding. In the end, my soul as well as my head, needed an updated faith that could move forward into a post-truth era of today's anarchal period of post-postmodernism. Fortunately, before this era arose I had the opportunity to understand its earlier, more benevolent - if not global twin - of postmodernism, which had several decades earlier thrown off the rigors and darkness of modernity at the onset of the horrible world wars of the twentieth century to come. In America this time proved to be the Vietnam era of social and civil unrest. In Europe it came sooner because of the wars.
At which point the Spirit held me tight and drove me to labor and write, publish and edit, everything which made sense to me. I later discovered not only I, but many many others, had gone through this same experience around the world so that now, no longer am I alone but am pursuing spiritual engagement with all my brothers and sisters, each Holy Spirit driven to lend hope and help to a world gone mad. To preach against the evils of a Christianity needing deep reform from its beggarly doctrines forbading love to the lowliest creature, the earth, or even one another. To seek a faith that isn't filled with hate and darkness but would see every man, woman, and child for the multuality we bear with one another rather than to cheapen life. To lay a new foundation down for those seeking a more meaningful spiritual direction. Into this journey has come a thousand different directions from an army of contemporary Christian Messengers who are thinking through what it means to recognize the deep necessity of their task. One requiring of God's many prophets and His teachers to speak out to the church, to humanity as a whole, and even to God's creation we have so carelessly destroyed without wisdom or comprehension.
In essence, when I transitioned to Arminianism and away from Calvinism I found I had to re-appraise the entirety of my belief structures to allow for the openness required in seeing the world anew. It brought with it fundamentally new ways of viewing Jesus, the bible, even God Himself. It also allowed me to understanding how my past traditions had become entangled in their own webs needing deliverance - not defensive apologetics by strident pen and voice. And this I endeavored to do which has led to many discoveries - first on my own, but later through others - of a attitude not wishing to defend my faith but to accept and discover God in all things again despite my inherited faith. One of those discoveries is the idea of an Open and Relational Process theology. For me ORT is a beginning, but not an end, to a fuller search seeking a broader hermeneutic in which to live, study, preach, and minister. Along with many other discoveries outside of ORT its force has allowed for a better appreciation of science, sociological, anthropology, worship, and ministry.
As consequence, Relevancy22 is a very wide-and-open site as I attempt to provide a more honest look of how today's Millennials or Generation-Z PostMillennials might live and breath out the Divine faith of Jesus into the world and church. In hindsight, if this website were to be read sequentially, from earliest date to latest, you would witness the progress of my thoughts as they formed actively - not perfectly, but imperfectly - as I tried to grasp and understand the meaning of what was being said on any one topic through the new eyes of the Spirit moving my being to write until I can no longer. And so I will. And pray for those faithful supplicants here to not give up hope. That the Christian faith can be meaningful rather than religious. That the bible can be the Bible through the eyes of Faith. And that good works as modeled by Jesus have tremendous spiritual impact as only God can energize those labors when done truthfully in His name.
A Short Course Introducing Whitehead's Philosophy and Helping Readers Understand Passages from Process and Reality Featuring Twenty Short Videos.
Where to Begin?
Readers who are interested in the process tradition as a whole will want to start with the Introduction.
Readers who attracted to Whitehead's idea that nature is alive may want to begin with Lesson Five.
Readers interested in jazz and innovation might begin with Lesson Twelve.
Readers interested in a summary of Whitehead's understanding of experience might begin with Lesson Seventeen.
Readers interested in the arts might start with Lesson Eighteen.
Readers interested in Whitehead's understanding of God might begin with Lesson Nineteen.
Readers wondering why people turn to Whitehead in the first place might begin with Lesson Twenty.
Why Short Videos?
The educational videos below are intended to help people in different parts of the world read Whitehead's Process and Reality. There are now many centers for process thought on every continent. The videos are created with an international audience in mind.
Most of the videos below are about six minutes long. The first video offers a general introduction and the ones that follow offer interpretations of important passages in the Whitehead's book, beginning with the Preface.
We recognize that many of our listeners are not native English speakers. Many of them are in mainland China, where we are doing much work these days. We wish we could offer these videos in multiple languages.
Nevertheless, the narrator -- Dr. Jay McDaniel -- speaks very slowly so that people for whom English is a second language can understand easily. The videos may be helpful for those wishing to practice English.
Suggestions for Using the Videos
How can the videos be used? Ideally, the videos will be supplemented by the guidance of a teacher on-site who adds his or her own guidance to the project of reading Process and Reality. Already they are used in certain settings in the United States in this way. But in the absence of a teacher, it is still possible, with help from the videos, to work through Process and Reality alone or in small reading groups.
Readers interested in the more general relevance of process thought to religious life, including Jewish and Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu, can learn from the increasingly pluralistic work of Process and Faith.
Readers interested in general applications of process thought to areas such as education, ecology, economics, spirituality, physics, biology, and other topics can gain much from the excellent resources of the Center for Process Studies, in Claremont, California.
Who is Alfred North Whitehead?
You can learn much about Whitehead by going to the website for the Center for Process Studies. In this website we also offer a short introduction to his life and career.
We will be offering more short-video courses, on other books by Whitehead, and on applications of process thought to daily life and community development, as the months unfold. This is just the beginning.
Process Thought is an Attitude and Outlook on Life, International in Scope, Influenced by the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
This video introduces process thought and explains the purpose of the series. Dr. Jay McDaniel (the narrator) introduces himself and presents process thought as an attitude toward life emphasizing creativity, interconnectedness, and respect for life. He gives you a sense of who and where process thinkers are, and he introduces a diagram -- the Tree Diagram -- which compares process thought to a growing tree.
The roots are Whitehead's philosophy; the trunk consists of twenty key ideas that flow from his philosophy; and the branches consist of application. The twenty key ideas can be found in English and Chinese on the JJB website: Twenty Key Ideas. JJB also introduces many applications of process thinking on a wide variety of topics: ecology, education, culture, spirituality, science, art, music, and food culture, for example.
However, this course focuses on the roots as developed in Whitehead's Process and Reality. As you take the course it is helpful, but not necessary, to have a copy of Whitehead's Process and Reality alongside you, making sure that you read the selected pages. It is best to read the text very slowly, without rushing. Do not worry if there are phrases you do not understand. If you watch and reflect upon these videos, you will have a good understanding of many ideas in Process and Reality.
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, pages xi-xii
Key Theme: There are four sources for wisdom: Science, Art, Religion, and Ethics.
This lesson focuses on the first two pages of the preface to Process and Reality. With help from highlighted texts, it presents Whitehead's aims in writing the book; explains that Whitehead spoke of his philosophy as a philosophy of organism; and talks about four kinds of experience Whitehead wanted to unify: scientific, aesthetic, moral, and religious. At the end Dr. McDaniel explains that, for Whitehead, the wisdom of the perspective he develops will lie in the overall scheme, and that this scheme is gradually developed throughout the book.
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiii
Key Theme: Thinking and feeling and decision-making form a whole.
Following a brief review of the previous lesson, this lesson turns to a list of nine fallacies which Whitehead lists in the preface found on page xiii of the Preface. These are fallacies which Whitehead seeks to avoid. This lesson focuses on three of them: (1) the fallacy of distrusting speculative philosophy, (2) the fallacy of trusting that language is an adequate expression of ideas, and (3) the fallacy of thinking that the human mind can be divided into mutually external compartments or faculties.
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiii (cont.)
Key Theme: Reality does not conform to subject-predicate grammar.
Lesson three continues in explication of nine ideas repudiated or rejected by Whitehead as he begins to develop his philosophy. After a short review of the previous lesson, Dr. McDaniel discusses one of the most important "fallacies" Whitehead sought to avoid. It is that of thinking that the world in which we live, and our experience of it, can be understood on the analogy of the subject-predicate mode of grammatical expression. In so doing the lesson introduces an idea that is central to the process tradition: namely that "entities" emerge out of their relations with other "entities" and that there are no entities existing in isolation. The emphasis on relationality is one reason that Whitehead called his philosophy a philosophy of organism.
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiii (cont.)
Key Theme: In philosophy no form of experience should be excluded.
Lesson Four presents Whitehead's idea that the starting point for philosophical thought is experience and explains that, for Whitehead, all kinds of experience must be taken into account: experience anxious and carefree, experience happy and grieving, experience emotional and experience intellectual, experience normal and abnormal, experience asleep and experience awake. This lesson also introduces the idea that Whitehead was a radical empiricist, rejecting the sensationalist doctrine of perception in the interests of recognizing the potential wisdom of many forms of experience.
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiii (cont.)
Key Theme: There are no vacuous actualities; nature is alive.
With help from visual images from the French artist and post-Impressionist painter, Paul Cezanne (1839-1906), this lesson introduces Whitehead's idea that the whole of the universe is "alive" in varying degrees and ways, and that there are no vacuous actualities. A vacuous actuality is an actuality which lacks any interiority or agency; it is a mere thing. Whitehead's philosophy is known for its proposal that all genuine actualities in our universe prehend their actual worlds from their own perspective, and that the objects we see in our world are either genuine actualities in their own right or nexus (aggregates) of such actualities. Mountains, for example, are aggregate expressions of actualities with prehensive vitality. One well-known process philosopher, David Ray Griffin, speaks of this as panexperientialism. In this website we sometimes call it panprehensionality. Whitehead's notion of prehension is dealt with in a subsequent lesson.
Relevant Text: Process and Reality, Preface, page xiv
Key Theme: We all have worldviews, but no one has the final word.
Lesson Six introduces four impressions that dominate Whitehead's thinking as he writes Process and Reality: (1) The age of criticism has done it's work, and it is time for construction, (2) the true method of philosophical construction is to frame a set of ideas, drawing from many forms of experience, and see if they help interpret and illuminate experience, (3) all forms of thought are influenced by a philosophical scheme of one sort or another, acknowledged or not, and (4) when it comes to sounding the depths of things, all schemes are finite and fallible. "The merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly."
Key Theme: Creativity is the ultimate reality of the universe
Lesson Seven explores four key themes, based on a very important paragraph in the first chapter of Part One of Process and Reality. The ideas are that (1) the ultimate reality is Creativity, which is ultimate by virtue of its actualizations; (2) God is the primordial self-actualization of creativity, but not the ultimate reality itself, (3) the emphasis on Creativity resembles Asian -- Chinese and Indian -- ways of thinking; and (4) when it comes to thinking about ultimates, some process thinkers (but not Whitehead himself) speak of different kinds of ultimates around which different cultural and religious traditions may be centered.
Key Idea: The actual entity is a process of prehending the actual world.
Lesson Eight begins the process of explicating the eight key "categories of existence" as adumbrated in Whitehead's Process and Reality. Among Whiteheadians there are two complementary ways of understanding an actual entity. One way begins with submicroscopic matter and works "up" to human experience. It presents actual entities as very tiny energy-events with the depths of matter. The other way begins with a single moment of human experience and works "down" to submicroscopic matter. It presents actual entities as activities, or processes, amid which, in the moment at hand, a human being feels the presence of the actual world. This lesson begins in the second way. It embodies what philosophers might call a phenomenological approach to Whitehead's idea of an actual entity. In the tradition of Whiteheadian scholarship there are many approaches: phenomenological, speculative, and post-structural.
Phenomenological approaches begin with lived human experience; speculative approaches begin with speculations about the universe; post-structural approaches begin more general sensibilities concerning multiplicity, difference, interconnectedness, and flow. In these lessons we often begin phenomenologically, but feel free to turn in the other two directions. And so it is with most Whiteheadian thinkers.
Key Idea: The many become one and are increased by one.
Lesson Nine considers selected passages from six paragraphs in a section of Whitehead's Process and Reality called The Category of the Ultimate. One of the most important ideas presented in these passages is that Creativity is, in Whitehead's words, "the universal of universals characterizing ultimate matters of fact." His idea is that every actual fact in the universe -- every actual entity -- is a "production of novel togetherness." This means that an entity is not simply "one" but also "many." It is the many becoming one. The video uses the example of a child's relationship to her parents to illustrate the point. Her parents are part of who she is, and in her very inclusion of them within her own life, she is more than them. Always she is becoming herself, and the self who becomes at any given moment becomes part of a many which influence her in the future.
Key Theme: Everything - even God -- is an act of experiencing.
Lesson Ten focuses on a unique paragraph in Process and Reality, where Whitehead proposes an answer to the question: What is everything made of? Whereas some traditions in the world might way that everything is made of something like matter and whereas some might say that everything is made of consciousness; Whitehead proposes a more Buddhist or Chinese response. Everything is made of events or, to be more specific, drops of experience, complex and interdependent. Here we find a vivid instance of Whitehead's event-cosmology. In traditional Chinese thinking philosophers speak of the totality of all that exists as wan wu (萬物) sometimes translated as the Ten Thousand Things. In a Whiteheadian context the Ten Thousand Things are Ten Thousand Events. There is nothing more real than events, and they are themselves drops of experience. At any given moment we ourselves are events composed of our own experience, yet related to everything else in the universe. God is an event, too. And so is a puff of energy in outer space. The universe is a vast unfolding network of inter-being or, perhaps better, inter-events.
Key Idea: There are two kinds of reality: actuality and potentiality.
In Whitehead's philosophy something is "real" if it can be experienced as an object of one sort or another and thus, as an object, make a difference in experience. Lesson Eleven introduces the idea that some objects of experience are possibilities rather than actualities. They are real but not actual, because they do not feel or prehend their surroundings and do not make decisions. The most abstract of these objects are what Whitehead calls eternal objects. They are pure potentials which may be actualized in some universe or cosmic epoch, even if not our own. These objects are similar to Plato's Forms, and Whitehead was indeed influenced by Plato. The lesson concludes with remarks concerning the creative and performing arts and the natural sciences, suggesting that they are ways of exploring and presenting potentialities.
Key Idea: Propositions are not simply statements of belief; they are lures for feeling.
Lesson Twelve discusses Whitehead's idea of a proposition -- or lure for feeling -- showing how propositions are means by which novelty enters the world. By way of illustration, this segment plays some of the music of the jazz musician, John Coltrane, and presents propositions in light of the innovative spirit of jazz. Whitehead proposes that, at every moment of our lives, we are improvising responses to given situations, adding our own voice to the very history of the universe. Other creatures are doing this, too. We live in an improvisational universe, in which indeterminacy is as real, and as important, as determinacy. Thus, for Whitehead, the future is always open, and the future is never entirely pre-determined by the past or the present. This is the case even for God, who knows what is possible in the future, but not what is actual until it becomes actual.
Key Idea: Prehensions are the means by which entities are present in others.
Lesson Thirteen introduces two of the most important ideas in Whitehead's philosophy: prehensions and subjective forms. . Every actual entity, every moment of experience, consists of acts of experiencing or prehending many realities which "become one" in the act of experiencing them. The realities can be other actual entities or pure potentialities, or combinations of them. Prehensions may be conscious or unconscious; in human life most are unconscious. Consciousness is but the tip of the experiential iceberg. Prehensions are the most fundamental element in actual entities, the means by which the universe is held together and things are present in one another. Lesson Thirteen takes a conversation between a mother and her daughter as a way of illustration prehension and their complementary notion: subjective forms.
Key Idea: Reality is thoroughly social. Molecules and atoms, planets and stars are societies, too. There are no self-contained facts.
Lesson Fourteen introduces the ideas of nexus and society to readers. Most of the macroscopic objects that we perceive around us are not single actual entities, but rather aggregates of actual entities unified by their prehensions of one another (nexus) and perhaps also by a common characteristic which they inherit from predecessors in the the nexus, thus giving them more specific definition (society). There are many kinds of societies. A human being is a society too. She is a personally-ordered society who consists of many moments of experience (many actual entities) in succession, each inheriting from the predecessors with special intimacy. There is no single person who underlies the change; there are many subjects in succession. The idea is very Buddhist: "No thinker thinks twice and no experiencer experiences twice." Lesson Fourteen ends by offering the idea that perhaps the universe as a whole is gathered into an ongoing Life, too. This is what Whitehead means by the consequent nature of God.
Key Idea: The body plays an essential role in human life: the withness of the body.
Lesson Fifteen introduces three ideas that are important to Whitehead in Process and Reality: the withness of the body, experience in the mode of causal efficacy, and experience in the mode of presentational immediacy. Experience in the mode of causal efficacy is visceral experience. It occurs when we feel affected or influenced by bodily states and by realities outside our bodies in direct, energetic ways. It is an important part of bodily experience and serves a perpetual reminder that, in our daily lives, we are with our bodies and our bodies are with us. Whitehead calls it the withness of the body. This does not mean that our minds are precisely identical with our bodies; we can have attitudes toward our bodies which are healthy or unhealthy, and these attitudes occur in our minds. But our bodies are marvelously intricate and complex systems of energy which nourish us, give us a sense of direction, offer us wisdom, and connect us with the world. And ultimately, says Whitehead, the whole world is like a body to us. Even God -- if God exists-- is embodied. The universe is God's body.
Key Idea: Decision is the very meaning of actuality
Lesson Sixteen focuses on Whitehead's idea that the very meaning of actuality lies in the notion of decision. In Whitehead's philosophy a decision is not a "conscious" decision, but rather a subjectivity activity -- conscious or unconscious -- in which some possibilities for responding to a given situation are excluded or cut off, while others are then actualizes. A woman climbing a mountain, movement by moment, is making conscious decisions which constitute her very actuality in the moment at hand. And so, thinks Whitehead, are the energy-events within the very depths of atoms. Understood in this way, decision is one of the primary expressions of the ultimate reality of the universe: creativity. Decisions may be wise or unwise, productive or destructive, violent or graceful -- whatever their nature, they are the very reason why things unfolds as they do. From Whitehead's perspective the universe is not simply an unfolding of abstract ideas. The world is not the outcome of mathematical formulas. It is the outcome of decisions.
Key Idea: Every moment of human experience is a concrescence of the universe.
Lesson Seventeen offers the most systematic summary of Whitehead's idea of experience available in this series of videos. The diagrams were created by a student at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas, USA. There is a danger in diagrams, insofar as they can lead people into overly-static and linear ways of looking at the world. Whitehead's philosophy is more holistic and dynamic. This means that, when we think of experience, we need to hold onto diagrams with a relaxed grasp, fully aware that experience is always more than images. Nevertheless, the diagrams may help viewers more fully understand Whitehead's concept of experience. In the narrative the experiencing subject is imagined as a human being, but it is important to remember that, in Whitehead's philosophy, there is subjectivity everywhere: in the infinitely small and the infinitely large. Even in the depths of atoms, and even in the depths of God, there is something akin to what is depicted in the diagrams: prehending, subjective form, and decision. However, in God, as Whitehead understands God, there is no perishing of immediacy. God is the inclusive and everlasting act of concrescence who shares in all finite moments such as those depicted above. (See Lesson Nineteen.)
Key Idea: The beauty of life is felt in contrast; the aim of life is to weave them.
Lesson Eighteen introduces an idea which is extremely important to Whitehead, and which he lists as among the eight categories of existence he seeks to illuminate in Process and Reality. This is the idea of contrasts. For some in the English-speaking world, the word contrast can suggest conflict; but for Whitehead it suggested complementarity. The yin-yang diagram in traditional Chinese thinking offers a helpful image of contrasts. Whitehead was interested in how we can experience objects in the world through contrasts, and also in how we try to weave our own emotions -- our subjective forms -- into contrasts. He believed that all experiencing subjects, anywhere in the universe, are seeking contrasts or, to use another word important to him, beauty. They - we -- seek harmony and intensity, neither to the exclusion of the other. In the very seeking there is a zest or vitality which, for Whitehead, is part of life's meaning. Even the adventure of the universe as One -- even God -- is enriched by and forever seeking a harmony of contrasts.
Relevant Idea: God is a non-coercive guide and a fellow sufferer who understands.
Lesson Nineteen presents Whitehead's understanding of God. This is an aspect of Whitehead's cosmology which which many religiously-minded people find especially important: whether Jewish or Muslim or Christian, Hindu or Taoist or Buddhist. In Whitehead's philosophy God has two aspects: a non-coercive but guiding aspect which is home to all the potentialities which the universe can actualize, and which is within each experiencing subject as its own innermost lure toward full aliveness; and a receptive side which shares in the experiences of all living beings, anywhere and everywhere, and is affected by all that is felt. God is, as it were, the deep Mind and the deep Listening. Whitehead thought it more rational to believe in God, thus understood, than not to believe in God; and he believed that this way of thinking about God is consonant with the view of the universe we gain from post-mechanistic science. In a later book, Adventures of Ideas, he speaks of the guiding side of God as an Eros by which the universe is lured into adventure, moment by moment, epoch by epoch; and the receptive side as a Harmony of Harmonies within which, in certain moments, the restlessness of adventure drops away and people feel deep peace.
Lesson Twenty brings the series to a close by articulating various reasons why people in different parts of the world are attracted to Whitehead's philosophy. To the many reasons identified in the video, one very important reason should be added. Many scholars in the academic world believe that Whitehead's philosophy can advance knowledge in specific disciplines: chemistry, physics, psychology, sociology, biology, philosophy, economics, business, culture studies. The work of the Center for Process Studies in Claremont, California, can introduce readers to developments in these and many other areas. It is the best single, online resource for finding resources and keeping abreast of developments within the disciplines.
At the same time, Whitehead's philosophy offers a way of moving beyond the disciplinary fragmentation that has separated academic disciplines from one another and from forms of practice, in real world, which might help guide the world toward sustainable communities. When it comes to practicing process thought, some Whiteheadian thinkers turn toward particular questions of public policy: economics,agriculture, manufacturing, education, governance. In this website, John Cobb's Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet and Foundations for a New Civilization offers an intimation of the policy-oriented directions. There is also much work being done today using Whitehead's thought encourage cross-cultural dialogue, including inter-religious dialogue. Why Whitehead? So many reasons.
This does not mean that Whitehead's philosophy has all the answers. For Whiteheadians the world needs many points of view, including many which offer critiques of Whitehead's own thinking. Whitehead hoped that his own ideas would be tested, applied, revised and, where necessary, replaced. And he did not want his philosophy to be turned into a dogma. Recall the point he makes in the preface: "How shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly." (xiv) Process philosophy is more -- much more -- than Whitehead. It is an ongoing tradition, inspired by Whitehead's ideas, but moving beyond his thinking, too, fully cognizant that there are no final answers, only lures for feeling.
