Quotes & Sayings


We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater

There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead

Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater

The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller

The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller

According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater

Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater

Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger

Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton

I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon

Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII

Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut

Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest

We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater

People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon

Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater

An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater

Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann

Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner

“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”

Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton

The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon

The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul

The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah

If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer

God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon

Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson

We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord

Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater

To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma

It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater

God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater

In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall

Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater

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Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write off the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater

Monday, March 23, 2020

A.N. Whitehead - A Conspectus of Whitehead's Metaphysics



Alfred North Whitehead


A Conspectus of A. N. Whitehead’s Metaphysics

by Peter Sjostedt-H

* To Peter's observations I will abridge it with my own using [RES]




  • A system of panpsycho-panentheism.
    • i.e. a panpsychism: that all entities have sentience (or, ‘proto-sentience’), combined with a panentheism: that God is nature and more
    • [RES - panexperientialism may be the more prefered route re inorganic matter]

  • Whitehead calls his system the ‘Philosophy of Organism’; it is also known as ‘Process Philosophy’.
    • Every entity is an organism, encapsulated in his sentence:
      • ‘Biology is the study of the larger organisms; whereas physics is the study of the smaller organisms.’ (SMW, ch. VI)
    • It is known as Process Philosophy because in actuality there are no static substances, but only events, occasions, processes.
    • [RES - In place of, or in addition to "organism" the idea of "Being & Event" might be added]

  • The smallest processes are called ‘actual occasions’, or ‘actual entities’.
    • These are drops of experience that constitute nature (cf. William James).

  • Actual entities are perspectives on the world, analogous to Leibniz’s monads. They are transitory: they become and they perish.

  • The process of an actual entity is called a concrescence. [It] involves:
  • an initial subjective aim to create that actual entity,
  • prehension of other actual entities,
  • subjective aim that conduces a decision, and
  • satisfaction that completes the process.
  • An initial subjective aim is bequeathed by the panentheistic God (see below) that sets off an experiential perspective.
  • [RES - The word "bequeathed" may speak of a determinate cosmos; as such, open and relational process theology would say God allows creational interminate freewill]

  • An actual entity prehends other actual entities, but not in the traditional relation of representation-to-object but rather as part-to-whole.
    • i. e. the prehension of an actual entity is the actual inclusion of that other actual entity within itself. This fusion is called vectoring. There is no absolute subject-object dichotomy. (cf. Henri Bergson)

  • The type of qualia that actual entities employ for their prehensions are called ‘eternal objects’. These are metaphysical ‘pure potentials’ and subsist within a realm of ‘God’ (see below).
  • Prehensions can be positive or negativephysical or conceptual:
    • Positive prehensions are of what is included in the actual entity. [sic, Formed Relationships]
    • Negative prehensions reject entities and concepts for inclusion. [sic, Unformed Relationships]
    • Physical prehensions are of other actual entities.
    • Conceptual prehensions are of eternal objects alone.
    • There are also impure and hybrid prehensions which are combinations of the above.

  • An actual entity is determined by past prehensions, but is also to varying extents self-determined through its subjective aim that strives for experiential aesthetic intensity.

  • There is thus efficient causality in the inheritance of the prehensions of actual entities, and final causation (teleology) in the subjective aim of actual entities.
  • [RES - Prehensive Process --> AE / AO --> Process of Becoming]

  • Actual entities in aggregate are called nexūs, and if the nexūs share a common characteristic they are called societies. An electron is an example of a society, as is an atom, molecule and crystal.


  • Whitehead adopts a dual-aspect theory whereby external appearance correlates to internal experience.

  • What are traditionally named ‘organisms’ are complex societies.

  • These high-grade societies ‘transmute’ a plurality of incoming prehensions into an abstracted unity for ease of comprehension. Common human sense perception is an example thereof.

  • There are two main species of human perception: perception in the mode of causal efficacy (PMCE) and perception in the mode of presentational immediacy (PMPI):
    • PMPI is commonly identified with all perception, being that from the five senses.
    • PMCE is the less distinct yet more ubiquitous internal experience of the actions and experiences of the past and concurrent surroundings flowing into the present.
    • Our actual perception is the combination of these two, a combination named ‘perception in the mixed mode of symbolic reference‘.
    • [RES - Sensation + experience = perception]

  • God is vital for the operations of Whitehead’s system. (S)He has two natures: the primordial and the consequent:
    • The primordial nature of God (PNG) is the realm of eternal objects.
      • The eternal objects are ingressed into all our experiences thereby determining the qualitative type of the experience.
    • The consequent nature of God (CNG) is the pantheistic unity of all experiences drawn into one higher consciousness.
    • PNG is unconscious; CNG is conscious.
    • [RES - Open & Relational Process Theology state that God IS and IS BECOMING ("I AM That I AM"). Thus, Experiential Event --> Prehensive Process --> Concresence as eternal cycle)]

  • God bestows the initial subjective aim for an actual entity as a lure for its concresence and the experiential intensity it evokes.
    • It is God’s purpose to enjoy the experiential intensities S(H)e provokes.
    • [RES - "enjoy" perhaps learn, take in, observe, be affected by, take action, etc]

  • God is not omnipotent as actual entities and their societies have their own teleology.
  • [RES - Open and Relational Process Theology may say God uses His omnipotence to sustain the cosmos but choses to guide, or participate, with it by its permission.]

  • God is not omniscient because the future does not yet exist because novelty emerges from actualities via their subjective aim and the infinity of eternal objects.
  • [RES - Open and Relational Process Theology may says unknowing is the nature of becoming.]

  • God is not omnibenevolent because morality is subordinate to aesthetic appreciation which is God’s desire. (Thus ‘God’ is perhaps a misnomer.)
  • [RES - Open and Relational Process Theology may rather say the God is always, and at all times, loving. It is both a choice but far deeper, it is who He is.]

  • Above Actual Entities and God, the third main tenet of Whitehead’s cosmology is Creativity.
    • God conditions creativity but it is beyond His control.

  • All but the PNG is subject to flux, to process, to novelty, to creativity.
    • Matter evolves as well as ‘organisms’, the laws of nature change, even the three dimensions of our extensive epoch will pass into history and in its place a cosmos of unimaginable difference will rise.

[*Note - RES - Based on Open & Relational Process Theology Whitehead's metaphysic of cosmology will need more rigorous adaptation as ORPT is a more recent subject not known during Whitehead's day though he was leaning into it.]


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