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 30, 2020

John Cobb - Whitehead's Process & Reality, Part II - Class Discussions


The Process of Being & Becoming


Did Kant create an inseparable gulf between the subjective (self) and the objective (science) so that the former is devoid of reality and the latter of value?

Question: MN

I am as far as can be from a trained philosopher but it seems to me that Kant is as much a hinge, a place where we went wrong, as Descartes is. Is that right? My understanding is that Kant “solved”, or put to sleep, the argument between subjective and objective realms of knowledge by proclaiming that they were by nature separate and incommensurable. Then, over time, because of the much greater efficacy and “power” in the observable world of the objective, the subjective kind of withered away, leaving what we have today; a secular world devoid of value, and a religious world devoid of reality. Do I have that at all right? I am just trying to remind myself of why this all matters, as I am a bit bogged down. Thx

Response: Jay McDaniel

What Kant set in motion was a turn to the subject as arbiter of all knowledge, because we can't know reality in itself; we can only know what is necessarily filtered through the categories in our minds. This gave rise later to an emphasis on subjective, first-person experience, as in existentialism, and human language, as in linguistic philosophies. Meanwhile, Kant notwithstanding, science made great strides in understanding what scientists believed to be an objective world, [one] independent of human projection. A twofold divide was [thus] created: humanities, dealing with subjective human experience, and the sciences, dealing with the objective world.

Whitehead seeks to overcome this [Kantian] dualism in several ways, one of which is to suggest that the very building blocks of the objective world are, in fact, moments of subjective experience. He formulates this in terms of what he calls the reformed subjectivist principle. Additionally, with his notion of experience in the mode of causal efficacy, he proposes that the objective world even apart from our mental categories finds its way into our own experience. He believes that this mode of experience was neglected by many philosophers, and that it provides a bridge between an objective (past actual world) and the immediacy of subjective experience, as enjoyed by humans and other animals and, for that matter, the energy-events with the depths of atoms. All occasions of experience, not just human occasions, begin with experience in the mode of causal efficacy, thinks Whitehead. In human life this experience is felt, among other ways, in what he calls the "with-ness of the body."

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Process-Relational Panentheism Diagram


How is God the Ultimate in Whiteheadian Thought?

Question: R.E. Slater

I finally completed Session 2 with Dr. Cobb. His last 10 minutes of so of discussion left me with a lot of questions. Is there something he might have written - an article or two - which might speak to what he was trying to express in a clearer way? I could pick out elements of his thought but it seemed a bit scrambled on a topic he had thought about for a long time. Especially on the idea of God as Ultimate or non-Ultimate vs Platonic thought and modern philosophy. Thanks.

Response: Jay McDaniel

Here's my take. If you ask the question: "Is there a thing or an activity of which all actual entities are expressions in their self-creativity and in the immediacy of the moment which can be manifested in the transition from one moment to the next?" Whitehead's answer is Creativity, not God. Understood in this sense Creativity is neither good nor evil; it can unfold in either way. It is the ultimate 'matter' of which all things, even God, are expressions. It is the ultimate reality.

And if you ask: "And is there a primordial manifestation of this Creativity which has preferences, which is on the side of life's well-being, and which shares in the joys and sufferings of all?" Whitehead's answer is God, understood as the primordial expression of Creativity.

Likewise, the primordial nature of God contains all the pure potentialities which can be actualized by the world: that is, eternal objects. Thus God is cosmic mind of sorts (an ultimate intelligence or wisdom) as well as a compassionate friend of the universe (a deep listening, the consequent nature). God is the ultimate actuality.

This is how I understand Whitehead and also John's view, developed in dialogue with Buddhism many years ago, that there are two ultimates: the ultimate reality of Creativity and the ultimate actuality of God. The idea is helpful because it opens us up to the possibility that different religious traditions may be attuned to different ultimates, all of which are 'real' in their way.

To this list we might add still more: e.g. the present moment of experience (Zen) and the sheer interconnectedness of all things (Chinese philosophy.) The word "ultimate" names different realities relative to the question being asked. Thus the idea of a single and exclusive "ultimate" is abandoned.

Response: R.E. Slater

Thank you Jay. I need to digest this a bit more but its direction helps me better understand how Whitehead was approaching the subject of the Ultimate. In relational terms, God shares, or creates, from himself a creation like himself... one that is relational, creative, self-becoming, etc. He allows agency to the creative process without determinative superintendency over it. God then is both the ultimate actuality as will as the eventuating causal expression of creativity et al as He fellowships, communes, and journeys with creation. I'm discovering the differences in Whitehead to philosophical and theological thought can be a lot to digest.


Follow-up Response: Jay McDaniel

One more thing to say, Russ. In Whitehead, God does not create the self-creativity of actual entiries. In the immediacy of the moment actual entities create in themselves a response to all the data they are given from the past actual world and God’s initial aims. This self-creativity is not reducible to God’s creativity or to the influences from the past. In this sense it is ultimate in its way. Even in the absence of God, it would be real. God works with this self-creativity but does NOT create it. This is one reason Whitehead names creativity as the ultimate reality. Even God has this capacity for self-creativity, but not God alone. God is ultimate in in a different way: as a lure for heightened creativity and a companion to all its expressions. It is God, not creativity. In whom monotheists plays their trust. This faith and awakening to creativity (as in some forms of Buddhist enlightenment and Hindu mysticism) are different, but both valid and potentially complementary. At least so it seems to me. Sorry to be so wordy.

Follow-up Response: R.E. Slater

Thank you Jay. I was thinking this but you helped fix the idea for me more concretely. That God is both the initial expression of creativity as He Himself is creative. Moreover, that creational creativity is an expression of God's creativity but without presidence over creational creativity in accordance with creational freewill agency. And finally, that both God and creation may everlastingly, to use John Cobb's term, create new creativities which have yet to be formed. This then would be the idea of "becoming" or "concrescence" of the organism or process-based union between God and creation.


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Process Theology re Ontology, Culpability & Theodicy

Question: TB

Keep bringing that goodness, Jay! This is such a helpful distinction for those [newbies] who are orienting to Whitehead. I've got some questions I'd hold out before you in the framing you are laying out that differentiates God and creativity that come from Christian contemplative streams (although it crosses many contemplative traditions).

First, a preface, then a few questions. If creativity is neither good nor evil, and needs God (principle of concretion) to create an actual world and to maintain a full openness for that system to function with true freedom, the possibility for evil must be a real possibility, yes? Some contemplatives will claim that there is nothing real but love (I think of Finley and the CAC living school here, as well as Eckhart Tolle and others in saying that "nothing real can be threatened and nothing unreal exists"). And yet, in our subjective experience of the world, evil, trauma, and suffering do become actualized in the world -- thus making it feel (as in a felt sense of the Whiteheadian metaphysic) that they do indeed "exist" in that they have become "actualized" at the very least as an emotive quality that is produced by an actual body.

I've had a hard time relegating actual suffering as merely a product of one's emotions (which are to be detached from in both the Christian and Buddhist contemplative streams in order to gain peace), or to in any way to make a metaphysical claim like the complex embodied or emotional experiences of personally ordered societies that include experiences of evil, trauma, and suffering are not "real" or "actual" in any way. For instance, Odin and Whitehead will say something like, "the suffering attains its end in the sense of peace — the infinity of God in the infinite suffering. this is only achieved through a psychical distancing, detachment, or disinterested contemplation — of transcending the ego in order to connect to the transcendental ground of peace in the midst of experiences of suffering."

I know that Whitehead says that, ultimately, evil is only remembered as 'fact' and not value, but in the framing you laid out initially here, it sounds like God, as the primordial expression of creativity, contains within the divine mind even the pure potentials for evil, although clearly luring toward beauty. so, here are a few questions:

  1. Is evil an eternal object?
  2. If so, how could it be that God, in holding out pure potentials for a becoming world could contain within the divine mind potentials for evil and still be called 'good' in any sense of the word? Are humans who actualize "evil" thus following a lure of creativity rather than God? Or is there another solution?
  3. Are human emotions real or actual in any metaphysical sense?
  4. And lastly, perhaps a more pedagogical question...how is one to move through their human journey with its emotional and embodied events of suffering into a place of peace? Is it by detachment or psychical distancing? Or is there some other integration of the reality of "actual" or "real" suffering into one's perspective that acknowledges suffering's reality and somehow harmonizes it into beauty? what is the contemplative path in this regard in your mind?

I've got some developing thoughts on these questions myself from a Whiteheadian perspective, but would be very curious to hear your thoughts! I know this developed into a pretty large inquiry, but I am curious to see what you think about this! Thanks so much!

Response: Jay McDaniel

Four great questions. You are so nice to care about my opinions. Here they are for what it's worth. I'll put your questions in quotations and mine outside quotations so that others may follow the conversation without too much re-reading of past posts.

1. "is evil an eternal object?"

No. The eternal objects are pure potentials and they are of two kinds – objective dealing spatio-temporal relations and subjective, dealing with subjective forms or emotions by which we respond to situations. These pure potentialities are not in themselves normative. There is not a pure potential called “truth” or a pure potential called “goodness” or a pure potential called “beauty.” Here Whitehead is different from Plato. Truth and Goodness and Beauty pertain to relationships between such potentialities and the actual world. For example, the emotion of anger may be “good” in some circumstances but “evil” in others. The wisdom of God is to avail us of possibilities which, relative to circumstance, are good and true and beautiful.

What is evil? From my own Whiteheadian perspective evil is two things: (a) debilitating suffering for which no subsequent goods can compensate, as in the suffering of the holocaust, and (b) missed potential, as occurs, for example, when an alcoholic who could have been a good parent misses that potential. Thus understood, evil is quite real, including for God. The idea that it is unreal is, for me, false. Having some experience in contemplative traditions myself, both Christian and Buddhist, I don’t see any reason to assert the contrary. The western idea that evil is merely an absence of God, or unreal as such, derives from neo-Platonic ways of thinking, but not from biblical ways of thinking. The idea itself betrays the experience of so many who do indeed suffer in debilitating ways or from a genuine sense that what could have been, was not.


2. "if so, how could it be that god, in holding out pure potentials for a becoming world could contain within the divine mind potentials for evil and still be called 'good' in any sense of the word? are humans who actualize "evil" thus following a lure of creativity rather than god? or is there another solution?"

As said above, the pure potentials are not normative. When we choose evil over good, let’s say hatred over compassion, the choice is not lured by God or, for that matter, by creativity as such, since it is not a lure in the first place. Our choice may well be influenced by countless forces in our past, conscious and unconscious, and some from society. We may be tempted by other lures coming from other sources, including decisions we ourselves have made in the past, but the temptations are not from God.

3. "Are human emotions real or actual in any metaphysical sense?"

Yes. Emotions are subjective forms and they are as actual as anything else metaphysically. Much depends on what is meant by metaphysical, but if we simply mean part of the actuality of the universe, we best say yes. Additionally, emotions can carry forms of wisdom: e.g. the wisdom of knowing others; the wisdom of sensing connections; the wisdom of wonder and awe; the wisdom of hope. They can carry “metaphysical” wisdom. The denial of this is part of a western dualism that I think Whitehead helps us overcome.


4. "And, lastly, perhaps a more pedagogical question...how is one to move through their human journey with its emotional and embodied events of suffering into a place of peace? is it by detachment or psychical distancing? or is there some other integration of the reality of "actual" or "real" suffering into one's perspective that acknowledges suffering's reality and somehow harmonizes it into beauty? what is the contemplative path in this regard in your mind?"

In general, I think integration is the best option, Tim. Although I think there are occasions when distancing, or anesthetizing, may be the best option. There’s no universal here; we must be sensitive to what helps a person deal with the suffering at hand. But all things considered, and in many circumstances, there is no need to hide from suffering that is inescapable, but our response to suffering can itself be beautiful even amid the suffering, as when we respond with courage or sheer endurance. And often, suffering can become grist for a subsequent wisdom and love, which would not have occurred otherwise, even if, all things considered, we still wish it hadn’t occurred. Additionally, I myself think that, in faith, we can hope that it is somehow transformed into a harmony of harmonies (the consequent nature of God) which includes tragedy. I think we can also feel this harmony of harmonies sometimes as an inner peace.


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HELPFUL READINGS IN PROCESS THEOLOGY

Question - What Books Might Be Suggested?

Wikipedia - C. Robert Mesle (born 1950) is a process theologian and was professor of philosophy and religion at Graceland University in Lamoni, Iowa until his retirement in 2016. After earning a B.A. in religion at Graceland University (1972), an M.A. in Christian theology at University of Chicago Divinity School (1975), Mesle received a Ph.D. in philosophy and religion from Northwestern University (1980).

Mesle is the author of Process Theology: A Basic Introduction. In this book he outlines three attributes of a process theology. There is a relational character to the divine such as:

  • God experiences both the joy and suffering of humanity.
  • God is not omnipotent in the classical sense
  • God exercises relational power and not unilateral control.



    




   





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