At the 10th Whitehead international conference on June 2015 in Claremont, California, the topic was called "Seizing an Alternative: Toward an Ecological Civilization." it claimed an organic, relational, integrated, nondual, and processive conceptuality is needed, and that the philosopher, mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead provides this direction in a remarkably comprehensive and rigorous way. (note 1)
Hence, God as the What and the Who is also the How. That is, God is the First Process of all proceeding processes which are informed and infilled with His Essence and Being. And as a God of Love we must expect all creative processes - that is, all cosmic and earth-bound processes - to flow with God's Love and Light. Here then is found the organic relationality of all things to all things. Moreover, Whitehead initial titled this system A "Philosophy of Organism" by which he intended to not simply state the relationality of the cosmos to its Creator but to its panpsychic nature of feeling, of being, in unlimited open novelty and uncontained creativity that is indetermined by agency, fully free, and fully non-directed.
One might thus think of this latter idea as responding cosmic processes bearing indeterminate freewill. And with this freewill it has the power to become and not simply be. And in its being flow through the streams of space-time with the essence and being of God's relational Self. And where it deviates to becoming less than it was created to be, it is due to the failings of freewill - even as it may also become more than it was created to be as due to the reciprocity of responding to the relational energy, presence, urging, and non-coercive partnership with its Creator-Redeemer God.
Thus Whiteheadian Process Philosophy/Theology becomes a panacea for all past, present, and future expressions of a process-based cosmos where technically speaking we may speak of cosmoecological civilizations in the greatest, most expansive terms pertaining to its being and becoming.
One last, Whiteheadian Process Thought may be seen exampled in Darwin's evolutionary character of the universe. Or in the quantum cosmological display of the Big Bang. Each portrayal emphasizes a process which starts from something (creatio continua NOT creatio ex nihilo) becoming something greater, more expansive, more distributive, more enhanced, novel, and with continuing energetic expression borne from the past into the present and from the present into the future.
The God of Creation
Two things here:
FIRSTLY, God and Creation were always present. One might capture this idea from the Genesis "void" which is poetically expressed in ancient metaphor. Here, in this passage, it is admitted that there was something in the beginning of Creation. The ancient's called it a void, most probably meaning "nothing." But if you will forgive me, I'd like to twist it's definition a bit.... In quantum terms of a void being a void let's take free scientific license and simply state that apart from its ancient meaning of apparent nothingness there was actually a somethingness there. A one-dimension spatial infinity filled with a hot, dense plasmic void without irregularity, wrinkle, or asymmetry.
Contemporary, scientifically-informed theologians differ from their classical counterparts in describing this observation as "creatio continua" as versus the older idea of "creatio ex nihilo." Creation from something as versus Creation from nothing. As this latter cannot be possible it is rejected in quantum physics and evolutionary biology. Which bumps up into the more "recent" Christian idea from the 1940s expressed creedly contra Darwin as "immediate" or "spontaneous" creational genesis by God from nothing into something. Later to become tamped down to perhaps admit a "Young Earth Creationism" or several other non-process, or semi-process based models.
However, since the God of Creation is involved in Process as very Process Himself, so we might expect God's "Calling forth" the worlds and man to bespeak process through-and-through. Thus and thus one might speak of "Theistic Evolution" by its old timey name or currently, as "Evolutionary Creationism" by its newer name, admitting Darwin and process together as one. Even as the Big Bang may be spoken of in process terms.
God With Creation
SECONDLY, if creation isn't with God in the beginning than there can be no God as we know God today in all of His Relational-Self and Self-Expression. Nor would it matter. God would be beyond our kin and simply not exist to His creation. God would be considered non-factual and most probably unconceivable much like a dog would never think of God, living in a god-absent world of chaos, chance, and random event. (PS, the current Process models of evolution and Big Bang cosmology would also includes these elements but with an expanding theistic base model of a God-filled teleology as versus an atheistic teleology full of process but devoid of God-filled meaning. Agnosticism would be of no matter here in these matters except for the fact of debating with a process-epistemology which would inform one of a process-based metaphysic and ontology).
So logically, for argument's sake, let's say God may be independent of the cosmos theoretically. For some this will be meaningful. But for the panentheistic theologian, it makes no sense. As God explains the cosmos/world (let's use these terms synonymously now) so too does the world explain God. In a process universe each requires the other metaphysically and ontically. It is a moot question then of which came first as it can never be resolved, only argued over from a Hellenistic point of view. Thus it is illogical and of no meaning. Allowable, fine, if one wishes. But unnecessary.
Within this panentheistic world is a world of relationships between God and the world and the world with God. Panentheism speaks expressively of relationality, of giving, of becoming, of dynamism, of movement. Wherein comes identity, expression, purpose, novelty, and - when agency is used aright - of valuative relational presence. Thus, we may speak of ecological civilizations as expressing social justice, humanitarianism, being human, as much as we may speak of environmental justice focusing on reducing humanity's carbon footprint to one by restoring earth's biophyllic communities to relational balance and harmony with itself and with the anthropocene era which now overcomes the earth perhaps to oxygen-breathing organism's doom.
Side Note: Both charts I find helpful in showing the comparison between older to new theistically-modeled systems. Where problems crop up will be in imperfectly understanding this newer panentheistic model because process theology is poorly understood. You will note too that God is no longer required to be in the "top spot" on the lower chart below, thus "relationally equalizing" God and Creation in mutual affection together, one to the other. The rallying cry, or universal theme, now becomes that of process philosophy/theology described as "creativity" but meaning so much more than this simply word might express. Again, this will come with a better understanding of Process Thought. I have spent some time in explaining this and will leave several index links for those of you interested in learning more about process thought.
