To reframe the concept of divine coherence in terms of Whitehead's process philosophy, we must shift from a substance-based metaphysics to a relational, event-based ontology. In this view, God is not a static, perfect substance with fixed attributes, but a dynamic, evolving participant in the ongoing process of the world. Here's a Whiteheadian reinterpretation:
Divine Coherence in Whiteheadian Process Thought
Divine coherence in process philosophy refers to the relational harmony and luring unity that characterizes God’s ongoing interaction with the world. Rather than denoting a fixed absence of contradiction within a self-contained divine being, coherence is understood as the consistent, persuasive aim of God’s presence across time, drawing all actual occasions into the pursuit of value, intensity, and relational harmony.
1. Theology Reimagined:
- From a process perspective, the Trinity may be interpreted not as three static persons sharing one essence, but as three relational modalities of divine becoming: the Primordial Nature (God's envisioning of all eternal possibilities), the Consequent Nature (God's participation into the world’s becoming), and the Superjective Nature (God’s influence on the world).
- Divine coherence lies in the harmonious interaction of these natures - creativity envisioned, received, and offered anew.
- God's “will” is not coercive or deterministic but is better understood as the initial aim - a persuasive call offered to every moment of becoming.
- Coherence is expressed not through control, but through the faithful offering of novel possibilities in a way that aligns the creative advance of the universe with divine values such as beauty, intensity, and peace.
- Creation is not a finished product but an unfolding harmony of free responses within a divine ecology.
- Rather than seeing the Incarnation as a contradiction of dual substances (divine and human), Whiteheadian thought would see Christ as the supreme instance of divine harmony with the world, a moment of extraordinary relational coherence where God's persuasive aim is most clearly realized in the human experience of Jesus.
- Divine Coherence then is the processual integration of divine and human aims in a single life or lifeforce - a unique concrescence of love and creativity.
2. In Other Spiritual Contexts:
- Broadly, Whiteheadian coherence aligns well with Sufi notions of divine unity, where union with the Real is achieved not by erasing individuality but by deep relational alignment with the divine rhythm. Practices like meditation or whirling dervish dances become enactments of coherence - occasions where the soul becomes intensely present to God’s lure.
- Practices like meditation, music, worship, rite, ritual, sacrament, or ceremony serve to heighten a person’s aesthetic intensity and attunement to the divine aim. Coherence is not imposed from above but cultivated inwardly through participatory resonance with the divine process.
- The notion of somatic coherence with the spirit and soul in holistic health can be reframed as the subjective harmony of physical, emotional, mental , and spiritual prehensions - aligned with God’s lure - toward wellness and peace. Even bodily systems, in process thought, are dynamic fields of interaction striving toward aesthetic harmony.
3. Philosophical Considerations:
- In Whitehead’s metaphysics, coherence is not static logical consistency but the mutual reinforcement of prehended values. God is the ultimate ground of this coherence - not by dictating reality, but by offering a vision of maximal harmony that all actual entities may prehend.
- Truth, in process thought, is not an abstract correspondence but a coherent pattern of relevance among entities. God’s knowledge is not omniscient in the classical sense of foreknowing fixed outcomes, but omniscient in feeling every becoming - the Consequent Nature of God lovingly receives all actual occasions into divine embodiment (that is, the divine Self or Being, as God is without body).
- Divine coherence unfolds as an infinitely concrescing tapestry of relational knowing and presence, faithful in all events, even in tragedy and loss.
Summary in Process Terms:
In essence, divine coherence in process thought is the unbroken faithfulness of God’s presence as a lure toward beauty, intensity, and harmony amid the evolving cosmos.
It is not the negation of contradiction by force or perfection, but the transcendence of chaos through relational creativity.
God, in God's Self, is the source of generative cosmic coherence - not because God controls the world, but because God patiently weaves every thread of becoming into the wider process of meaning, renewal, and love.
