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 from 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

Showing posts with label Commentary - Jay McDaniel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commentary - Jay McDaniel. Show all posts

Saturday, February 17, 2024

Jay McDaniel - The Biography of Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr



The Biography of Dr. John B. Cobb, Jr

by Jay McDaniel
February 8, 2024


John Cobb, My Frugal, Visionary Mentor

John Cobb, my mentor, is nearing his 100th birthday. He is a visionary par excellence. More than any philosopher or theologian I know, John has done two things simultaneously. He has made clear to us impending catastrophes we face as a species (global climate change, violence and the threat of nuclear war, political dysfunction, economic collapse, and widespread loneliness) lest we change our ways of thinking and living in the world. And he has simultaneously sparked a collective movement of hope around the world: the hope of a new kind of civilization, an Ecological Civilization, which can serve the well-being of life.

There are many institutions around the world indebted to him. They include the Center for Process Studies, The Cobb Institute for Community and Practice, the Institute for Ecological Civilization, the Institute for the Postmodern Development of China, the Living Earth movement, Pando Populus, and still more. And there are thousands of students, I among them, likewise indebted. He is not just my mentor; he is our mentor.

If you passed him on the street, you might not notice him. Small in stature, there's nothing flashy about him: no designer clothes, no fancy watches, no air of importance. He would likely be wearing pants and a sweater that he's owned for the last fifty years.

On his birthday, he will be celebrated for numerous accomplishments: publishing over a hundred books, pioneering process theology, possessing an amazingly interdisciplinary mind, working in China and other nations, and demonstrating a visionary commitment to ecological civilization. Click here to learn about his academic achievements.

He will also be celebrated for his kindness to people from all walks of life, his unpretentiousness, his indifference to questions of status, and his caring heart. John draws no distinctions between "important" and "unimportant" people; all are important. It's not just John's achievements that inspire people; it's who he is and how he treats them.

In this spirit, I want to celebrate one more aspect of his life: his simple lifestyle. This includes his minimalist wardrobe mentioned above and his living space. When you visit John in his apartment, he doesn't turn on lights because he doesn't want to waste energy; sunlight suffices. John lives simply and frugally, without the trappings of conspicuous consumption. He is a mentor to me and others in this, too.

This frugality is not solely his own design; he inherited it from his parents and his Methodist (Wesleyan) tradition with its commitment to simple living. In principle, he could have learned it from the Benedictines as well, or the Quakers, or the Franciscans, or the Amish. Or, if he lived elsewhere, from Gandhi and from many Buddhist communities. Methodists do not have a monopoly on simple living. But John learned it from his parents, their friends, and the Wesleyans. He chose to follow the way of his elders.

There is authenticity to this choice. In a world where appearances often take precedence, John's lifestyle underscores his humility and care for the world. He lives without ostentation, embodying a down-to-earth demeanor that fosters connection and relatability. People like to be around him because he is so polite and humble. This is one reason he is so popular in China. It's not just his ideas; it's his demeanor.

His lifestyle also carries a counter-cultural and indeed, a Christian message. John seeks to follow Jesus in his daily life. He believes that the God whom Jesus revealed is a God of love, not ostentation. He believes that God's call to each of us and to all of us is to live simply, in community with one another and other creatures, so that others might simply live. You can get an idea of his sense of vocation in the essay below.

But first, a word about process theology. John does not parade process theology as if it were the answer to all questions. He is more committed to the well-being of life than to process theology. But John's commitment to simple living is itself an embodiment of process theology and its idea that mutuality and relationality are at the heart of what is really important in life. John's lifestyle is a reminder that true richness does not lie in the abundance of possessions but in the richness of experiences, relationships, and service to others.

This is the kind of richness, this is the kind of wealth, that we see when the will of God is done on earth as it is in heaven. When we know this love, there is no need for conspicuous consumption or ostentatious display. The love, like the sunlight in his apartment, is enough.

- Jay McDaniel

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What is My Vocation?
by John Cobb


The idea of “vocation” has had an important history in the West. The word suggests that we are “called” to do something. It was long used by Christians to emphasize the idea that lifelong service to the church was something that one should not choose for oneself on a practical basis but rather should undertake only out of a definite sense that God called one to be a priest, a monk, or a nun. The fact that these all took vows of celibacy accented their special role.

In the fifteenth century the Protestant Reformers argued that every Christian has a “calling” or “vocation,” and that none of these required celibacy. Serving the institutional church was just one vocation among many. Christians were equally called to be lawyers or doctors, cobblers or merchants. Whatever one’s calling, one should pursue it conscientiously as one’s service of God and neighbor.

This teaching could lead to a high sense of service through one’s daily work. In a feudal society it worked quite well. Every role required both knowledge and skill, and each had its contribution to make to the whole. Emphasizing this could give to all a fuller sense of participation. However, with the shift to industrial capitalism, one’s work was understood as a necessity in order to live. The word “vocation” came to mean for many people little more than a job.

Responding to the Call of the Moment

Nevertheless, the idea that we are “called” can still evoke a deeper meaning. Whitehead radicalized it. He taught that every momentary event is called to be the best that can be achieved in that moment at that place. His terminology was that there is an “initial aim” for every “actual occasion.” Like the traditional “calling” this aim is derived from God. The implications for personal experience are much like those of the original idea of “vocation,” but now generalized through existentialism. I am called, right now, in this and every moment, to be and do the best I can. There is a calling for each moment.

Fostering Healthy Relations with Other People

Often this call focuses on relations with another person. That person may be my spouse, my child, my friend, or a stranger. That personal presence participates in my momentary experience. I am who I am in this moment partly because of the presence of that other person. That presence enriches my experience, and the more open I am to it, and to what it offers, the more I am enriched. To some extent I feel the feelings of the other.

Sometimes it is enough simply to be there with the other. But often one is called to something more. The other may be lonely or anxious or insecure. I am called to respond. Perhaps I need only signal that I am open to listening. That is a step of which most of us are capable even if we often do not take it. We prefer to speak ourselves rather than hear others into speech. Accordingly, others sense that their feelings and needs are not of interest to us. Instead, we want to draw them into our projects. True listening and responding are rare.

This kind of openness to the other does not exclude our speaking. Indeed, sometimes it is only when we share our hesitations and weakness that the other is assured that we can hear without judgment or ridicule. Adjusting our need to be heard and affirmed by others by the recognition of their need to be heard and affirmed is the beginning of ethics.

We are often called by or through the other’s need to do more than listen. Some of the other’s needs are for food and shelter and safety. To some extent, we can and should respond directly, especially when the other is a friend or family member. And there are practical needs of the stranger that also call for immediate practical response.

Fostering Healthy Relations with the Natural World

But the world that surrounds us and grounds our experience moment by moment is not limited to other people. Western ethics has been far too focused on interpersonal relations. Our pets play an important role, as do plants and birds, and insects, and grass, and trees, and soil, and rocks. These “others” offer themselves to us and claim a place in our experience. They too have their needs, massively so today.

The needs of the human stranger and the natural world often lead to another level of ethical action. We can respond only to a very small number of these multifarious needs. Our personal awareness of them is miniscule in comparison with the reality. Recognizing this leads us to a concern for the health of the larger society and the natural environment. We want a human community in which all take responsibility for the wellbeing of all, including the natural world.

As we reflect about ourselves we recognize that who we are and what we are is largely a function of the societies of which we are a part. I am an American, a Californian, a member of a retirement community, a churchman, a theologian, and so forth. My participation in these human societies and the landscapes with which they are connected enables others to identify me and shapes my self-identification as well. My wellbeing is largely a function of the wellbeing of these societies and their natural contexts, and I know that this is true for other members. To whatever extent the societies in which we inescapably live become authentic communities of mutual care we all benefit. While I can directly respond to very few of the needs of my fellow members, through building community and healing the natural environment I can help many indirectly.

Helping build just and sustainable communities

To whatever extent I listen to others, I am already engaged in building community. This is the level at which all can fully participate. But most are called to other, less personal, ways of shaping and strengthening community. This may involve attending meetings, working on committees and accepting particular responsibilities. In some cases it may require me to be active in the politics of the society. Sometimes I may be asked to represent the community to outsiders. In all these cases I am called to seek the well being of the community rather than my private advantage over other members. Occasionally this involves real personal sacrifice. More often my subordination of private interest to that of the community ends up as deeply rewarding to me.

Reflecting upon and advocating compassionate public policies

But responding to the call to serve the community through active participation in its life leads me to understand that this ethical activity raises questions at still another level. Sometimes I see that the community is acting in ways that are self-destructive. In our world this appears especially in the massive damage human communities are inflicting on the natural world. We can envisage acting more wisely. This is the level of policy. A community needs participation in its life whatever its policies may be, but that it keep adapting its policies to new situations and improving them is also of great importance to all its participants. Justice and sustainability are crucial goals of good policy. We are called to support good policies, and that means to involve ourselves in the politics of the communities in which we live. For some, this is their major vocation.

Often one sees that in its zeal to do well, one’s community seeks to advance at the expense of others. My ethical subordination of my private interests to those of the community turns out to be an unethical contribution to harming other communities. This can happen at all levels. In the past, deep convictions have often led religious communities to harm each other.

Critiquing collective Idolatries (e.g. Christianism and American Exceptionalism)

In our world, this ethical complexity appears most often and most painfully in relation to nations. As an American, my vocation includes active citizenship and participation in national life. I am called to strengthen and improve that national life and to protect it from encroachments by others. But I discover that some of what I do, ethically, for the sake of my nation, in the larger scheme of things, harms other peoples. I am called to envision and support national policies that work for the larger good and not simply for the power of my nation over others. I have identified some other collective idolatries that seem to me very dangerous in Deconstructing Modernity.

Analyzing and Challenging Basic Assumptions about the World

When I realize that devotion to my religious community or my nation is harmful to humanity as a whole, I cannot simply solve the problem by trying to be more moral. The general meaning of morality reflects an understanding of religious or national communities that in fact leads them into conflict. Self-sacrificial service of one’s nation may lead to killing those who are self-sacrificially serving their nations.

We are called to ask questions at a different level. What about the assumptions that shape this ordinary understanding of morality as service of the common good of my community. Asking this question may be thought of as another dimension of ethics. We may call it the ethics of thought.

When we realize that doing what seems right and good often ends up harming others, we also realize that something is wrong with our ideas. Often these ideas are widespread in our communities. Daring to question the beliefs that are simply accepted by most people is a special vocation. Many are called to be open to such questioning. For some this challenge to common assumptions is a major vocation.

Once we grasp the importance of criticizing the assumptions that underlie our actions and even our reflections on morality, we can extend this to other areas. There are assumptions that underlie our choices of public policy, our educational practice, our legal system, our social and natural sciences. When we study the history of these areas of thought, it becomes clear that assumptions now recognized as unsatisfactory have played a large role. There is no reason to suppose that those assumptions that now operate are free from problems. The ethics of thought is as important to human beings as the ethics of personal relations, the ethics of community, and the ethics of policy.

Accepting the responsibility to be unpopular or disruptive (for the sake of the common good)

Ethical behavior always has its dangers. When we genuinely listen to a stranger, we may find ourselves drawn into ways of thinking and even of acting that are uncomfortable and disruptive. When we seek the well being of communities, we may antagonize those who personally profit through distortions of community life. When we seek to direct our governments away from self-aggrandizing policies, we are likely to be called unpatriotic. When we question the assumptions that are widespread in our cultures, we upset many who have based their lives and their thought upon them.

But hope for the world lies in ethics, and today this is especially true of the ethics of thought, the vocation to analyze assumptions. Established assumptions about human beings and economic policies, and finance, and international affairs have led humanity to the brink of catastrophe. If we do not challenge and uproot these assumptions, there is little chance of changing behavior sufficiently to save the world.

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Note: John Cobb has offered his own ideas on the assumptions that need to be challenged. We are called to challenge anthropocentrism, individuality, sense-bound empiricism, small group loyalty, and conventional morality. See Foundations for a New Civilization. He has shared alternative and constructive ideas for living lightly and gently on the planet. See Ten Ideas for Saving the Planet. In addition, and importantly, he offers an analysis of assumptions which, in his view, must be challenged (or de-constructed) in our time. See Deconstructing Modernity. 

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​God as Abba
by John Cobb

Excerpts from God as Abba, used with John Cobb's permission

​Two Problems with "God" as Too Often Conceived

​​For me, God is of central importance to life and thought. As a boy I found that my conviction fitted comfortably with widely shared belief. I did not agree with everything I heard people say about God, but the problem with “God-language” was not much different fromother instances of disagreement and confusion.

Today the situation has changed. God remains of central importance for me. But I no longer find that belief to fit comfortably into my cultural context. On the contrary, many people are both skeptical that the word God has any reference and very uncertain what that reference would be like if it existed at all. In addition, the word now has a strongly negative connotation for many thoughtful and sensitive people, and I often find myself upset by how it is used. If the problem were simply linguistic, we could solve it easily. Just use another term: Creator, Goddess, Great Spirit, Almighty, Yahweh. Using other names sometimes helps, but the problem is deeper. What has happened?

One problem is intellectual. From the outset of modernity, belief in the biblical God has been problematic. The biblical God is operative in both nature and history, whereas modernity, from its beginning, denied that God was a factor in what happened in the natural world. That is, it asserts that if you are trying to explain any natural event, you are not allowed to attribute any role to God.

At first, there was one exception. The world seemed so wonderfully ordered that it could not be thought of as coming into existence on its own or by chance. Most people assumed that it was created by an intelligent and powerful being, and did not hesitate to call that being “God.” Scientists found that the world was governed by laws, so that the Creator was also the Lawgiver. Some religious people thought that every now and again the God who created the laws intervened and caused something to happen that did not obey them. Thus there were supernaturalists, but the default position was “deism,” that is, the belief that God’s only relation to nature was the one act of creation and the imposing of natural laws.

At the same time, everyone assumed that human beings were not part of the nature from which God was excluded. Opinions differed on how God was related to human beings. The devout could picture the relation as quite intimate, but the dominant culture encouraged the idea that God had created human beings and had also given them rules to live by. Unlike plants and animals, people might choose not to obey these rules. After death those who violated them were punished, whereas those who obeyed them were rewarded.

Deistic thinking still continues, but it has far less support than in the earlier period. It was deeply shaken by Charles Darwin’s demonstration that the world we now know developed in a natural evolutionary way from a much simpler beginning. God was no longer needed to explain the remarkably complex and beautiful world we have around us; it could be explained by natural causes. Equally important was that human beings are fully part of this evolving nature. If God is excluded from playing any role in natural events, then God is excluded from playing any role in human events. The default position now is atheism.

*

Credibility has not been the only problem we theists faced. For many people “God” has become an offensive idea because so many terrible things have been done by his followers. I grew up believing that God was always good and loving. I knew that human beings, even those who worshiped God, had done some very bad things, but I supposed that this was an aberration and that we Christians had repented and were seeking peace and justice everywhere.

However, along with many others, I came to see history differently. In the name of God, Christians had persecuted Jews for most of Christian history. This persecution had reached new heights in what we considered a Christian country, Germany. True, the Nazis were not Christians, but they could show the continuity of their anti-Jewish teachings and actions with statements of Christian leaders, and the opposition to Nazi anti-Judaism on the part of Christians was weak.

I learned that in the century-long theft of the New World from its inhabitants, many Christian missionaries had played embarrassing roles. I learned that, indeed, even the more recent missions to Africa and Asia had often supported colonial exploitation of the people. Even the better missions were often tainted with the sense of Western superiority, and with condescension toward those to whom they were witnessing. More generally,

More generally, I learned that over the centuries the churches were usually allied with the rich and powerful. I learned that the enslavement of nonwhite races had been supported as God’s will. I discovered that earlier members of my own family had written pious Christian books in defense of slavery. Even many of those leaders to whom we looked with admiration, such as Abraham Lincoln, had been racists. The Bible that seemed evidently to oppose such racism had been widely and successfully used to justify it. (John Cobb)


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Rediscovering God through Jesus
by John Cobb

The purpose of this book is to propose that it is time for thoughtful Christians to free themselves from acquiescence to the late modern worldview. My conviction is that the biblical worldview in general, and the worldview of Jesus and Paul in particular, is superior. Of course, there are many respects in which their worldview is out of date. But bringing it up to date is much easier and more fruitful than trying to make the modern worldview adequate to our needs. We certainly have a great deal of knowledge about astronomy today that is far more accurate than the beliefs that prevailed in New Testament times. But adjusting to that information is no threat to the basic insights of Jesus or Paul.

We know now that the world is composed of quantum events, a view that is vastly different from ideas in the minds of any New Testament writer. But their worldview was basically one that gave primacy to events. That events characterize the world at microscopic levels is not an uncongenial idea, whereas the modern world is not able to assimilate it. And above all, the idea that events are both subjective and objective would pose no problem to the ancients, whereas the moderns have to deny it, conceal it, or treat it as an anomaly.I have focused on what is central for Jesus, the reality and purposes of Abba. I have wanted to show that belief in Abba makes a lot of sense today.

Of course, I have not proved the existence of Abba; indeed, it is not really possible to prove the existence of anything. I cannot prove that I exist, but we know much that we cannot prove. We cannot prove that there were any events before the present moment. How could we do so?

But I for one do not doubt that many things have happened, and I doubt that you are seriously doubtful. Although we cannot prove anything, we can disprove a good many things. We can disprove the indivisibility of what we still call atoms, named when we thought they were indivisible. Science has disproved the astronomy generally accepted in New Testament times. It has disproved the idea that the world is just six thousand years old.

I believe we can disprove some beliefs about God as well. For example, the systematic implications of the belief that God is all-powerful and the belief that God is all-beneficent contradict each other, and their combination is incompatible with the historical facts. It is very sad when those who consider themselves followers of Jesus spend their time defending ideas that are indefensible and are not found in the Bible. The idea that the Bible is inerrant is another belief that is easily disproved. So is the idea that Jesus and Paul were supporters of what are today called “family values.”

The basic argument of this book is that, although many ideas associated with God and Christian faith have been disproved, Jesus’ teaching about Abba has not. On the contrary, it is coherent with our experience and responds well to the needs of the world in our day. It can be tested against personal experience. I commend it enthusiastically.

For my part, I strive to be a faithful disciple of Jesus. There are those who follow Jesus without sharing his belief in Abba. I admire them, but I am convinced that the effort to follow Jesus while ignoring his Abba has a tragic character. It usually results from being socialized into a culture and a way of thinking that is not deserving of commitment. I am convinced that a much deeper and more joyful faithfulness is possible if we seek to relate to Abba as Jesus did. I commend a faithfulness to Jesus that shares Jesus’ confidence in the love and empowering power of Abba.
"Abba cares much more about the future of the world than about who believes in him and who does not."

​But loving an omnipotent God, or a morally judgmental God, or an exclusivist God, or a God who demands sacrifice in order to forgive, can be harmful. Abba is none of those things. I believe that loving Abba is the best hope for the world’s future, and loving Abba means working with Abba....Abba cares much more about the future of the world than about who believes in him and who does not. We who love Abba will eagerly cooperate with those who do not, if they are working to save the world. But today we may rejoice that the leading voice in the movement to save the world comes from one who loves Abba: Pope Francis. It is my hope that my tiny effort to renew and strengthen the worship of Jesus’ Abba will also build support for the great work of Pope Francis. (John Cobb)
"Abba is always present in the world working for good."

​​In sum, with regard to all that I have said thus far, I believe that we experience in some usually faint and fragmentary way Abba’s presence with us, working in all things for good. Abba’s work is most effective if we attend to it, open ourselves to it, align ourselves with it. This is part of the meaning of faith. Our resulting thoughts and actions sometimes have effects beyond our intentions. We can experience ourselves to be participating in Abba’s salvific work in the world. And we can sense the companionship of Abba as well as of others who work with Abba. We can know something of the divine commonwealth, the presence of which Jesus announced. (John Cobb)
"Abba is present even in the cells in our bodies."

​​​I am repeatedly surprised by how rapidly wounds heal when the body is given the chance. Doctors often comment that their medicines do not heal us. They counter hostile forces in the body. When these are removed, nature works its healing power. When thought and emotions are healthy and supportive, the healing work of nature is speeded and strengthened. For me, there is no “nature” from which Abba is absent. That does not identify God and nature. There is much in nature other than Abba. But I think that it is Abba’s presence in nature that makes for healing. I believe that Abba is in every cell in the body calling it to do its part for its own well-being and for the well-being of the whole.

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Ilia Delio - "The Not-Yet God" of the Relational Whole


A Recommendation of Two Books...


bookshop.org link

When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life's Sacred Questions
Sue Monk Kidd (Author)

Description
Combining personal experience and classic Christian teachings, this inspirational autobiographical account of a woman's personal pain, spiritual awakening, and divine grace received "Virtue" magazine's "Book of the Year" award.

Publisher - HarperOne
Publish Date - October 11, 2016
Pages - 240

BISAC Categories
Christian Living - Inspirational
Devotional
Spirituality
Christian Living - Spiritual Growth
Cultural, Ethnic & Regional - General
Spiritual

About the Author
Sue Monk Kidd is the author of the bestselling novels The Secret Life of Bees and The Mermaid Chair, as well as the award-winning The Dance of the Dissident Daughter and God's Joyful Surprise.

Reviews
  • As I read her book, Kidd became a companion. I love having her walk with me on my journey.--Eugene Peterson, author of The Message
  • "A joy to read....Honest and healing."--Alan Jones, dean of Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, and author of Soul Making


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Teihard de Chardin is NOT a process theologian but one which uses a small bit of process theology's relational process philosophy and theology tucked into the mythic realm of de Cardin's own Westernized (non-processual) system.
And though de Chardin describes this relational approach as a myth... a true process theologian will not; more aptly, relationality is one of the concise descriptors to how the God of all, and the creational products of the God of all, work and react to one another.
Thankfully, Ilia Delio, the author of the title below, IS a process theologian to which I am in hopes she makes this distinction as her publisher, Orbis, has not in it's published blurb below. - re slater



bookshop.org link
The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole
Ilia Delio (Author)

Description
We are a species between axial periods. Thus, our religious myths are struggling to find new connections in a global, ecological order. Delio proposes the new myth of [Jung's] relational holism; that is, the search for a new connection to divinity in an age of quantum physics, evolution, and pluralism. The idea of relational holism is one that is rooted in the God-world relationship, beginning with the Book of Genesis, but finds its real meaning in quantum physics and the renewed relationship between mind and matter.
Our story, therefore, will traverse across the fields of science, scripture, theology, history, culture and psychology. Our guides for a new myth of relational holism are the psychoanalyst Carl Jung, and the Jesuit scientist-theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. The complex human can no longer be simplified to one view or another: one must see the whole of our existence or one does not see at all.

Publisher - Orbis Books
Publish Date - August 30, 2023
Pages - 304
BISAC Categories

About the Author
Ilia Delio, OSF, a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC, is Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology, Villanova University, and founder of the Center for Christogenesis. Her many books include The Hours of the Universe, Christ in Evolution, The Emergent Christ, The Unbearable Wholeness of Being, Birth of a Dancing Star: My Journey from Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian, and Re-Enchanting the Earth: Why AI Needs Religion (all with Orbis).

Reviews
"Over ten years ago, Ilia Delio boldly asserted that evolution is the metanarrative for our age, changing even our understanding of God. Engaging the God question in this evolutionary context requires the myth of the relational whole, the story of a living God in relationship with a living earth. God is incomplete, not‐yet, and we are incomplete, not‐yet! With her unique creative literary flair, Ilia Delio draws on the relational holism of the psychoanalyst Carl Jung (whom she names as the saint) and the Jesuit scientist‐theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (whom she describes a prophet) to create a new framework for thinking about God. The outcome is a highly original synthesis--spiritually inspiring and theologically ground-breaking." --Diarmuid O'Murchu, author, Doing Theology in an Evolutionary Way
"Ilia Delio offers a brilliant and breathtaking look at the relational wholeness of God and world through the lenses of Teilhard, Jung, and contemporary science. If you're seeking faith in the future or a unitive vision that will revitalize our understanding of the participatory inter-becoming of God, humans, and world, this book is a must-read." --Sheri D. Kling, director, Process & Faith
"From the psycho-sentient depths of matter to the heights of divine becoming, Delio's cosmotheandric entanglement of Jung and Teilhard, modern science and ancient mysticism, achieve a new relational holism for a new axial age. The theology of the future will be "theohology"--experiential talk of the God-whole that is still coming into being." --Andrew M. Davis, The Center for Process Studies
"Ilia Delio is right: we need a new framework for thinking about God and salvation in an age of quantum physics and evolution that overcomes obstacles in the Church and beyond. Delio offers such an obstacle-overcoming framework: theohology. Building on insights from Jung, Teilhard, and many others, she provides a vision of the God who is the Whole of the whole, the distinct source of love but inseparable from everything that exists. This is an amazing book!" --Thomas Jay Oord, author, Open and Relational Theology
"The Not-Yet God is an important work and a major contribution to the fields of theology and depth psychology. In comparing Teilhard and Jung, Delio reveals new aspects of both thinkers and allows us to appreciate them from new angles. This work demonstrates wide reading and research in these fields and is written in a clear and concise language, so that not only specialists but general readers can glean many insights from Delio's excellent scholarship." --David Tacey, emeritus professor, La Trobe University, Australia; author, The Postsecular Sacred: Jung, Soul and Meaning in an Age of Change


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Process Pop-Up: The Not-Yet God and the Relational Whole

January 8 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm PST

Process Pop Ups The Not-Yet God and the Relational Whole with Ilia Delio

We are part of a creative whole of unlimited potential whereby God, self and world are constantly drawn into new existence together

The new science, especially quantum physics, has changed our understanding of space, time and matter; hence it raises new questions on the meaning of God. Is God outside space and time? Or is God integral to the unfolding of the universe? If consciousness is fundamental to matter, is consciousness fundamental to the reality of God as well? We will discuss these questions and more as we explore the essential role of consciousness in relation to the religious experience of God.

We’ll discuss Ilia’s latest book, The Not-Yet God: Carl Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, and the Relational Whole.

Entanglement is the inextricable and insuperable relationality of all that is, including God. If pantheism conjures up the collapse of God into matter, then entanglement holds everything together in a relational whole. There is no transcendence without immanence and no immanence without transcendence; there is no God without matter and no matter without God. God and matter form a complementary whole.

Ilia Delio

Articles about Ilia’s work on Open Horizons

Ilia Delio, OSF, PhD

Ilia Delio, OSF, PhD is a Franciscan Sister of Washington, DC and American theologian specializing in the area of science and religion, with interests in evolution, physics and neuroscience and the import of these for theology.

Ilia currently holds the Josephine C. Connelly Endowed Chair in Theology at Villanova University, and is the author of twenty books including Care for Creation (coauthored with Keith Warner and Pamela Woods) which won two Catholic Press Book Awards in 2009, first place for social concerns and second place in spirituality. Her book The Emergent Christ won a third place Catholic Press Book Award in 2011 for the area of Science and Religion. Her recent books include The Unbearable Wholeness of Being: God, Evolution and the Power of Love (Orbis, 2013), which received the 2014 Silver Nautilus Book Award and a third place Catholic Press Association Award for Faith and Science. Ilia holds two honorary doctorates, one from St. Francis University in 2015, and one from Sacred Heart University in 2020.


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"The Not-Yet God" by Ilia Delio

A Reflection and Review by Jay McDaniel


I am a Christian deeply involved in interfaith communities. I look for books that Jews, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and others might explore together as springboards for thought and conduits for friendship. "The Not-Yet God" by Ilia Delio is such a book. I am also a member of an adult Sunday School class in a local Methodist Church. I am on the lookout for books that might be helpful for my Sunday School class. Here, too, "The Not-Yet God" is such a book.

Let me explain. On the one hand, with its emphasis on Christian theologians and teachings, "The Not-Yet God" is relevant to Christians with its novel understanding of Christ and the birth of Christ in the human heart. It offers new ways of thinking about Christ, God, Church, and Christian spirituality.

On the other hand, with its focus on a religion of tomorrow that understands God as the sacred Whole of the universe and spirituality as respect and care for the planet, "The Not-Yet God" is relevant to people of all faiths. She speaks of a church of the planet, but she could as easily have said a sangha of the planet, or an umma of the planet, or a temple of the planet. Her hope, and mine as well, is that people of many faiths, and people without any faith, might find some of the ideas she proposes important, helpful, and inspiring.

I am also a process theologian, as is she, although she is much more influential and talented than I. I am chair of the Board of Directors of the Center for Process Studies, on the advisory board of Process and Faith, and active in the Cobb Institute for Process and Practice - all of which seek to introduce process ways of thinking to the general public. I am always on the lookout for books that I might share with people in study groups who want to learn about the process tradition. "The Not-Yet God" is such a book.

Delio is a unique kind of process thinker: weaving together insights from Teilhard de Chardin, Whitehead, Hartshorne, Carl Jung, David Bohm, Marshall McLuhan, Cynthia Bourgeault, and many others. The subjects she addresses, too, are unique, especially computer technology and artificial intelligence. She is one of the very few who have developed theologically sensitive and appreciative approaches to AI as a potential partner in helping bring about a better world. As part of the process family, she is among our pioneers in charting new ground - a very Whiteheadian and Teilhardian thing to do.

I offer below two pieces that may also be relevant to such groups: a short essay called "Process and Christogenesis" and a review of "The Not-Yet God."

​This is not the first time I've written on her remarkable work. You might also be interested in:


​- Jay McDaniel


Thursday, May 4, 2023

Jay McDaniel - The Immortal Immortal (Life, Death, Soul)


Objective Immortality and Subjective Immortality

by Jay McDaniel
Process philosophy offers two views of the possibility of life after death, typically called objective immortality and subjective immortality.

In objective immortality, the self (understood as a linear series of subjective experiences, each of which is its own subject) does not continue after the death of the brain, but the experiences nonetheless influence all that comes afterward, however negligible. Objective immortality thus understood can also include the idea that the experiences are remembered (and thus affect) God who is, as it were, the Deep Memory of the universe (Whitehead's Consequent Nature of God). Here the experiences, and the momentary subjects to whom they belong, would not fade in importance, but be valued everlastingly. "I" would not live on after my death, but memories of me, on God's part, would survive and be woven into the beauty of God's ongoing life. Thus, there are two kinds of objective immortality: objective immortality in the world and objective immortality in God.

Subjective immortality, on the other hand, is the continuation of the self after the death of the brain, whereby the self undergoes a continuing journey. This journey may or may not be everlasting; it may be "immortal" in the sense of having no end, or it may be "immortal" in a metaphorical sense, as surviving the death of the brain and continuing for a finite duration. David Griffin argues for subjective immortality but does not spell out the particular form it would take, saying that direct and indirect evidence from parapsychology points to its plausibility and perhaps even its probability. Please note that all these kinds of immortality, objective and subjective, may be "true" from a process perspective.

If subjective immortality, or at least a continuation of the self's journey, is a reality, God would be at work in the journey after death no less than in the journey prior to death: as an indwelling lure toward the fulness of life relative to the situation at hand (through initial aims) and as a companion in the journey, sharing in the sufferings and joys. There could be spiritual growth after death: a soul-gentling.

- Jay McDaniel, 6/24/2022



​​Life after Death: A Reflection

by John Cobb

Question:

​Can you explain the Process view of our ‘life after physical death.’ Are our satisfactions resurrected into God and do they grow into what they could be in God’s aim? Will we be able then to grow into God’s aim?

from Process and Faith: October 1999

Dr. Cobb’s Response

The question asked this month is more specific than the general topic of life after physical death. It is about the Consequent Nature of God and what it means that we are taken up into this. “Are our satisfactions resurrected into God and do they grow into what they could be in God’s aim? Will we be able then to grow into God’s aim?”

There is no one answer of process theologians to these questions. There are slight differences between Whitehead and Hartshorne, and those who follow them also have different views. Of course, no one knows.

But even if we can only have visions of what may be rather than of what certainly is, these visions are important. To be persuasive they need to be organically related to the rest of what we believe. If they are to function eschatologically, they must at some level satisfy our need to believe that life and history have meaning, that they add up in some way, that what we are and do is not simply lost forever, and that even when it is painful or seemingly vacuous, it makes some positive contribution.

This is the main point of both Whitehead and Hartshorne. Whitehead thinks it is more coherent to suppose that God has physical feelings of the world than that God only mediates pure possibilities to the world. He also thinks this belief makes contact with some very deep religious intuitions. For if God prehends us, there are good reasons to think that God’s Consequent Nature includes us far more fully and richly than even a successor moment of our own experience includes its predecessors.

There are two dimensions to this difference. First, in every prehension of my immediate past experience, some of it is omitted. Whitehead provides good reason to think that in God’s prehension, nothing, or virtually nothing, is omitted. Second, although the immediate past is felt in human experience with considerable immediacy, that is, its subjectivity functions as such, this fades rapidly. My memories of what occurred even a few minutes ago lack that immediacy. In God, there is no fading of immediacy. Each experience in its full subjective value lives on forever.
Students of Whitehead sometimes miss this emphasis on experiential immediacy in the divine life because this is said to be a doctrine of “objective” immortality. This is set over against “subjective” immortality which means that persons would continue to enjoy new experiences after death.

This distinction is real and important, and although process thought does not exclude the possibility of subjective immortality in this sense, that is not what this question is about. The point here is that the data of God’s physical feelings are our subjective experiences. It is these that live on in God in their full immediacy.

The question, however, asks for something more than this, something at which Whitehead hints. As occasions of experience are resurrected in the divine life, are they changed and do they continue to change? Specifically, do they grow into what they could be in God’s aim?

Marjorie Suchocki has gone further than any other process theologian in exploring this possibility. Her book, The End of Evil, is to be highly recommended for its speculative development of Whitehead’s hints in this direction. Her development of Whitehead’s thought is motivated by her passionate conviction that sheer everlasting perpetuation of miserable experiences is no eschatology!

I have not been able to imagine as much transformation within the divine life as does Suchocki. Nevertheless, it is clear that there is some. A creaturely occasion as felt by God is not simply what that occasion was as an act of creaturely feeling. Whereas it felt itself in a very limited context, it is felt by God in a universal context. In that context it has a meaning and role that it did not have for itself. Further, as the Consequent Nature includes more and more events lying in the future of the one in question, the meaning of the original event changes. Since God’s lures have taken account of the original event, the later events, when responsive to those lures, may have built upon the original event in positive ways upon it. Thus as time goes on the momentary experience in question may become part of the realization of aims of which it was itself unaware, even of aims that did not exist at that time.

The question remains whether this change of role and meaning affects the subjectivity of the occasion. Here my imagination breaks down, and I am disposed to answer negatively. The subjective experience prehended by God remains forever just that experience. An experience here and now may be positively affected by the assurance that God can use it beyond its merits in the larger scheme of things. But just what that use may be lies forever outside the experience.

The added element of assurance that God will do with us more than we can imagine is important. That it probably does not affect the immediacy of our lives in God need not detract from that current value. It can provide the deeper meaning required by eschatological faith.


​For more on life after death in Open Horizons, see:



Five ​Questions People Ask


What is the soul, anyway?

For John Cobb and for other process philosophers influenced by Whitehead, the human soul is part of nature. It is natural not supernatural. Animals have souls, too. The soul is a center of experience in its continuity through time, unfolding moment by moment, including within its momentary unfolding unconscious and conscious dimensions.

When depth psychologists and neurobiologists speak of unconscious forms of experience and activity within the life of a person, process philosophers and theologians agree. Conscious experience is important in the life of a soul, but not the whole of it by any means. Much and perhaps most of our experience is unconscious. One of our tasks is to find ways of reconciling and integrating the conscious and unconscious sides of our lives.

In the lives of human beings and other animals, the soul plays a decisive role in coordinating bodily activities. Consciously and unconsciously, the soul receives influences from the body and initiates responses. The state of a soul can influence the body just as the state of a body can influence the soul; hence the truth of psychosomatic medicine. Our bodies are partly affected by the states of our souls, and our souls are partly affected by the states of our bodies.

Is the soul in the brain?

Cobb and other process philosophers and theologians believe that the soul occupies regions of the brain in such a way that the brain is a constant source of novelty for the soul. The brain is composed of a vast array of "societies" that interact with one another in incredible ways, and the soul is very much shaped by those interactions. But the momentary experience of a soul, at any given moment in its ongoing life, is not reducible to any particular portion of the brain or even to the whole of the brain understood in narrowly molecular terms. It is the lived experience of the person to whom the brain belongs, and this lived experience may include forms of feeling and perception, conscious and unconscious, that are not mediated by the physical brain. If so, the soul is still "natural" in the sense of being part of the larger web of life, but not brain-restricted.

Can the soul survive death?

There is nothing in this understanding that necessitates the view that the soul pre-exists the body or survives bodily death in subjective immortality (see above). The soul may emerge in and with the embryo, not having existed beforehand. And it may perish with the death of a brain, insofar as its experience depends on the brain for nourishment. If this is the case, the soul would have objective immortality in the world and in God, but not subjective immortality.

However, from a process perspective, the pre-existence and survival of the soul after death are metaphysical possibilities. The process cosmology understands the universe as a vast and multi-dimensional web of life, and there is nothing that precludes the pre-existence or survival of souls, human and animal, if empirical evidence points in those directions.

John Cobb's colleague, David Ray Griffin, has done extensive work in exploring evidence for life after death, and concludes that there is much evidence in favor of a continuing journey. For Griffin and for Cobb, it is likely that the soul undergoes a continuing journey after death. See his books below.

What about Heavens and Hells?

It is possible that, in the ongoing life of a soul, there are periods of purgation. "Hells" can be imagined as states of affairs in which a person comes to truly understand and share in the harm and pain the person inflicted upon others, seeking forgiveness. It would be a form of rehabilitation and creative transformation.

"Heavens" can be imagined as states of affairs in which a person grows into the full potential of love, awakening to connections and perhaps being reunited with loved ones. All are possible from a process perspective.

Even heavens are not necessarily permanent. It is possible that the desired end of the journey is for the soul to arrive at a definitive end, after which there is the pilgrimage of the soul as a memory in the ongoing life of God. This would be subjective immortality for a time, or, perhaps better, subjective continuation for a time, until love is fully realized, and death can be natural and holy,

Would God be at work in the life of a soul in life after death?

​God is many things in process thought: an indwelling lure toward wholeness, a course of creative transformation, an eternal companion to each and all. If there is joy and suffering after death, God would share in the joy and suffering; they would 'belong to God' in some way. If there is spiritual growth in life after death, God would be an indwelling lure in the soul for the growth that is possible. From a process perspective, God never gives up on anybody. Yes, there are initial aims after death.


​- Jay McDaniel



​Books by David Ray Griffin exploring
Evidence for Life after Death


  



John Cobb on the Soul

in a Christian Natural Theology, reposted
with permission of Religion Online


​Whitehead is remarkable among recent philosophers for his insistence that man has, or is, a soul. Furthermore, he is convinced that this doctrine has been of utmost value for Western civilization and that its recent weakening systematically undercuts the understanding of the worth of man. The understanding of the human soul is one of the truly great gifts of Plato and of Christianity, and Whitehead does not hesitate to associate his own doctrine with these sources, especially with Plato.(AI, Ch. II)

Nevertheless, Whitehead’s understanding of the human soul is different from those of Platonism and historic Christianity and is one of his most creative contributions for modern reflection. If we are to understand any aspect of Whitehead’s doctrine of man, we must begin by grasping his thought on this subject.

Perhaps the most striking differentiating feature of Whitehead’s doctrine of the soul is that it is a society rather than an individual actual entity. A moment’s reflection will show that this position follows inevitably from the distinction between individuals and societies explained in the preceding chapter. Individuals exist only momentarily. If we identified the soul with such an individual, there would be millions of souls during the lifetime of a single man.

But when we speak in Platonic or Christian terms, we think of a single soul for a single man. If we hold fast to this usage, and Whitehead basically does so, (MT 224. However, since for Whitehead identity through time is an empirical question, he allows for the possibility of a plurality of souls in a single organism.) then we must think of the soul as that society composed of all the momentary occasions of experience that make up the life history of the man. The soul is not an underlying substance undergoing accidental adventures. It is nothing but the sequence of the experiences that constitute it.
In contrast to some Christian views of the soul, it should also be noted at the outset that Whitehead’s understanding of the soul applies to the higher animals as well as to man. Wherever it is reasonable to posit a single center of experience playing a decisive role in the functioning of the organism as a whole, there it is reasonable to posit a soul. For the soul is nothing but such a center of experience in its continuity through time. The use of the term "soul" carries no connotation in Whitehead of preexistence or of life after death. There is no suggestion that the soul is some kind of supernatural element which in some way marks off man from nature and provides a special point of contact for divine activity. The soul is in every sense a part of nature, subject to the same conditions as all other natural entities. (Although this is Whitehead’s usual terminology in his later writings, in such earlier works as CN and occasionally in his later writings he speaks of nature in a more restricted sense.)


John Cobb on Life after Death

in a Christian Natural Theology, reposted
with permission of Religion Online
One of the questions to which the similarity and difference of animal and human souls is relevant is that of their existence after death. Whitehead dealt with this question only rarely, and then very briefly. The most important passage on the subject can be quoted.

"A belief in purely spiritual beings means, on this metaphysical theory, that there are routes of mentality in respect to which associate material routes are negligible, or entirely absent. At the present moment the orthodox belief is that for all men after death there are such routes, and that for all animals after death there are no such routes.

"Also at present it is generally held that a purely spiritual being is necessarily immortal. The doctrine here developed gives no warrant for such a belief. It is entirely neutral on the question of immortality. . . . There is no reason why such a question should not be decided on more special evidence, religious or otherwise, provided that it is trustworthy. In this lecture we are merely considering evidence with a certain breadth of extension throughout mankind. Until that evidence has yielded its systematic theory, special evidence is indefinitely weakened in its effect."(RM 110-111)

Whitehead never returned to a positive treatment of this question, largely because his own interest focused on quite a different conception of immortality.(Dial 297.) Hence, if we are to discuss this aspect of his doctrine of man, we must lean heavily upon this single fascinating passage. A number of points are clear. First, with reference to the topic of the last section, it seems that Whitehead is doubtful that so sharp a line can be drawn between animals and humans that there is real warrant for affirming total extinction of all animals and survival of all humans. Here again we see the insistent rejection of a priori and absolute distinctions. Second, Whitehead explicitly and forcefully denies that the existence of the soul is any evidence for its survival of bodily death. On the other hand, it is clear that he regards his philosophy as perfectly open to the possibility of immortality and that relevant evidence might in principle be obtained. Third, Whitehead recognizes that our response to evidence of this sort depends upon a wider structure of conviction that either opens us to the likelihood of that which is being affirmed or closes us to it.

The passage quoted is found in Religion in the Making and uses terminology slightly different from that employed in this book which depends on his later writings. In terms of the analysis offered above, we may put the question quite simply: Can the soul exist without the body? Can it have some other locus than the brain and some other function than that of presiding over the organism as a whole? In other words, can there be additional occasions in the living person without the intimate association with the body in which the soul or living person came into existence? To these questions Whitehead answers yes.(Whitehead even speculated as to the existence of other types if intelligences in far-off empty space However, the philosophical possibility that this occurs is no evidence that it in fact occurs. Furthermore, it might occur for some minutes or days or centuries and then cease. Whitehead’s private opinion was probably that it did not occur at all.

Nevertheless, in our day the philosophical assertion of the possibility of life beyond death is sufficiently striking that we will do well to consider the grounds of this openness. Since in faithfulness to Whitehead it cannot be argued that there is such life, I will only try to show why the usual philosophical and commonsense arguments for the impossibility of life after death are removed by his philosophy. These arguments stem both from anthropology and from wider cosmological considerations. They are treated below in that order.

The basic form of the anthropological argument against the possibility of life after death has already been answered in what has gone before. This argument fundamentally is that man is his body, or his body-for-itself, (Sartre) or the functioning of his body, in such a sense that it would be strictly meaningless to speak of life apart from the body. The body-for-itself obviously shares the fortunes of the body in general, and certainly the functioning of the body cannot continue without the body. Others, more correctly (from Whitehead’s point of view) , state that man is a psychophysical organism. Clearly a psychophysical organism cannot survive the death of the physical organism. From this point of view, whatever might survive could not in any case be the man.

Whitehead recognizes that language does commonly refer to the entire psychophysical organism as the man.(AI 263-264.) In this it bears testimony to the extreme intimacy of the interaction between body and soul. However, he himself ordinarily identifies the man with the soul.(PR 141.)It is the soul that is truly personal, the true subject. The body is the immediate environment of the person. Hence, the continued existence of the soul or the living person would genuinely be the continued existence of the life of the man. That there is a soul or living person, ontologically distinct from the body, is the first condition of the possibility of life after death. This distinct existence has been established in Whiteheadian terms in the preceding sections of this chapter.

The secondary anthropological objection against such life Whitehead himself probably found more weighty. This is that we have no experience of souls apart from the most intimate interaction with bodies. It is by bodies that the causal efficacy of the universe is mediated to them, and it is as the controlling forces in bodies that they have their basic functions. But whatever significance Whitehead may have attached to such considerations, he knew they were far from decisive. The soul in each momentary occasion prehends not only its environing brain but also its own past occasions of experience and the experiences of other souls.( Most important of all is the prehension of God, omitted from the text because of my effort here to limit myself to what can be said of man without reference to God. Attention will be devoted to God and to man’s experience of him in Chs. IV to VI. Insofar as White-head himself speculated about the separability of the soul from the body, the relation to God was uppermost in his mind. Note the following passage, Al 267: "How far this soul finds a support for its existence beyond the body is: -- another question. The everlasting nature of God, which in a sense is non-temporal and in another sense is temporal, may establish with the soul a peculiarly intense relationship of mutual immanence. Thus in some important sense the existence of the soul may be freed from its complete dependence on the bodily organization." Whether Whitehead actually had in mind in this passage the kind of life after death of which I am speaking or the kind of immortality in the consequent nature of God that was his usual concern I do not know.) These prehensions are not mediated by the body. Hence there is no evidence that they could not occur apart from the body. The extreme vagueness with which other souls are prehended directly in this life (PR 469. "But of course such immediate objectification [of other living persons] is also reinforced, or weakened, by routes of mediate objectification. Also pure and hybrid prehensions are integrated and thus hopelessly intermixed.") might be replaced by clarity when the mediating influences of the pure physical prehensions are removed. Such speculation makes use of no materials not directly provided by Whitehead. But it affords no evidence that the soul does live beyond death. It simply supports Whitehead’s statement that his philosophy is neutral on this question.

Even if it is accepted that the soul is such that it could exist in separation from the body, we are likely to object that there is no "place" for this existence to occur. The days when heaven could be conceived as up and hell as down are long since past (if ever, indeed, they were present for sophisticated thinkers). In the Newtonian cosmology, disembodied souls seemed thoroughly excluded from the space-time continuum. But souls, or mental substances, fitted so ill in this continuum at best, even in their embodied form, that it did not seem too strange to suppose that beyond the continuum of space and time there might be another sphere to which human souls more naturally belonged. Those who believed that somehow the soul could also be explained in terms of the little particles of matter that scurried about in space and time could not believe in any such other sphere. But for those who were convinced that mind could never be explained in terms of the motions of matter, the duality of matter and mind pointed quite naturally to the duality of this world and another, spiritual world in which space, time, and matter did not occur. Gradually, however, the sharp line that separated matter and mind gave way. Evolutionary categories brought mind into the natural world, involving it in space and time. Even if this forced the beginning of the abandonment of the pure materiality of the natural world, it also undermined the justification for conceiving of any sphere beyond this one. If minds have emerged in space and time, it is to space and time that they belong. A nonspatiotemporal mental sphere seemed no more meaningful or plausible than a nonspatiotemporal material sphere. There seemed no longer to be any "place" for life to occur after death.

Theology responded to this new situation by reviving the ancient doctrine of the resurrection of the body. If heaven could not be another sphere alongside this one, then it must be a transformation of the spatiotemporal sphere which will come at the end of time. The Pharisees, it appeared, had more truth than the Orphics. But the belief in an apocalyptic end was hard to revive, and even among the theologians who used its language, there were many who regarded the resurrection of the body more as a symbol of the wholeness of the human person, body and mind, than as a reliable prediction of the future. Outside of conservative ecclesiastical circles, the doctrine of the resurrection of the body continued to appear anachronistic. Natural theology, at any rate, could not be asked to attempt to make any sense of such a theory.

But in our situation, in which the mind or soul has been naturalized into the spatiotemporal continuum, can natural theology suggest any "place" for any kind of life after death? I am not sure that in any positive sense it can, and I am sure that I am not capable of the kind of imaginative speculation that would be required to give such a positive answer. Yet something may be said in a purely suggestive way to indicate that our commonsense inability to allow "place" for the new existence of souls is based on the limitations of our imagination and not on any knowledge we posssess about space and time. We will turn to Whitehead for the beginning of the restructuring of our imagination, on the basis of which further reflection must proceed.

The first point that must be grasped and held firmly is that we are not to think of four-dimensional space-time as a fixed reality into which all entities are placed. Space-time is a structure abstracted from the extensive relationships of actual entities. So far as what is involved in being an actual entity is concerned, there is no reason that there should be four dimensions rather than more or fewer. The world we know is four-dimensional, but this does not mean that all entities in the past and future have had or will have just this many dimensions. Indeed, it does not mean that all entities contemporary with us must have this number of dimensions, although there may be no way for us to gain cognition of any entity of a radically different sort.

Our four-dimensional space-time is the special form that the universal extensive continuum takes in our world. Every actual entity participates in this extensive continuum. But even this is not because the extensive continuum exists prior to and is determinative of the occurrence of actual entities. The extensive continuum is necessary and universal only because no actual entity can ever occur except in relation to other actual entities. Such relations may not be such as to allow for measurement, as they do in our four-dimensional world; certainly they may not have the dimensional character with which we are familiar. But some kind of extensiveness, Whitehead believes, is a function of relatedness as such.

If we try to imagine what it would be like to have no intimate relations with a body or with an external world as given to us in our sense experience, we seem to be left with a two-dimensional world. There is the dimension of successiveness, of past and future. We have memory of the past and anticipation of the future. In addition, there remains the direct experience of other living persons in mental telepathy. These persons are not experienced as related to us in a three-dimensional space but only as being external to ourselves, capable of independent, contemporary existence. Shall we call this a one-dimensional spatial relation?

Let us suppose, then, that the life of souls beyond death occurs in a two-dimensional continuum instead of the four-dimensional continuum we now know. Is it meaningful to ask" where" this two-dimensional continuum exists? Such a question can only mean, How is it related to our four-dimensional continuum according to the terms of that four-dimensional continuum? And perhaps, in those terms, no answer is possible. However, if there are relations between events in a two-dimensional continuum and events in a four-dimensional continuum, then those relations too must participate in some extensive character. Perhaps, therefore, in some mysterious sense, there is an answer, but I for one am unable to think in such terms.

For the speculations I have just outlined, I can claim no direct support from Whitehead. He does make clear that the relation of an occasion to the mental pole of other occasions does not participate in the limitations that I take to be decisive for our understanding of a three-dimensional space. (SMW 216; PR 165, 469; AI 318.) He does affirm that even now there may be occasions of experience participating in an order wholly different from the one we know. (MT 78, 212. Whitehead anticipates the gradual emergence of a new cosmic epoch in which the physical will play a lesser role and the mental a larger one. [RM 160; ESP 90.]) He repeatedly emphasizes the contingency of the special kind of space-time to which we are accustomed.(SMW 232; PR 140, 442.) But beyond this the speculation is my own.

Even if my speculations are fully warranted by Whitehead’s understanding of the extensive continuum, it should be clearly understood that these considerations argue only for the possibility of life after death, not at all for its actuality. There is nothing about the nature of the soul or of the cosmos that demands the continued existence of the living person. If man continues to exist beyond death, it can be only as a new gift of life, and whether such a gift is given is beyond the province of natural theology to inquire.