Origins & Critique: The Problem of "Feeling" in Whitehead's Metaphysics

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2024

The Problem of “Feeling” in Whitehead’s Metaphysics

by Michael A. Flannery

University Of Alabama At Birmingham

flannery@uab.edu

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An Observation

Historical background is always necessary to have pertaining to the origins of ideas however the datedness of yesteryear's discussion seems passe to the current force of Whiteheadian thought in process philosophy and theology.

I, like others, are not adverse to processual "feeling" all the way down into nature and the cosmos finding in it a necessary descriptor when so much of Christian thought would separate man from the animal, the flora and fauna, the inorganic kingdoms, when asserting man as unique and without peer. A Whiteheadian Process Philosopher and Theologian bears no such artificial divisions. 

Too, the early post-cursors of Whiteheadian thought over the years has only deepened with the additions of process-based panexperientialism and panpsychism to that of panrelationalism. Hence, despite the engagements of past philosophers to their contemporaries ideas and their own academic generations in context with other relevant philosophies and "noetics", we might find these discursives as but helps and aides to Whitehead's own experimentations in speaking more frankly about the voids of the current day's metaphysics. 

Whitehead's organic onus is now on the present generation of process thinkers to continue to work out the many paths and divergencies of process thought in relation to contemporaneous philosophical, psychoanalytic, and socio-cultural thought today: 1) in formalistic terms and, 2) in practical terms whereby civilizations may be aided in their language between one another.

- RE Slater, Nov 9, 2024

The Problem of “Feeling”

in Whitehead’s Metaphysics

article link

by Michael A. Flannery

Fall 2024

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When Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) left England for the United States in 1924 to serve as Harvard’s newest lecturer in philosophy, the department and university administration were delighted to have the co-author of the massive and masterful Principia Mathematica (19101913) on their faculty. Although he had an early foray into philosophy and metaphysics with the Tarner Lectures delivered at Trinity College in November 1919 (published as The Concept of Nature [1920]), it wasn’t until after he turned to the temporal and teleological ideas of Henri Bergson and formulated them into a whole system of thought that he became known as the purported “father” of modern process philosophy. With the publication of his magnum opus Process and Reality (1929), process thought was alleged to have begun, proof that academic pedigree often determines one’s fame.

But Whitehead was not the only one to introduce process philosophy. Swedish-American John Elof Boodin (1869-1950), coming as he did from the Midwest (first at Grinnell College in Iowa, then at the University of Kansas, followed by Carleton College in Minnesota) before moving to the fledgling UCLA, only recently promoted as an independent institution from its former status as the Southern Branch of the University of California, was destined for obscurity despite the fact that he already developed his own system of process philosophy. Boodin’s career as a process thinker shouldn’t be surprising given the fact that Josiah Royce, to whom Boodin was devoted, is regarded as America’s first true process philosopher (Auxier 2013, pp. 40, 63).* Armed with what he had learned from his dissertation supervisor and mentor, Boodin worked out his own process thought in A Realistic Universe in 1916, three years before Whitehead’s Tarner Lectures, four years before his Concept of Nature, nine years before his Science and the Modern World, ten years before

*Randall Auxier points out that Royce’s process philosophy can be traced to an unpublished essay, “On Purpose in Thought,” written in 1880. This was developed further in Royce’s essay, “The Problem of Job,” published in Studies of Good and Evil: A Series of Essays Upon Life and Society (New York: Appleton, 1898). Richard Hocking (1906-2001), son of idealist philosopher and student of Royce, William Ernest Hocking (1873-1966), noted this too. He observed that Royce “expressed . . . his conviction that human existence is at once thoroughly time-immersed as a sequence of practical actions and, in its rational power, capable of grasping forms of order and lawfulness which are true throughout the relativities of the temporal flux. Royce is a kind of process philosopher” (Hocking 1963, pp. xivxv). All of these elements are more fully developed in Boodin’s oeuvre.

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Religion in the Making, and eleven years before his Gifford Lectures that would become Process and Reality (1929), his magnum opus.

As with any major system or theory, differences over origination, emphasis, definition, interpretation, and consequences are common among its adherents. At the time, Boodin identified himself a creationist, which he defined as someone who believes in “the occurrence of new forms, characters and stages under the guidance of an actuality which controls and animates the course of history.” As interpreted, “creation is epigenesis or emergence (in recent terminology) together with control from a higher level” (Boodin 1934c, p. 14). On the other hand, Boodin considered Whitehead a preformationist, meaning “that evolutionary development is latent in the process so that later forms and stages are really an unfolding or making explicit what is already present in the earlier stages of the same history” (Boodin 1934c, pp. 14, 43-45). By definition, however, both were process thinkers, although the term process philosophy per se came into common use by its own independent route.

Here some sorting out of terminology is helpful. While process philosophy is generally associated with Whitehead, he actually never employed the term, preferring to call his system “the philosophy of organism.” In fact, the theme of this essay examines Whitehead’s proposal whereby in “place of the Hegelian hierarchy of categories of thought, the philosophy of organism finds a hierarchy of categories of feeling [emphasis mine]” (Whitehead [1929] 1978, p. 166). Process philosophy as a general term referring to being as becoming in a constant holistic relational interaction of change appears to have first been used explicitly in Wilmon H. Sheldon’s America’s Progressive Philosophy (1942) and elaborated upon in his Process and Polarity (1944). Sheldon did not use this phrase as a synonym for the philosophy of organism, though he regarded Whitehead as one of several of its greatest proponents (this included Dewey, a pragmatist who, as we shall see, opposed several of Whitehead’s formulations); instead, Sheldon developed his ideas independently of Whitehead (Rescher 1996, p. 23). However, it was Bernard Loomer who applied “process” to both branches of philosophy and theology. Here Looomer made it plain that in using “process philosophy” he had “reference in this case to the general Whiteheadian orientation” (Loomer 1949, p. 181). Although Loomer knew of Sheldon’s work, he probably emphasized Whitehead’s process philosophy because he saw process as “a theory which Whitehead has already exemplified” (Loomer 1944, p. 67). Here is how process philosophy became synonymous with the

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philosophy of organism. Bolstered by Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) at the University of Chicago with his evangelizing zeal for process (he preferred “neoclassical”) theology under his own interpretation of Whitehead, whom he knew and had worked with, by the 1950s the almost exclusive identification of process philosophy and theology with Whitehead was complete. In any case, given the etymology of the phrase, process philosophy casts a wide net that captures a broad genus of kindred thinkers whose specific species of beliefs can vary widely. None of these early proponents actually used the phrase.

Initially, Boodin offers little critique of Whitehead only to provide a fuller assessment by stating, “When theory goes beyond experience, it belongs to the world of fiction, albeit a useful fiction if it leads to further experience” (Boodin 1934c, p. 487). Eventually, he accused Whitehead of perpetuating a kind of fiction—and not a particularly useful one—by singling out his tendency to abstraction, over generalization, conflation of mathematical truths with causal explanations, and his overambitious metaphysical constructions (Boodin 1943). Of particular concern for Boodin was Whitehead’s use of “feeling” in his metaphysical system:

Whitehead . . . attributes little importance to sense-quality. Instead, he stresses feeling. His language of feeling is as fluctuating as the feelings. He sometimes uses feeling in the psychological sense of feeling tone. In this sense, it is a fusion of a large mass of organic sensations, especially from the autonomous system. This is an emergent fact as much as the sense-qualities which we use to characterize external things. While feelings are an important revelation of our life in nature, they are certainly not less organic than the more specific sense-qualities. Together with the specific sense-qualities, the feelings constitute the immediate awareness of our life in nature. They are more massive and in that sense richer than the specific sense-qualities. But that is no reason for putting them on a different metaphysical basis. Sometimes Whitehead uses feeling for our whole immediate awareness of nature. This immediate awareness he calls prehension, as contrasted with apprehension. Prehension suggests active seizure; and feeling, instead of being an emergent, becomes an efficient cause in nature. As all nature is organic for Whitehead, feeling becomes the efficient causation in nature. And since reality is conceived as dynamic, feeling becomes reality, and Whitehead is brought by his own route to the mysticism of Bradley. Feeling, as one type of the emergent actualization of nature—the florescence of life's activity—becomes the whole of reality. Such ambiguity will give the philosophers much material out of which they can make a living and will no doubt be perpetuated [emphasis mine] (Boodin 1934a, pp. 157-158).

Boodin’s last pithy comment was a prescient observation on his colleagues’ easy slide into the hypnotic gaze of the noetic idea.

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Like Boodin, University of Arkansas philosopher Daryl H. Rice refused to fall under Whitehead’s spell. Rice accuses Whitehead of “reductive vitalism” (1989), but not before pointing out that Whitehead’s use of “physical feeling” is deceptive because it doesn’t refer to physical reality in any meaningful way, but as a “psychical reality” (Rice 1984, p. 123). Instead, Whitehead universalizes “physical feeling” to show the relativity and continuity of events in nature. Here we have Whitehead’s philosophy of science in the service of a metaphysics of feeling and emotion. In other words, the universal relativity and continuity of the events of nature are raised to the level of a metaphysics of feeling and emotion. This is carried to questionable lengths in Whitehead’s moral philosophy where “the ought” is reduced to an æsthetic sense (see Schlipp 1951, pp. 561-618).

Whitehead’s metaphysical scheme applies “feeling” to so many things that it seems to lose coherence and all meaning. It can refer to an actual occasion as subject, to an actual occasion as object, to the apprehension of object by subject, and to the affective tone washing over the act of apprehension. We have a feeling that “feels” so obfuscatory that “Feeling seems to become what Hegel claimed became of his notion of the Absolute in the hands of some of his contemporaries: the night in which all cows are black” (Rice 1984, p. 123). Whitehead restricts feeling to “subjective form” and as such it cannot be passed on from subject to subject because it is solely internal. Whitehead’s “feeling” becomes a word spaghetti of incomprehensibly slippery usage (Rice 1984, p. 124).† There is nothing in process thinking that requires “feeling” of this sort. It is a muddle of Whitehead’s own making in his effort to understand “the whole of reality” and thus extends feeling “by overturning our thought expectations and beliefs” (Baciu, 2023, p. 67). Here the extension of feeling to inanimate things is rightly regarded with extreme Kantian distrust, but is nonetheless indispensable to Whitehead’s “actual occasions.”

Careful to keep substance out of his metaphysics, Boodin admits that since “we are concerned only with the dynamic world as it appears in our experience, . . . we must assume that reality is what it is known-as” therefore banishing “the fictitious [Kantian] thing-in-itself” (Boodin 1916, p. 28). Kant’s mistake was to assume that we link things with our intellect arbitrarily when, in fact, we are selective in that “our conjunctions tally with the conjunctions of qualities as

†Whitehead’s awkward handling of feeling is exemplary of his entire philosophy. Process and Reality, supposedly Whitehead’s grand metaphysical statement, has been called “almost the most unintelligible essay in philosophy ever written” (Urban 1939, p. 617). Many who have tried to digest its contents would agree.

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ascertained in our experience” (Boodin 1916, p. 91). Furthermore, rather than mere subjective additions as Kant would have it, things “come to figure in the contexts of our interests” (Boodin 1916, p. 93). These relations are not abstractions. In good Jamesian fashion, “Terms and relations are pragmatic. They are our emphasis in the service of the dominant interest for the time being. The real units of reality are neither terms nor relations, but energy systems from which the terms and relations are intellectual abstractions” (Boodin 1916, p. 94). For Boodin, human experience is comprised of constancy—invariable associations, permanent will, the dominant tendency, the ruling passion—and change—shifting contents and values, new experiences, unforeseen obstacles, and pleasant surprises (Boodin 1916, p. 176). Process must entail flux and that implies constancy on the one hand and change on the other. Indeed without flux growth, creativity and novelty would have no meaning. Whitehead forces energy systems into an odd context of “feeling” that seems unwarranted and unnecessary unless one subscribes to the equally unwarranted and unnecessary panpsychism or its pragmatized twin panexperientialism as some Whiteheadians have done (Griffin 2001, pp. 94-128]; Mesle 2008, pp. 93-94). This merely presses an abstraction into the service of an a priori metaphysic. Nothing in process thought requires this.

Whiteheadians will no doubt insist that the ubiquitous use of feeling avoids the dreaded bifurcation of humanity and nature but Boodin’s metaphysic was just as averse to bifurcation (Boodin 1925, pp. 50-51, 252-261, 265; Boodin 1934a, pp. 148, 170-171). Whitehead’s background and achievements in mathematics, alluded to earlier, secured his Anglo-American status, but it could be a detriment too. Boodin suggests that Whitehead made the same error as Samuel Alexander (1859-1938) by treating abstract mathematical concepts as real-world attributes. This is confirmed in Whitehead’s conflation of “value” all the way down, like Alexander, “into the elementary constituents of the universe” (Urban 1951, p. 325). While this was ostensibly an effort to head off the bifurcation of nature and experiences, it seems dubious to do so by employing such mathematizing abstractions as reading value all the down. Boodin was too close a reader of Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) not to know that mathematics simply comprises “pragmatic conventions contributed by the human mind and relative to the needs of descriptions” (Boodin 1925, p. 87). Perhaps Whitehead’s confusion stemmed from such a concerted effort, along with his colleague Bertrand Russell, to create a notation system in Principia Mathematica that would provide “the perfect language” for clarifying everything. This involved trying to fill in every

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ambiguity or ambivalence and caused serious problems (Grayling 2019, pp. 342-344). In the end, it fell under the weight of its own imposing objective by worsening a problem it sought to solve.

Famed pragmatist John Dewey (1859-1952) and political scientist/philosopher Arthur F. Bentley (1870-1957) recognized the “linguistic chaos” to which logic and epistemology had fallen and attempted to clarify things in their Knowing and the Known published two years after Whitehead’s death in 1949. Dewey and Bentley called for consistency in terminology and “firm names” based upon observation that could be generally accepted by logicians and epistemologists working in the field (Dykhuizen 1973, p. 311). Their project was clearly not served by Whitehead’s neologisms, special word usages, and unusual linguistic applications. Dewey was not overly critical of Whitehead in public, choosing to emphasize those things with which his own philosophical thinking most agreed. But privately both he and Bentley knew Whitehead had problems. Like his fuzzy use of “feeling,” Bentley told Dewey in a letter dated May 1, 1942, "that Whitehead “is always trying to read the universe in mentalistic terms.... My irreverent feeling is that he [Whitehead] empties a pillow case full of feathers, and you waste a lot more time than is necessary in huffing and puffing them away. He worries me” (Ratner and Altman 1964, p. 101). Dewey explained his motive in not fully challenging Whitehead’s ideas: “I didn’t mean to indulge in anything like a wholehearted defense of Whitehead,” he told Bentley on December 3, 1944, “In fact, I think his thought is slippery—but the slipperiness is of a kind in which I think the alternatives are either to leave him alone or engage in a highly technical discussion—in our case I favor the first alternative” (Ratner and Altman 1964, pp. 344-345).

One of those “technical” issues was Whitehead’s background in mathematics. He simply tried to do too much with it. Einstein, like Poincaré, admitted his descriptions were useful abstractions without any direct physical significance for his space-time, but Whitehead sets out to give an account of nature in which, as Boodin explains, “abstractions are conceived as extensive abstractions. Even event-particles with their point-instants are conceived as contained in nature.” Not surprisingly, Whitehead has difficulty showing how these can be extrapolated from “events” in any reasonable sense. Boodin, therefore, concludes, “The spatial, temporal, and physical points do not possess the character of extension and inclusion. Whitehead admits that ‘the creative advance of nature,’ which is his expressive characterization of concrete reality, is ‘not serial.’ But it is easy to see that Whitehead has left himself no other locus for such entities, so he has to include

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them within nature. He has set himself to deal with nature as closed to mind. There is to be no bifurcation into subjective and objective. Nature is to be self-contained to a theory of nature. He did not leave the least hole through which he could chuck embarrassing entities” (Boodin 1925, p. 316).

All Whitehead had to do is admit mind—and by extension feeling—as a part of nature instead of shoehorning it into “occasions” or painfully demonstrating how points, instants, and point-particles can be abstracted from events. These “are not contained in the same sense as adjectives or as the objects of science. They can only be considered as part of nature if we regard the instrumental function of mind as part of nature” (Boodin 1925, p. 317). In the end, Whitehead’s effort to root out any and all ambiguity in his metaphysical system, attempting to avoid bifurcation at all costs, paid the ultimate price of mentalizing nature. Of course, mind as a part of nature is not the same as being nature. The latter is groundless panpsychism. Dewey recognized this in Whitehead, accusing him of “converting continuity of functioning into identity of contents” of which “he is very guilty” (Ratner and Altman 1964, p. 342).

Again, this difficulty, in part, resides in Whitehead’s mathematizing everything. Bentley noticed the same problem in Whitehead that Boodin had. Although not in the published version of his essay “Specification” that appeared in the November 1946 issue of The Journal of Philosophy, his draft, shared with Dewey the year before, pointed out that “the logical technical examination of the mathematical methods is always legitimate; but the logical carryover of goals, tests, and standards is something else. In this process of trying to make logic run mathematics, the logic [of Russell, Whitehead, et al. (brackets in the original)] has advanced (i.e., weakened itself) to the three-valued or multi-valued forms,‡ and it has tried to make probability developments oriented to the old scheme; it has had many offshoots. (Consider hypostatizations. Consider concept as a norm around which the wording circulated. Consider pure quality assumed to be capable of mathematicised treatment)” (Ratner and Altman 1964, p. 466). But Dewey explained to Bentley that Whitehead’s “ultra-mathematical organizations” were only part of his problem: the heart of it was “the same as Bergson’s starting from Newtonian physics,” both were struck by the significance of temporality, but with the new physics, Whitehead attempted to apply his “temporal

‡A reference in logic to what is sometimes called 3VL or many-valued systems (MVL) that include true, false, and one or more additional values (e.g., provisionally true or false, heuristically useful, etc.).

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constructions” with relativity and space-time “to mentalize his Reality” (Ratner and Altman 1964, pp. 102-103).

Of course, this looped back to Whitehead’s mathematized metaphysics. Boodin saw this better than Dewey: “The theory of relativity raises the whole question of the relation of mathematics to the real world. Einstein and Whitehead both assume the validity of the mathematical concepts of continuity and infinity, which have played such a large part in modern physical description ever since the invention of the differential calculus. They belong to the scientific method of the Newtonian era to which we owe the foundations of the physical sciences. But like the Newtonian concepts of time and space, they are purely artificial concepts. We have no evidence that nature ever has the constitution symbolized by the concepts of continuity and infinity. That nature makes no leaps is one of those a priori dicta, like nature abhors a vacuum, which we have come to distrust. So long as there was no evidence to the contrary, the Newtonian framework of science naturally compelled conviction. But we have seen how the conception of absolute spaceunits and time-units was shattered by” the new physics (Boodin 1925, p. 307). In effect, Whitehead, in following Einstein, was putting new wine into old wineskins.

It may seem that we have come a long way from Whitehead’s use of “feeling” in his metaphysics, but it is really a significant red flag to all the problems attending his philosophy, problems noted by so many. This is why Boodin’s comment concerning his colleagues’ eagerness to thrive on ambiguities such as Whitehead’s use of “feeling,” even when ostensibly rooting them out, should give pause. It is important to note that the problem is not with process thought per se, the problem is with Whitehead’s construction and presentation of it. Boodin avoided Whitehead’s complications in three ways: first, by letting most of the moral and teleological work of his metaphysics to be carried on the shoulders of cosmic immanence (Flannery 2024); second, by a frank humility and fallibilism, admitting that it is “Far better to confess honestly our ignorance and pray for light. This confession does more to honor God than a pretended wisdom” (Boodin 1934b, p. 163); third, by avoiding Whitehead’s sweeping generalizations, namely, his parallelism that “saves the principle of continuity at the price of making an assumption (i.e., that every material change is accompanied by a psychological change [more mentalizing]) for which there is no evidence. [Julian] Huxley appeals for support to A. N. Whitehead and quotes, ‘Each event is a reflection of every other event, past as well as present.’ This is mysticism and would make science

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impossible. Whitehead ignores two fundamental principles: the principle of specificity or the emergence of new qualities under specific conditions, and the principle of levels which emphasizes the discontinuity of organization in nature” (Boodin 1957, p. 111). If the Whiteheadian reply is that event means something else here entirely, then we’re back to the linguistic chaos bemoaned by Bentley and Dewey.

In the end, disputations of the kind instigated by certain aspects of Whitehead’s metaphysics—from his ambiguous use of feeling to his mathematical conflations and mentalizations—will probably have influence only within the rarefied atmosphere of the philosopher’s lecture hall. And for good reason. Perhaps our philosophers—whoever they may be—need to have the same “genius” as good leaders in other more commonplace endeavors, in Walter Lippmann’s words, to leave behind them “a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal successfully.”

Bibliography

Auxier, Randall E. 2013. Time, Will, and Purpose: Living Ideas from the Philosophy of Josiah Royce. Chicago: Open Court.

Baciu, Claudiu. 2023. “Feeling” and Metaphysics in Whitehead. Studii de istorie a filosofiei universal. Issue 1:59-70.

Boodin, John Elof. 1916. A Realistic Universe: An Introduction to Metaphysics. New York: Macmillan.

Boodin, John Elof. 1925. Cosmic Evolution: Outlines of Cosmic Idealism. New York: Macmillan.

Boodin, John Elof. 1934a. “Functional Realism.” The Philosophical Review. v. 43, no. 2: 147-178.

Boodin, John Elof. 1934b. God and Creation: God, a Cosmic Philosophy of Religion. New York: Macmillan.

Boodin, John Elof. 1934c. Three Interpretations of the Universe. New York: Macmillan.

Boodin, John Elof. 1943. “Fictions in Science and Philosophy. II.” The Journal of Philosophy. v. 40, no. 26: 701-716.

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Boodin, John Elof. 1957. Studies in Philosophy: The Posthumous Papers of John Elof Boodin. Edited by Donald Ayres Piatt. Los Angeles: University of California. 

Dykhuizen, George. 1973. The Life and Mind of John Dewey. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.

Grayling, A. C. 2019. The History of Philosophy. New York: Penguin Press.

Griffin, David Ray. 2001. Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Hocking, Richard. 1963. “Process and Analysis in the Philosophy of Royce.” In Josiah Royce’s Seminar, 1913-1914. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.

Loomer, Bernard. 1944. Review of America’s Progressive Philosophy by William Henry Sheldon. The Journal of Religion. v. 24, no. 1: 66-67.

Loomer, Bernard. 1949. “Faith and Process Philosophy.” The Journal of Religion. v. 29, no. 3: 181-203,

Mesle, C. Robert. 2008. Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead. West Conshocken, PA: Templeton Press.

Ratner, Sidney and Jules Altman, eds. 1964. John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley: A Philosophical Correspondence, 1932-1951. New Brunswick: Rutger University Press.

Rescher, Nicholas. 1996. Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy. Albany: SUNY Press.

Rice, Daryl H. 1984. “Alfred North Whitehead’s Political Theory and Metaphysics: A Critical Recurrence.” PhD dissertation. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University.

Rice, Daryl H. 1989. “Whitehead and Existential Phenomenology: Is a Synthesis Possible?” Philosophy Today. v. 33, no. 2: 183-192.

Schlipp, Paul. 1951. “Whitehead’s Moral Philosophy.” In The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp. 2nd ed. The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 3. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

Urban Wilbur M. 1938. “Elements of Unintelligibility in Whitehead's Metaphysics.” The Journal of Philosophy. v. 35, no. 23: 617-637.

Urban, Wilbur M. 1951. “Whitehead’s Philosophy of Language.” In The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Edited by Paul Arthur Schlipp. 2nd ed. The Library of Living Philosophers, vol. 3. La Salle, IL: Open Court.

Whitehead, Alfred North. 1978. Process and Reality. Corrected edition. Edited by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne. New York: The Free Press.

What is Process Panexperientialism?

In each fleeting moment,

all things touch,

alive with the pulse of experience,

woven in a web of becoming.

- re slater

 

Each spark of feeling,
from stone to star,
joins the dance of the world—
we are all in relationship

from atomic force to sentient being.

- re slater

In the heart of process,
each is both subject and object,
bound in a web of shared experience,
becoming, always becoming....

- re slater

[All brackets are mine] - re slater

Panexperientialist theologies begin with the idea that experience is fundamental to the whole of things. Long before there was life on earth, and before the evolution of the earth itself, there was something like experience. The entire ongoing of the evolution of the cosmic universe is an evolution of experience. Experience is not consciousness. Consciousness is an emergent property just as time is [e.g., cosmic space creates time, thus making of time an emergent property of physical space].

Some experience is conscious but much not. Experience is the activity of "prehending something other" and being influenced by what is prehended. This page outlines one version of a panexperientialist theology rooted in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Others can likewise be developed: indigenous theologies, Hindu theologies, Buddhist theologies, Jewish theologies, Muslim theologies, and Christian theologies. All would begin with the shared idea that experience is everywhere and that the universe itself is, in some deep sense, a "living cosmos" that is new at every moment.

- Jay McDaniel

The universe hums with feeling,
from the smallest atom to the deepest soul,
experiencing, creating, in

endless flows of connection.

- re slater

All things feel,
all things are touched,
all worlds unfold in the

meeting of things,

hearts and minds.

- re slater

In every pulse of time,
there is a meeting of souls,
as all things arise together -

in symphonies of shared

experience.

- re slater

​Panexperiential Theology

article link

A Living Cosmos and the

Perpetual Newness of God

by Jay McDaniel

In the flow of process,
we are neither fixed nor free,
but woven in the fabric of the now,
experiencing each other’s becoming.

- re slater

What is Panexperientialism?

Panexperientialism is the idea that "experience" is not confined to human consciousness but extends throughout the depths of matter and into the vast reaches of the galaxies. Understood in this way, "experience" need not involve consciousness as in clear perception (e.g. visual awareness). Nor need it involve intellectual awareness as in the conscious reflection on ideas, memories, or goals. Experience can be non-conscious and non-intellectual but still be "experience." It is the activity of feeling or "prehending" something other and being influenced by it in some way. Wherever energetic transactions occur between entities—whether among living cells, atomic events, or stellar processes—experience is present, as it is, of course, in human beings and other animals, serving as the connective tissue between entities. It carries an element of interiority or "subjective immediacy," suggesting that something akin to subjectivity exists universally. Consequently, the objective world we see, hear, and touch is an expression of this pervasive subjectivity. The objective world, then, is an objectification of subjective experience.

One value of this way of looking at things is that it encourages us to live with respect and care for the whole of the material world, both biological and trans-biological. Another is that it invites us to imagine sacrality itself as part of, not apart from, a panexperiential world.

Entire theological frameworks--panexperientialist theologies—can be constructed on this foundation. They begin with the idea that experience is fundamental, not simply to human life but to the whole of things. This page outlines one version of a panexperientialist theology rooted in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Others can likewise be developed: indigenous theologies, Hindu theologies, Buddhist theologies, Jewish theologies, Muslim theologies, and Christian theologies. All would begin with the shared idea that the universe, one way or another, is alive with subjective immediacy, valuable in its own right.

Outline of a Whiteheadian Approach

Cosmic Evolution and the Emergence of Life

The universe, approximately 14 billion years old, has evolved through stars, galaxies, and planets, eventually giving rise to life on Earth. It is still evolving. Conventional vs. Panexperiential Views of Experience

A common view holds that early cosmic processes were devoid of experience, with subjective awareness emerging only later with biological life. Whitehead offers a different perspective, suggesting that experience—however primitive—has been present from the universe’s beginning.

Energy as Feeling

For Whitehead, energy and feeling are inseparable; even subatomic events involve basic forms of attraction, repulsion, and responsiveness. Every transfer of energy involves not just physical force but also a rudimentary kind of subjective experience, or "prehension."

Quantum Events and Human Experience

Whitehead suggests a continuity between quantum events and human experiences, where both involve moments of responsiveness without requiring self-awareness. Human experience consists mostly of preconscious sensations, emotions, and bodily awareness—similar in essence to quantum interactions.

Spontaneity and Self-Creativity

Neither quantum events nor human experiences are entirely determined by the past; each involves spontaneity and creativity. Whitehead describes this as “self-creativity,” where unfulfilled possibilities shape the present and help guide it toward novel outcomes.

Prehension as Felt Connections

Prehension is the process by which events integrate past influences and potential futures into each unfolding moment. This process involves more than information transfer—it includes a felt connection with possibilities, guiding each moment toward satisfaction and fulfillment.

Seeking Intensity through Contrasts

Both quantum events and human experiences seek intensity, achieved through the integration of contrasting elements. This contrast fosters novelty and depth in human emotions and in cosmic processes, enriching the creative advance of the universe.

Inanimate Objects and Prehending Events

Even seemingly inanimate objects, like rocks, consist of prehending events at the quantum level, though they lack spontaneity and self-organization. Whitehead distinguishes between mechanical unities (e.g., rocks) and organic unities, where interactions create emergent complexity and self-organization.

Value as Intrinsic to the Universe

Experience inherently carries value, with each moment seeking satisfaction and self-enjoyment. Value exists in the act of becoming itself, independent of consciousness, and is woven into the evolving universe from the very beginning.

The Universe as a Creative Advance into Novelty At the heart of Whitehead’s process philosophy is the idea that the universe is a continual creative advance into novelty. Reality consists of moments of experience that, through their spontaneous self-creativity, add something new to the unfolding process of time. Creativity, in this view, is not merely a property of particular beings but the ultimate reality underlying all things. It is through this ceaseless creativity that both order and novelty emerge in every moment of the universe. This advance into novelty makes life unpredictable, opening space for innovation and transformation at every level—from quantum events to human choices.

God as the Lure of Beauty

God participates in the unfolding cosmos by offering potentialities—called "eternal objects"—that guide events toward beauty and fulfillment. As both a source of new possibilities and a receptive presence for all experiences, God embodies a dynamic relationship with the universe, inviting every moment to contribute to the evolving harmony of creation.

The Perpetual Newness of God. God is evolving is that new events that happen in the universe, given its creative advance into novelty, add contents to the life of God that not exist to be felt or known theretofore; and in the sense that these new events add new potentials to God, to lure the universe and to enjoy contrasts, that did not exist theretofore, even for God.

Further Discussion

The Universe as a Process of Becoming

We are told that the universe as we know it is approximately 14 billion years old. It has been evolving ever since—into stars, galaxies, planets, moons, and, at least on our planet (and probably elsewhere), what we call life. "Life" has many definitions, but for now, let us assume that to be alive is to possess something like feeling or experience.

It is tempting to believe that, before a certain stage in cosmic evolution, there was no experience at all—no interiority, no emotion, no prehending, no attraction or repulsion, no feeling. According to this view, the early universe consisted solely of energy and force transfers, devoid of any subjective dimension. Consciousness and experience would have emerged only later, perhaps with the advent of biological complexity. Until that point, the universe would have been a realm of purely physical interactions, lacking any trace of interiority or feeling.

The Whiteheadian Alternative: Energy = Feeling

Alfred North Whitehead offers a radically different view. He proposes that what we call "energy" at the subatomic level is not distinct from experience but is itself a primitive form of feeling. Energy, in this view, is not merely an objective force exchanged between particles—it is a form of prehension. Wherever there is energy, there is some degree of feeling, however rudimentary. The interactions of subatomic particles are not devoid of experience but involve basic forms of attraction, repulsion, and responsiveness. Energy transfers, therefore, are not merely physical events but also moments of subjective experience—simple, unconscious feelings, or "prehensions."

This perspective suggests that the universe has always contained an element of subjectivity—an interior dimension present from its earliest moments. Prehension did not emerge with life; it has been present all along, shaping the evolution of the cosmos at every level. Energy and feeling, as Whitehead sees it, are inseparable aspects of the same process of becoming.

Quantum Events and Human Experience

If this panexperiential view is correct, it implies that quantum events—occurring deep within atoms just after the Big Bang—are of the same kind as moments of human experience. Both, in their way, are alive.

What connects a moment of human experience to a quantum event? Neither is conscious in the traditional sense. They do not involve perceiving objects with the clarity of human sight, nor do they engage in self-reflection. Quantum events, like most of our everyday experiences, lack conscious perception or reflective awareness. Even when we are awake, moments of clear perception are rare. Much of our experience consists of bodily sensations, emotions, desires, and preconscious memories.

To grasp the connection between quantum events and human experiences, we need to move beyond conventional ideas of consciousness. Neither requires self-awareness or the sense of being distinct from the world. Both unfold in response to what came before, shaped by prior influences. Whitehead describes this responsiveness as experience in the mode of causal efficacy.

Spontaneity and Self-Creativity

Yet, neither quantum events nor human experiences are fully determined by the past. There is always an element of spontaneity—what Whitehead calls self-creativity. In both cases, experience arises from the intersection of past influences and spontaneous aliveness. Unfulfilled possibilities from the future also shape the present, acting as attractors, much like probabilities in quantum theory, drawing events toward particular outcomes.

Prehension and Subjectivity

Whitehead introduces the concept of prehension to describe how events—whether human or quantum—incorporate past influences and future possibilities. Prehension is not a conscious process but a way of feeling both what has been and what could be. It integrates the past and potential futures into each unfolding moment.

Prehension involves more than just information transfer; it entails a felt connection. Both quantum events and human experiences respond to relevant past influences and potential futures. These potentials serve as lures or subjective aims, guiding events toward certain outcomes.

Every experience, whether human or quantum, contains what Whitehead calls subjective immediacy: an inner aliveness unique to the present moment. Both human experiences and quantum events are moments of experience—or actual occasions—each with its own subjective immediacy. There is an ontological continuity between them: both involve prehension, and both seek some form of satisfaction in the process of becoming.

The Aim Toward Intensity and the Role of Contrast

What do quantum events and human experiences seek? According to Whitehead, they seek intensity—or, more precisely, satisfying intensity. Both aim to achieve a kind of fulfillment unique to their moment. This pursuit introduces novelty into the world, contributing to the ongoing creative advance of the cosmos.

Contrast plays a key role in generating intensity. In human experience, contrasting emotions or perspectives deepen awareness and amplify meaning. Similarly, quantum events achieve intensity by integrating past influences with unrealized future possibilities. Without contrast, experience would lack the tension necessary to generate novelty and richness.

In human life, this felt preference for certain influences over others manifests as emotions. Even at the quantum level, Whitehead suggests that events have subjective forms—a rudimentary form of emotion or responsiveness. Emotions, contrasts, and prehensions are not exclusive to humans but are present throughout the cosmos. Subjective forms, the "clothing" of prehensions, embody the contrasts that give rise to intensity.

What About Rocks?

Some objects—like rocks—seem devoid of agency. It may seem odd to suggest that rocks are alive in any meaningful way. Whitehead acknowledges this intuition, explaining that rocks are not themselves prehending realities but aggregates of prehending events. These aggregates, or nexuses, are complex groupings of countless events where prehension occurs at the quantum level.

Whitehead distinguishes between mechanical and organic unities. Rocks, as aggregates, are mechanical wholes—the sum of their parts, lacking spontaneity and self-organization. In contrast, organic wholes have emergent unities, where the interaction of parts creates something more than their sum.

It’s also important to note that matter takes many forms—not just solid objects like rocks. Matter can exist as liquids, gases, plasmas, and other dynamic states. Some forms, like fluids, contain seeds of self-organizing creativity absent in solids. Whitehead’s view invites us to move beyond the idea of matter as static, recognizing that all matter participates in processes of becoming.

Value in the Universe

Our universe consists of experiential moments and the aggregates (nexuses or societies) they form. But what about value? Is value inherent in the universe?

For Whitehead, the answer is yes. Value resides in the act of experiencing itself—in the self-enjoyment that arises from each moment of becoming. Every momentary experience seeks satisfaction, and this pursuit of value is intrinsic to its being. The universe, in evolving, is also evolving in value—developing capacities for feeling, enjoyment, and satisfaction.

Importantly, value does not depend on consciousness. Experience has been present in the universe from the beginning, while consciousness emerged later. Value precedes consciousness and is woven into the fabric of existence.

God, Beauty, and Eternal Objects

At the heart of the universe is God—understood as the complex unity of the cosmos, a living whole with a life of its own. God is not separate from the unfolding process of becoming but actively participates in it, luring the universe toward heightened forms of value wherever possible. God offers possibilities that align with each moment’s circumstances, always seeking beauty in the form of harmonious intensity.

Integral to this process are eternal objects—timeless potentialities that exist within the mind of God. These eternal objects are not merely abstract possibilities; they represent forms of value, beauty, and meaning that are always available to the universe. However, they are only made relevant "in due season"—that is, they become available to particular events when conditions align, guiding the universe toward new possibilities. These eternal objects act as divine lures, drawing creation toward more profound expressions of harmony, novelty, and satisfaction.

Beauty

If we see one word to name the subjective aim of the the living whole of the universe, of God, it might be Beauty.

Beauty, in this sense, is more than aesthetic pleasure—it is the harmonious integration of contrasting elements into satisfying forms of intensity. Every moment of beauty achieved in the universe is retained within the ongoing life of God, who serves as an empathic receptacle for all that happens. God holds the joys and sorrows of every occasion, weaving them into a larger pattern of meaning and value.

Two forms of Beauty that are especially important in human life, and perhaps in other forms as well, are Truth and Goodness. Truth is not an object to be attained, It is a name for the act of experiencing and responding to the world in a way that is responsive to the way the world truly is. Truth is the activity of seeking rapport, or correspondence, with how things stand, however they stand. Goodness is a name for seeking to foster the well-being of life. One ultimate expression of Goodness, thus understood, is Love.

This dynamic relationship between God and the the living cosmos is not coercive but persuasive. God offers possibilities—lures toward beauty—but their realization depends on the cooperation of each moment and its circumstances. As the universe unfolds, beauty emerges wherever contrasting elements are synthesized into enriching forms of intensity, contributing to the greater whole.

God, as both the source of eternal potentialities and the receptive heart of all experience, embodies a dual role: offering the world new possibilities while receiving and preserving each moment of experience. In this way, the universe is both a creative adventure and a profound act of participation in divine beauty. Every experience, no matter how small or fleeting, contributes to the ongoing evolution of beauty and value within the life of God.

Whitehead's Metaphysics

Actual Entities

An actual entity is a moment of concrescence—a moment of experience in which the many entities of the past actual world are felt and gathered into the unity of a subjective whole. In each actual entity, "the many become one, and are increased by one." This gathering includes the self-creativity and self-enjoyment of the entity, as it unifies influences from the past and brings forth something new. Actual entities are multiple and thus different from one another. Each entity arises with its own distinct characteristics, shaped by its unique prehensions and subjective forms. Once completed, an actual entity perishes as a subjective experience but continues to exist objectively, contributing to future moments of experience. This process exemplifies the dynamic nature of reality—each actual entity participates in the ongoing creative advance of the universe by transforming the past into novelty.

Prehensions

Prehensions refer to the ways actual entities relate to and "take account of" one another. This concept captures how an entity feels or grasps another entity—not conceptually, but experientially. Prehensions are the building blocks of relationships, with each actual entity prehending others through positive (inclusive) or negative (exclusive) feelings. These prehensive relations allow all things to participate in one another’s becoming, embodying the interconnectedness of all entities.

Nexus (or Nexūs)

A nexus is a network of actual entities related through shared prehensions, forming structured webs of interconnected experiences. Some nexūs take on enduring forms called societies, where occasions of experience inherit common characteristics from one another, creating patterns of continuity.

Corpuscular societies: These consist of relatively stable entities, such as atoms or molecules, which persist across time by maintaining coherence.

Personally ordered societies: These are sequences of experiences that form personal identities, such as the stream of consciousness that constitutes a person’s life. Each occasion builds on its predecessors, creating personal continuity and coherence over time.

Nexūs and societies reveal how individual occasions of experience participate in larger patterns of becoming, connecting everything from microscopic particles to human lives in an ongoing process of transformation.

Subjective Forms

Subjective forms refer to the emotional or qualitative tone that shapes how an entity experiences the world. These forms influence how prehensions are integrated, giving each experience a unique emotional quality. For example, one person might feel rain as melancholic, while another experiences it as refreshing. Subjective forms guide how entities respond to and integrate the influences they prehend, adding emotional depth to experience.

Eternal Objects

Eternal objects are pure potentials—abstract qualities or possibilities that actual entities can take up in their becoming. They are not confined to any specific event but exist as timeless potentials. For example, the quality "redness" is an eternal object that can manifest across different instances and contexts. Eternal objects provide the abstract building blocks that influence the unique character of each experience.

Propositions

Propositions are lures for feeling—imaginative suggestions that invite actual entities to explore certain possibilities. They function as speculative invitations, guiding the creative process by proposing how things might be. A proposition is not merely a factual statement but a suggestion for novelty and change. For example, an artist may consider a proposition that offers a new way to combine colors. Propositions help entities integrate new potentials, influencing both artistic creation and practical problem-solving.

Multiplicities

Multiplicities are diverse entities that exist in disjunction from one another. They may consist of actualities (such as actual entities) or potentialities (such as eternal objects). As truly distinct, multiplicities are not yet unified into the togetherness of an actual occasion of experience. A particular moment of experience (or actual entity) gathers these disparate elements into unity, but outside such unification, the universe remains a multiplicity. In this sense, multiplicities represent the richness of possibilities that are yet to be integrated.

Contrasts

Contrasts refer to patterns of difference or opposition that are either harmonized or remain in tension within experiences. These contrasts give shape and complexity to reality by bringing together opposing elements. For example, a melody is enriched by contrasts between high and low notes, and a life story is enriched by the interplay of joy and sorrow. Contrasts are essential to the depth and texture of experience, embodying both harmony and tension within each moment.

Creativity

Creativity is the “ultimate of ultimates,” the underlying activity expressed in all actualities. It manifests as the self-creativity of each actual entity through concrescence—the integration of many influences into a unified moment of experience. This process also involves transition, where the subjective immediacy of an entity perishes but lives on as objectively immortal in the experiences of future entities. Creativity is the driving force behind the novelty in the universe, enabling the ongoing process of becoming through which the past transforms into something new.

God

God encompasses three aspects, offering a relational and evolving presence in the universe:

• Primordial Nature:

• This is God's conceptual aspect, holding all eternal objects as pure possibilities. It represents the timeless realm of potentiality, offering the raw materials from which new experiences emerge.

• Consequent Nature:

• This is God’s empathic reception of all that happens, integrating every experience into the divine life. God feels the world, weaving all joys and sufferings into a coherent whole, continuously expanding in response to the world's becoming. God’s consequent nature ensures that no moment of experience is ever lost, as every event contributes to the unfolding divine reality.

• Superjective Nature:

• This is God's influence on the world, luring creatures toward new possibilities. The superjective nature represents the way God inspires and persuades actual entities toward greater beauty, truth, and harmony, without coercion. God’s power lies not in domination but in invitation—offering new possibilities and guiding the world toward creative advance.

Becoming Bereans and the Process-based Christian Faith

The last three articles dealt with how to read the bible as it presents itself against all those voices reading the bible to support the kinds of beliefs they wish to protect, promote, and propagate in their own beings:

• What Is Divine Love and How Is Love Holy?

• How to Read the Cruel and Violent Acts in the Bible

• Is Yahweh ‌a‌ ‌Warrior‌ ‌God ‌or‌ ‌a‌ ‌God‌ ‌of‌ ‌Shalom?

And as I have shown through each of the above articles we have choices to make whether to continue with these kinds of religious, irreligious, and non-religious stories about God and the bible or whether we are ready to "grow up and eat spiritual meat":

Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual but as worldly–mere infants in Christ. I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men? I Corinthians 3:1-4 NIV

Though the Apostle Paul would apply his words to the Jewish-Gentile churches he was planting and discipling I have personally given up instructing evangelical churches how to reorient their faith and have rather been speaking to exvangelicals, the none-and-dones of the church, and radicalized ex-Christians or non-Christians, to reconsider how to read all doctrines of the Christian faith (or, any religious faith) with God's love.

I do not debate God's existence. To believe God is, or is not, will always be a faith matter. My own assumptions begin with a theistic application that God is... before next debating the kind of God whom/which God is. In doing so, I've come to the conclusion I must have a process-based God rather than an evangelical-God or a folkloric traditional God, or a God of trickery, hate, wrath, or inaction. Hence, this kind of God who sings within my being is unbound by human imagination, actively present in this world, and continuously redeeming and resurrecting the world from death and hatred.

Looking around ourselves we all can admit that if we become active participants with God in continuously redeeming and resurrecting the world around us... even church worlds, faith worlds, and non-faith worlds... our efforts would vastly assist God in God's activity of reclamation and reconstruction.

We have much to say about this, but it is hard to explain because you are slow to learn. In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil. Therefore let us leave the elementary teachings about Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again the foundation of repentance from acts that lead to death, and of faith in God, instruction about baptisms, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. Hebrews 5:12-6:2. NIV

Secondly, this process God whom I follow is a God of love at all times. Never hate. Never wrath. Never hellish, harmful, or toxic. Again, my past Christian background was one which supported a dipolar God of love and wrath, but the God whom I chose to see and follow is a monopole God of love, not wrath. So again, over these past many years of rewriting the story of God and who God is I have also rewritten the stories of the bible and the kinds of theologies we entertain from those stories... stories of love, perseverance, failure, doom and recovery, and so forth. But never have I doubted that God is not loving through the stories we read or the stories of our own life. It has always been the conflictions within our own hearts of which God we wish to think upon.

Mainly, the evangelical story of who God is in our own lives as opposed to the kind of God we think God is to the world is one of fickleness, fictional fabulism, folkloric tradition, and unhealthy beliefs. It has led to the kind of religious turbulence both church and world have found themselves within... that of an evolving process world of shifting faith stories, morals, ethics, migrations, settlement, despair and hope. However, I was more happy when seeing God as a God of love within my story of failure, loss, and tragedy, than as a God who blames me for outcomes, heaps on guilt upon my broken heart, or disappears when I needed God most.

And so, my second intent when writing through all these years has been to write a Christian theology and faith which is centered in the love of God and not in the theology of the church. To do this, I had to ironically remove the bible from the center of my faith and put the Author of the bible there instead. I facetiously tell people that the bible is no longer my faith center but that God's love is this center as expressed by Jesus. Of course, it's a slight-of-hand-trick as well as circular-logic but one in which I wish to be centered in an evolving bible speaking to God's love. If my beliefs, theologies and religious practices can get this right then I have the possibility of hope that the kind of process world we live upon might make more sense to our faith.

And the Lord’s servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him, he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, II Timothy 2:24-25. NIV

At the last, I have provided many perspectives and many stories and many teachings how a reorientation to a loving, process-based, faith and circumspection of life might assist in breaking, upsetting, disturbing, and revolutionizing the Christian faith. One which might get us back into the game and win it by emphasizing a loving theology which is weak (Paul: "I am strong when I am weak"), recenters science via process philosophy, is balanced out by panpsychic process mysticism which throws out insipid, unpalatable, mystery statements refusing science in favor of folkloric tales and beliefs and new ageism.

Jesus said tha he came to disrupt, overthrow, remove, and burn down all religious faith structures which prevent his disciples from seeing the God of love around them (as surely Pariseeism had done). In many ways I and other process exvangelicals, nones-and-dones, and radicalists both Christian, agnostic, atheistic, and so forth, are doing the same. Of these categories I and process theists are but one voice - but I find this voice to be the more helpful to my faith journey.

A journey where I could have easily lapsed into these other categories but now no longer need to. I simply have found a spirit voice within my being that helps me co-exist in a healthier way against the other voices which would have led me to their own conclusions guided by their own spirit constructions. I like mine own version of Christian faith and so, I write of it sharing my journey of discovery. It could not have been done without God blowing up my former faith and reconstitutionalizing it's traditional baptistic and conservative evangelic centers.

Since doing the hard work of reconstruction, and learning how to continually apply this work into new and novel settings, I can confidently state that God is alive and well and lovingly present in all that we do should we listen to the simplest of voices to love as Jesus loved. Whenever teaching the bible, teach it from the vantage point of a God love and not from a God of wrath and vengeance as I have explained in the past three articles. Whether living through life's sadness and horror, if possible, rise from the ashes like the phoenix rocs of old knowing God is there, having done all that could be done in a wicked world of sin and death.

The Christian faith is not a faith of escapism from the world but a living present faith re-engaging with the world - even religiously unhealthy worlds of Christian faiths. And, at all times, by being led by a God of love. The prophets of the Old and New Testaments vouchsafed this faith time and again though many turned from the prophet's speech and sought God on their own terms. Terms which left them less wise, less gracious, angry and broken.

I suspect the Christian faith can do better today than it has recently done under trumpian maga-ism and Q'anon foolishness... even as those surviving progressive Christians are now doing rising over the broken shards of their past evangelical faith. But even these faithful need a newer theology to which I propose a process-based theology currently being described by Tom Oord (who is my friend and whom I support) as an Open and Relational Theology. Yet, by adding one word to this phrase, and then giving that one word depth, and this contemporary Christian phrase will be fully energized and engaged with today's societies. 

The word? Open and Relational Process Theology, ala Whiteheadian process philosophy and the process theology which results from this metaphysic, ontology and ethic. To wit, I will now turn over the discussion to my friend, Jay McDaniel, in part II of this three part discussion ending with John Cobb's Whireheadian video.

Peace,

R.E. Slater

September 7, 2024

Acts 17

New International Version

In Thessalonica

17 When Paul and his companions had passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where there was a Jewish synagogue. 2 As was his custom, Paul went into the synagogue, and on three Sabbath days he reasoned with them from the Scriptures, 3 explaining and proving that the Messiah had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Messiah,” he said. 4 Some of the Jews were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, as did a large number of God-fearing Greeks and quite a few prominent women.

5 But other Jews were jealous; so they rounded up some bad characters from the marketplace, formed a mob and started a riot in the city. They rushed to Jason’s house in search of Paul and Silas in order to bring them out to the crowd.[a] 6 But when they did not find them, they dragged Jason and some other believers before the city officials, shouting: “These men who have caused trouble all over the world have now come here, 7 and Jason has welcomed them into his house. They are all defying Caesar’s decrees, saying that there is another king, one called Jesus.” 8 When they heard this, the crowd and the city officials were thrown into turmoil. 9 Then they made Jason and the others post bond and let them go.

In Berea

10 As soon as it was night, the believers sent Paul and Silas away to Berea. On arriving there, they went to the Jewish synagogue. 11 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true. 12 As a result, many of them believed, as did also a number of prominent Greek women and many Greek men.

13 But when the Jews in Thessalonica learned that Paul was preaching the word of God at Berea, some of them went there too, agitating the crowds and stirring them up. 14 The believers immediately sent Paul to the coast, but Silas and Timothy stayed at Berea. 15 Those who escorted Paul brought him to Athens and then left with instructions for Silas and Timothy to join him as soon as possible.

In Athens

16 While Paul was waiting for them in Athens, he was greatly distressed to see that the city was full of idols. 17 So he reasoned in the synagogue with both Jews and God-fearing Greeks, as well as in the marketplace day by day with those who happened to be there. 18 A group of Epicurean and Stoic philosophers began to debate with him. Some of them asked, “What is this babbler trying to say?” Others remarked, “He seems to be advocating foreign gods.” They said this because Paul was preaching the good news about Jesus and the resurrection. 19 Then they took him and brought him to a meeting of the Areopagus, where they said to him, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? 20 You are bringing some strange ideas to our ears, and we would like to know what they mean.” 21 (All the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there spent their time doing nothing but talking about and listening to the latest ideas.)

22 Paul then stood up in the meeting of the Areopagus and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. 23 For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’[b] As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’[c]

29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”

32 When they heard about the resurrection of the dead, some of them sneered, but others said, “We want to hear you again on this subject.” 33 At that, Paul left the Council. 34 Some of the people became followers of Paul and believed. Among them was Dionysius, a member of the Areopagus, also a woman named Damaris, and a number of others.

 

FULL SERIES

9 - The Artistry of Processual Prophecy

8 - Part 2/2 - The Difference between Non-Process and Process-based Source Criticism and Interpretation

7 - Part 1/2 - The Difference between Non-Process and Process-based Source Criticism and Interpretation

6 - How People Think of the History of the Bible

5 - When Did Written History Begin and Why Is This Important to Christians?

4 - Becoming Bereans and the Process-based Christian Faith

3 - Is Yahweh ‌a‌ ‌Warrior‌ ‌God ‌or‌ ‌a‌ ‌God‌ ‌of‌ ‌Shalom?

2 - How to Read the Cruel and Violent Acts in the Bible

1 - What Is Divine Love and How Is Love Holy?

 * * * * * * *

Twenty Key Ideas

in the Process Worldview

by Jay McDaniel

1. Process: The universe is an ongoing process of development and change, never quite the same from moment to moment. Every entity in the universe is best understood as a process of becoming that emerges through its interactions with others. The beings of the world are becomings.

2. Interconnectedness: The universe as a whole is a seamless web of interconnected events, none of which can be completely separated from the others. Everything is connected to everything else and contained in everything else. As Buddhists put it, the universe is a network of inter-being.

3. Continuous Creativity: The universe exhibits a continuous creativity on the basis of which new events come into existence over time which did not exist beforehand. This continuous creativity is the ultimate reality of the universe. Everywhere we look we see it. Even God is an expression of Creativity. Even as God creates, God is also continuously created.

​

4. Nature as Alive: The natural world has value in itself and all living beings are worthy of respect and care. Rocks and trees, hills and rivers are not simply facts in the world; they are also acts of self-realization. The whole of nature is alive with value. We humans dwell within, not apart from, the Ten Thousand Things. We, too, have value.

5. Ethics: Humans find their fulfillment in living in harmony with the earth and compassionately with each other. The ethical life lies in living with respect and care for other people and the larger community of life. Justice is fidelity to the bonds of relationship. A just society is also a free and peaceful society. It is creative, compassionate, participatory, ecologically wise, and spiritually satisfying - with no one left behind.

6. Novelty: Humans find their fulfillment in being open to new ideas, insights, and experiences that may have no parallel in the past. Even as we learn from the past, we must be open to the future. God is present in the world, among other ways, through novel possibilities. Human happiness is found, not only in wisdom and compassion, but also in creativity.

7. Thinking and Feeling: The human mind is not limited to reasoning but also includes feeling, intuiting, imagining; all of these activities can work together toward understanding. Even reasoning is a form of feeling: that is, feeling the presence of ideas and responding to them. There are many forms of wisdom: mathematical, spatial, verbal, kinesthetic, empathic, logical, and spiritual.

8. Relational Selfhood: Human beings are not skin-encapsulated egos cut off from the world by the boundaries of the skin, but persons-in-community whose interactions with others are partly definitive of their own internal existence. We depend for our existence on friends, family, and mentors; on food and clothing and shelter; on cultural traditions and the natural world. The communitarians are right: there is no "self" apart from connections with others. The individualists are right, too. Each person is unique, deserving of respect and care. Other animals deserve respect and care, too.

9. Complementary Thinking: The process way leans toward both-and thinking, not either-or thinking. The rational life consists not only of identifying facts and appealing to evidence, but taking apparent conflicting ideas and showing how they can be woven into wholes, with each side contributing to the other. In Whitehead’s thought these wholes are called contrasts. To be "reasonable" is to be empirical but also imaginative: exploring new ideas and seeing how they might fit together, complementing one another.

10. Theory and Practice: Theory affects practice and practice affects theory; a dichotomy between the two is false. What people do affects how they think and how they think affects what they do. Learning can occur from body to mind: that is, by doing things; and not simply from mind to body.

11. The Primacy of Persuasion over Coercion: There are two kinds of power – coercive power and persuasive power – and the latter is to be preferred over the former. Coercive power is the power of force and violence; persuasive power is the power of invitation and moral example.

12. Relational Power: This is the power that is experienced when people dwell in mutually enhancing relations, such that both are “empowered” through their relations with one another. In international relations, this would be the kind of empowerment that occurs when governments enter into trade relations that are mutually beneficial and serve the wider society; in parenting, this would be the power that parents and children enjoy when, even amid a hierarchical relationship, there is respect on both sides and the relationship strengthens parents and children.

13. The Primacy of Particularity: There is a difference between abstract ideas that are abstracted from concrete events in the world, and the events themselves. The fallacy of misplaced concreteness lies in confusing the abstractions with the concrete events and focusing more on the abstract than the particular.

14. Experience in the Mode of Causal Efficacy: Human experience is not restricted to acting on things or actively interpreting a passive world. It begins by a conscious and unconscious receiving of events into life and being causally affected or influenced by what is received. This occurs through the mediation of the body but can also occur through a reception of the moods and feelings of other people (and animals).

15. Concern for the Vulnerable: Humans are gathered together in a web of felt connections, such that they share in one another’s sufferings and are responsible to one another. Humans can share feelings and be affected by one another’s feelings in a spirit of mutual sympathy. The measure of a society does not lie in questions of appearance, affluence, and marketable achievement, but in how it treats those whom Jesus called "the least of these" -- the neglected, the powerless, the marginalized, the otherwise forgotten.

16. Evil: “Evil” is a name for debilitating suffering from which humans and other living beings suffer, and also for the missed potential from which they suffer. Evil is powerful and real; it is not merely the absence of good. “Harm” is a name for activities, undertaken by human beings, which inflict such suffering on others and themselves, and which cut off their potential. Evil can be structural as well as personal. Systems -- not simply people -- can be conduits for harm.

17. Education as a Lifelong Process: Human life is itself a journey from birth (and perhaps before) to death (and perhaps after) and the journey is itself a process of character development over time. Formal education in the classroom is a context to facilitate the process, but the process continues throughout a lifetime. Education requires romance, precision, and generalization. Learning is best when people want to learn.

18. Religion and Science: Religion and Science are both human activities, evolving over time, which can be attuned to the depths of reality. Science focuses on forms of energy which are subject to replicable experiments and which can be rendered into mathematical terms; religion begins with awe at the beauty of the universe, awakens to the interconnections of things, and helps people discover the norms which are part of the very make-up of the universe itself.

19. God: The universe unfolds within a larger life – a love supreme – who is continuously present within each actuality as a lure toward wholeness relevant to the situation at hand. In human life we experience this reality as an inner calling toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity. Whenever we see these three realities in human life we see the presence of this love, thus named or not. This love is the Soul of the universe and we are small but included in its life not unlike the way in which embryos dwell within a womb, or fish swim within an ocean, or stars travel throught the sky. This Soul can be addressed in many ways, and one of the most important words for addressing the Soul is "God." The stars and galaxies are the body of God and any forms of life which exist on other planets are enfolded in the life of God, as is life on earth. God is a circle whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. As God beckons human beings toward wisdom, compassion, and creativity, God does not know the outcome of the beckoning in advance, because the future does not exist to be known. But God is steadfast in love; a friend to the friendless; and a source of inner peace. God can be conceived as "father" or "mother" or "lover" or "friend." God is love.

20. Faith: Faith is not intellectual assent to creeds or doctrines but rather trust in divine love. To trust in love is to trust in the availability of fresh possibilities relative to each situation; to trust that love is ultimately more powerful than violence; to trust that even the galaxies and planets are drawn by a loving presence; and to trust that, no matter what happens, all things are somehow gathered into a wider beauty. This beauty is the Adventure of the Universe as One.

Explanation: ​

Process thinking is an attitude toward life emphasizing respect and care for the community of life. It is concerned with the well-being of individuals and also with the common good of the world, understood as a community of communities of communities. It sees the world as a process of becoming and the universe as a vast network of inter-becomings. It sees each living being on our planet as worthy of respect and care.

People influenced by process thinking seek to live lightly on the earth and gently with others, sensitive to the interconnectedness of all things and delighted by the differences. They believe that there are many ways of knowing the world -- verbal, mathematical, aesthetic, empathic, bodily, and practical - and that education should foster creativity and compassion as well as literacy.

Process thinkers belong to many different cultures and live in many different regions of the world: Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe, North America, and Oceania. They include teenagers, parents, grandparents, store-clerks, accountants, farmers, musicians, artists, and philosophers.

Many of the scholars in the movement are influenced by the perspective of the late philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead. His thinking embodies the leading edge of the intellectual side of process thinking. Nevertheless, a mastery of his ideas is not necessary to be a process thinker. Ultimately process thinking is an attitude and outlook on life, and a way of interacting with the world. It is not so much a rigidly-defined worldview as it is a way of feeling the presence of the world and responding with creativity and compassion.

The tradition of process thinking can be compared to a growing and vibrant tree, with blossoms yet to unfold. The roots of the tree are the many ideas developed by Whitehead in his mature philosophy. They were articulated most systematically in his book Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. The trunk consists of more general ideas which have been developed by subsequent thinkers from different cultures, adding creativity of their own. These general ideas flow from Whitehead's philosophy, but are less technical in tone. The branches consist of the many ways in which these ideas are being applied to daily life and community development. The branches include applications to a wide array of topics, ranging from art and music to education and ecology.

Much of this website -- Open Horizons - is devoted to the branches and trunk. Of course, some people will be interested in the roots. For those interested in gaining knowledge of the roots, we have created a free course of short videos which provides an introduction to Alfred North Whitehead's organic philosophy and serves as a guiding companion to Whitehead's seminal work, Process and Reality. These twenty six-minute videos are offered below. They can be viewed in sequence or in parts, depending on your interests. If you would like to get started on this short course to better understand the roots of process thinking, go to What is Process Thought? The ideas above represent the twenty key ideas in the trunk. 

Jay's PowerPoint Summation:

https://www.canva.com/design/DAE9PMAjT4s/view

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John Cobb has been very instrumental to my and Jay's process faith.

Here is an introduction to what it is and how it should be regarded from

Claremont College and it's Graduate School of Theological Studies.

 - re slater

John Cobb - An Introductory Introduction: 01

   Center for Process Studies