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

Friday, December 17, 2021

John Cobb - "Whitehead's Constructive Postmodernism"




CONSTRUCTIVE POSTMODERNISM


John B. Cobb, Jr., Ph.D. is Professor of Theology Emeritus at the Claremont School of Theology, Claremont, California, and Co-Director of the Center for Process Studies there. His many books currently in print include: Reclaiming the Church (1997); with Herman Daly, For the Common Good; Becoming a Thinking Christian (1993); Sustainability (1992); Can Christ Become Good News Again? (1991); ed. with Christopher Ives, The Emptying God: a Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (1990); with Charles Birch, The Liberation of Life; and with David Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (1977). He is a retired minister in the United Methodist Church. His email address is cobbj@cgu.edu.
This lecture was delivered by Dr. Cobb at Wuhan, China, June 3-5, 2002. Used by permission of the author. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.

SUMMARY

Modernity has left us in a state of intellectual confusion and chaos. It thinks of nature in materialistic terms, but in these terms it can explain neither the natural world nor how it is related to human beings. It can provide no notion of substance, yet matter is inherently a substantialist notion, since matter is understood to take on different forms without ceasing to be the same matter.




I. What is "post-modern"?

"Postmodern" is an intentionally odd term in English. For a long time, the words "modern" and "contemporary" and "up-to-date" were used almost interchangeably. The content of the "modern" changed with time. What was technologically "modern" in the nineteenth century was called "Victorian" in the twentieth century.

However, the term, "modern", became attached also to particular styles. For example, "modern" architecture was not simply whatever was currently fashionable but specifically the Bauhaus style. Architects who understood that style but went beyond it could either say that what was once modern was no longer so, or call themselves "postmodern". Some in fact chose to label themselves "postmodern".

The more general and important use of the term "modern," however, referred to a much broader movement and period of time. There were textbooks on "modern" European history. The contrast here was with ancient and medieval history. The break between ancient and medieval came with the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West. The boundary line between medieval and modern was much less clear, but certainly the fourteenth century was still medieval and the seventeenth century was universally regarded as modern.

[Modernity transitions to Post-Modernity]

Until recently, modern history was assumed to continue to the present and to be still in process. But during the twentieth century there was a cumulative sense that major characteristics of the recent past were ending. The word "post" was used to describe the new situation. When the age of European empire ended after World War II, the new situation was described as post-colonial. As the globalization of the economy reduced the importance of national boundaries, one could speak of a post-nationalist epoch. As the industrial heartland exported its traditional factories and concentrated on information technology, people spoke of a post-industrial age. As Christianity became increasingly disestablished politically and unconvincing to the intelligentsia, the new situation could be called post-Christian. As the basic assumptions of the Enlightenment became more and more questionable, one could describe the new cultural and intellectual developments as post-Enlightenment. As commitments to various theories of government and society lost their sway, people spoke of the new climate as post-ideological. As feminists lifted to consciousness the age-old pattern of male domination and destroyed its self-evidence, they could call for a post-patriarchal society.

With so much profound change occurring, the sense arose among some European intellectuals that the differences between the new global society and the past few centuries is as great as that between the modern period and the medieval one. We no longer live by the basic assumptions and styles that began with what has been called modern civilization. Our world is post-modern.

One problem with that label is that it gives little clue as to what features of the modern world are being left behind. The term has been used so commonly and with such different meanings that it is now itself becoming out-of-date. Some view the "post-modern" movement as a short-lived fad and speak of being post-post-modern.

Although too much is at stake in the critique of the modern world to dismiss as a fad the idea that we are moving into a new epoch, the term is weak also in that it does not provide any positive indication of what is succeeding the modern or what should follow it. The most influential form of post-modernism is often called "deconstructive". The accent clearly falls on the critique of the assumptions derived from the modern period that still shape most of our Western culture. This critique is a valuable and even necessary undertaking, but a new world cannot be built simply on taking apart the old.




II. A Constructive Post-modernism

Constructive post-modernism is, of course, just one of several forms of post-modernism. The term "constructive" is used to contrast with "deconstructive" to emphasize that constructive post-modernism is proposing a positive alternative to the modern world. This does not mean that it opposes the work of deconstructing many features of modernity. The point is that critique and rejection should be accompanied by proposals for reconstruction.

The label was invented by David Griffin, who edits the State University of New York Series on Constructive Postmodernism, but the position to which he has given that label has been around for some time. He comes to it from the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, to which I also subscribe. Several persons influenced by Whitehead used the term "post-modern" in the 1960s, but we did not emphasize it, and its recent currency is not the result of our use.

Whitehead did not use the term, but he did use the term "modern" in a way that suggested that the modern period is over. Already in the twenties, he published a book under the title Science and the Modern World. In the book he makes clear that the "modern science" of which he speaks is now superseded. It was bound up with a view of reality that science itself has shown to be invalid. Our task is to reconstruct a scientific worldview based on new developments in relativity and quantum theory. Since the whole of modern culture has been intimately related to the same worldview, the changes required are pervasive. Whitehead suggested the direction of needed change in that book and developed it much more fully in subsequent ones. That some of us spoke of this new way of thinking as post-modern followed easily.

Many of the conclusions to which those of us influenced by Whitehead have come have been reached by others out of different intellectual histories. For example, feminists criticize many of the same features of the Western cultural heritage to which Whiteheadians object. Often their criticisms are richer and more pointed than ours have been. Ecologists have joined Whiteheadians in objecting to the tendency of modern Westerners to ignore the natural world or treat it as merely instrumental to human use. Buddhists, for millennia, have rejected some of the ideas that Whitehead found wrong in modern Western thought. Hence, Griffin’s series includes writings by people who have been little influenced by Whitehead but have come to similar conclusions.

Nevertheless, Whitehead’s philosophy provides the most systematic and explicit account of the basic assumptions of constructive post-modernism. I will explain these assumptions primarily in Whitehead’s terms while recognizing that other formulations are possible and that others, feminists and environmentalists, for example, make independent contributions of great importance to the contemporary movement.




III. The Scientific and Philosophical Underpinnings

The Enlightenment adopted the machine as its basic model of reality. It did so in conscious reaction to the primacy of organic models in the Middle Ages. Even living things are to be understood as complex mechanisms. Everything is composed of matter. All forces operate ultimately by pushes and pulls. Teleology is excluded. In short, the world can be understood exhaustively in terms of matter in motion. Everything can ultimately be explained by the laws of motion.

This vision of reality was extremely fruitful for physics and the other natural sciences. This fruitfulness reinforced confidence in the worldview. It also strengthened its acceptance by the culture as a whole.

On the other hand, most people were not disposed to view themselves as parts of this world machine. The philosopher who did most to shape this vision of the world, Rene Descartes, regarded the human mind as wholly different in nature. Whereas everything else is material, the human mind is mental and operates by entirely different principles. We are left with a radical, metaphysical dualism. Dualism poses insuperable philosophical problems; so modern Western philosophy can be seen as a struggle to overcome it. Some philosophers became thoroughgoing materialists, others, phenomenalists, and still others, idealists. But overall the project of overcoming dualism has not been successful.

Scientists, in any case, continued their work through the nineteenth century on the assumption of the mechanistic worldview. They were shaken only by the development of relativity theory with its move from matter to energy as basic to the world and by the discovery that the subatomic world did not conform to their worldview. For some purposes it was to be treated as particles; for others, as waves. One important step in the disintegration of this worldview came with the discovery that there was no ether through which light waves were propagated

On the whole, dualism was accepted by the general culture. To this day it shapes the structure of the university, with its division between the sciences and the humanities. Most people, whether they articulate it or not, view the world given to them in sight and touch as material, while they consider themselves to transcend that purely material status. The evolutionary perspective, which has also entered into the common sense of the culture, created acute difficulties for this dualism, but somehow the two inconsistent ideas have continued to exist side-by-side in the general culture and in the university.

Clearly, modernity has left us in a state of intellectual confusion and chaos. It thinks of nature in materialistic terms, but in these terms it can explain neither the natural world nor how it is related to human beings. It can provide no notion of substance, yet matter is inherently a substantialist notion, since matter is understood to take on different forms without ceasing to be the same matter. One material object precludes others in the space that it occupies, but in the real world, there is interpenetration among the actualities.

A common response has been to decide that the world is unintelligible. If it does not conform to the schema imposed on it by modern thought, then in principle, many think, it cannot be understood. We must simply abandon the goal of understanding in any broad or inclusive sense. The project of reason launched by the Enlightenment is a failure. The mind can analyze, but it cannot synthesize or arrive at any universal truths.

Much of post-modernism adopts this view. It depicts modernity as the Age of Reason and post-modernity as requiring the abandonment of all attempts to achieve a comprehensive vision of the world. Metaphysics is regarded as out-of-date. All thinking must be understood to be relative to the conditioned standpoint from which it arises. Especially if that standpoint is a privileged one, it is to be regarded with suspicion as an instrument of domination. This post-modern enterprise is unmasking the false pretenses of modern thinkers. It abandons the effort to achieve a coherent view of nature, much more, of the world as a whole.

I have been describing, in particular, deconstructive postmodernism. There is much to accomplish in this work. Recent decades have expanded our understanding of the many non-rational factors that enter into human thought. Historians and anthropologists have made us aware of the historical and cultural conditioning of our thought. Marx showed us how much of our thinking is shaped by our class perspective. Freud unveiled many unconscious forces at work in our supposedly rational thought. Now women have forced us to acknowledge how gender informs our thinking.

Despite all of this, Whiteheadian post-modernists continue to believe that efforts at comprehensive thinking are appropriate and needed. We disagree that the breakdown of the Enlightenment conceptuality displays the limits of conceptual thought in general. Before abandoning the wider quest for intelligibility and understanding, we propose that we should test the usefulness of other conceptualities.




Whitehead’s basic proposal is that we should shift from substance thinking to event thinking. Thinking from the model of the machine is clearly an example of substance thinking. In general, taking the objects for philosophical analysis from the data of sense perception leaves us in the grip of substance thinking even when we acknowledge that we cannot discover substances in or through our sensory experience. But we also have the idea of an event or happening. Just as we can think of tables and clocks; so we can also think of conversations and car accidents. Modern thought has conditioned us to think of conversations and accidents as enacted by people or happening to objects. In other words, events presuppose substances. But there is the other possibility that events are the primary realities and that what we think of as substances are complex structures of events.

This is not a new move. Buddhists turned from Hindu substantialism to the primacy of events more than two millennia ago. Heraclitus is famous among Greek philosophers for initiating a similar move. Hegel certainly emphasized the processive character of things. What is new in the twentieth century are the data of contemporary physics which call for explanation in terms of an event philosophy. Whitehead’s philosophy is the most extended and rigorous effort to carry through this program. It is, in this way, post-modern in a sense that earlier proponents of the primacy of events could not have been.

Whereas the effort to overcome dualism was doomed to failure when nature was conceived as material substance, a nondual view follows quite naturally when nature is conceived first and foremost in terms of events. A human experience also has the character of an event. Of course, a human experience has characteristics we do not expect to find in unicellular organisms, certainly not in molecular or electronic events. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify characteristics that all events share and to imagine how more complex events evolved out of simpler ones. Gradations and differences are very important, and the study of human beings involves dimensions that are not relevant to the study of the natural world. But there is no metaphysical divide between the two sets of events.



[Whiteheadian Actualities & Occassions]

Just as science has analyzed complex "material" objects into smaller ones; so also it can and does analyze complex events into the simpler ones of which they are composed. At some point we arrive at events that cannot be further divided. A momentary human experience is such an event. So also, probably, is a quantum burst of energy. Whitehead calls these unit events "actual occasions". In Whitehead’s view, actual occasions are best understood as syntheses of their relations to other events. In other words, preceding events participate in making them what they are. Whereas, when we think in substance terms, we ask what a thing is in itself and then how is it related; [but] when we think in event terms, we recognize that an actual occasion comes into being as a synthesis of relations and has no existence apart from those relations.

Furthermore, if there is intrinsic value in some events, such as moments of human experience, there is intrinsic value in all events. This is particularly important with respect to other sentient beings, but it makes a difference even for our attitude toward the inanimate world. Of course, the interconnection of things means that all have value for one another. But it is important to add that nothing has value only for other things. Every actual occasion has value in and for itself as well.

These three points are crucial to constructive post-modernism. They are by no means limited to Whiteheadians:
  • First, dualism is rejected. Human beings recognize their kinship to all things. 
  • Second, individuals do not exist apart from one another. Everything is interrelated. Human beings are part of a complex web of existence.
  • And third, every actual occasion is of [has] value. It is wrong to appraise nonhuman entities only by their contributions to our well being.
David Griffin speaks of this post-modern understanding of the natural world in terms of re-enchantment. Instead of a world of dead, passive, valueless, matter we inhabit a world of living, active, intrinsically valuable occasions. Instead of alienation from a merely objective world, we experience kinship and participation in nature. This has two types of implications. First, it calls for a re-enchanted science, that is, a science that seeks to understand the world as living, active, and valuable. Second, it calls for rethinking the public policies that have been based on the modern worldview. This is especially important with respect to economics, since that has become the reigning discipline in the shaping of governmental policies. I will devote the next three sections of this lecture to these topics.


IV. Post-modern Science

One major reason for developing a post-modern worldview is the confused of science at this time. That confusion has given aid and comfort to those who want to end the project of formulating comprehensive worldviews. They encourage us to abandon the quest for any kind of universality. Paradoxically, in doing so, they often make universalistic arguments, but this is not the place to pursue the internal conflicts occasioned by their proposals. Their critique of reason opens the door also to forms of irrationalism and fideism that the deconstructive post-modernists do not, in fact, want.

The task of reconstructing science around the primacy of events is, of course, an enormous one, and I am not qualified to contribute to it. Nevertheless, I think you may be interested in some of the steps that have been taken. I will report briefly on developments in relativity and quantum theory.

Whitehead himself devoted a great deal of time and thought to formulating a theory of relativity. He did not dispute the empirical accuracy of Einstein’s theory, but he believed there were weaknesses in its formulation that could be cured by shifting more fully away from substance thinking. He found Einstein’s view of space-time especially troubling. Einstein treated space-time as if had a substantial character that Whitehead believed it did not have.

The issue focused on Einstein’s claim that the curvature of light as it passed around heavenly bodies was based on the curvature of space. Whitehead believed that space is not the kind of thing that can be either curved or straight. As a mathematician he pointed out that any space that can be viewed as elliptic or hyperbolic can also be viewed as Euclidian. To assert the curvature of space as a physical or metaphysical fact is deeply misleading and leads to a theory that cannot be genuinely understood.

Whitehead proposed that similar results can be obtained by focusing exclusively on multiple time systems. He worked this out in mathematical detail in his book on The Principle of Relativity. The predictions following from his formula were so close to Einstein’s that for a long time no test could be made to support either formula against the other. However, about twenty years ago, more refined tests of the tides began to count against Whitehead’s predictions. His formula called for summing up all the gravitational forces of the universe, whereas Einstein employed a nonlinear equation.

Whitehead was aware that the empirical evidence might count against his formulation. For him nothing fundamental was at stake. He offered a second equation whose results, he said, would be identical with Einstein’s, but he did not work this out. Only recently has this second Whiteheadian formula been unpacked, thanks to the work of Robert Russell. Like the other equation, it replaces the curvature of space with multiple time systems. It shows that a more intelligible account of relativity can be given.

A hundred years ago intelligibility would have been important to the community of physicists. For centuries physics had sought to understand and explain nature. But the confusion of modern physics had not stopped progress in prediction and control, and many physicists abandoned the effort to understand. Most are now conditioned to be interested in new theories only if they lead to new predictions. Accordingly, the availability of a more intelligible theory counts for little, and Whitehead’s achievement has received very little attention.

There is another respect, however, in which Whitehead’s theory may prove to have advantages. It does not require that the speed of light is an absolute limit for the transmission of energy. For Whitehead this is an empirical question. Today, there is evidence of faster transmissions.

For Einstein, the issue was not only the transmission of energy but also any kind of influence whatsoever. He was accordingly troubled by a thought experiment that indicated that two particles with opposite spin would be in communication with each other instantaneously. The thought experiment assumed that with paired particles, if the spin of one changes, the spin of the other also changes. This occurs however far apart the paired particles may be. This theory is called Bell’s theorem.

Experiments have verified that Bell’s theorem is correct. There seems to be influence at a distance that is virtually instantaneous. This is not possible in Einstein’s worldview.

Whitehead, on the other hand, was open to this possibility. His judgment was that the transmission of energy through what he called pure physical prehensions depended on contiguity and would, therefore, take time to propagate over a distance. But he thought that there is another way that occasions can relate for which spatial distance is not determinative. He called this "hybrid physical feeling". A hybrid physical feeling does not transmit energy, but it does communicate information. It is the influence of the "mental" pole of one occasion on another. Among human beings this can be found in mental telepathy. Something analogous can occur among much simpler occasions.

It is my understanding that at the quantum level there is evidence that what happens in one occasion is affected by the whole quantum world. I do not know enough to affirm this, or whether the effect would be instantaneous or could be mediated at the speed of light. But if, as I have been told, the influence seems to be instantaneous, Whitehead’s philosophy could provide an explanation that other theories seem to lack.

Quantum theory has been in fundamental difficulty from the beginning. Experimenters approached the data with two models in mind. They thought that light and similar phenomena must consist in either waves or particles. This judgment showed the power of substance thinking over their minds. "Particle" is a new term for something like the earlier atom, which turned out, despite its name, to be divisible. Particles are envisioned as tiny lumps of matter that travel though space. Waves, on the other hand, are patterns of motion and thus more like events. However, the basic model was taken from movements on the surface of water. Sound waves were movements of air. It was assumed that light waves also had a material substratum, which was named the "ether." When the lack of an ether was demonstrated, the idea of light waves became essentially unintelligible, but the language was retained because the mathematics developed for the analysis of wave motion was useful also for some features of light.

It is well known that some experiments showed the particle character of light and others showed its wave character. Unfortunately, the concept of a wave and that of a particle cannot intelligibly be applied to the same thing. The solution was to impose on this confusion a notion of polarity, which in fact clarified nothing.

There is another possible approach. If one gives up substance thinking and understands the world in terms of events instead, one can see the experimental situation in terms of a field of events. Some patterns of relations of occasions in a field can resemble "particles" sufficiently that mathematics designed to interpret particles has relevance. Other patterns of relations in the field resemble waves. I do not mean to suggest that this simple comment solves the problems. I mean only that it provides a different context for thinking about the phenomena.

Whitehead himself wrote little about quantum theory. Nevertheless, his metaphysics can easily be considered a quantum one. The world consists, in his view, in interrelated "actual occasions", most of which are quantum events.

The quantum theorist whose thought most resembled Whitehead’s was David Bohm. Bohm wrote extensively about the importance of thinking in terms of events rather than substances. He proposed the model of the hologram for thinking of unit events, a model very similar to what Whitehead says about actual occasions. And, unlike Whitehead, he developed, together with Basil Hiley, a quantum theory based on this different perspective, which can predict all known quantum phenomena.

Like Whitehead’s still viable theory of relativity, Bohm’s formulation predicts chiefly what is already predicted by established theories. Its advantage is coherence and intelligibility rather than prediction. Unfortunately, most physicists have been conditioned to think that the only test of the value of a theory is its ability to predict and thus to be tested empirically; so this theory has not gained much attention. For this reason, we must share Bohm’s hope that there are some distinctive testable predictions that can be derived from his formulations.

The constructive post-modern vision has implications for other sciences as well. All the sciences studying living things have, in the modern context, treated their subjects as if they were mere objects. It has been part of the modern program to empty the world of any purposefulness. Purposeful behavior is denied any role in the evolutionary process despite its obvious importance. Or, if the importance of apparently purposeful behavior is acknowledged, it is explained as only apparently purposeful, actually resulting from mechanical causes. From the point of view of constructive postmodernism, on the other hand, there is no reason to deny a role to animal purposes. The recognition such purposes makes possible a far more adequate and plausible account of the evolutionary process.

In the past, wild animals have been studied almost entirely in captivity. Often they are dissected so that the behavior of the animal as a whole can be explained by the behavior of its parts. Much has been learned in these reductionist ways. But much is also obscured. Only recently have a few students actually spent extended time with animals in the wild. They have learned much that could never be discovered in the laboratory. However, their work is not really encouraged by the guild. It is hardly recognized as science from the point of view of modernity. From a constructive post-modern point of view, in contrast, it is an important source of information that should inform what is studied in the laboratory as well.

Studies of the relation of the brain to subjective experience are another area in which constructive post-modern thought can make a large difference. The great majority of work in this field remains reductionistic. Explanation for subjective experience is sought in brain activity. The possibility that subjective experience participates as a causal agent in the process is hardly considered. Fortunately, there have been exceptions. Roger Sperry’s work on the split brain led him to recognize the causal role of conscious experience. This is the direction of inquiry that constructive post-modernism supports.


V. Constructive Post-modern Political Theory

Modern thought has been influenced by many factors. In this lecture I will view it only in terms of the influence upon it of the model I have been describing. Just as the world as a whole was viewed as composed of tiny bits of matter that related to one another only externally, that is, spatio-temporally, so human beings were viewed as individuals who relate to one another only externally. In this case, the relations were viewed as contractual. Political and economic theory were both developed on this basis.

In the Middle Ages the church provided legitimacy to both ecclesiastical and political authority. This gave a certain primacy to the religious institution. Political leaders were not happy with this, and especially as modernity dawned, they sought legitimacy without involvement of the church. They could claim the divine right of kings, but it was better still if this right could be derived from an analysis of the social situation as such. Accordingly, they favored the social contract theory.

This theory was based on a myth. The idea was that at the beginning there was anarchy. Each family sought only its own good with no responsibility to others and no restrictions on how they might treat others. This meant equally that there was no check on how others might treat them. The result was profoundly unsatisfactory. In Thomas Hobbes’ famous formulation, life was "nasty, brutish, and short." According to Hobbes, it was so bad that it was to the advantage of each family to gain security at any price in liberty. He deduced that the social contract consisted in the surrender of all personal liberty to a monarch in exchange for the security of person and property. John Locke did not see the consequences of anarchy in quite such dire terms. Accordingly, he thought that a certain amount of personal liberty was preserved in the contract. The American constitution builds on Locke with its claim that all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Of course, this is a completely unhistorical picture. Human beings originated and evolved in tightly knit tribal communities. Only gradually, and much later, did they develop more individual autonomy. The legitimate point of the theory was, of course, that as they developed individuality, it was still important for them to accept sufficient government control to insure security. That was the Hobbesian ground of the legitimation of rulers. A ruler who could not secure the persons and property of subjects lost legitimacy under this theory. As long as such security was preserved, protests of lack of freedom, or of injustice, carried little weight.

The point here is not to debate the relative merits of Hobbes and Locke, but to stress the atomistic individualism of modern political theory in both these forms. In contrast, constructive post-modern theory emphasizes that people are bound together in communities before they develop personal individuality. This is simply historical and sociological fact. An infant can only become a full human being in relations with others in which contracts play a very small role.

Viewed in this light, the question of the legitimation of government is quite different. A community needs some pattern of governance. This applies already in the family. There the question is whether the father (or the mother) makes all the decisions or whether there is participation of both and even of the children in decision-making. We may assume that in many instances the father has the physical power to enforce his will. The question is whether this best reflects the nature of the whole pattern of relations within the family. Are all members of the family most benefited by this pattern? Does it achieve even the deeper purposes of the father in the most fulfilling ways?

A post-modern approach is not likely to prescribe particular rules. It does encourage experimentation with inclusion. Obviously a baby cannot take part in family decision-making, and a child of eight cannot play the same role as the mother or father. But listening to all voices and progressive weighting of their preferences makes sense when we understand each member of the family as largely constituted by relations to the others.

Just as individuals cannot exist apart from relationships to others, so also the family depends on larger patterns of relationship. In every situation, some patterns are always given, and what is thus given is to be respected and dealt with. One never begins with a blank slate. Still, ideally, each family participates as one family among others in affirming, critiquing, and modifying those larger patterns. People and families grow when they participate in the decisions that shape their context.

This participation can sometimes consist in direct involvement as in many tribal councils or the New England town meetings. More often it involves selection of representatives people trust to decide issues that may be too complex for most members of the community to make sound judgments. Either way, there is no assurance that the decisions will be wise, but the strengthening of community that follows from a sense of ownership of the process is an intrinsic value. And it normally protects participants from extreme exploitation and distortion.

My intention here is not to spell out a political theory but to indicate that a post-modern theory emphasizes the bottom-up approach. Modern thought began with dispersed power but moved directly to its centralization. Once centralized, the ruler would organize power from the top down. In the United States, local communities have power only as that is granted them by the individual states. In a post-modern society the state would have powers granted it by the cities and counties. The whole structure of authority would grow out of community, communities of communities, and communities of communities of communities.


VI. Constructive Post-Modern Economic Theory

The same understanding of human beings underlay modern economic theory. Homo economicus is viewed as an atomic individual related to others only in market transactions and contracts. Accordingly, economic theory has no place for community or for such values of community as justice. The goal is simply increased economic activity or the creation of wealth.

This wealth is increased when the market sets prices based on supply and demand with no interference from outside. Originally the market that served as the model for economists was the village market, where personal relations provided a favorable context for the transactions. However, economic analysis showed that larger markets encouraged faster growth. Since human relations other than market transactions counted for nothing in economics, economists favored larger and larger markets – today, a global market.

In the past, markets were always contained with political borders. This did not insure that they were well managed, but it offered the possibility that concerns for community and justice could establish some limits on their hegemony and moderate their effects. Today there is no global government to regulate markets or defend communities from their ravages.

A post-modern economics would return as far as possible to the village market. That is, economic structures should operate within political ones, and the closer these are to the people who are governed, the better the chance for genuine human participation. Obviously, however, many goods needed by contemporary society cannot be produced locally. Still it is possible to favor a bottom-up economy along with the bottom-up political structures. What can be produced and marketed locally should be. What requires a larger market should come under the jurisdiction of a community of communities. Production that requires a still larger market should be supervised by a community of communities of communities. These may reach to a global level, but this will not be a global economy in the present sense. It will not erase the boundaries between communities or run roughshod over their interests.

Modern thought was dualistic, and this has been reflected in economic policies with respect to nature. This has been particularly apparent in the United States. The policy of Europeans coming to the Americas in general, and to the United States in particular, has been one of rapid exploitation of nature, viewed simply as "natural resources." Economic theory has depicted nature in no other way, and even natural resources have not been regarded as important. They have virtually disappeared from standard economic textbooks, which treat labor and capital as the only significant factors of production. The United States still has policies that favor the rapid exploitation of resources for the sake of economic growth.

Even now when the limits of resources and problems of pollution have forced themselves on the attention of everyone, our inheritance from modernity counts heavily against an adequate response. We calculate the cost of preserving bits and pieces of the natural world in economic terms. When we ask what policy to adopt in view of global warming, economists are inclined to advise us not to make any costly changes. If we accumulate enough capital, they argue, we will be in position to pay the costs of global warming as they arise.

The modern attitude toward other creatures expresses itself today in the way we raise animals for slaughter. We do not concern ourselves with their suffering. It turns out that the meat of calves is tenderer when they get no exercise; so some are raised in tight confinement. Chickens are raised in such confined quarters that they cannot spread their wings. Since money can be saved by mass production, huge hog farms now raise their hogs in miserable condition, meanwhile massively polluting the land and water and bankrupting farmers who try to continue more natural production methods.

Some constructive post-modernists have become vegetarians. Since they believe that the animals we raise for our food have their own intrinsic value, they do not want to participate in a system that kills them. Others do no believe that killing animals is necessarily so bad that it should be given up altogether. I am one of these. We argue that if an animal is allowed to have a good life and is killed humanely, this is, on the whole, positive. If people did not raise them for food, there would be far fewer animals in the world. Accordingly, moderate meat eating is acceptable.

On the other hand, in the United States, the justification of eating meat is becoming ever more difficult. More and more of our meat is raised in ways that mean the animal’s whole life is one of misery. The enjoyment of the meat can hardly counterbalance such extended suffering.

There are additional reasons for a post-modernist to be concerned. Our American appetite for beef leads to the cutting down of tropical forests in Latin America to gain temporary grazing land. This is often abandoned after a few years because it is not really suitable for this purpose, but the destruction of forest cover and animal habitat has long-lasting consequences.

As global grain supplies decline in relation to demand, there will be additional reasons for reducing meat consumption. Obviously, the first claim on the grain should go to relieving hunger. Huge quantities of grain are now fed to animals. The calories in the meat produced are around a tenth of the calories available for direct consumption in the grain. When eating meat not only causes suffering to animals but also deprives the world’s poor of needed food, it will certainly not be justified.




Conclusions

Although there are many similarities between constructive and deconstructive post-modernists, the sections of this paper that deal with science and with public policy would not be likely to appear in a lecture on the latter topic. Deconstructive post-modernists are interested in showing that the dominant forms of science are shaped by particular perspectives and do not have the universality to which they pretend. With this point constructive post-modernists are in enthusiastic agreement. But deconstructive post-modernists usually discourage the attempt to develop better theories, an attempt that seems important to constructive postmodernists.

Somewhat similarly, deconstructive postmodernists show how many, widely affirmed, policies have assumptions that express the bias and self-interest of those in power. They often do brilliant work in showing the elements of self-deception present in those who uphold them. But they are unlikely to go on to propose other policies. They are likely to view any policies proposed as expressive of other biases and interests. As a result they do not give support to any. From the point of view of constructive post-modernists, society cannot function without policies to guide decisions. All may be tainted, and we should never pretend to have no personal interests or to be unbiased in our judgments. But the world will not survive without improved public policies, ambiguous as they may remain.

Constructive post-modernists make no claim to perfection or finality for their ideas about philosophy, science, or public policy. We know that we are all finite beings with limited understanding and that we see the world from one perspective among many. We know that our perspectives are conditioned by many relativizing factors, and that these perspectives determine which features of the totality stand out for us. But we also believe that what we see from particular perspectives includes valid and valuable elements of the always-elusive truth. We also believe that by being open to what others see from their different perspectives, we can correct and expand our present thinking. Constructive post-modernism understands the world as a whole, and itself in particular, to be in process.



An Interview with John Cobb - "The God of Process Theology"




The God of Process Theology:
An Interview with John Cobb

by John Cobb | July 22, 2014


Tikkun: How did you start your thinking about theology?

Cobb: I grew up in a religious Methodist Christian family, and when I started meeting intellectuals I realized that this was considered a rather unusual and somewhat eccentric position. I did my graduate degree at the University of Chicago and wanted to study all the arguments against the existence of God. Growing up, God was a central companion, so discovering that this was not supported by most of the intellectual and academic community was a shock.

“If we could liberate science from the shackles of an outdated metaphysics, the line between physics and spirituality would be radically blurred,” Cobb says.

But at the University of Chicago I came to understand that, for most intellectuals, it wasn’t a matter of discussing “the evidence,” but the worldview that dominated. For this worldview, anything coming from outside the natural realm was completely unacceptable and outside the dominant universe of discourse. I began to discover, through my teachers at the Chicago Divinity School, to which I transferred, the very impressive intellectual work of Alfred North Whitehead.

Whitehead shifted me from the notion of God as omnipotent to a God who is powerful, and from a God who is immutable to a God who is in genuine interaction with the world and cares about what happens in the world—and hence changes.

Tikkun: How does process theology understand God? It is clear that process theologians do not believe in a big man in heaven who sends down judgments and rewards and punishes people for their misbehaviors. But is the God of process theology a person? What relationship does this God have to human beings?

Cobb: Given the huge amount of human experience with God, my teachers argued that this experience was just as valid as any other aspect of human experience. I follow Whitehead quite closely myself, and for him, God includes the world and is immanent in every event. Some process theologians think that Whitehead’s God is too speculative and prefer to define God purely within human experience. Henry Nelson Wieman said, “God is that process in which human values grow.” He described that process brilliantly and considered the reality of this God indubitable. In both cases, God is a process. In Wieman’s case, the process is very personal in the sense that it creates and nurtures persons, but it is in no sense a person. In Whitehead’s case, God is similarly personal. God not only brings persons into being and nurtures them but also calls them to fuller, more ethical lives. In addition, God as the cosmic Subject has many of the characteristics of human persons.

Challenging the Cartesian View of Nature

Tikkun: Why have process theologies gained so little traction in the modern situation?

Cobb: The worldview that dominates most universities excludes both subjects and values a priori. In other words, it excludes not only Whitehead’s speculations about a cosmic Subject, but also Wieman’s effort to describe God in a purely empirical way. Because this exclusion is a priori, no argument is needed. It is this metaphysics that still runs the world.

This metaphysics started with Descartes’s description of nature. Then, after Darwin showed that human beings are part of nature, this metaphysics attributed the same characteristics also to human beings. In this way it ruled out all that is subjective, any internal reality. And this became the dominant view shaping universities and academic discourse. It led to the marginalizing of people like Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. The hard sciences become the paradigm for all that is true.

Tikkun: Yes, the Network of Spiritual Progressives runs into this in our campaign for an Environmental and Social Responsibility Amendment (ESRA), because people say that we can’t allow juries to assess whether a corporation is environmentally and socially responsible without having objective measures, by which they mean metrics that are empirically observable or measurable.

“I would say that many animals have conscious experience,” Cobb says. “Whiteheadians assume that the experience of chimpanzees is quite like ours.” 

They assume that anything real must be subject to measurement or empirical observation, which then leaves out anything from the sphere of ethics or spirit. The Cartesian worldview works very well with capitalism, because it marginalizes the values that could be used to critique capitalism. Where does Whitehead fit into all of this?

Cobb: Whitehead understood the physical world in a different way than was dominant in intellectual life at his time and ever since. He came to his views through his study of physics and math. Physicists thought they were talking about an actual world, but in fact they discussed abstractions to which they mistakenly attributed actuality.

Whitehead was developing his ideas about the world during the period in which Einstein was developing relativity theory, so I will illustrate the issue there. He was bothered by the fact that Einstein’s theory of general relativity described space as if it could either be curved or flat (flat locally but curved over great distance). In order for space to be either flat or curved, it would have to be concrete, and Whitehead thought it did not make sense to speak of space that way. He was a mathematician, and in geometry any space can be treated as Euclidian, hyperbolic, or elliptical....


How to Read the Rest of This Article: The text above was just an excerpt. The web versions of our print articles are now hosted by Duke University Press, Tikkun‘s publisher. Click here to read an HTML version of the article. Click here to read a PDF version of the article.

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John B. Cobb Jr. taught at Claremont School of Theology. To develop the implications of Whitehead’s philosophy he cofounded Process Studies, the Center for Process Studies, the International Process Network, and the Institute for Postmodern Development of China.


NASA's Parker Solar Probe Explores the Sun


https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/stereo-a-spacecraft-returns-data-from-the-far-side-of-the-sun



NASA's Parker Solar Probe Touches The Sun For The First Time
Dec 14, 2021

NASA Goddard
For the first time in history, a spacecraft has touched the Sun. NASA’s Parker Solar Probe has now flown through the Sun’s upper atmosphere – the corona – and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. 
 
The new milestone marks one major step for Parker Solar Probe and one giant leap for solar science. Just as landing on the Moon allowed scientists to understand how it was formed, touching the very stuff the Sun is made of will help scientists uncover critical information about our closest star and its influence on the solar system. 


Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center

Click to Enlarge  |  For more Info go here




Artist's impression of Parker entering the solar corona. (NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/Joy Ng)

For The First Time in History, a
Spacecraft Has 'Touched' The Sun

15 DECEMBER 2021

In an incredible historic first, a human-made spacecraft has swooped in and made contact with the Sun.

On 28 April 2021, NASA's Parker Solar Probe actually flew into and through the solar corona, the upper atmosphere of the Sun. Not only did it live to tell the tale – proving the efficacy of Parker's high-tech heat shielding – it took in situ measurements, giving us a wealth of never-before-seen data on the heart of our Solar System.

"Parker Solar Probe 'touching the Sun' is a monumental moment for solar science and a truly remarkable feat," said astrophysicist Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters.

"Not only does this milestone provide us with deeper insights into our Sun's evolution and its impacts on our Solar System, but everything we learn about our own star also teaches us more about stars in the rest of the Universe."

Parker Solar Probe launched in 2018, with its primary objective to probe the solar corona. In its planned seven-year mission, it should be making a total of 26 close approaches, or perihelions, to the Sun, using a total of seven gravity assist maneuvers from Venus to bring it ever closer. The April perihelion was the eighth, and the first to actually enter the corona.

In its nearly five hours inside the solar atmosphere, Parker measured fluctuations in the Sun's magnetic field and sampled particles. Previously, our estimates of these properties relied on external information.

"Flying so close to the Sun, Parker Solar Probe now senses conditions in the magnetically dominated layer of the solar atmosphere – the corona – that we never could before," said astrophysicist Nour Raouafi, Parker project scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

"We see evidence of being in the corona in magnetic field data, solar wind data, and visually in images. We can actually see the spacecraft flying through coronal structures that can be observed during a total solar eclipse."


(NASA/Johns Hopkins APL/Naval Research Laboratory)

Above: The bright features visible in the pictures here are coronal streamers, normally only seen from Earth during an eclipse. These were imaged by the Parker probe during the ninth perihelion in August this year.

The Sun doesn't have a solid surface. Instead, its boundary is defined by what we call the Alfvén critical surface, where gravity and the Sun's magnetic fields are too weak to contain the solar plasma.

Above this point, the solar wind emerges, blowing powerfully through the Solar System, so fast that waves within the wind break away from the Sun. What we call the 'surface' of the Sun, composed of roiling convection cells plasma and known as the photosphere, is far below.

One of the goals of Parker was to find out more about the Alfvén critical surface; namely, where it is, and what its topography is like, since we didn't know either of those things. Estimates had put the Alfvén critical surface at somewhere between 10 and 20 solar radii from the center of the Sun. Parker entered the corona at 19.7 solar radii, dipping down to as low as 18.4 solar radii during its corona jaunt.

Interestingly, the probe seemed to encounter the magnetic conditions of the corona sporadically, suggesting that the Alfvén critical surface is wrinkled. At lower depths, Parker encountered a magnetic structure known as a pseudostreamer, which we can see arcing out from the Sun during solar eclipses. Parker's data suggest that these structures are responsible for the deformation of the Alfvén critical surface, although we don't currently know why.

Inside the pseudostreamer, conditions were quieter than the surrounding solar atmosphere. Particles no longer buffeted the spacecraft quite so chaotically, and the magnetic field was more orderly.

Parker also investigated a phenomenon known as solar switchbacks. These are Z-shaped kinks in the magnetic field of the solar wind, and it's not currently known where or how they form. We've known about switchbacks since the 1990s, but it wasn't until Parker investigated them in 2019 that we learnt that they are rather common. Then on its sixth flyby, the probe's data showed us that switchbacks occur from patches.

Now Parker has detected them inside the solar atmosphere, suggesting that at least some of the switchbacks come from the lower corona.

"The structure of the regions with switchbacks matches up with a small magnetic funnel structure at the base of the corona," said astronomer Stuart Bale of the University of California, Berkeley, lead author on a paper on the phenomenon in press at The Astrophysical Journal. "This is what we expect from some theories, and this pinpoints a source for the solar wind itself."

We still don't know how these curious structures formed, but with dozens more perihelions ahead, going as close as 9.86 solar radii from the center of the Sun, we're likely to be getting some pretty fascinating answers.

"We have been observing the Sun and its corona for decades, and we know there is interesting physics going on there to heat and accelerate the solar wind plasma. Still, we cannot tell precisely what that physics is," Raouafi said.

"With Parker Solar Probe now flying into the magnetically-dominated corona, we will get the long-awaited insights into the inner workings of this mysterious region."

The research has been published in Physical Review Letters.



https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/sun-space-weather/sun-regions



https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/science/solar-anatomy.html



https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Cutaway-view-of-the-Sun-showing-the-interior-layers-and-average-temperature-values-and_fig1_51890986




Saturday, December 11, 2021

Progressive Christians Are Beginning To Embrace Process Theology

CHAPTER II
The Pool of Tears

Alice Stretches Tall: `Curiouser and curiouser!' cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English); `now I'm opening out like the largest telescope that ever was! Good-bye, feet!' (for when she looked down at her feet, they seemed to be almost out of sight, they were getting so far off). `Oh, my poor little feet, I wonder who will put on your shoes and stockings for you now, dears? I'm sure I shan't be able! I shall be a great deal too far off to trouble myself about you: you must manage the best way you can; --but I must be kind to them,' thought Alice, `or perhaps they won't walk the way I want to go! Let me see: I'll give them a new pair of boots every Christmas.' - Alice in Wonderland

Alice had just entered Wonderland, had taken a magic potion, and immediately began to experience personal changes in the world which she had never experienced before. Notice how she remarked how she had forgotten how to speak, became surprised by the moment, and felt like she was opening up like a telescope

One might aptly describe the world of process theology as a type of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland.... A world in which our spoken language feels quite inadequate; we become overwhelmed by changes occurring within us; and the world we once lived in all of a sudden seems too small as our soul reaches beyond what was once "reality" to what might become a new kind of "reality" or "experience."

Process Theology for progressive Christians may seem like Wonderland and more. Thankfully it is.

What is Process Theology?

Process theology is built upon the English Mathematician/Philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's Process Philosophy (circa 1910 & 20's) as a alternative to the traditionalized Greek/Christian view of Platonism and all it's subsequent "isms" over the past 2400 years. Which means the entirety of Christian Theology - both Protestant and Catholic (most probably Greek & Russian Orthodox too) - is orientated towards transcendent eternal objects (thank Immanuel Kant, Rene Descrates, et al for this). From the church's creeds and dogmas to its doctrines and indoctrinated life qualities and characterizations, we think in terms of eternal transcendent, static objects.

Realizedly, Whitehead was not proposing a new thought system for Christianity so much as a different way of thinking about Hegelian cosmology (cosmos = universe = world = creation; its my catchall phrase) in which we live and inhabit. But as a Victorian-kind of Westernized Christian (sic, C.S. Lewis, JRR Tolkien, et al) Whitehead's projections would come to "reconstruct" or "recompose" Christianity through his later students such as Charles Hartshorne, and the generations after Charles like David Ray Griffin, John Cobb, Marjorie Suchocki, Catherine Keller, Thomas Oord, and many others.

Process theology is socially and ecologically progressive, and driven by love. But progressive Christianity is not process theology. It may be, or may become that, but is usually composed of a denominational or evangelical mix of Protestant, Orthodox, and missional Catholic faiths. - re slater

What is Process Thought (sic, Philosophy cum Theology)? Well, to ask this is to ask how the Philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel thought about life set in his native Germany of the late 1700s. Simplistically, Hegel was tired of looking at the world as set in dualisms: mind over matter, reductionism, nature as a clock-work mechanism, subject v. object, noun v verbs, etc. 

What Hegel proposed was a dynamic, self-determining, self-moving, purposeful, active encroachment of the eternal object into the world of the organic. Let's call him a half-and-half Platonist and perhaps a latent Arminianian ( = Wesleyans, Baptists = Open & Relational Theology). Hegel didn't quite get rid of Plato as he brought its transcendent-forms-above into the here-and-now timeful world below. Again, this is an extremely bare view of Hegel.

Two hundred later Whitehead comes along, is profoundly involved in the Royal British Academy, is conversant with all the science heads-of-state such as Einstein, and is seeing the world about him in astonishingly non-Platonic qualities, features and characteristics. He finishes up Principia Mathematica (1910–1913) with his partner Bertrand Russell and is quite discontent in his person to leave things alone at the age of 62 for the "younger generations" to sort out, if possible.




From age 62-68 Whitehead produces Process & Reality and the rest is history. (PS, do pickup and read a copy of P&R. Do not avoid this task hoping to supplement it's pages through other explanatory publications - or websites - such as here. With the exception of Chapter 4, which is quite dense, most of P&R is readable enough. Then go to additional helps while also returning to Whitehead again-and-again. You'll be glad you did).

Wikipedia - "Beginning in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Whitehead gradually turned his attention from mathematics to philosophy of science, and finally to metaphysics. He developed a comprehensive metaphysical system which radically departed from most of Western philosophy. Whitehead argued that reality consists of processes rather than material objects, and that processes are best defined by their relations with other processes, thus rejecting the theory that reality is fundamentally constructed by bits of matter that exist independently of one another. Today Whitehead's philosophical works – particularly Process and Reality – are regarded as the foundational texts of process philosophy.

"Whitehead's process philosophy argues that "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 consequences for the world around us."[23] For this reason, one of the most promising applications of Whitehead's thought in recent years has been in the area of ecological civilization and environmental ethics pioneered by John B. Cobb."

In sum, Whitehead took Hegel a step further by totally disassociating with any part-or-parcel of Platonism. No longer did he look at "eternal objects" as being the "real reality beyond the phenomenological world of the experienced or, ahem, ...the "known". If anything, such objects became an epistemological archetype (much like Carl Jung's  archetypes) requiring a kind of primal symbol - or image of convenience - for  orthographic etymologies of expression, meaning and reference. That is, our limiting human languages, require ideation of categorical representations.

The "world" of expressive archetypes provide such categories but do not demand them to be real, only referential in epistemological conversation. As example, the idea of God, truth, love, evil, loss of hope. These are expressive, referential qualities of thought within the human breast but are used as forms of symbolic representation in communication without demanding them to actually real, eternal objects.

Don't let God as a non-object trip you up; think in terms of ourselves... are we "objects" or living, transitioning organic entities made up of a universe of microorganisms which are made up of a metaverse of quantum particles? God is so too... a living "being" who is always in process just as is God's creation, which has taken on His ontological qualities.
Too, as Creator, God is the First Primal Process of all subtending processes. Everything existing is in time-and-motion, composed of community in relationality, dependent on one as to the other, like the air we breathe. Hence, process thought may lead to many other kinds of process thoughts, as today's process theologians are rightly exploring.

Symbolic expressions can be helpful or misleading. Philosophers know this and spend quite a  lot of time explaining what they mean by a word, phrase, statement, or descriptor. Which is also why they can be dense to read or listen to. They are asking us to speculate with them towards other metaphysical, ontological and epistemological categories.




Conclusion

To finish up, Whitehead proposed a very quantum-like state of metaphysics. One that flowed via process-and-event. From a former state of being towards a newer state of being which he described as "becoming." Hence, a prehending state of possibility concresces towards a newer state of actuality before it too concresces forwards towards another state of actuality.

All which means that all of creation (er, the cosmos) moves from "eventful being to eventful becoming". Not as static, unmovable, eternal objects but as timeful ontological events made up of an infinite array of past timeful events, each proceeding together prehending from whole to part to whole again-and-again-and-again in a infinite perturbations of cosmological states of organic becoming. Which is why Whitehead's philosophy was known as a Philosophy of Organism before it later became described as Process Thought.

R.E. Slater
December 11, 2021

ps - I try to steer away from cultic-like new ageism, or "circles of life" manifestoes (causality, consciousness, trivium and logic), astrology per se (though not denying aural cosmic "consciousness" re quantum physical forces and energies), etc. Many religions such as Buddhism come closest to Whitehead's thought in its balance, rhythm, harmonies, and symmetries, even as many of today's contemporary quantum sciences including evolutionary theory via chaotic randomness, movement and growth of organism or particle, etc.
Which is also why process thought may also be thought of as an "Integral Theory"  of everything, in a sense (re version 2.0, as I understand it, from Matthew Segall). Even in the earliest ancient cultures, including Greek philosophy, the ideas of process flow-and-rhythmbeing and becoming, were captured in its thoughts and images but not as an entire cosmological metaphysic. Like an elephant being described by blind men, each seeing a part of the whole, other philosophies, psychologies, sciences, cultures, religions, etc., all have seen greater or lesser portions of the process elephant but not as its own categorical entirety. Thus it is reflected everywhere we look... even in the bible, should we be bold enough to rethink Christianity not only in progressive terms but in process terms. Which is the whole import of this post. - re slater

rev. December 23, 2021

I've added the much respected Roger Olson's recent article as he recently thinks about progressive Christianity in historical context. That is, as versus "liberal theology" which at its greatest height of definition for myself would mean a Christ-less theology without divine atonement and redemption. Liberal theology would treat these subjects as mere cultural symbolism. I do not.

However, as a sidebar, I do not consider it a liberal theology to hold that the bible is neither infallible nor inerrant - though do hold to its inspiration if a far broader and more nuanced fashion than my older dispensational, cum Baptist, background would like. For those thoughts google related topics on the sidebar in this website in the white space which says "search this blog." For myself, conservative evangelicalism and fundamentalism holds an incorrect, or let us say, "unbiblical" view of the bible itself placing it into the magical corner of "biblicism" by reading it literally. I vote "yes" to reading the bible historically, grammatically and contextually but it is a big, big mistake to read the bible "literally"... it creates misunderstanding, promotes religious idealism, and leans into the paths of anti-intellectualism because of its misuse of individual, religious, denominationalist, or sectarian subjectivism of making the text into its own pretexts.
One last observation... In an ironic twist, I consider conservative's unbiblical misuse of the bible as "liberalism on steroids" and adding to the great divisions in the church today for those followers of Christ trying to be true to Jesus as opposed to those Christians having left the "biblical" faith for guns, a white supremacist Jesus, and an ingenerous, selfish, advocation for individual rights over the sovereign rights of a peaceful civil democracy.

- re slater


* * * * * * * * * 




Embracing Process Theology as Theological Lens
for Progressive Christians

by Rev. Dr. Brice Thomas
August 29, 2016

One of the most interesting findings in the data collected during the biblical storytelling worship services for my doctoral research was the evolution of many in my congregation from a “meaning as reference” to “meaning as experience” theological perspective. Throughout many of our journeys from fundamentalist roots to the UCC, we have struggled to find a systematic theology that could easily explain the processes of God from a progressive perspective. Process Theology was the closest interpretive theological lens that I discovered in seminary for doing that. But in the real, everyday life of the spiritual person it can be difficult to appropriate. While the identification of a new systematic theology that evolves out of a biblical storytelling paradigm was far beyond the scope of my research, the desire to begin a process toward that end still existed. Naming performance criticism as a progressive hermeneutic for translating the ancient symbols of our faith into digital culture was an important initial step toward that end.

Relationship as “Process of Becoming”

Process Theologian, Marjorie Suchocki, has helped to clarify Alfred Whitehead’s notion of “relationship of becoming.” Her understanding of Process Theology, that “all reality is relational and power comes from reality through relation,” is liberating.[1] But it is also intensely challenging. Suchocki’s perspective suggests that we have the unique opportunity and responsibility to engage and realize our ultimate spiritual reality by faithfully pursuing relationship with God. However, this honest pursuit in progressive contexts can reveal that the journey no longer has a beginning and an end. The journey becomes a dynamic experience of faith seeking opportunities to discover possibilities. The destination is no longer heaven or hell. The destination is a deeper intimacy with the one who called us into being, and makes us accountable for choosing our spiritual future.

Pastoral theologian Carolyn Bohler suggests that, “while our present reality may be limited by our choices in the past, the possibility of making new choices in the present can lead to a harmonic future compatible with God’s aims for the world, given what it is now. God’s best possibilities for our future, given the present, are available.”[2] While we are not predestined to choose them, God gives us the free will to do so. Our contribution to this progressive journey is making those choices that move us forward, no matter what we chose in the past.[3] This is the essence of Process Theology and a progressive faith.

The application of these theological processes on my research had important goals: (i) to present a God who is present and participates in our spiritual journeys, and (ii) to help participants discern their own decisions and choices for a better spiritual reality. The influence of this presence and participation had the potential to move the congregation beyond passive faith and encourage them to actively trust God’s initial aim for their best reality.

Process Theology tells us that we can trust God because the character of “God as Wisdom” (God the Spirit in traditional theology) knows the infinite possibilities of our future and works consistently to harmonize our past and present toward a transforming future.[4] This transforming future is the achievement of justice. The eminence of “God as Power” (God the Father in traditional theology) assures that this is God’s initial aim. It confirms that God and justice are the same things. Whether or not that justice is achieved, is the responsibility of God’s creation to choose it.[5] It places the responsibility on us, the pilgrims, to seek revelations of God that transform God’s initial aim into God’s best actual occasion. All the while God is there, creating and wanting and offering us the best and ultimate reality.

Jesus as Model of Relationship with God

This disagreement raised other crucial questions in this research: from whom do we receive atonement then, if not from Jesus Christ? Some progressives believe that we can confess that Jesus Christ is Lord without subscribing to a belief in his divinity as defined by a virgin birth, sacrificial act of atonement on the cross, a physical resurrection and final supernatural ascension. But this rejection of the fundamentalist teaching of Christ’s lordship does not pose a problem of loyalty as some suggest it should.[7] Suchocki, however, posits that since all knowledge is conditioned by perspective, then a consideration of God based on a process analysis of the world and accomplished from a Christian frame of reference influences our conclusions.[8] Therefore the vision of a redemptive God of presence, wisdom, and power could be revealed in the testimony of Jesus Christ. 

This question surfaced in my research: Can process thought harmonize the dissonance between the divine Christ and the historical Jesus for progressive Christians?  [sic, for myself as a process guy carrying forward a reformed tradition, I choose the divine Christ as historic God in human form who was virgin born, as discussed in past posts. - re slater]

Another significant perspective of process thought is the understanding that the Jesus narratives are a testimony to the relationship between humans and a relational God. The exploration of the historical Jesus movement in my church challenged participants to deconstruct Jesus Christ as presented in the sacred scriptures. The search for the historical Jesus challenged whether we could tell the story of Christ apart from the concept of a classical theistic God. From our study of this “hermeneutic of suspicion” it became clear that Jesus the Christ was an earthly portrait of the classical theistic God. To reject the image of a classical theistic God also challenged us to reject the image of Jesus as the divine Christ. Process theology reevaluates these biblical narratives from a relational paradigm. In this paradigm, the stories of Jesus reveal the essence of “God as Presence” (God the Son in traditional theology). Yet the “God of Presence” can also be revealed through other faith practitioners, in spite of and because of our own humanity. Historical studies alone can not provide access to Jesus of Nazareth.[6]

I acknowledge that this harmonization may not be achievable for all progressives, especially considering the exhaustive work of the conservative and liberal Church over the last century to keep the spiritual life confined under the canopy of either a classical theistic dogma or academic intellectualism. But Process Theology can provide insight for progressives who desire to make a relationship with “God as Presence” foundational for their Christian formation. Process theology, expressed through the methodology of performance criticism, can provide a way to discover relationship with Jesus outside a classical theistic perspective. It gives the ancient sacred scriptures new authority for pursuing an authentically progressive spiritual life. This new meaning perspective allowed us to experience Jesus again for the first time. And those are stories that we love to tell!

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You can follow this research here on Vital Signs and Statistics, or view videos and resources of this work at www.ExperientialJesus.com.

[1]Marjorie Suchocki, God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1982), 29.

[2]Carolyn Jayne Bohler, Doctoral Defense Notes, (Dayton, OH: United Theological Seminary, March, 2015).

[3]Bohler, Doctoral Defense Notes.

[4]Suchocki, Process Theology, 72.

[5]Suchocki, Process Theology, 82.

[6]Michael Jinkins, Invitation to Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2001), 104.

[7]Jinkins, Invitation, 120.

[8]Suchocki, Process Theology, 87.


Rev. Dr. Brice Thomas is the Director of Alumni/ae Relations and Adjunct Faculty at United Theological Seminary in Dayton, Ohio. He is also called to bi-vocational ministry at Harmony Creek Church in Dayton, an emerging congregation.



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What Is “Progressive Christianity?”

November 10, 2021


I keep hearing this label “progressive Christian.” What does it mean? I answer as a theologian and scholar of American Christian varieties—ecclesiological and theological.

The trouble is that there is no historical tradition of “progressive Christianity.” There are no prototypes to point back to or to now. This is in contrast to, for example, “liberal Christianity” which is a historical-theological tradition well documented and described by theologian Gary Dorrien in his three volume history of the subject. Unfortunately, he uses “progressive religion” as virtually synonymous with “liberal Christianity” in America.

Most people who call themselves progressive Christians do not fit the liberal profile from the father of liberal Christianity, Friedrich Schleiermacher, up through his contemporary successor and interpreter Douglas Ottati. Some do; some don’t.

Unfortunately, “progressive Christian” is like Luther’s “wax nose” that can be twisted to suit anyone’s countenance. The label only has meaning within some particular context. Perhaps it only means something like “more open to change than what was before in a particular context.”

Let’s [look at] an example

A few years ago two Dallas Theological Seminary professors promoted something called “progressive dispensationalism.” They published a book about it. It was still dispensationalism but with a couple of new interpretations. It was just a new style of old dispensationalism.

Some years ago some of us were calling ourselves “progressive evangelicals.” Our heroes were (among others) evangelical theologians and writers Bernard Ramm, Donald G. Bloesch, Clark Pinnock, Stanley Grenz, Tony Campolo and Ronald Sider. The “progressive” label meant something different in each case except for one thing—all were evangelicals breaking away from fundamentalism.

[Today's Vernacular Usage]

In the past decade, “progressive Christian” (here in the U.S.) seems to be a label preferred by real liberal Christians (whose Christianity seems dubious to me) but also by non-liberal Christians who are “open” to new ideas such as gay marriage, LGBTQ rights within society and the churches, passionate social justice activism, egalitarianism, etc.

When I hear someone labeled “progressive Christian” by themself, or others, I do not know what is meant—other than [someone who is] open to new ways of thinking and “doing” Christianity within a certain context. However, in my experience, the label is increasingly being “owned” by formerly conservative Christians who are moving toward liberal Christianity but hesitating to go all the way there.

In 2022 Zondervan will publish my 22nd book entitled Against Liberal Theology: Putting the Brakes on Progressive Christianity. It is scholarly but completely accessible to anyone with a high school education. I use no “big theological words” without explaining them carefully.

The purpose of the book is to explain what “liberal theology” really is, as opposed to how many people wrongly use the label, and to warn progressive Christians against the cliff at the end of the slippering slope of contemporary “progressive Christianity.” That cliff being full-blown liberal theology which is theology centered around symbolic realism—Christianity mostly cut off from history except for transforming symbols such as the cross and resurrection and Parousia. These are treated by liberal theologians as symbols (although most would say the cross event actually happened but was a tragic martyrdom God used to expose the evil powers of this world).

The one thing I am seeing in common, shared by so-called (contemporary) progressive Christians and liberal Christians is a distaste for doctrines except as relics of Christianity’s history. For both, Christianity is largely reduced to spiritual formation and social transformation. Belief in doctrines such as the Trinity (to choose just one example) is largely considered optional for contemporary Christians.


Roger Olson

*Sidebar: The opinions expressed here are my own (or those of the guest writer); I do not speak for any other person, group or organization; nor do I imply that the opinions expressed here reflect those of any other person, group or organization unless I say so specifically. Before commenting read the entire post and the “Note to commenters” at its end.*