Whitehead by John B. Cobb, Jr
Chapter 4: Whitehead’s Doctrine of God
4. The Character of the Argument
This concludes the survey of Whitehead’s statements about God. How are we to evaluate what has been done?
Has Whitehead "proved" the existence of God? Does his description of God’s nature follow in every detail from the argument for his existence?
Have we here an inescapable truth that every honest mind must now accept whether or not it wishes to believe in God, and whether its own religious intuitions conform to this doctrine or militate against it?
Obviously the answer to these questions is no. Nothing is proved in this sense. But in that case, what value has the discussion? Have we done nothing more than consider the private, and fundamentally arbitrary, opinions of one man?
Whitehead points out that every proof depends for its force upon the self- evidence of its premises. (MT 66-67.)There are no simply obvious
premises on the basis of which one can construct an argument for the existence of God. If there were, the argument itself would hardly be needed. The primary task of philosophy is to arrive at an adequate and immediately persuasive description explanatory of the world we
actually know. Once this description is accepted, certain conclusions will follow, but the real problem is to arrive at the adequate description.
Whitehead’s argument for the existence of God, insofar as there is an argument at all, is primarily the traditional one from the order of the universe to a ground of order. It is an argument that has taken many forms in the history of thought. Sometimes a particular formulation has received such heavy emphasis that when that formulation was shown inadequate, the argument itself was supposed disproved. To many, it has seemed an unedifying sight that those who defend theism on
cosmological grounds have time after time given up their arguments only to come back with new ones which in turn are later surrendered. If there is truly a proof of the existence of God, why should it not be offered once for all in an irrefutable form? Does not the constant effort to find an adequate argument indicate that those who seek it are
attempting to rationalize and justify beliefs that have no rational
justification? Many honest and sensitive persons have been led by such questions to refuse all further attention to cosmological and teleological arguments for God’s existence.
I propose, in agreement with Whitehead, I believe, an alternative interpretation of this situation. There is a deep human intuition that the order of the world requires for its explanation some principle of order that cannot entirely be attributed to the entities that constitute the world.
To many people, this intuition amounts to a virtual certitude. It seems incredible to them, for example, that the marvelous, intricate, and dynamic adjustments constantly made by the cells in the human body, apart from which human life is impossible, are somehow self-
explanatory. They seem surely to depend upon a wisdom that cannot be attributed to the cells themselves.
But how can such conviction be expressed in an argument that will have philosophic force or carry conviction to those who see no need to appeal to a higher wisdom? The answer depends entirely upon how the science of that time -- science in the broadest sense -- understands the cell and its functioning. If, for example, nature is seen as a great machine made up of lesser machines ultimately composed of particles of matter in law- abiding motion, then the cell also will be understood as being a law-
abiding machine. In that case, the marvelous fact that these little machines are productive of human life will be seen as pointing to the wisdom of the one who imposed upon little particles of matter so wonderful a system of laws. The argument will be the old one from the watch to an intelligent maker.
The argument is not a proof, if by a proof we mean the movement from inescapable premises by logically necessary steps to a conclusion. The argument depends entirely upon two premises neither of which is indisputable: first, that the universe and all its parts are really machine- like in character; second, that machine-like things are possible only as the expression of intelligent workmanship. Either premise may be denied. Yet if the fundamental description is accepted, the conclusion has nearly the force of self-evidence.
Unfortunately, some defenders of theism in the eighteenth century wedded themselves to this view of the complex machine and its maker and associated it with the view that such special forms of the machine as the human body came into existence fully formed in an aboriginal
creation. Hence the argument was peculiarly vulnerable to the new understanding of the evolutionary processes in nature which came to dominance in the nineteenth century. Random variation and the survival of the fittest appeared to provide explanations of the emergence of new forms, including the human, on principles that removed the need for an intelligent creator and lawgiver. The scientific theory was itself attacked by religious thinkers in order to preserve the force of the old argument!
Such strategy could only result in thoroughly discrediting the argument, and even the doctrine it was intended to support.
But the new understanding of nature did not, any better than the old, explain the order of nature. The emergence of the living from the inorganic may be viewed as a random variation, but it certainly has nothing to do with the survival of the fittest. A stone is far more capable of survival than a plant or animal, and on the whole the lower forms of life are more readily adapted to survival than are the higher. Some other force seems to be at work in nature besides random variation and the survival of the fittest -- some appetition toward more complex forms of order more difficult to sustain but more valuable in their results.
Furthermore, the understanding of all life in terms of evolution implies that the previous understanding of the inorganic was in error. From the simply material, the wholly inert, the totally passive lumps of the earlier
theory, it is incredible that random variation could produce life and mind. But if the image of the purely material machine is set aside, the problem of explaining the orderliness of things reappears with
intensified force.
My point is that the problem of order must recur, however we understand the nature of the world. The order is indisputably there, whether or not there may also be disorder. The order may be understood either as entirely imposed or as arising out of the nature of things
themselves. Whitehead believes that elements of both are essential to an adequate analysis.(AI 146-147.) But however it is viewed, there will always remain an inexplicable factor so long as we consider only the temporal entities themselves.
We can, of course, refuse to ask those questions which lead to this final conclusion. We can limit our questions to those which fall fully within the scope of the particular sciences each of which so circumscribes its work that questions of such ultimacy cannot arise. We can declare all other questions meaningless on the grounds that they cannot be settled by empirical evidence. But if we do ask these questions, we will be led to answer in terms of some source of order that transcends the objects of scientific investigation, whether it be beyond or within the ordered world.
I am asserting this dogmatically. The evidence can only be the several attempts to formulate a comprehensive explanation. These must vary according to the description of the structures of the world in which they find their premises. No one argument formulated from any set of
premises can constitute a proof of the existence of God in the usual sense. Each only displays how a more or less adequate account of the order of the world points to some principle of order.
The strength and importance of Whitehead’s argument for the existence of God, therefore, does not lie in some new and more penetrating
structure of the argument. The argument is little more than a pointing to the need of a principle of limitation. The importance lies in the unusual thoroughness and adequacy of the description of the world from which the argument begins. If one is persuaded that Whitehead’s account is indeed the most penetrating that now exists, that it does justice to the complexity of the phenomena of science and of history alike, then the fact that it too leads, almost in spite of the author’s apparent intention, to a doctrine of God as the source and ground of order is an important
further confirmation of the inescapability for speculative reason of some kind of belief in God.
More important than the mere fact that Whitehead too could not understand the world apart from God, is the particular form that his doctrine of God takes. This, of course, is a function of the categories in which the description of the world is developed. If the world is viewed as a complex machine, then the correlative doctrine of God is likely to be that of a creator who stands outside of his creation. But if the world is viewed in organic terms, then the principle of life, order, and growth must be immanent to the organisms. That there is something which we may properly call God is sufficiently indicated by the kind of order that is visible to all. But what that "something" is, where it is, how it
functions, these questions can be reflectively considered only in the light of the categories in terms of which the world is understood.
In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead told us little except that there must be some principle of limitation that makes for the realization of value. But in Religion in the Making and Process and Reality he worked through the questions of what such a principle must be in itself and how it must function. It must be an actual entity that brings the realm of possibility into effective and limiting relation to the becoming occasions of the world. It can do this only if it functions at the outset of every new occasion to give it an aim toward that kind of self-
actualization which is compatible with the larger orders of nature. Here is the essence of his philosophical doctrine of God.
But there is more that can be suggested as the reasonable and probable implication of what has been worked out with some rigor. If God is an actual entity, then it is appropriate to attribute to him the structures characteristic of other actual entities. To refuse to do this would require far more justification than to carry through the application to God of the categories. Whitehead insists that "God is not to be treated as an
exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse.
He is their chief exemplification." (PR 521.) Hence, we must attribute to God not only the conceptual ordering of the eternal objects by virtue of which he lures the occasions of the world toward order and value; we must attribute to him as to all other actual entities physical feelings as well. Whitehead’s own explanation of what he is doing here and what philosophical status is to be attributed to it is a model of care and honesty.
"We must investigate dispassionately what the metaphysical principles, here developed, require on these points, as to the nature of God. There is nothing here in the nature of proof. There is merely the confrontation of the theoretic system with a certain rendering of the facts. But the
unsystematized report upon the facts is itself highly controversial, and the system is confessedly inadequate. The deductions from it in this particular sphere of thought cannot be looked upon as more than suggestions as to how the problem is transformed in the light of that system." (PR 521.)It is shortly after this passage that Whitehead introduces his major discussion of the consequent nature of God.
There is another factor involved, in Whitehead’s view, in the philosophical development of a doctrine of God. Scattered widely throughout the history of mankind there have been "somewhat exceptional elements in our conscious experience . . . which may
roughly be classed together as religious and moral intuitions." (PR 521.) The adequacy of a philosophical scheme must be tested against these intuitions just as much as against the findings of the natural sciences.
And just as clues to the ultimate nature of things that arise in the sciences must be taken with great seriousness by the philosopher, so must the clues that emerge in moral and religious intuition. Hence, the suggestions that arise from the application of the general scheme of thought to this special question of the nature of God may be weakened or may gain cogency according to the reading of these great intuitions of the race by which men live. Whitehead believes, of course, that his own speculative suggestions are appropriate to these intuitions, as well as conformal with what his scheme demands. To him, the ability of his philosophy to do justice both to science and religion must be its supreme test of relevance.(PR 23.)In Chapter VI, we will consider whether his philosophic doctrine can illumine aspects of religious experience in relation to which he did not himself test it.(See Ch. VI, sec. 2.)
Key to References
Footnote references to books by or about Whitehead use the following abbreviations. Numbers after the abbreviations in the footnotes refer to pages unless otherwise indicated.
AI Adventures of Ideas. The Macmillan Company, 1933.
CN The Concept of Nature. Cambridge University Press, 1920.
Dial… Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, as recorded by Lucien Price. Little, Brown and Company, 1954.
ESP…Essays in Science and Philosophy. Philosophical Library, Inc., 1,947.
FR…The Function of Reason. Princeton University Press, 1929.
Imm "Immortality," in Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. See "Schilpp" below.
MT Modes of Thought. The Macmillan Company, 1938.
PNK An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge.
Cambridge University Press, 1919; second ed., 1925.
PR Process and Reality. The Macmillan Company, 1929.
RM Religion in the Making. The Macmillan Company, 1926.
SMW Science and the Modern World. The Macmillan Company, 1926.
Works about Whitehead are listed in the first footnote entry by author and title. Subsequent entries are usually by author only.
Blyth John W. Blyth, Whitehead’s Theory of Knowledge. (Brown University Studies, Vol. VII.) Brown University Press, 1941.
Christian William A. Christian, An Interpretation of Whitehead’s Metaphysics. Yale University Press, 1959.
Ely Stephen Ely, The Religious Availability of Whitehead’s God. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1942.
Hammerschmidt William W. Hammerschmidt, Whitehead’s Philosophy of Time. King’s Crown Press, 1947
Johnson A. H. Johnson, Whitehead’s Theory of Reality. Beacon Press,
Inc. 1952.
Kline George L. Kline, ed., Alfred North Whitehead: Essays on His Philosophy. Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1963.
Lawrence Nathaniel Lawrence, Whitehead’s Philosophical Development University of California Press, 1956.
Leclerc Ivor Leclerc, Whitehead’s Metaphysics: An Introductory Exposition. The Macmillan Company, 1958.
Leclerc (Ed.) Ivor Leclerc, ed., The Relevance of Whitehead. The Macmillan Company, 1961.
Lowe Victor Lowe, Understanding Whitehead. The Johns Hopkins Press, 1962.
Palter Robert M. Palter, Whitehead’s Philosophy of Science. The University of Chicago Press, 1960.
Schilpp Paul Arthur Schilpp, ed., The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Tudor Publishing Company, 1951.
Sherburne Donald W. Sherburne, A Whiteheadian Aesthetic. Yale University Press, 1961.
31
return to religion-online
A Christian Natural Theology Based on the Thought of Alfred North
Whitehead by John B. Cobb, Jr.
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. Published by Westminster Press, Philadelphia, 1965. Used by permission. This book was prepared for Religion Online by Ted & Winnie Brock.