James, Gene Reeves (eds.) Introduction
Chapter 2: The Development of Process Theology by Gene Reeves and Delwin
Brown
Gene Reeves holds degrees from Boston and Emory Universities. He has taught at Tufts University and is now Professor of Philosophy at Wilberforce University.
Delwin Brown holds degrees from Union Theological Seminary, New York, and Claremont Graduate School. He is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at Anderson College, and Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at the School of Theology.
The story of the influence of Alfred North Whitehead’s process
philosophy on British and American theology is much larger, and more complex, multiform, and intricate than can be told in a few pages. It includes the imprecise appropriation of Whitehead’s vision of reality
and the application of his vision and ideas to a wide variety of cultural and theological problems. It involves the development of Whitehead’s major metaphysical ideas into a more complete philosophical theology, and the development and use of those ideas for an understanding of Christian faith. Also involved is the highly technical discipline of interpreting and revising Whitehead’s very sophisticated and rigorous metaphysics, an endeavor which was undertaken in a major way only after 1950 but since then has been carried on by an increasingly large number of both secular philosophers and Christian theologians. And this story must also take account of a variety of negative responses to
process philosophy, some carefully critical, some emotionally reactionary.
In this paper we will attempt to present the highlights of this story. We hope that a sense of the sweep and variety and significance of what appears to be a growing theological movement will be evident. Some of the detailed argument involved, some of the richness of development, some of the complexities and problems of process theology are present in the chapters which follow this historical introduction.
It is important to realize that, while process theology has recently received considerable attention in both religious and popular journals, this development, though lacking the organization of a movement, has been under way for more than forty years. It has always had its fervid adherents, its warm sympathizers, and its vehement detractors. And, though it has never occupied the central place of popularity among theologians, process theology is a development which over these four decades has shown continued, and increasing vitality, scope, and creativity.
ONE: Developments to 1950
Alfred North Whitehead, after a highly successful career in mathematics at Cambridge and London, left England in 1924 at the age of sixty-three to settle at Harvard University and begin the most brilliant and
productive part of a career which would make him one of the giants of modern philosophy. Response to his philosophy by Christian
theologians followed soon upon the publication of his early philosophical works, Science and the Modern World in 1925 and
Religion in the Making in 1926. Somewhat contrary to Miss Stebbing’s prediction that Religion in the Making would likely be widely quoted in pulpits and approved by theologians,1 much of the early reaction was
severely critical and negative. Father Sheen, for example, vigorously attacked this philosophy which he saw as based exclusively on the new physics and encumbered with an esoteric vocabulary. In it he found a rejection of the "true conception of substance," a false view of evil, and a conception of God which does honor neither to God nor logic.2 And, like Sheen, Wyndam Lewis in England identified Whitehead’s
conception of God with that of Samuel Alexander and found it wholly inadequate as a resource for Christian thought.3
Not all of the negative criticism came from the theological right. The well-known advocate of atheistic humanism, Corliss Lamont, was quick to argue that Whitehead’s use of "God" in "nonsupernaturalistic ways"
was both deceptive and incomprehensible.4 And Max Otto raged at the audacity of Whitehead’s attempt to do metaphysics at a time when "the millions" are concerned about human suffering and need a restructuring of society.5
Some early theological response to Whitehead was complimentary.
Reinhold Niebuhr, for example, wrote an exuberant review of Science and the Modern World in which he saw Whitehead’s philosophy as
"exactly the emphasis which modern religion needs to rescue it from defeat on the one hand and from a too costly philosophical victory on the other."6 Indeed, during the decade following publication of
Whitehead’s major philosophical works, a variety of theologians, both in the United States and in Great Britain, were responsive to the new views articulated by Whitehead and made considerable use of many general features of his philosophy in constructing their own theologies.
Categories such as "process" [or "evolution"] and "organism,"
categories which were present in a number of dynamic philosophies similar in many respects to Whitehead’s,7 were seen as the
philosophical basis for a new Christian theism consistent with modern science. Indeed, until the Barthian storm broke in America in the form of The Word of God and the Word of Man in 1927, this new theism based on evolutionary philosophies was becoming the most influential among British and American theologians and showed considerable promise of sweeping the theological field.
One of the most widely read theological works giving a rather large amount of attention to Whitehead was Nature, Man and God by William Temple.8 Throughout the book, Temple quotes Whitehead extensively in support of a process or organismic conception of the universe. But when it comes to Whitehead’s more distinctive notions,
such as panpsychism or ultimate atomism, Temple expresses doubts.
And, of Whitehead’s doctrine of God, he is almost entirely critical, finding that it does not give sufficient importance to "Mind" or
"Personality."
The most thoroughgoing early use of Whitehead’s philosophy appeared in the context of an attempt to formulate a very supernaturalistic
Christology. In The Incarnate Lord,9 British theologian Lionel Thornton made extensive use of Whitehead’s categories for framing a view of the world in which the Incarnation of Christ is the culmination of complex evolutionary process. As "the Eternal Object incarnate," Christ is the
"source of all revelation," the "goal towards which the universe as a developing system of events had previously moved," and the "starting point from which all its subsequent history flows." For Thornton, the Incarnate Lord is a new order of being in which lower orders of nature are taken up by the incorporation of humanity in the Eternal Order.
Writing prior to Process and Reality, Thornton made relatively little use of Whitehead’s concept of God, but his use of the notions of events and objects in cosmology, his defense of Whitehead’s Platonism, his attempt to summarize Whitehead’s philosophy, and his use of Religion in the Making to defend the melding of philosophy and the "special evidence"
of Christianity, all showed him to be an energetic process theologian.
In the United States, Whitehead’s closest theological sympathizers were at nearly the opposite end of the theological spectrum from Thornton.
Several "theological naturalists," centered mainly at the University of Chicago, were favorably inclined toward Whitehead during the thirties.
The earliest of these American theologians to begin a dialogue with Whitehead’s philosophy was Henry Nelson Wieman. As early as 1927 Wieman had written a sympathetic presentation of Whitehead’s view of God as the principle of concretion.10 When Wieman was brought to the University of Chicago to interpret Whitehead11 there began a long, and in many respects misleading, identification of Whitehead’s philosophy and the empirical and pragmatic style of theology headed by Wieman.
Three chapters of Wieman’s 1927 work, The Wrestle of Religion with Truth,12 are devoted to a non-critical interpretation of Whitehead for theological purposes. But very early in the book the pattern which would continue to govern Wieman’s appropriation of Whitehead’s views is evident: Whitehead’s philosophy, particularly his views published prior to Process and Reality, is transformed into American pragmatism. While conceptual knowledge of God is seen as valuable, Wieman was much more concerned with the method and values of
seeking personal and social adjustment to "that character of events to which man must adjust himself in order to attain the greatest goods and avoid the greatest ills."13 Wholly out of keeping with Whitehead’s developed views, Wieman insisted that God is not concrete but only
"the principle which constitutes the concreteness of things."14 Later, Wieman and Meland would argue that for Whitehead it is creativity rather than God that is the ultimate reality and that in proposing that God has a concrete, consequent nature, Whitehead had indulged in unempirical and therefore unwarranted speculation.15 In much later works Wieman increasingly rejected process metaphysics as idle speculation — "a waste we cannot afford."16
Thus, despite the fact that Wieman and others of similar persuasion found elements of Whitehead’s philosophy congenial, and despite the fact that many others saw Wieman as a Whiteheadian, in retrospect one must conclude that Whitehead’s influence on Wieman was very partial and that the influence of John Dewey, with a resultant emphasis on empirical observation and verification, was much more formative for Wieman’s distinctively empirical and pragmatic theology.
Despite the views, and perhaps hopes, of some that Whitehead’s metaphysics provided an opportunity for theology to rise above
empirical naturalism and provide a via media between the rationalism of Thomistic theology and the subjectivism of Protestantism,17
Whitehead’s actual influence on American theology during the thirties was very limited. In 1939 some thirty-five participants in a "How My Mind Has Changed In This Decade" series in The Christian Century gave scant mention of Whitehead. Only James Luther Adams claimed to have been influenced by him, and he did not demonstrate or discuss this influence. In general, the contributors are preoccupied with a humanism which they see as dead, with the economic depression and war, and with Barthianism in theology. A constructive approach to theology through the use of Whiteheadian metaphysics is nowhere evident.
In the forties, while some were praising Whitehead for providing a basis for a theological defense against positivism, for attacking theological dogmatism, and for envisioning a deity more suitable for religious worship than the aloof Absolute of traditional metaphysics and
theology,18 others were claiming that you cannot pray to a principle of concretion,19 and that the Whiteheadian conception of divinity,
"probably as strange, bizarre and grotesque as can be found in the
philosophic literature of modern times," has no connection with the God
of historic theism.20
This issue — whether the God of the philosopher Whitehead can be the God of religious devotion and worship — has been a persistent one throughout the history of the relation between process philosophy and Christian theology. Interestingly, the charge that Whitehead’s
conception of God is unsuitable for religion was first given prominent attention not by more conservative theologians but by the columnist, political theorist, and sometime theologian, Walter Lippman. In A
Preface to Morals, an attempt at humanistic theology, Lippman charged Whitehead with having a conception of God "which is
incomprehensible to all who are not highly trained logicians," a
conception which "may satisfy a metaphysical need in the thinker," but
"does not satisfy the passions of the believer," and for the purposes of religion "is no God at all."21
This issue reached a kind of culmination in the publication in 1942 of a little book entitled The Religious Availability of Whitehead’s God, by Stephen Lee Ely.22 Though it involved a technically careful and reasonably detailed exposition of Whitehead’s view of God, Ely’s fundamental thesis was quite simple. It assumed that a conception of God suitable for religious purposes would align the divine purpose with human good. But, Ely argued, in Whitehead’s view it is God himself who is the ultimate enjoyer of value, and thus we have no evidence that Whitehead’s God is truly good in the sense that he "wishes humanity well." Though all of our experiences may contribute to the divine experience and enjoyment, such objective immortality does not help or comfort the individual worshiper who, presumably, needs assurance that God is on his side. In short, according to Ely, not only is Whitehead’s conception of God inadequate, it is positively inimical to "religious availability."
Response to Ely’s book was swift and substantial as a number of
philosophers and theologians rose to Whitehead’s defense. Victor Lowe argued that Ely had not dealt with Whitehead’s conception at all, but rather with one of straw built out of a misconception of important aspects of his philosophy. But Lowe admitted that there is an important sense in which God, for Whitehead, is not all good in Ely’s sense, i.e., good for us, and that there is a sense in which he is not available for our use.23
The most complete response to Ely’s book was made by Bernard M.
Loomer.24 Loomer clarifies Whitehead’s view of the primordial nature of God as being with all creation rather than prior to it. Process and Reality, with its notion of the two natures of God, is not as clear as one might like on the relation between the two. Some seized upon the primordial nature either in support of their own views, as in the case of Wieman, or to attack as hopelessly abstract, as in the case of Ely.
Loomer shows that according to Whitehead’s centrally important
"ontological principle" actuality is prior to possibility, the abstract derivative from the concrete, and consequently that Whitehead’s mature metaphysics requires that God as the primordial and abstract principle of limitation is only an aspect of God as a consequent, concrete reality.
Loomer’s article also shed considerable light on the problem of the relation of God and evil. Ely had claimed that God ultimately turns all events into elements of his own satisfaction thereby making evil into good and rendering our acts irrelevant to God. But Loomer shows how this is in important respects the very opposite of Whitehead’s views. For Whitehead, "there is tragedy in God even though it be a tragic peace."
That is, God’s inclusive vision and experience does enable him to relate evil events to others in such a way that some positive value results. But this does not mean that past evils are simply obliterated or that they are no longer evil in any sense. Loomer’s article also carefully pointed out that in Whitehead’s view there is not the incompatibility of human and divine values seemingly presupposed by Ely’s argument. God’s
standards of value are, in principle, compatible with our own. In fact, according to Whitehead all entities pursue the same abstract value — increase in diversity, contrast, and intensity of experience consonant with harmony. That is, God wills our highest good. But this means that his good may not be identical with what men at any particular time hold to be good. "Whatever God wills for man would be recognized by man as good if man . . . were to realize his greatest potentialities." Thus, what is "really" good for man cannot be evil for God.
Another attack on Ely’s work came from the philosopher-theologian and member of the University of Chicago faculty who was becoming the foremost advocate of process philosophy and theology, Charles Hartshorne.25 From the publication of his first book in 6 until the present, no thinker has matched Hartshorne in the detailed elaboration and adaptation of Whitehead’s philosophy. Though he claims to have been influenced as much by William Ernest Hocking and Charles S.
Pierce as by Whitehead, for thirty-five years Hartshorne has sought to develop and explicate a consistent, Whiteheadian understanding of God.
In early articles and in Beyond Humanism27 Hartshorne expounded a view of God which provided a middle way between the absolutism of traditional theologies and the atheistic humanism of many of his
contemporaries in the thirties. His first theological paper was published in the journal which a few years earlier had presented the "Humanist Manifesto" setting forth the major tenets of a new faith based upon atheism and science. In this article,28 Hartshorne introduced many of the key ideas which he would elaborate in future years. Hope for the future of theology, he argued, lies in seeing that the new metaphysics, most profoundly enunciated by Whitehead, provides a fresh basis for raising the old question of the existence or non-existence of God. The key idea is a new conception of absoluteness or perfection in which "whatever is present in some degree in every creature is maximally present in God"
(excluding self-contradiction of course). That is, in contrast with traditional views, God is not to be regarded as the negation of positive qualities in creatures nor are creatures to be regarded as devoid of divine qualities. The difference between the creatures and God is one of
degree, but of a qualitatively different degree represented by the difference between the logical quantifiers ‘some’ and ‘all.’ Thus, for example, while creatures have some knowledge, God knows all that can be known. The extreme quantitative difference between human
knowledge and divine knowledge makes a qualitative difference,
making it possible to conceive of divine omniscience as ‘all that can be known’ without resorting to some absolute difference. But, given the new metaphysics of becoming and creativity, our understanding of ‘all that can be known’ must also be revised. Consistent with the freedom of the creatures and the idea of the universe as genuinely creative process, the future must be regarded as a class without members or as completely nonactual." Thus, future events are in principle unknowable and
therefore excluded from the idea of divine omniscience.
Both in this article and more extensively in Beyond Humanism, Hartshorne argued that in contrast with the new supernaturalism
emerging in European theology the new "theistic naturalism" recognizes that in a certain sense nature is God. But this is not to be construed in Spinoza’s pantheistic sense that God and nature are to be simply identified; rather, nature is an individual with a quality that is divine.
God is not wholly beyond the passing flux of events, but includes them, responds to them, and is himself influenced by them.
The relationship between God and the creatures which Hartshorne seeks to elucidate is in some important respects a function of what he calls
"panpsychism."29 Though Whitehead did not use the term
panpsychism," it is clear that the actual occasions of his metaphysics are significantly homogeneous and that this homogeneity includes an ability to feel the environment and respond creatively and purposively to it. All occasions are "psychic" in the negative sense that they are not, to use Whitehead’s term, "vacuous." Every actual entity, from God to the most insignificant physical occasion, is a responding, valuing, creative
subject.
In order to avoid the discredited panpsychism of Fechner in which macroscopic objects such as rocks and plants and planets are said to have souls, Hartshorne, like Whitehead, defends a cell theory of
"compound individuals" wherein macroscopic objects are construed as aggregates of sentient occasions of experience. In this view, while rocks and such are not sentient, the simplest physical entities of which they are composed are. Though their level of sentience is much lower than that of higher animals, this does not preclude their having some degree of feeling, willing, and mentality.
Panpsychism has theological implications which are both
methodological and substantial. Methodologically panpsychism is related to Hartshorne’s apparent anthropomorphism. That is, every occasion of reality is to be regarded as a momentary experience or specious present. But only our own specious present is directly
experienced with any vividness; and it is from this direct experience that philosophy must, according to process philosophy, seek to generalize its understanding of the non-human world. Thus, while we do not know empirically that lower orders of reality have life and subjectivity, there is no reason to draw some arbitrary line absolutely separating living and non-living, or subjects and pure objects. But the same is true in the opposite direction. Just as process philosophy’s understanding of sub- human levels of existence is dependent on analogy with the human, its understanding of God is based on a similar analogy. The universe, accordingly, is a vast hierarchy of organisms and non-organic societies of organisms from microscopic physical events to God, in which there is a high degree of continuity between levels because at every level
existence is constituted by social relationships. This contrasts sharply, Hartshorne believes, with traditional views in which "mere" matter is regarded as too inferior to be social and God too superior to be truly social.
That reality is social at all levels means, Hartshorne believes, that God,