Whitehead by John B. Cobb, Jr
Chapter 5: A Whiteheadian Doctrine of God
1. God as Actual Entity
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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.
Chapter 5: A Whiteheadian Doctrine of
if he had interpreted God as conforming to these features of actual occasions as well.
In this chapter, I undertake to develop a doctrine of God more coherent with Whitehead’s general cosmology and metaphysics than are some aspects of his own doctrine. This project presupposes that there are elements of incoherence in Whitehead’s doctrine of God. This
incoherence does not amount in most cases to strict inconsistency. But Whitehead holds before philosophers an aim at something more than mere logical consistency. Consistency is only freedom from
contradiction.(PR 5.) Undoubtedly Whitehead’s writings also include points of self-contradiction, but these are minor and easily remedied.
The further criticism of a philosophy as incoherent has to do with its
"arbitrary disconnection of first principles." (PR 9.) To the extent that the four ultimate elements of his system (actual occasions, God, eternal objects, and creativity) are arbitrarily disconnected, to that extent some measure of incoherence remains in Whitehead’s own philosophy. It is my intention to show both that Whitehead moved far toward
overcoming such incoherence and also that one can go, and therefore should go, farther yet.
Lest this appear unduly pretentious, a few further words of justification are in order. In the preceding chapter it was shown that when Whitehead first introduced God as a systematic element into his philosophy, he made no attempt to assimilate this principle to any other category.(See near the beginning of Ch. IV.)God was to be viewed as a unique attribute of the substantial activity alongside of eternal objects and actual occasions. Further, there is direct continuity between what is said of God in Science and the Modern World and what is said of the
primordial nature of God in Process and Reality.(Whitehead equates the primordial nature of God with the principle of concretion. [PR 373-374, 523.])In the latter book it is explicitly recognized that the primordial nature of God is an abstraction from God as actual entity,(PR 50.) yet most of the references to God in that book are references to this
abstraction. When in the end Whitehead discusses more fully the consequent nature, he tells us that, unlike the primordial nature, this is fully actual.(PR 524.)Yet he cannot strictly mean this, for again and again he tells us that actual entities are the only finally concrete
individual things.(For Whitehead’s acknowledgment of the misleading character of his language on this subject, see Appendix B in Johnson, Whitehead’s Theory of Reality, esp. pp. 214, 218.)He means to say that God is concrete by virtue of his consequent nature, and even that is not
precise. Unless God is much more of an exception than Whitehead intends, God is concrete by virtue of being an actual entity, and being an actual entity involves both the primordial and the consequent natures.
The reason Whitehead introduces concreteness with the consequent nature is that at this point he takes for granted the primordial nature and that the consequent nature is its complement, whereas when he
previously discussed the primordial nature, the consequent nature was not in view.
The objection to Whitehead’s formulation, then, is that too often he deals with the two natures as though they were genuinely separable.
Further, he frequently writes as though God were simply the addition of these two natures. Thus God’s primordial nature performs certain
functions and his consequent nature others. But according to White- head’s own understanding, this cannot be the precise and adequate formulation. Actual entities are unities composed of a synthesis of their mental and physical poles, but they are not exhaustively analyzable into these two poles. In such analysis we would omit precisely the subjective unity, the concrete satisfaction, the power of decision and self-creation.
It is always the actual entity that acts, not one of its poles as such, although in many of its functions one pole or another may be primarily relevant. Whitehead must certainly have meant to say this also about God, but his separate and contrasting treatment of the two natures is misleading -- indeed, I believe that he was himself misled into exaggerating their separability.
That Whitehead wrote much of the time, even in Process and Reality, without holding clearly in view his own doctrine of God as an actual entity, is illustrated by the extraordinary treatment of the category of reversion, the category that explains the emergence of novelty in the actual occasion. It has to do with the way in which the prehension of an eternal object derived from objectification of an antecedent occasion gives rise to the prehension of a related but novel eternal object. In the initial statement of the categories, this prehension is understood as a new conceptual feeling.(PR 40) However, in the course of his fuller exposition in the second part of the book, Whitehead realizes that the prehension of the novel eternal object must be an objectification of that possibility as envisioned in God, hence a hybrid prehension of God. At this point he states that "by the recognition of God’s characterization of the creative act, a more complete rational explanation is attained. The category of reversion is then abolished; and Hume’s principle of the derivation of conceptual experience from physical experience remains
without any exception." (PR 382.) To carry through the process of rethinking the account of actual occasions and eternal objects in the light of the full doctrine of God will be in line with the direction in which Whitehead’s own thought was moving at this point and will also alter in subtle, but at times important, ways the precise form of the doctrine of God.
My aim at each point is to achieve "a more complete rational
explanation" in just the sense meant by Whitehead in the preceding quotation. This is the same goal as that of achieving greater coherence of first principles. The attempt is to explain the way in which God is related to actual occasions, eternal objects, and creativity, in such a way that at no point do we attribute to him a mode of being or relation
inexplicable in terms of the principles operative elsewhere in the system.
This program may well begin with reference to the perplexing problem as to how the eternally unchanging primordial nature of God can
provide different initial aims to every occasion.(See discussion near beginning of Ch. IV.) That each occasion has its unique, appropriate aim given to it, Whitehead is clear. God’s aim at universal intensity of
satisfaction determines a specific aim at the appropriate satisfaction of each individual occasion. But it is very difficult to imagine how these individual aims can be wholly timeless and yet become relevantly effective at particular moments of time.
In the preceding chapter we saw that the initial aim can be conceived as a feeling of a proposition clothed with the subjective form of desire for its actualization. (Refer to previous note.)A proposition is a
togetherness of some actual entity or nexus of actual entities with some eternal object. For example, "The stone is gray," is a sentence that expresses a proposition of which the subject is a nexus of molecular actual occasions and the predicate is the eternal object gray. Many propositions are felt without being expressed in language. The initial aim would almost always be the feeling of an unexpressed proposition.
In this case, the subject of the proposition would be the occasion itself, and the predicate would be that form of actualization which is ideal in that situation.
In temporal occasions the initial aim is always an aim at some intensity of feeling both in the occasion itself and in its relevant future.(PR 41.) We have seen that the relations of an individual’s own future and those
of others introduce tensions that are highly relevant to man’s ethical thinking. (See Ch. III.) In God, however, there are no such tensions because the ideal strength of beauty for himself and for the world coincide. (In PR Whitehead uses "intensity" to refer somewhat loosely to what is analyzed in AI as strength of beauty. See PR 134-135, 160- 161, 373, 381.) Hence, we may simplify and say that God’s aim is at ideal strength of beauty and that this aim is eternally unchanging. On the other hand, even in God there must be tensions between immediate and more remote realizations of intensity.
Assume a similar situation in man, although I have denied in Chapter III the likelihood of the occurrence in a man of what would be for him a rigid selfishness. The man aims at the realization of some ideal satisfaction in the present occasion and in his future occasions. His subjective aim in the strictest sense is a propositional feeling about himself in that immediate moment of becoming, but this aim is
determined in part by propositional feelings about future occasions of his own experience. He aims at actualizing himself in the present in such a way that these future occasions will have the possibility of enjoying some measure of beauty. Instrumental to this goal must be the behavior of occasions of experience other than his own, for example, occasions in his body and in other persons. He must entertain
propositional feelings about them also. There will be a large complex of such propositional feelings, entertained with an appetite for their
becoming true, synthesized in the one propositional feeling of his own satisfaction. He aims at so actualizing himself that other occasions will actualize themselves as he desires. His aim at ideal satisfaction for
himself will be unchanging, but it will take a different form according to every change in his situation.
In God’s case there is nothing selfish about the constant aim at his, own ideal satisfaction, since this may equally will be described as an aim at universal satisfaction. But in other respects there is no reason not to see the situation as analogous. Certainly God’s aim is unchangingly directed to an ideal strength of beauty. In this unchanging form it must be
indifferent to how this beauty is attained.(PR 160-161.)But if God’s aim at beauty explains the limitation by which individual occasions achieve definiteness, then in its continual adaptation to changing circumstances it must involve propositional feelings of each of the becoming occasions as realizing some peculiar satisfaction. God’s subjective aim will then be so to actualize himself in each moment that the propositional feeling he entertains with respect to each new occasion will have maximum
chance of realization.(This is at least a possible interpretation of Whitehead’s statements.[PR 134, 343; AI 357.]) Every occasion then prehends God’s prehension of this ideal for it, and to some degree the subjective form of its prehension conforms to that of God. That means that the temporal occasion shares God’s appetition for the realization of that possibility in that occasion. Thus, God’s ideal for the occasion becomes the occasion’s ideal for itself, the initial phase of its subjective aim.
If the dynamic of the relation between God and man can be understood in this way, it is analogous to the dynamic of the relation between at least some temporal occasions and some occasions in their future. For example, the human actual occasion frequently so actualizes itself as to aim at influencing other occasions in the body. This may be a matter of raising the hand or swallowing food, or it may be far more complex. In general, the body is highly responsive to this influence, although not absolutely so. One may also attempt to actualize himself so as to influence future occasions of his own experience, as when he determines not to forget an appointment or to resist a particular
temptation in the future. These decisions also have some real influence on the future, although still less perfectly so. Finally, one attempts by his self-actualization to influence future occasions in other persons, with some, although much less, success.
A new occasion, then, may feel past occasions in the temporal world in terms of their aim for it, and it will be affected to some degree in the formation of its subjective aim by these feelings. If this is so, then Whitehead’s sharp distinction within the initial phase of an occasion between the initial aim and the initial data may be modified. The new occasion prehends all the entities in its past. These entities include God.
All the entities will be positively felt in some way, some by simple physical feelings, others by hybrid physical feelings. These hybrid physical feelings will include feelings of propositional feelings about the new occasion, and these in turn will include propositional feelings whose subjective forms include desire for realization. In its prehension of these propositional feelings, the subjective form of the new occasion will at least partly conform to that of the past occasions it prehends.
Hence, its aim for itself will always partly conform to the aim that past entities have entertained for it. Among the entities so felt, God will always be by far the most important one and, in some respects, prior to all the others. (Probably the function of determining the locus and extension of the new standpoint must be assigned exclusively to God.)
The subjective aim of the new occasion will be some synthesis and adaptation of these aims for it, which it also feels conformally.
It would be possible to support this analysis in some detail by citation of passages from Whitehead that point in this direction. However, I resist this temptation. The analysis as a whole is not found in this form in his writings, and it deviates from the apparent implications of some of his statements in at least two ways. First, it rejects the association of God’s aim exclusively with the primordial nature, understood as God’s purely conceptual and unchanging envisagement of eternal objects; this
rejection is required if we deny that God’s immutable aim alone
adequately explains how God functions concretely for the determination of the events in the world. Second, it interprets the subjective aim of the actual occasion as arising more impartially out of hybrid feelings of aims (propositional feelings whose subjective form involves appetition) entertained for the new occasion by its predecessors. In other words, it denies that the initial phase of the subjective aim need be derived exclusively from God.
In Process and Reality, much more sharply than in Religion in the Making, Whitehead treats the causal efficacy of the consequent nature of God for the world quite separately from that of the primordial nature.(PR 532.)I believe that this is a mistake. If God is an actual entity, God will be prehended by each new occasion. We will assume that God’s aim for it, a propositional feeling for which the new occasion is the logical subject and some complex eternal object the predicate, will in every case be prehended and play a decisive role in the determination of the subjective aim of the occasion. But the occasion’s feeling of this propositional feeling in God need not exhaust the objectification of God in the new occasion.
In my feeling of my immediate past I may feel con-formally the intention of that immediate past that in this moment I shall carry out some project. But my feeling of that past also feels many other aspects of that past, perhaps its discomfort or its hope for some more distant future. Similarly, there is no reason to suppose that the prehension of God’s aim for the occasion will exhaust the prehension of God in that occasion. Hence, Whitehead was right to insist that in addition to
deriving the initial aim from God, men also prehend God in some other way.(PR 532.)But just as he was wrong to identify the derivation of the initial aim wholly with the primordial nature, so also he is wrong to identify the other prehensions of God solely with the consequent nature
if this is simply identified with God’s physical prehensions of the world.
Whitehead’s own writings about the consequent nature seem to attribute to it a synthesis of the physical prehensions with the conceptual ones.
(PR 524.) If so, there need be no quarrel -- only an insistence that there can be no sharp distinction between the reception of the initial aim and the other prehensions of God.
According to my view, the actual occasion is initiated by a prehension of all the entities in its past, always including God. Some of these
entities, always including God; have specific aims for this new occasion to realize. The subjective aim of the new occasion must be formed by some synthesis or adaptation of these aims for which it is itself finally responsible. In addition, the past entities, including God, will be
objectified by other eternal objects. What these other eternal objects will be, complex or simple, is determined partly by the past entities and partly by the new subjective aim.