Section One: Religion and Metaphysics
Chapter 5: Christian Natural Theology by John B. Cobb, Jr
2. The Problem of Relativism
In the preface and elsewhere in (A Christian Natural Theology), I have indicated my conviction that a cosmology inspired by the natural sciences has played the dominant role in undermining Christian understanding of both God and man. I have developed at some length aspects of a Whiteheadian cosmology which, I believe, both does more justice to the natural sciences and creates a new possibility of Christian understanding of man, God, and religion. But there is another factor that has contributed to the decline of faith in modern times, which has not yet been seriously considered. This is the historical study of culture and thought. This study has led to the view that every kind of human activity and thought can only be understood as an expression of a particular situation, that all value and "truth" are culturally and historically
conditioned, and that this means also that our attempts to find truth must be understood as nothing more than an expression of our conditioned situation.
In the foregoing discussion of Christian natural theology I expressed my own acquiescence in this relativistic understanding to a considerable degree. It is because no philosophy can be regarded as philosophically absolute that the Christian can and should choose among philosophies [so long as they are philosophically of equal merit) the one that shares his own vision of the fundamental nature of things. But if so, then are we not engaged in a fascinating and difficult game rather than in grounding our affirmations of faith? If we can pick and choose among philosophies according to our liking, what reason have we to suppose that the one we have chosen relates us to reality itself? Perhaps it only systematizes a dream that some of us share. The problem of relativism is fundamental to our spiritual situation and to our understanding of both theology and philosophy. Before bringing this discussion to a close I want to confront this problem directly, and, though I cannot solve it,
perhaps shed some light upon it as Whitehead helps us to see it.
Few philosophers have recognized as clearly as Whitehead did the relativity of their own philosophies.6 Yet in Whitehead’s vision the relativity of philosophies need not have so debilitating an effect as some views of the relativity of thought suggest. He understands the relativity of philosophies as closely analogous to the relativity of scientific
theories.7
In the field of science the fundamental principles now applied are remote from the fundamental principles of the Newtonian scheme.
Nevertheless, the Newtonian scheme is recognized as having a large measure of applicability. As long as we focus attention upon bodies of some magnitude and upon motion of moderate velocity, the laws of science developed by the Newtonians hold true. They have, therefore, real validity, and those who accepted them were not deceived. These laws did not cease to be true when science passed beyond them to the investigation of elements in the universe to which they do not apply.
What happened was that heretofore unrecognized limits of their truth came to light. Certainly the Newtonian apprehension of nature was conditioned by history and culture, but it was also substantiated in its partial truth by centuries of patient thought and experimentation. That thought and experimentation are not discredited.
Whitehead believed that the situation in philosophy is similar. No philosophical position is simply false. Every serious philosophy illumines some significant range of human experience. But every
philosophy also has its limits. It illumines some portion of experience at the cost of failure to account adequately for others.8 Also, science and history keep providing new data of which philosophy must take
account. The task of the philosopher in relation to the history of philosophy is not to refute his predecessors but to learn from them.
What they have shown is there to be seen. A new philosophy must encompass it. Where there are apparent contradictions among
philosophers, the goal must be to attain a wider vision within which the essential truth of each view can be displayed in its limited validity.9 There are, of course, sheer errors in the work of philosophers. These can and should be detected, but this has nothing to do with the problem of relativism. Indeed the possibility of showing errors presupposes a nonrelativistic principle at work. And no philosophical position is built upon sheer error. The more serious problem arises at the point at which
philosophers draw inferences based on the assumption that their systematic positions are essentially complete. These inferences will prove erroneous, because in the nature of the case no system of thought is final. All must await enlargement at the hands of the future.
If Whitehead is right, and surely he is not entirely wrong here, then we should employ a philosopher’s work with proper caution. We should never regard it as some final, definitive expression of the human mind beyond which thought cannot progress. But we need not suppose that the entire validity of his work depends upon the chance correctness of some arbitrarily selected starting point. What the philosopher has seen is there to be seen or he would not have seen it. His description may be faulty, and what he has seen may have blinded him to other dimensions of reality. He may have drawn inferences from what he has seen that he would not have drawn if he had also seen other aspects of reality — perhaps those other aspects dominating the work of another
philosophical school. But when all is said and done, we may trust philosophy to give us positive light on problems of importance.
Whitehead’s excellence is impressive when judged by his own
principle. . . . But at the same time that I find Whitehead’s thought so deeply satisfying, I realize that there are others, more intelligent and sensitive than myself, who see all things in some quite different perspective. Can I believe that they are simply wrong? From my
Whiteheadian perspective I can usually understand why they adopt the view they hold, what factors in the whole of reality have so impressed themselves upon them that they allow their vision to be dominated by those factors. But is there not an ultimate and unjustified arrogance in supposing that my perspective can include theirs in a way that theirs cannot include mine? Must I not reckon more radically with the possibility of sheer error in my own vision?
Here I think we must come to terms with an aspect of the modern sensibility that we cannot transcend. Just because we humans can transcend ourselves, we can and must recognize the extreme finitude of all our experiences, all our judgments, all our thoughts. Every criterion we establish to evaluate our claims to truth must be recognized as itself involved in the finitude it strives to transcend. From this situation there is no escape. We must learn to live, to think, and to love in the context of this ultimate insecurity of uncertainty.
This may suggest to some theologians that the whole enterprise of
natural theology is, after all that has been said, misguided. It seeks support for theology in a philosophy that cannot transcend relativity and uncertainty. These theologians may hold that Christian theology should remain faithful only to the Word of God that breaks through from the absolute into the relative. But there is no escape here. I can be no more sure of the truth of the claim that the absolute has shown itself than of the truth of the philosophical analysis. However certain the absolute may be in itself, it is mediated to me through channels that do not share that absoluteness. If the appeal is to some unmediated act of the
absolute in the believer, there must still be trust beyond certainty that the act has truly occurred and been rightly interpreted. Faith does not free us from involvement in relativities any more than does philosophy.
Yet, in another sense, faith is the answer to the human dilemma of being forced to live in terms of a truth that one knows may not be true.
Perhaps even here Whitehead can help us or at least we can sense in him a companion in our struggles.
Whitehead’s discussion of peace has already been treated twice in this volume, but it has not been exhausted. One element in particular remains. Ingredient in peace, for Whitehead, is an assurance that ultimately the vision of the world given in sense experience is true.10 This is the assurance that reality does not ultimately deceive. It is an assurance that exceeds rational demonstration. It is faith.
In the context of the present discussion this faith must be that the necessity to live and act by a belief whose truth we cannot know is accompanied by an assurance that as we do so we are not wholly
deceived. We will not pretend to a privileged apprehension of reality as a whole. We will not suppose that those who disagree with us are
therefore wrong. We can only witness to the way that our best reflection leads us to perceive our world. But we can and must believe that in this witness also, somehow, the truth is served.
NOTES:
1. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962.
2. In this section I am following Tillich in using "faith" and "ultimate concern" interchangeably.
3. That this is so is fully established by the work of Hartshorne. See especially The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948, 1964).
4. In Living Opinions in Protestant Theology, I have tried to show in each case how, whether recognized or not, theological positions depend systematically on affirmations that are not private to theology. I
acknowledge the brilliance of Barth’s near success in avoiding such dependence.
5. Whitehead saw the work of the creative philosopher in terms of the novelty of his perspective. The philosopher "has looked at the universe in a certain way, has seen phenomena under some fresh aspect; he is full of his vision and anxious to communicate it. His value to other men is in what he has seen" (Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead 266).
Whitehead also recognized that the philosopher’s vision is affected by the historic community in which he stands. "Modern European
philosophy, which had its origins in Plato and Aristotle, after sixteen hundred years of Christianity reformulated its problems with increased attention to the importance of the individual subject of experience, conceived as an abiding entity with a transition of experiences."
(Religion in the Making 140.)
6. Essays in Science and Philosophy 87.
7. Process and Reality, An Essay in Cosmology 20-21.
8. The Function of Reason 70-71.
9. Process and Reality, An Essay in Cosmology 11-16.
10. Adventures of Ideas 388 ff.
From A Christian Natural Theology, by John B. Cobb, Jr., The Westminster Press Copyright © 1965, W. L. Jenkins. Used by permission of The Westminster Press and John B. Cobb, Jr.
John B. Cobb, Jr., attended Emory University and the University of Chicago. He is Ingraham Professor of Theology, the School of Theology at Claremont.
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Process Philosophy and Christian Thought by Delwin Brown, Ralph
James, Gene Reeves (eds.)
Section One: Religion and Metaphysics
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. Ralph E. James, Jr. attended Emory and Drew Universities. He is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Religion at North Carolina Wesleyan College. Gene Reeves holds degrees from Boston and Emory Universities. He has taught at Tufts University and is now Professor of Philosophy at Wilberforce University. This book was published in 1971 by The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.
It was prepared for Religion-Online by Harry W. and Grace C. Adams