God’s Junk

Topic

Let’s talk about Whitehead’s Sky Daddy.

“For process theism, God is the supreme or eminent creative power, but not the only creative power. Thus, process theists speak of God and the creatures as co-creators (Hartshorne and Reese 1953 [2000, 140]; Hartshorne 1967a, 113). Process theism’s doctrine of creativity differs from that of classical theism according to which God alone is genuinely creative.”

I appreciate Whitehead’s understanding of the big G as co-creator, but does he talk about similar entities with a neutral or feminine gender? Is this language more a product of social moors of the time/place or his own religious or spiritual tradition/understanding?

Thanks,

-Gwen

Replies

I think that it’s due to tradition on thinking how god, even being above human nature and such, is depicted as male due to the privileged ontoligcal position of men above women throughout history (thinking in terms of Simone de Beauvoir) but this process theology opens the door to going beyond a male-female-neutral distinction. He declares in another part the radical freedom of everything that’s beyond a given body of relations, and if gender reality is real in terms of our social constructs then god (in his incompleteness) has no account for this reality, or doesn’t need to.

This can kind of be read as de-personification of women as social-construct or performance-related concept, referring to them outside the fact that they’re women in the first place (like patriarchal societies tend to do with women in STEM for example), but in Whitehead’s metaphysics and relational reality we can study ontologies of gender as what they are, social constructs with fixed narratives that are maleable and restricted to human endeavors rather than some type of force of nature as some authors in the history of philosophy tend to do.

It’d be interesting to discuss later on about Whitehead and readings on gender, seeing how he has inspired authors such as Haraway and her influential Cyborg Manifesto

Great questions!
I’ve never thought of Whitehead’s idea of “God” as male…. it’s just too different…. Makes me wish that in Part V he had coined a unique pronoun to refer to God, as he coined words like “superject” etc : )
I checked out Dr. Cobb’s Wordbook (“God” 69-71) and don’t see any references to “he” there — but no comment on pronouns either : ) Let us know what you discover!

Gwen,

Very interesting question. I would agree with others that this is simply a product of Whitehead’s own era rather than something he was positively attached to. And there’s certainly much in Whitehead of that sort, which we may want to leave behind in our own era.

One important point here, though, is to return to Whitehead’s discussion of ultimates and think of God in light of this schema. Rather than God-as-male being the single ultimate reality, for Whitehead creativity and the cosmos itself are likewise equally ultimate, so even if we retained a masculine gendered picture of God, this gendered perspective would not be as fundamental as it can seem in much traditional Christian theology, where God alone is ultimate.

Process theology after Whitehead has explored this question more deeply and explicitly, offering a number of different perspectives on how to move beyond this baggage from the tradition. I’ve definitely seen some womanist process theology which explores using female pronouns for God, whereas others endeavor to simply exit this kind of gendering game all together when it comes to God as ultimate, so they simply use the proper name “God” rather than any pronouns.