Andrew Davis
Doug, again fantastic and insightful diagrams! See the link below to an old paper which includes various panentheistic insights, among others.
Best,
Dr. D
Bill and Zhenbao, great conversation occurring here. Let me recommend a few texts that were really transformative for me. I trust they will lend insight on the intersection of mindfulness, Buddhism and panentheism etc.
Zhenbao, thank you (again!) for your great contributions to our course. I’m very glad that the discussion group was profitable for you. You bring a rich set of categories and experience from your Chinese perspective, that’s for sure: Whitehead, (as Joseph Bracken has argued) offers a philosophical bridge between East and West. See his book below.
Best,
Dr. Davis
Hi Kevin,
Good question here. Specifically, I think you are speaking of divine activity or who God acts. Whitehead (and process theologians) are certainly to be credited with the theologizing of the language of the “lure.” Zhenbao, however, is right to bring in the long tradition of Aristotle whoss unmoved mover “attracts” the entire cosmos to itself. So Whitehead is in this tradition, but his God is active, “the most moved mover,” acting via persuasive lure and not just attracting all to the divine self, although there is room for that too.
Cheers,
Dr. D
Doug, I love your diagrams and I’m interested to see how you would express the interrelationality of panentheistic conceptions, Whitehead’s in particular. As motioned in class, the sacramental dimension of panentheism is rich.
Here is a resource below that may be helpful:
Cheers,
DR.D
Dennis, you shall not be ostracized, certainly, no matter how much I may disagree. Wrestling though this material is A-OK! Whitehead is not into magic, especially not in metaphysics. And God is certainly no magician. Nor, arguably, is there a cognitive leap to God. Sherburn, Donald Crosby, Frederic Ferre, Bob Mesle–all Whitehead without God folk, and good scholars, but I disagree with them.
What in the nature of things provides the functions necessary for a process universe to coherently “process.” There is, of course, a debate about these “functions.” The word “God” may not help, but that there is something that performs these “functions,” Whitehead came to affirm as necessary. Why add God if the universe functions fine on its own? It’s not as if Whitehead didn’t consider this. Nevertheless, there remains that which corresponds to what has been termed “God.”
We can have Whitehead without God only with a God-shaped metaphysical hole remaining; otherwise, we develop a different system that is not his–which is fine (as long as its done honestly and without the sentiment of philosophers like Thomas Nagel: “I just don’t want God to exist. I don’t want the universe to be that way!”). At least he’s honest. What is more, can a Godless universe account for the diversity of religious experiences that seem to presuppose this “something” (variously understood)? Good comments nonetheless…and a persistent debate among process people.
Cheers,
Dr. D
Jeremy, I’m glad you are engaging the supplemental reading. What you say seems true to Whitehead’s statement below:
“[In the consequent nature, God] gives to suffering its swift insight into values which can issue from it. He is the ideal companion who transmutes what has been lost into a living fact within his own nature…This transmutation of evil into good enters into the actual world by reason of the inclusion of the nature of God, which includes the ideal vision of each actual evil so met with a novel consequent as to issue in the restoration of goodness. God has in his nature the knowledge of evil, of pain, and of degradation, but it is there as overcome by what is good. Every fact is what it is, a fact of pleasure, of joy, of pain, or of suffering. In its union with God that fact is not a total loss, but on its finer side is an element to be woven immortally into the rhythm of mortal things. Its very evil becomes a stepping stone in the all-embracing ideals of God. Every event on its finer side introduces God into the world…[God’s] ideal vision is given base in actual fact to which He provides the ideal consequent, as a factor saving the world from the self-destruction of evil. The power by which God sustains the world is the power of himself as the ideal…The world lives by its incarnation of God in itself.”
See also the resources below: