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Suchocki essentially develops a theory of subjective immortality by ramping objective immortality up to where it becomes subjective immortality. She posits that God prehends, internalizes our subjectivity, or in theological language our soul, completely, in toto, and that this means its internalization and preservation in God as an ongoing, living reality, not merely an objective and dead fact retained in God’s memory.

There are of course some obvious problems with this theory. For instance, if our subjectivity/soul is largely constituted by the experience that it receives from our bodies and it’s transferred to God where its ongoingness will now be sustained by the input that it receives from the body of God, well, won’t this different input constitute it to be something different, so different from who we were in our human bodies that it won’t really be us anymore. Won’t we become so divinized that something new will be born in God, too new for it to be said that it’s us persisting within God?

It’s the same question of identity that’s raised in some science and horror fiction, where the consciousness of a human being is transferred to a robot body, or a character’s body is supernaturally transformed. For instance, when someone’s body is transformed by vampirism his mentality is also transformed and becomes okay and preoccupied with killing and feeding on human blood. He’s really no longer the person that he was because his mind is now receiving input from a new vampire body. This makes perfect sense from a Whiteheadian perspective, according to which our subjectivity largely comprises and is conditioned by the experiences inherited from our body. Well then, if our bodies are replaced with God as the base that our subjectivity derives experience from then wouldn’t that necessarily change us so radically as to mean the death of who we were and the emergence of a new existent within God? Even if there’s continuity with our corporeal self, doesn’t becoming such a thoroughly different existent in God spoil the whole appeal of the idea of our having subjective immortality in God? I think that it does, but perhaps others have a different view that they’d like to share.

I would suggest exploring Marjorie Suchocki’s theory of subjective immortality. You can find formulations of a theory of subjective immortality in her book The End of Evil, and in Joseph Bracken’s book World Without End. This might be an option that you could offer to grieving individuals who don’t believe in the traditional doctrine of Heaven but who need to believe in the possibility that their deceased loved ones haven’t been completely annihilated by death. Personally I prefer the theory of objective immortality, but I realize that it isn’t likely to be terribly comforting to a great many people.

You seem to have a bit of a one-way focus here. Your focus is on process theology as a conceptualization of the divine in terms of God as giver, and what flows to us, or to actual entities in general, from God: the “novel possibilities that lead to greater wisdom, compassion, creativity, complexity, and beauty”; and the comfort, and “possible and productive responses to every situation” that we receive from God. I would suggest perhaps also working in something about God as receiver, and piety being a matter of our being givers of our creativity, complexity, and beauty to God, for the growth and joy of God.

I’m thinking of Hartshorne’s theory of contributionism, according to which we contribute our self-realization to God; according to which our raison d’etre is not only to enrich ourselves and our fellow finite actual entities, but also to enrich God with our actualization of creative possibilities, and according to which our having value for God is the crowning instance of having value for others.

I’m also thinking of the Pietistic concept of Bildung, according to which the best way to worship God is by self-cultivation in the sense of cultivating the image of God within us (which btw the Pietists understood to be a thoroughly social-relational project), and rendering our spiritual fulfillment unto God. The orientation here is again to giving rather than receiving. I think that any process theology elevator speech should also feature this emphasis on what we can and should do for God, and not only on what God does for us.

Such an emphasis would also point up the process view that God is not an independently and statically perfect Absolute, Unmoved Mover who is unaffected by us, who needs and gets nothing from us; that, rather, God is thoroughly relational, and perfect in the sense of having an infinite capacity for growth, to which we humbly contribute. I think that all of this needs to be included for a well-rounded nutshelling of the process concept of God, and the God-world relation. Traditional theists tend to focus on service to God, on what we’re obliged to do for God; and I think that some process theologians focus a bit too much on what God does for the world’s actual entities. We all need to remember that the God-world relation is a two-way street.

In Whitehead’s cosmology, and in Whiteheadian panentheism God isn’t identified with the cosmic whole for multiple interrelated reasons. First of all, reality according to Whitehead is genuinely pluralistic, it’s populated by an infinitely growing plurality of actual entities, it can’t be identified with one being. It’s one nexus, one society of entities, not one being. That is, God is held to be one member of the plurality, the cosmic nexus, not the whole of it. Also, although the whole plenitude of the universe contributes to the consequent nature of God it doesn’t comprise the totality of God because God is also God’s primordial nature, and because God has God’s own individual subjectivity. God is an individual subject, not just the universe. God’s subjectivity prehends, and God’s consequent nature is composed of the experiences of the universe, which is how the universe is in God, and is God’s body, but God remains a distinct actual entity (or society of actual entities for Hartshornians) individuated by God’s own subjective aims and self-decisions. Hence panentheism not pantheism. Also, Whitehead posits that such an entitative God is necessary because according to his ontological principle eternal objects can only reside in an actual entity, so there needs to be an eternal actual entity to serve as their receptacle. The finite plurality of entities can’t serve this function, a distinct eternal actual entity is need to fit this job description. So, once again we need a distinct God. And according to Whitehead God is also needed to supply initial aims. This also requires a universally-related but distinct central subjectivity who envisages and evaluates our possibilities and can share that envisagement-with-valuation with us. For all of these reasons God is distinct rather than undifferentiated from the world like the God of pantheism, or the Brahman of Vedanta.

Thank you so much for such kind feedback. I’m very happy that my posts have been helpful.

I also conceive existential enlightenment to be a lifelong process rather than attaining a plateau where the adventure ends, a static state of mind and being. This makes perfect sense from a Whiteheadian perspective. From a Whiteheadian perspective enlightenment can be understood as an aspect of our ever-ongoing process of self-actualization, and therefore not something that reaches a final “satisfaction” while that process is still underway.

You might want to explore Marjorie Suchocki’s theory of subjective immortality. It might be one option for you to offer some grieving individuals who don’t subscribe to traditional eschatologies but who wish to believe that their deceased loved ones haven’t completely perished. Personally I prefer the theory of objective immortality, but I can see how it might not be comforting to a great many people. Suchocki’s book The End of Evil, and Bracken’s book World Without End both present explorations and formulations of the theory of subjective immortality.

Don’t feel bad about not previously grasping the potential of multi-ultimism to resolve the problems presented by religious diversity. The idea that ultimate reality actually comprises a plurality of ultimates, i.e. eternal, irreducible, and sacred ingredients of reality, and that this in large part accounts for Abrahamic, Eastern, and indigenous traditions centering spirituality on different religious ultimates, as opposed to them all having different conceptions of the same religious ultimate, is an idea that most folks outside of the process community might never think of, and often have difficulty with, but which a Whiteheadian perspective predisposes one to. Whitehead posits several eternal and irreducible elements of reality that can readily be construed as religious ultimates: creativity, the extensive continuum (which a minority of quite brilliant Whiteheadians conceive to be a Platonic kind of “receptacle”, a khoric aspect of creativity), the multiplicity of actual entities that is the universe, the eternal objects, and God. This prepares the minds of Whiteheadians to be open to and entertain the idea of what I’ve termed multi-ultimism (a neologism I came up with by taking Schellenberg’s term “ultimism” and attaching the prefix “multi” to it). Although even for Whiteheadians this hasn’t always been the case. Back in the 50s I’m sure that there weren’t many if any Protestant process theologians who thought of Whitehead’s other ultimates as religious ultimates, as far as I know the category of religious ultimate was reserved by that generation exclusively for God. In my case the ability of process thought to take onboard the possibility of pluralistic ultimacy is actually one of its huge selling points. If you wish to explore multi-ultimism further here’s a link to the Google Books page for a great book about it, written from the process perspective:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Religion_and_Reality/I4FNAwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Btw, when I was reading about propositions in Appendix B I made a new connection between Whiteheadian propositions as lures whose efficacy and value doesn’t depend on their truth content, on their being true in a literal sense, and Jesus being a lure to godliness even if traditional Christological doctrines aren’t true, even if the historical Jesus was a mere human being like the rest of us. I realized that both the idealized historical Jesus, and the theological Jesus, i.e. the supernatural Jesus constructed by the Church Fathers, can be understood in terms of their functioning as propositions that lure and guide Christians toward holiness, regardless of their objective truth value. I was already thinking in terms of the idealized historical Jesus being a lure, and of his objective immortality having grown into a lure that transcends the historical Jesus, but I hadn’t realized that Whitehead’s understanding of propositions is also serviceable for formulating and articulating this perspective. Thanks again Dr. McDaniel.

My understanding of subject-superject is that subject refers to an actual entity in its phase of internal experientiality and growth, of its growing out of all that its creative subjectivity comprises: its ingathering and integration of the experience of other actual entities; the integration of this experience into an emergent subject, and a subjective aim; the conceptual prehension of self-creative possibilities, and their evaluation from the point of view of a subjective aim; selection among possibilities; and final satisfaction or self-unification. In the subjective phase then we have an actual occasion synthesizing the world, and adding its own subjective take on, and response to the world.

Superject refers to the phase in an actual entity’s career of its outputting itself, with its subjective take on/response to the world. In its superjective phase an actual entity is an object of experience contributing to subsequent occasions its unique perspective, so to speak, on the world.

If we apply this model to God, God’s subjectivity comprises God’s primordial nature, God’s envisagement and evaluation of the possibilities of existence (note however that God is a bit different from other actual entities in that God’s primary pole is the primordial nature, not the ingathering of the world’s data); and God’s consequent nature, God’s ingathering of the experience of the universe; and the interplay of these modes of God’s internal functioning, of envisagement-evaluation and physical prehension of the world.

The superjective nature of God is the output of this interplay of God’s envisagement-evaluation and physical prehension of the world. An output that contains God’s vision, with valuation and appetition, of the possibilities (eternal objects) that actual occasions might actualize, the initial aims that if accepted will orient actual occasions toward their ideal self-actualization.

Of course an actual entity, including God, is always a subject-superject, these natures are differentiable but not separable. For purposes of reflection we can isolate them but in reality they comprise one unified nature and ontology. In the case of God, the primordial, consequent, and superjective natures are, as Whittemore has observed, rather like the Trinity of orthodox theology, they’re one in three—as opposed to three independent natures. And what other actual entities, such as human minds, prehend is a unified superjective output of God. All actual entities, finite actual entities and the divine actual entity, are processes of unification. We can intellectually parse actual entities into individual phases but we shouldn’t lose sight of their ontological unity. Well, that’s all I’ve got on the superjective nature of actual entities and God. I hope it’s helpful.

Interestingly, the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas asserts that the Jesus who is of value to one’s spirituality is not the “dead Jesus”, i.e. the historical Jesus who is now dead and gone; rather, it’s the living Jesus, who is the voice of God (I would just add that from my pluralistic perspective Jesus is one particular diction that the voice of God speaks to human beings in; Muhammad, Moses, Manjushri, Mithra, and so on, are all other divine dictions, as it were). This understanding of Jesus as the voice of God giving guidance to one’s spirituality resonates for me with the idea of Jesus as a divine lure. Of course this isn’t exactly what the ancient author of the Gospel of Thomas had in mind, I realize that; but I think that his living Jesus who ongoingly voices God’s truth to us, and the Jesus of process theology who in his objective immortality functions as a lure to godliness kind of vibrate on the same Christological frequency of interpreting Jesus as a vector carrying the voice of God—or communications from God in the form of initial aims, as a process theologian would say. Both Thomas and process conceive Jesus to be spiritually important, and divine not in terms of being the second person of a Trinity who was incarnated and died for our sins, but rather as a continuing divine means for the sharing of spiritual pointers—for Thomas those pointers are the sayings of Jesus that he relates, for process theology they’re the Jesus-mediated initial aims that continue to be generated in the mind of God to point our self-creativity in a shalomic direction, and which are received prehensively by us. These admittedly aren’t quite the same understanding of Jesus, but I think that they’re simpatico, and that both are preferable to substitutionary atonement.

Thank you for an informative reply. Btw, recently I’ve been familiarizing myself with two Chinese concepts: tianxia, as reinterpreted by Zhao Tingyang; and datong, the conception of society as a relational “great harmony”. In an article Zhao Tingyang says: “The concept of tianxia defines an all-inclusive world with harmony for all.”, and “First, tianxia means the Earth under the sky, ‘all under heaven.’ Second, it refers to the general will of all peoples in the world, entailing a universal agreement. It involves the heart more than the mind, because the heart has feelings. And third, tianxia is a universal system that is responsible for world order.” He also speaks of a universalistic “tianxia peace”; and “relational rationality”, saying: “As I define it, relational rationality emphasizes the minimization of mutual hostility over the maximization of self-interest. Tianxia suggests that relational rationality should have priority over individual rationality”. And so forth. I find that both of these concepts, tianxia and datong, resonate with process thought. What are your thoughts about that?

Yes Lawrence, that’s essentially Dr. Cobb’s Christology. My own view is a tad bit different. I don’t idealize the historical Jesus, and I don’t think that he needs to have been so perfect to function as a lure to sanctification, to have salvific efficacy in our spirituality. I think that we can acknowledge that the historical Jesus was flawed. For instance, we can recognize that he was an apocalypticist whose end of days, like the end of days of all apocalytpicists down through the centuries, didn’t come to pass. And it seems that his beautiful morality was unfortunately premised on its being the ticket into the eschatological kingdom of God. He didn’t quite teach be good purely for goodness sake, but rather to qualify to be admitted to God’s eschatological kingdom (Bart Ehrman is a good source of information about this). Well, I think that we can admit all of this, and a bit more, and still find Jesus to be a lure to holiness—largely because of what’s been done with Jesus’ objective immortality by generations of Christians. But if Cobb’s idealization of Jesus appeals more to some folks, well that’s also a part of Jesus’ objective immortality, the objective immortality that gives him efficacy as a lure, and for our salvation. So, in any event Jesus can still be valuable for our spirituality, even if we no longer subscribe to supernaturalism.

I would just add that in addition to the ongoing emulation of Jesus, the continuing actualization of his example and teachings, his objective immortality also consists of much that’s been contributed to it by Christians down through the centuries. It’s grown well beyond merely what Jesus actualized in his lifetime. And, although Jesus might be a perfect initial aim for sanctification, I still wouldn’t equate him with God. For instance, he can’t be identified with God’s primordial nature, and so forth.

Yes, many post-supernaturalistic and post-mythological Christians, folks who no longer believe in the supernaturalism and mythological elements of the Nicene Christian narrative, such as Jesus’ literal resurrection, or the historical existence of an Adam and Eve whose original sin Jesus is supposed to have been crucified to save human souls from, but who still want to believe in the salvific efficacy of Jesus, who want to retain it in their spirituality, can find it difficult to see how they can pull that off. They’re what I might call limboic Christians, they’re stuck in a kind of theological limbo regarding what to make of a naturalized and demythologized Christ, how he can still function salvifically in their spiritual journey. I think that the best ticket for getting out of this limbo, the one that does the best job of not reducing Jesus and God to mere metaphors, is process theology. So I would just suggest that you stick with your study of it.

Did you view the Marjorie Suchocki slideshow? There are some great bits in it that might be helpful. You might want to view it again, and read some of her books.

One of the slides touches on resurrection, what I took away from it is that resurrection isn’t the literal and supernatural revivification of Jesus after being crucified. Nor is it a future supernatural mass return to life of believers in the divinity of Jesus, it’s the ongoing work and process of God bringing to life, to living actualization, the best possibilities and meanings of life from the perished past, including the deathly and destructive in the past. Jesus is just one especially historically significant instance of this divine MO; who in turn aids and facilitates it, who enables God to bring to life the best present existential possibilities out of the perished past for those whose spirituality centers on Jesus. Jesus’ resurrection is God bringing Jesus to life in the spirituality of Christians as a call to embody their ideal spiritual and human self-creative options. But this process, of claiming ideal existential and spiritual possibilities from even the deathly and destructive events of the past is one that is always and universally taking place, it isn’t unique to Jesus, or a future eschatological event. It’s God’s eternal process and service. But for Christians Jesus is a key player in it, and that’s how to best interpret him, his salvific efficacy, sans supernaturalism. Well, this is some of my thinking, it works for me but perhaps it’s not for everyone. Still, if you continue your reading of process theology I’m confident that you’ll find your way out of Christological limbo.