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My understanding is God “knows” all possibilities, but not if or when one will be chosen.

In the lovely book A GENERAL THEORY OF LOVE, the authors talk about how good psychotherapy works. I remember their example as when a therapist empathetically walks side by side with you through the circumstances of your present life, gently offering choices and ideas for how to move towards wholeness, towards love. You want to change. The therapist believes change is possible, and may have lots of ideas for change, yet no one knows if and when it will occur. The therapist is not omniscient, but omni-patient. You take the wrong path time and time again, until one day you choose otherwise.

Although there are obvious differences between God in Christianity and Whitehead’s understanding of God’s role and function, for me, it is relatively easy to identify points of transition between them, even if it is only metaphorically or poetically. For example – Importance of body (Whitehead) and the notion of incarnation & Eucharist (Christianity); Relational/self-giving love (Whitehead) and trinity or Jesus (Christianity): primordial & consequent natures of God (Whitehead) and essence & energies (Eastern Orthodox).

How do Whitehead’s ideas of God translate into Chinese philosophy? What is the Chinese corollary to Whitehead’s God as the “great companion”, “poet of the world”, “fellow sufferer who understands”?

I am curious if Whitehead’s terminology makes more sense to us in the West because the main religious heritage is more human-centric. However, the attraction of process thought in China would suggest that the Chinese are quite able to integrate these ideas into their own traditions.

I have started reading “Dao de Jing, A Philosophical Translation” by Roger Ames & David Hall. As I know you’re aware, it uses an unapologetic Whiteheadian lens of interpretation. Quite fun to read.

Thanks, Benejamin, for sharing these connections and resources. Many years ago, I read “The Life We Are Given” by George Leonard and Michael Murphy, which incorporated ideas from Sri Aurobindo. Coincidently, I believe Keith Ward has a great appreciation for Vedanta, which he finds compatible with his own idealist/process perspective. Keith is obviously Christian, but he is quite “big tent”.

Personally speaking, I became interested in the topic after my mom died last year. She was 88 and living in a memory care facility while suffering from dementia. During the last few hours of her life, she experienced “terminal lucidity”, and hearing the story about it was quite amazing. I shared this with the director for her funeral and he said, “Oh yes, we hear these stories all the time.”

Jeremy & Jay, Thank-you both for responding to this. And yes Jeremy, I can’t imagine any interest in the afterlife, if God isn’t love. In my own words, comedy perseveres over tragedy.

Jay, I have to be honest and say I liked this article as much due to my upbringing in the American South, where good manners were less an option, than my newfound appreciation for process 🙂

Yet it seems somewhere along the way, perhaps over centuries, western civilization developed dysfunctional notions around personhood…notions such as authenticity = radical individualism and the real, essential me is separate from other people.

I read an interesting book a few years back called “You Are What You Love” written by the philosopher James KA Smith. He contrasts the shopping mall as a ritual space that entrains us to certain habits with Christian worship, which provides formation for countercultural ones. Thinking back about the book now, it seems quite Confucian. My faith community is Anglican, which for all of its shortcomings, provides a really good space to practice Confucianism.

Keith Ward:

One other thought…in my cursory and emergent learning about Confucianism, my understanding is that human being are not creatures with an essential self that helps guide and direct our activity in the world. Rather, we are born with a variety of energies, emotions, dispositions, etc. and as we and the world engage, we also develop a bunch of conditioned responses, so that other people and encounters “pull out of us” a response to each situation. It is this “pulling out” that seems like another sort of “lure” – although this may be my misunderstanding.

On a broader scale, I can see how current geopolitical conflicts appear as if one country does this, then another country does that in response, and so on and so forth, as if a more dangerous situation is being built. At another level though, it appears as if we are being pulled by something like big “D” Disaster.

Yes, John. Addiction is a good example of what I am wondering about. Or “temptation” more generally or “delay discounting” – where a short-term reward seems more alluring than a long-term one. The biblical theologian Walter Wink put forth the idea that “Satan” or “satanic” were terms for forces not overtly evil, but ones that lesser than “the will of God”. (Think the temptation of Jesus…”turn this stone into bread…”) Thanks for illustrating my question.

Dennis,
The weather in Michigan where I live is basically the same as yours, but I grew up on the other side of the mountains in Tennessee (went to East Tn State University). I must say the views you have in Boone and better than mine. You’re in a beautiful part of the world! Hope it warms a tad. Thom

I find this ANW’s comment quite witty, “There are simplicities connected with the motion of a bar of steel which are obscured if we refuse to abstract from the individual molecules.” (Mesle, p 21)

Yes, postmodern deconstruction or metaphysical idealism might have us think everything important is constructed or else residing in Consciousness – but hit your foot with a snow shovel (like I did today) and it is clear that the world can be quite solid.

I watched Jay’s presentation last night, and Charles’ questions remind me of a portion of that conversation when the group was trying to wrap its head around how “experience” and “feeling” relates to all reality, including the quantum world. I don’t have the scientific background to digest all of that, but the discussion reminded me of the so-called hard problem of consciousness.

I happen to have a chronic pain condition and there’s allot of great mind-body work being done to help people address chronic pain. However, very often, you’ll hear someone with great compassion and knowledge say something like, “And then your brain ‘decides’…” When I hear this, I always think, “I am a person and I have a brain and that brain has neurons and those neurons are actually other little, tiny, microscopic people who are always voting on my experience.” Of course, that is not what they mean, but it does sound like they are applying aspects of human experience – feeling, evaluating, decision-making to small aspects of reality.

It sounds like Whitehead is offering something similar in which macro and micro aspects of reality have connection and alignment. And that’s what I think Prof. Mesle is doing with his claims.

Thank you for sharing the essay. I am curious if the premature and sudden death of his son in 1918 played a role in his transition from a preoccupation with “mathematics, logic, and philosophy of science” to broader philosophical concerns? I am harboring a guess that during the first period of his philosophical development, he shared the scientific atheism of his time, yet wrote a book called RELIGION IN THE MAKING only a few years later. I haven’t read anything about this connection, so this is entirely speculative, yet it comes out of being a father.

Also seeking clarification on “creativity”…Dr. McDaniel names “creativity” in the context of process thought’s 4 values – “living in the spirit of wisdom, compassion and creativity” (slide 9 of the presentation). This makes me think of the Platonic transcendentals “truth, beauty and goodness”, as I see his use of “creativity” pointing towards something that is better than something else, for example “stupidity, hatred and inertia”.

Question…Dr. McDaniel’s use is different than Whitehead’s use of the word “creativity”, correct? I found this is Process & Reality: “Creativity is without a character of its own in exactly the same sense in which Aristotelian ‘matter’ is without a character of its own. It is that ultimate notion of the highest generality at the base of actuality. It cannot be characterized, because all characters are more special than itself.”

John, although my family grew up mainline Presbyterian, the surrounding religious culture was evangelical, even fundamentalist. In my teens, I came across a book by the Anglican J.B. Phillips called “Your God is Too Small”, which was very helpful. However, in later life, I have often thought about writing my own book called, “Your God is Too Big!” in the spirit of a certain hiddenness that I sense to the divine.