Tom Gates
Addendum: in my tradition (Quakers), 15 or 20 years ago there was a lot of buzz about “non-theism” as the wave of the future. One of our members came back from a 5 day workshop as an “evangelist” for non-theism . He started a small discussion and reading group. Because I was curious, I engaged with them. I agreed with 90% of what I read from Quaker non-theists, but in the end I concluded that they mostly were interested in “disproving” supernatural theism. I felt that I had left that behind 35 years before (after reading John Cobb’s “A Christian Natural Theology” in a 20th century theology course as an undergraduate). The rest of the group was not very curious about panentheism and process theology; they seemd more interested in being “against” something rather than “for” an alternative.
Short contribution:
From Hosinki, p. 19: “For Whitehead the word ‘experience’ has a wealth of meaning. For him it refers to our participation in reality. . .”These two pieces were very helpful, even inspiring.
In Jay’s piece, p. 106 in his book, he says, “When humans address GOd, they often sense that their prayers are being received into a deeper listening as the prayer occurs, and that the listener who listens is affected by the prayer. Process theologians agree. The Consequent Nature of God is the deep listening.”
Which brought to mind a profound story I once heard, about Mother Theresa. It seems she was once asked,”When you pray, what do you say to God?” She replied, “I don’t say anything; I listen.” And the follow-up question, “And what does God say to you?” “God doesn’t say anything; God listens.”Thanks to all for the thoughtful comments and elaborations.
Jay, re: Thomas Kelly. Do you know of his connection to Whitehead? He was determined to earn a second PhD, from Harvard, and so spent a couple of years there in the early 1930’s, and had some contact with Whitehead (who may have been on sabbatical, or already retired). When it came time for his oral defense of this thesis, he “froze,” becoming virtually unable to speak–and was denied his PhD. This was shattering to him and led to a real crisis. But somehow he came out of this transformed into the radiant mystic and activist of his final years. Learning that story made his writings even more inspiring to me. The story is told in “Thomas Kelly as I knew Him,” by T. Canby Jones, Pendle Hill Pamphet #284 (around 40 pages, probably available via Kindle, around $8)And thanks Kathleen for your musings on power and its ambiguity. In my (recent) retirement from a career as a family physician, I have become part of a group (all members of our Quaker Meeting, as it happens) advocating for better care of those struggling with mental illness, especially in the intersection with the criminal justice system–timely, as our county is about to embark on building a new jail, with a real opportunity to build better mental health care into the new jail.
THanks Jay, for clarifying intial and subjective aims. Mesle’s appendix also is helpful, p. 104. “So remember that the intial aim includes ALL the possibilities relevant for the becoming of a particular actual entity–even if those possibilities include mass murder…THe self-creativity includes the capacity to take what is given and create its own subjective aim.”
I understand that to mean that the initial aim from God is a “package” of all the ‘relevant’ possibilites, differentially valued by God, so from God’s persepctive there may be a single best possiblity offered. THe actual occasion in its becoming ‘chooses’ one of relevant possibilities, not necessarily God’s ‘choice.’
Does that sound right?Important to this conversation is that Whitehead did not start out with some kind of hidden theological agenda; he was an agnostic of several decades standing. But at some point he found that he had to introduce some “actual entity” that could mediate “possibilities” to the actual occasions in their process of becoming. I suppose he did not have to call this entity God; it is certainly far from the “gawd” (David Ray Griffen) of classical theism (the unmoved mover of Aristotle, eternal and unchanging, via neoplatonism to Augustine, and subsequently to most western Christianity), but arguably not so far from the biblical God.
I think it is also important to avoid making this into a “god” versus “creativitity” choice: Whitehead seemed to believe that his system needed both, in order to be coherent. There are of course many perfectly good reasons why some will choose not to use the word “god,” after centuries of misuse and abuse–but those so choosing should be clear on which god they are rejecting. If it is the god of classical theism, I agree. “But his [Whitehead’s] way of thinking about God is very different from traditional understandings in the the West.” (McDaniel, p. 36).