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Divine Immutability in Process Philosophy and Contemporary Thomism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2014

Barry L. Whitney
Barry L. Whitney*
Affiliation:
University of Windsor
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Abstract

Process philosophers and theologians have long been critical of the traditional (Thomist) doctrine of divine immutability (Section I); yet until quite recently their protests had been largely ignored in Roman Catholic circles. The purpose of this present article is to draw attention to the fact that a number of contemporary Roman Catholic theologians have begun to take the Whiteheadian-Hartshornean challenge seriously, indeed to the extent that they have felt pressed, in response, to seek and exploit implicit, latent resources within Thomas' texts in order to explicate a more adequate Thomist conception of God's interrelationship with his creatures (Section II). Process metaphysics is defended versus several criticisms raised by Roman Catholic writers (Section III).

Type
Articles
Information
Horizons , Volume 7 , Issue 1 , Spring 1980 , pp. 49 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © The College Theology Society 1980

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References

1 Besides Aquinas, other theological and philosophical exponents of the “traditional” or “classical” doctrine of God include Philo, Augustine, Anselm, Descartes, Leibniz, Kant, etc.: see Hartshorne, Charles and Reese, William L., Philosophers Speak of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 76–164.Google Scholar

2 Hartshorne, Charles, Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (Chicago: Willett, Clark and Company, 1941), p. 156.Google Scholar

3 Hartshorne, Charles, The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. 149–50.Google Scholar

4 Ibid., p. 58.

5 Ibid., pp. 48–49.

6 Proslogion 8, as cited by Hartshorne, , The Divine Relativity, p. 54.Google Scholar

7 Hartshorne, , The Divine Relativity, p. 54.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., p. 55.

9 Hartshorne, , Man's Vision of God (see note 2 above), p. 165.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 164.

11 Felt, James W., “Invitation to a Philosophic Revolution,” New Scholasticism 45 (1971), p. 99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 108.

13 Ibid., p. 96.

14 Ibid., p. 104.

15 Ibid., pp. 102, 109.

16 Ibid., p. 107.

17 Ibid., p. 103. Felt criticizes Whitehead's God for not entering freely into interrelationship with his creatures: this issue is discussed in Section III. Felt worries, furthermore, about the inability of Whitehead's system to account for personal immortality; yet some recent process writings have argued a Whiteheadian case for “subjective immortality,” versus the more widely assumed “objective immortality.” See Griffin, David R., “The Possibility of Subjective Immortality in the Philosophy of Whitehead,” The Modern Schoolman 53 (1975), pp. 39–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Meliert, Robert B., “A Pastoral on Death and Immortality,” in Cargas, Harry J. and Meland, Bernard, eds., Religious Experience and Process Theology (New York: Paulist Press, 1976), pp. 399–408Google Scholar; Inbody, Tyron, “Process Theology and Personal Survival,” The Iliff Review 31 (1974), pp. 31–42.Google Scholar

18 Donceel, Joseph, “Second Thoughts on the Nature of God,” Thought 46 (1971), p. 347.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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20 Ibid., p. 355.

21 Ibid., pp. 367-70: Hans Küng.

22 Ibid., p. 360.

23 Ibid.

24 Clarke, W. Norris, “A New Look at the Immutability of God,” in Roth, R. J., ed., God Knowable and Unknowable (New York: Fordham University Press, 1973), p. 44.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., p. 45.

26 Ibid., p. 46.

27 Ibid., p. 45.

28 Schoonenberg, Piet, “Process or History in God?” Louvain Studies 4 (1973), p. 316.Google Scholar

29 Schoonenberg, Piet, Man and Sin (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1965), p. 50.Google Scholar

30 Stokes, Walter E., “Freedom as Perfection: Whitehead, Thomas and Augustine,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophicai Association 36 (1962), p. 134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also the following relevant articles by Stokes: “Is God Really Related to this World?” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 39 (1965), pp. 145–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Whitehead's Challenge to Theistic Realism,” New Scholasticism 38 (1964), pp. 1–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “God for Today and Tomorrow,” New Scholasticism 37 (1963), pp. 351–78.Google Scholar

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34 Donceel, , “Second Thoughts on the Nature of God” (see note 18 above), p. 349.Google Scholar

35 Hill, William J., “Does the World Make a Difference to God?” The Thomist 38(1974), p. 146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 Ibid. (italics added).

37 Ibid., p. 147.

38 Ibid.

39 Ibid., p. 151.

40 Ibid., p. 163.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid. p. 157.

43 Wright, John H., “Divine Knowledge and Human Freedom: The God Who Dialogues,” Theological Studies 38 (1977), p. 450.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

44 Ibid., p. 452.

45 See Section III.

46 Ibid., p. 451.

47 Ibid., p. 458.

48 Ibid., pp. 460-61.

49 Kelly, Anthony J., “God: How Near a Relation?” The Thomist 34 (1970), p. 193.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 Ibid., pp. 194–95.

51 Ibid., p. 198.

52 Ibid., p. 203.

53 Ibid., p. 228.

54 Ibid., p. 220.

55 D'Arcy, Martin, “The Immutability of God,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 41 (1967), p. 19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

56 Ibid., p. 20.

57 Ibid., p. 21.

58 Ibid., p. 22.

59 Ibid., p. 23.

60 Ibid., pp. 24-25.

61 Rahner, Karl, Theological Investigations IV (Baltimore: Helicon, 1966), pp. 113–14.Google Scholar

62 Ibid.

63 D'Arcy, , “The Immutability of God” (see note 55 above), p. 19.Google Scholar

64 Donceel, , “Second Thoughts on the Nature of God” (see note 18 above), p. 350.Google Scholar I am, at present, working with a colleague, J. Norman King, to analyze the similarities and also the differences between Rahner's proposal and that of Hartshorne. See his excellent article on Rahner, , “The Experience of God in the Theology of Karl Rahner,” Thought 53 (1978), pp. 174–202.Google Scholar

65 Felt, , “Invitation to a Philosophic Revolution” (see note 11 above), pp. 98–99.Google Scholar

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68 Ibid., p. 194.

69 Ibid.

70 Clarke, , “A New Look at the Immutability of God” (see note 24 above), p. 48.Google Scholar

71 Hartshorne, Charles, “Contingency and the New Era in Metaphysics,” Journal of Philosophy 29 (1932), p. 458.Google Scholar See also Hartshorne's, “Causal Necessities: An Alternative to Hume,” Philosophical Review 43 (1954), pp. 479–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

72 Hartshorne, Charles, Reality as Social Process: Studies in Metaphysics and Religion (Glencoe: The Free Press and Boston: Beacon Press, 1954), pp. 88–89.Google Scholar

73 Donceel, , “Second Thoughts on the Nature of God” (see note 18 above), p. 359.Google Scholar

74 See Hartshorne, Charles, “The Kinds of Theism: A Reply [to Taubes[,” Journal of Religion 34 (1954), pp. 127–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hartshorne acknowledges that Hegel's dictum that “the truth is the unity of the contraries” is similar to his own principle of polarity, yet he insists that “there are two versions of this principle, only one of which yields pantheism.” The truth is in the unity of opposites, absolute and relative, necessary and contingent, etc., but this unity itself (the total reality) is not necessary, absolute, eternally the same; it is rather relative, contingent, processive. The former position reduces to pantheism, the latter to panentheism. Hegel's view “is pantheistic or it is the unresolved contradiction of both asserting and denying pantheism, the contradiction being treated as a dialectical virtue. Either way there is a contradiction.”

75 See, for example, Hartshorne's appeal to Morris Cohen's Law of Polarity, according to which “ultimate contraries are correlatives, mutually interdependent, so that nothing real can be described by the wholly one-sided assertion of simplicity, being, actuality, and the like, each in a ‘pure’ form, devoid and independent of complexity, becoming, potentiality, and related contraries.” (Philosophers Speak of God [see note 1 above], p. 2).

76 Clarke, , “A New Look at the Immutability of God” (see note 24 above), p. 45.Google Scholar

77 Ford, , “The Immutable God of Father Clarke” (see note 67 above), pp. 189–99.Google Scholar

78 Schoonenberg, , “Process or History in God?” (see note 28 above), p. 305 (italics added).Google Scholar

79 Wright, , “Divine Knowledge and Human Freedom” (see note 43 above), p. 450.Google Scholar

80 Stokes, , “Whitehead's Challenge to Theistic Realism” (see note 30 above), p. 7.Google Scholar

81 Hill, , “Does the World Make a Difference to God?” (see note 35 above), p. 151.Google Scholar

82 Following Whitehead, Hartshorne and other process philosophers employ the “reformed subjectivist principle” as the starting point of epistemology. This principle is distinguished from Descartes' “subjectivist principle” since Descartes’ well-known location of the indubitable basis of knowledge in the thinking self does not go far enough; it does not acknowledge that man does not merely think, but thinks something. Man is aware of external reality, he feels or prehends causal data. Hartshorne insists that certain basic or generic traits of human experience can be ascertained and generalized to apply to all reality as “cosmic variables” (see his Beyond Humanism: Essays in the New Philosophy of Nature [Chicago: Willett, Clark and Company, 1937], p. 112).Google Scholar As Whitehead argued, “creativity,” the “many” and the “one” constitute the “category of the ultimate”; i.e., the basic characteristic of all reality: all beings exemplify creativity, a self-determining freedom whereby the many of the causal data are unified in the one, a new creative experience. “The many become one and are increased by one.” (Process and Reality [New York: Macmillan, 1929], p. 32).Google Scholar

83 Hill, , “Does the World Make a Difference to God?” (see note 35 above), p. 149.Google Scholar

84 Ibid., p. 155.

85 See, for example, William J. Garland, “The Ultimacy of Creativity” and Reeves, Gene, “God and Creativity,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 7 (1969–1970), 361–76 and 377–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

86 See Hill, , “Does the World Make a Difference to God?” (see note 35 above), pp. 154–55Google Scholar and Felt, , “Invitation to a Philosophic Revolution” (see note 11 above), p. 103.Google Scholar

87 See, for example, Robertson, John C. Jr., “Rahner and Ogden: Man's Knowledge of God,” Harvard Theological Review 63 (1970), p. 403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also his “Does God Change?” The Ecumenist 9 (1971), pp. 61–64.Google Scholar I would like to add here my deep appreciation to Dr. Robertson for introducing me to process metaphysics and in directing my Ph.D. Dissertation on Hartshorne's Theodicy. While Dr. Robertson is not responsible for any shortcomings in this present article, I am most grateful to him for sharing his immense wisdom with me.

88 Felt, , “Invitation to a Philosophic Revolution” (see note 11 above), p. 106.Google Scholar

89 Robertson, , “Rahner and Ogden” (see note 87 above), p. 403.Google Scholar

90 Hartshorne, Charles, Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of Metaphysics of Religion (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1976), pp. 9, 12.Google Scholar

91 Robertson, , “Rahner and Ogden” (see note 87 above), p. 406.Google Scholar

92 Sherburne, Donald W., A Key to Whitehead's Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 67–69.Google Scholar

93 Kelly, , “God: How Near a Relation?” (see note 49 above), p. 208.Google Scholar

94 See Whitehead, Alfred North, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, 1967, originally published by Macmillan, 1929), pp. 181–92.Google Scholar