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Classical Theism and Pantheism: a Victory for Process Theism?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert A. Oakes
Robert A. Oakes
Affiliation:
Visiting Professor of Philosophy, the University of Wisconsin
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Extract

In Anselm's Discovery, Professor Hartshorne makes the rather startling and (I think) counterintuitive claim that ‘…there is indeed no issue between theism and pantheism. We all exist in the divine being, as St Paul said.’1 Classical or orthodox theists, it seems eminently fair to say, can be expected to recoil from any such suggestion with more than a little indignation. First of all, it might well be objected that Hartshorne - as a ‘process theist’ (or, as he often calls himself, a ‘neoclassical theist’) - is not a classical theist, and, consequently, while there may be no issue between pantheism and his brand of theism, such is simply not the case in so far as classical theism is concerned. According to the latter - in contradistinction, of course, to Hartshorne's ‘neoclassical theism’ - immutability is an ‘essential’ property of God; as such, it would be a conceptual error to ascribe any contingent (i.e. changeable) states to God at all. Now as is well known by philosophers of religion, Hartshorne regards this immutability doctrine of classical theism as a serious ‘logical blunder’ (loc. cit.), one which - in so far as it reflects the ‘Greek bias’ which has always (but mistakenly) identified perfection with the absolutely unchangeable - is profoundly distortive of the biblical concept of Deity.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 1977 , pp. 167 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

page 167 note 1 Hartshorne, Charles, Anselm's Discovery (LaSalle, Illinois, 1965), p. 109.Google Scholar There may, of course, be those who disagree with Hartshorne's exegesis of St Paul in this regard.

page 168 note 1 Whitehead, A. N., Religion in the Making (Cleveland, 1960), p. 67.Google Scholar There may be those who would prefer to designate this view ‘panentheism’, reserving the label ‘pantheism’ for the doctrine that ‘God’ and ‘The universe’ are extensionally identical in contradistinction to the somewhat ‘softer’ view that God is ‘world-inclusive’. Whatever we call it, however, the point to be driven is that if (as I hope to show) classical theism entails it, it (classical theism) is thereby reduced to absurdity.

page 169 note 1 Ross, James F., Philosophical Theology (Indianapolis, 1969), p. 254.Google Scholar

page 170 note 1 Mavrodes, George I., Belief in God (New York, 1970), p. 70.Google Scholar

page 170 note 2 Pike, Nelson, God and Timelessness (New York, 1970), p. 108.Google Scholar

page 170 note 3 Summa Theologica, Part I, Q. 104, A. I; reply to Obj. 4.

page 170 note 4 Third Meditation (LaFleur, translation of the Meditations), p. 47.Google Scholar

page 170 note 5 Pike, 115.

page 171 note 1 Maimonides, Moses, The Guide of the Perplexed, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Shlomo Pines, Introductory Essay by Leo Strauss (I. 69), p. 169.Google Scholar

page 171 note 2 ibid., p. 171 (my italics).

page 172 note1 Cf. Margolis, Joseph, ‘The Mode of Existence of a Work of Art’, Review of Metaphysics (1958), pp. 26–34.Google Scholar

page 173 note1 This paper germinated during the Summer of 1976 under a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (to participate in a Summer Seminar on Medieval Islamic and Jewish Philosophy at Ohio State University with Alfred Ivry). My thanks to the Endowment for their support.