Process Theology &
The Holy Spirit
Another vital theological movement
of the 20th century, one I reflected on in a limited way in my last book that
will play a significant role in my own thinking, is process theology. Process
theology began as a philosophical movement started by Alfred North Whitehead, a
mathematician and philosopher. Alfred North Whitehead was an agnostic before he
began his quest to develop a comprehensive worldview that could make sense of
the scientific revolutions taking place at the turn of the century. Whitehead
thought that the mechanistic model of reality, seeing the world as a giant
clock whose workings could be perfectly described through math and science, had
about run its course. It no longer served to push the cause of science and humanity
forward, and some new thinking was going to be required if we were to engage in
the big paradigm shifts that the future looked like it would be forcing on us.
Whitehead thought the line between life and non-life, as well as the line
between the world of the mind (the human condition) and the world of the
mindless was blurry, at best. Rather, the world and the things that make it up
are lifelike and mindlike, and all of reality could be modeled this way. The
world by Whitehead's lights was a realm of freedom, and the laws of physics
were descriptions of the regularities in the behavior in the use of this
freedom. What's more, all things are themselves only societies of other things,
all things are organic and societal, and this is one reason why his philosophy
is often called "The Philosophy of Organism". Strange as this may
sound, not long after Whitehead's theorizing about metaphysics, physics itself
started to turn in this direction. Quantum mechanics changed our view of the
world as something hard, fast, material and determined. Later, influenced by
Whitehead and others, a new field of science called systems theory started to
permeate all branches of science, from biology and chemistry to physics and
even social science. Systems theory very much treats reality and the things
that make it up as lifelike and often even mindlike. I personally believe that
in time, Whitehead's influence in science will be as great or greater than even
Albert Einstein.
Whitehead was taken aback when he
realized that the implications of his theories, which are laid out in his
writings in ways far more complex and yet precise than what I've said here,
pointed the way to the existence of something very much like the God spoken of
in the world's great religions. What shocked him was the way free beings, over
and over again, on an unimaginable scale, constantly added up to not just
aggregates but real wholes, wholes that often expressed an increasing aesthetic
value. Whitehead wanted to understand how it was that value is produced, and
how a progression of value in the universe took place. It seemed obvious to
Whitehead that things moved in the direction of being more complex, and more
beautiful. Why should this be so? From his point of view, increasing physical
zeal and zest were a reflection of a mental pull towards increasing depth of
being. Things were trying to be the 'most' of themselves they could be, to
impress deeper upon the world. This action was ultimately self-centered. But
from this self-centered action of free beings, a whole, coherent, ordered, and
beautiful world resulted. Things, trying to be fully themselves, did so by
trying to produce a better, ordered and more beautiful whole. This tendency in
things to 'choose' to live for others, in order to fully live for themselves,
indicated to Whitehead that Something was impressing upon them something like
the human experience of meaning and value.
This led him to take a close look at
the broadest range of religious experience throughout human cultures. What he
found was something similar going on in religious life. A common religious
thread, the one that he thought had the strongest evidentiary force, was the
view that I only really find self-fulfillment in my fulfillment of the widest
possible human community and moreover, in reality as a whole. I try to be the
'most me' I can be. But I find that I can only truly do this if I live for the
whole of things, for all of reality. We live most of the time with an atomized
vision of self, where we think we are this singular experiencing center, and we
find fulfillment by satisfying that center. But such a life is ultimately
self-defeating, unless it includes in it a wider circle that we also try to
fulfill: familial, cultural, societal and so on. I only find my own real good
by fulfilling these larger wholes. Who I am, is only discovered in my
relationship with others. Religion at its best, thinks Whitehead, opens us up
to an even larger sense of self, one that is only found when we completely lose
that sense of an atomized 'me'. If I find my life I lose it, and if I lose my
life I find it (Matthew 10:39). This paradoxical insight is yet the foundation
of all that truly seems to be 'the good life'. Whitehead thought that this
human insight was something that applied to all reality. Whitehead's philosophy
is ultimately an attempt to take the reality of individual things seriously.
Individuality, novelty, and freedom are real, for Whitehead, and yet they are
only fully expressed in and through community. Individuality in community, and
community through individuality, is the very nature of the universe, for
Whitehead. He says this explicitly in RELIGION IN THE MAKING, I apologize for
the technical language, but if you do the work to understand Whitehead, the
profundity of the message is real:
"The
actual world, the world of experiencing, and of thinking, and of physical
activity, is a community of many diverse entities; and these entities
contribute to, or derogate from, the common value of the total community. At
the same time, these actual entities are, for themselves, their own value,
individual and separable. They add to the common stock and yet they suffer
alone. The world is a scene of solitariness in community.
The
individuality of entities is just as important as their community. The topic of
religion is individuality in community." (emphasis added)
Whiteheadian philosophy posits a
dual natured God as the source of the physical world. The primordial nature of
God is a non-physical reality, a "best possible" image of the whole
world. The consequent nature of God is the world, which expresses that
"completed" image to some degree. Each individual 'thing' is imaged
in God's primordial nature as the best it can be, adding up to the best
possible world given the facts of the world as they are now. An object
in the world, possessed of some kind of mental capacity, has a basic ability to
respond to this image, and it uses its freedom to 'lurch' towards it,
actualizing it less or more. God then re-orders His primordial nature, to
produce a new ideal image, which is respondent to the actions of the objects
that make up the world. T Think
about how it like this: a friend of mine needs a kidney, and I happen to be a
match. God presents to me the ideal of me donating my kidney to my friend, within
His primordial nature. Through religious and moral experience, and more so
through true self-awareness (awareness of myself in and through the whole of
things, an awareness Whitehead called 'prehension'), I apprehend this 'ideal
possibility', this best possible image of myself within a best possible image
of the world. But because of fear or distrust I procrastinate and my friend
passes away. This ideal image is now gone, a new one replaces it. God may, say,
call me to tell others my story to encourage others to have the courage I did
not. This is the new ideal image, the new primordial nature of God, for me.
What is true for me is true for every thing in the universe, and the universe
as a whole. All things, from the cells in my body which are called in each
moment to behave according to biological rules and yet still have the freedom
to go cancerous to weather systems which are called to continue the dance of
life and beauty but can become destructive, have some imaged reality in the
primordial nature of God. To the degree the individual things express the
primordial nature in the physical world, God exists along side us, and that is
what Whitehead calls the 'consequent' nature of God. Whitehead says in that
same book 'all acts leave the world with a greater or fainter impress of God'.
It didn't take long for Whitehead's
philosophy to get appropriated by Christian theologians who thought it
presented a new and exciting way for us to reconcile science and Biblical
religion. Charles Hartshorne was the first to really get the ball rolling. He
started by simplifying Whitehead's system into a Divine Personalism, whereby
the universe is treated as the Body of God and God as the mind of the universe.
The Divine Mind could set the goals and imagine the ideals to which the things
that make up the body respond. This was a simpler and more personal way to
express the same truths. A flurry of thinkers developed an important school of
thought known as process theology, and it has had a wide influence in
Christianity. There are many process theologians, and even more traditional
theologians who have been influenced by process thought. It is an exciting and
important field. Process Pneumatology has been sorely lacking, unfortunately.
Process theologians have tended to identify the Holy Spirit with the primordial
nature of God, guiding the universe forward through inspiration, and Christ
with the consequent nature, the good things in the world expressing the Spirit.
Jesus is usually seen as a paradigmic example of this kind of intersect. As
Clark Pinnock points out in his wonderful work of Pneumatology "Flame of
Love", this is not concomitant with the experience and worship of the
Christian community as a whole, and will not do as it stands. For this reduces
the Spirit and the Son to parts of God, aspects of God, and not God Himself.
This aspectism is not personalism and it is three Persons of God that we
need, we need the sense of the Spirit as a Person, not an idea, not an abstract
part of the whole. That said these ideas will play important roles in my own
Trinitarian vision and Pneumatology. I think that the material here can be
brought into conversation with tradition and we can reach a whole new height in
Pneumatological and Trinitarian reflection. And that is a big part of what I
will be doing in this book: giving tradition a much stronger voice alongside
process theology than it does for almost any other process thinker. I have
explained before why I think honoring tradition and the church experience is
important, and it is important for me, just as process theology, too, is
important. That is why these ideas will play a role, but the role they will
play is to give form and function to a Pneumatological project.
One last thing needs to be said
about process theology and Pneumatology. I said before that Greek philosophy
tended to weaken the church's ability to talk about the Spirit and the Trinity.
One of the things Whitehead did for theologians was give them a philosophical
framework that freed them of the substance vision that so limited their ability
to talk about God relationally. This God, the God of Whitehead, is essentially
relational, as all things are. Objects are their relationships, and so is God.
As such, we have a language which will make it possible to talk about God in
and through the relationships of three distinct persons. Whitehead's greatest
gift to us was to give us a way to talk about God AS love. For that reason, if
for no other, all Christians owe him a great debt of gratitude.
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