What Did Whitehead Mean By That?

"It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God."- From PROCESS AND REALITY

Transcendence means a lot of things in Whitehead's writing. In this case the meaning is to have power 'over and against' the other. For Whitehead there is a qualitative, not quantitative, distinction between God and the Universe. To say that God transcends the world is simply to say that God is in some sense and to some degree able to resist the power of the world. God is not changeless, for Whitehead. But what changes for God is His experience and knowledge, not his character. It is the changeless character of God that marks off God's transcendence of the world. No matter what happens in the world, God is always good, always loving, always merciful, always just...nothing in the world can change who God is. God's character is eternal, and it is unchanging.

God has power over and against the world. God sets some absolute limits on what the world can do. The initial aim, the ideal that God sets up for the world, not only gives it a goal to 'lurch towards' but it also sets limits on what is possible for any one epochal occasion. If this kind of limit were not set, there could be no order in the world, for any one example of evil could at any time wipe out the whole of existence. Some things must be impossible for the world to be a place that makes sense. God's power over the world is this limiting function, along with the ability to adjudicate which experiences will be retained within God' self. It is in these senses that God transcends the world.

The world is just as eternal as God, but unlike God no part of the world remains in any way changeless. Particular goods are retained within God's memory and so the moment is 'eternalized' within God. His character finds particular expression in the world, and that particular expression is eternalized within His own mind. But nothing in the world has an independent immortality of it's own: immortality is found within and through God. The world transcends God because the world can act independently of God. Just as God's character remains unchanged by the world, and so part of God is beyond change, there are parts of the world that resist the immortality of God, and so parts of the world go in directions that God does not will. The world has a level of genuine freedom that allows it to 'rebel' against God. More accurately, parts of the world are in rebellion against God. The freedom to so rebel, contained within the very fabric of existence (here thought of as 'becoming' rather than 'being').

To exist is to have some level of self-determination, and this self-determination means that one can literally rob God of certain moments, consigning them to oblivion by moving them far enough off the 'mark' of the ideal that God sets for the world. God can limit the freedom of the world. This is His influence over the world. But the world can limit the experiences of God. This is the world's power over God. What God experiences and knows is determined by the action of particular things within the world.

And so God has a freedom of character, a center of who He is that is independent of the happenings of the world. He also limits the freedom that the world has. This is God's transcendence of the world.

The world has a freedom of action, pockets of reality that act independently of God's will. It also limits God's experience by it's choices. This is the world's transcendence of God.

Aaaahhhh, but what about the overlap. The two do not SIMPLY transcend one another, at least not based on what I've said here. Yes, and indeed in the same part of PROCESS AND REALITY Whitehead also says, "It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World." But that is a post for another time.