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For example, assume that a mother catches one of her young sons stealing something. As she is going to punish him by whipping him, the young boy's brother steps in and says, "mom, I am stronger than he is, whip me. The mother's action of whipping the innocent boy is in no way just; it is manifestly unjust. Which brings me to my second point: Justice requires the guilty person to be punished unless he repents , and nobody else.
Sin and its consequences are not like an impersonal commercial transaction, where one person can pay the debt of another. Sin and punishment are personal, and therefore the analogy to a commercial transaction is not a good one. Third, if justice is always satisfied by someone being punished then there is no room for mercy.
Mercy is forgiving someone without requiring punishment or repayment, which God is fully capable of doing if someone sincerely repents. Ostler whole-heartedly admits that Christ suffered our pains, afflictions, and temptations, but he denies that such suffering was required by some universal law of justice that needed to be satisfied. If you want to know how he views the Atonement you'll have to read the book. Dec 11, Samcwright rated it really liked it. I first read second volume of Exploring Mormon Thought about 10 years ago. I came across powerful concepts that challenged my view of God and theology.
I now wonder what, if any thing, I took from these books the first time. Ostler does an incredible job of laying the philosophical and theological framework to evaluate Mormonism and its doctrines. He shares insights I first read second volume of Exploring Mormon Thought about 10 years ago. He shares insights that have taken me years to develop and articulate. And they do not represent the definitive philosophical response on Mormon thought. But they are an important contribution in the continuing dialogue about Mormon theology and highlight the unique and powerful ideas found in the faith.
Sep 14, Rae rated it really liked it Shelves: Volume Two of Ostler's highly philosophical and logical look at traditional Christian doctrines and how Mormonism compares with them. I've been working my way through this particular book for months now, and I'm sure I've only grasped a small part of it.
But what I have understood, I have loved and tried hard to internalize. I especially like Ostler's look at the Atonement quite logically dispelling some of the common explanations of it that we accept so easily and grace. Of course, when all is Volume Two of Ostler's highly philosophical and logical look at traditional Christian doctrines and how Mormonism compares with them. Of course, when all is said and done, we still know so little about God and the way he loves us. Specifically, process theism is a product of theorizing that takes the categories of becoming, change, and time as foundational for metaphysics.
In his Harvard doctoral dissertation , Hartshorne argues for the existence of a God that is the eminent exemplification of relational and social values. Between the publication of Science and the Modern World and Process and Reality —a time of intense creativity for Whitehead—he articulated his metaphysical system, including the concept of God.
Indeed, the elaboration and defense of process theism fell largely to Hartshorne and his students at the University of Chicago — , Emory University — , and the University of Texas at Austin — His anthology republished in , Philosophers Speak of God , edited with the help of his student William L. Reese, is a massive critical study of the varieties of concepts of God as they relate to process theism. The book includes selections from and commentaries on a wide range of thinkers from Western and Eastern traditions, both well-known and obscure. Philosophers Speak of God demonstrates that Whitehead and Hartshorne are not the sole representatives of process theism, although they are its chief exponents.
Buddhism, with its twin emphases on impermanence and dependent origination, is arguably the most sophisticated ancient form of process philosophy. Buddhist philosophers criticized the notion of a timeless absolute without, however, developing a form of process theism e. Hartshorne sees process theism as providing the needed coherence Dombrowski and Viney In the generation immediately preceding Whitehead, C. Peirce — and William James — closely anticipated process theism and served as important influences on its development. Philosophers and religious thinkers who independently formulated aspects of process theism in the twentieth century include: Some of the central themes and arguments of process theism, however, are evident in less well-known thinkers scattered throughout history.
McCabe — , and Otto Pfleiderer — Some might count G. Hegel — as a forerunner of process theism, but his case is not clear. It is also ironic that it was much less in the positive influence of Hegelian idealism than in the negative reactions to it that process philosophy, and by implication process theism, matured in the twentieth century. Philosophers and theologians who have published a monograph defending some variety of process theism informed by Whitehead or Hartshorne include: Edwards, Delwin Brown — , David A.
Shields, Donald Viney, Daniel A. The question of the metaphysical relation of God and creativity is a watershed between process theism and more traditional forms of theism. In process metaphysics no actual entity is wholly determined by the activity of another; or phrased positively, every actual entity retains some power of self-determination, however minimal or slight it may be.
According to this view, to have power in relation to others is to have power in relation to other entities with some degree of power. The logic of the matter does not change if God is included in the metaphysical scheme. For process theism, God is the supreme or eminent creative power, but not the only creative power. Thus, process theists speak of God and the creatures as co-creators Hartshorne and Reese , ; Hartshorne a, Aquinas explains that to create is to bring something from nothing, and this is possible only for deity.
This is the famous doctrine of creatio ex nihilo , or creation from no pre-existing material. This ex nihilo creation is logically distinct from the claim that the universe is temporally finite. Aquinas, for example, treats the questions whether God is the creator and whether the universe had a beginning under separate headings.
Aquinas is clear that he accepts the temporal finitude of the universe as a matter of faith, from revelation, and not because of rational argument. On the other hand, like other traditional theists Gottfried Leibniz for example , Aquinas holds that God could have created a temporally infinite universe, but it too would have been created ex nihilo. Process theists generally, though not unanimously, deny that the universe had a first temporal moment. There is still the objection, however, that by conceiving both God and the creatures as creative, process theists seem to destroy one of the most meaningful contrasts between God and the world: God as creator and the world as created.
In process theism, as in traditional theism, the existence of God is in no way precarious, in no way dependent upon the activity of other entities; likewise, process theism and traditional theism are in agreement that non-divine individuals are contingent they can fail to exist —in the case of non-angelic beings, they are born and they die.
Nevertheless, the creatures, being lesser creators, create something in God, if only the knowledge of their own activity. Augustine, for example, in the Confessions book XI, chapters 13 and 14 , considers it nonsensical to ask what God was doing before the creation of the world; God, in creating the universe, brings time—and with it, relations of before and after—into existence; thus, it is no more meaningful to ask what came before the first moment of time than it is to ask what is north of the north pole.
In traditional theism, the temporal world is spread out before God who can see it in its entirety from an eternal vantage point, like an observer on a hill viewing travelers in a caravan. As Boethius says in The Consolation of Philosophy book 5, prose 6 , eternity is the complete, simultaneous and perfect possession of everlasting life. Process theism takes a contrary view that time is the process of creation. In other words, the order of beings in time is the process whereby beings are created. For process metaphysics, there is no eternal act of divine creation that fixes the world in existence and there is no eternal perspective from which the universe can be considered a finished product.
In process thought, this ultimate is creativity. Creativity is not a metaphysical agency that produces anything; rather, it is the character of every concrete fact, from the humblest flicker of existence in non-divine actual entities to God. Creativity, then, is the ultimate metaphysical principle.
A principle, however, is not a real being. Whitehead explained to his student A. Johnson that God is not a principle but an actuality Johnson , 5.
That which is best described, in process theism, as the ultimate reality, is God. For Whitehead and Hartshorne, God should not be treated as the exception to metaphysical principles; otherwise, there can be no reasoned discourse about the divine that is, no theology.
Whitehead and Hartshorne strive to conceive God as the chief exemplification of metaphysical principles. In process theism, the divine or eminent form of creativity provides the basis for cosmic order and achieved value. Insofar as traditional theism maintains the doctrine of the necessary existence of God, it too accepts the necessity of something existing. Therefore, the difference between process theism and traditional theism is not in whether something necessarily exists, but in the nature of the necessarily existent.
Process theism refuses to give a privileged metaphysical status to the one over the many. Taking creativity as the category of the ultimate is an attempt to keep the one and the many on equal metaphysical footing by taking reality itself as necessarily social. God, considered as the ultimate reality in any version of process metaphysics, necessarily exists as a social being in dynamic interaction with all non-divine entities.
Process theists usually regard the distinction between the supernatural and the natural as a by-product of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In process thought, there is no such thing as a realm of the natural in contrast to that which is supernatural. Process theists generally regard the notion of creation ex nihilo , as explained above, as going hand-in-hand with the idea that the relations between God and the world are one-way relations.
God creates, but the creatures lack all creative power, the one wholly uncreated, the other wholly uncreative Hartshorne , 9. It is not within the ability of any creature, according to this view, to make a difference to God. To say that God is pure act is to say that anything God could be, God already is—there is no potentiality in God for any type of change.
To say that God is the unmoved mover is to say that the divine moves others but is unmoved by another—this includes the idea that God is impassible, literally, without feeling or emotion. In the view of process theism, the denial of real relations in God renders classical theism paradoxical to the point of incoherence. According to classical theism, God has perfect knowledge of a contingent and changing world, yet nothing in God could be other than it is.
The one condition, however, contradicts the other cf. Hartshorne , 13—14; Shields ; Viney An infallible knower necessarily knows whatever exists; it does not follow, however, that what exists is necessary unless one adds the premise, taken from classical theism, that nothing in God could be other than it is. Process theism jettisons the premise that there is nothing contingent in God. The only other non-atheistic alternatives, say process theists, are to follow Aristotle and deny that God knows the world or to follow Spinoza and deny that nothing in God or in the world could be other than it is Hartshorne , What is impossible is a God with no contingent aspects knowing a contingent world.
The denial of real relations in God also has paradoxical consequences for the concept of divine goodness. If God is unaffected by the creatures, then God is impassible, not moved by their suffering. Anselm, in Proslogion chapter VIII, asks how God can be compassionate towards the creatures without feeling sympathy for them. His answer—in effect a kind of theological behaviorism Dombrowski , —is that the creatures feel the effects of divine compassion but that God feels nothing. This leaves unanswered how non-sympathetic compassion is possible. Aquinas provides a less obviously question begging reply.
He says that to love another is to will the good of the other; God necessarily wills the good of the other, so God is love Summa Theologica I, Q 20, a. Process theists do not deny that love requires willing the good of the other, but they maintain that it requires something more, or at very least that there are greater forms of love of which willing the good of the other is a necessary aspect.
Divine love is more than beneficence; it includes sensitivity to the joys and sorrows of the beloved.
Of course, when all is Volume Two of Ostler's highly philosophical and logical look at traditional Christian doctrines and how Mormonism compares with them. A related problem is that the distinction between the possible and the actual is finessed. He argues that the commitment that God loves us and respects our dignity as persons entails that God must leave us free to choose whether to have a saving relationship with him. Second, the process view contradicts the Boethian concept of eternity as a non-temporal viewpoint on temporal events. Roberts and John Widstoe.
The denial of real relations in God, coupled with the concept that the world and its creatures have no value except as it is borrowed from God, implies that that total reality described by God-and-the-world contains no more value than that described by God-without-the-world.
This view has two unhappy consequences. Process theists point out that these ideas do not square with analogies drawn from human experience. Yet, one cannot love another unless the other exists, or once existed. Thus, if there is a value in love, it requires the existence of the other , not merely the idea of the existence of the other. Process theism rejects the counter-intuitive claim that the world as actually existing has no more value than the world as possibly existing.
By parity of reasoning, process theism rejects the view that it is no better for God to create the world than to contemplate the possibility of creating it. Perhaps the most disastrous consequences of the denial of real relations in God, as far as process theists are concerned, are the problems that it poses for free will and creaturely suffering. The creative or causal relation flows one way only, from God to the world. The world and its creatures are products of a unilateral divine decision that things should be one way rather than another. Hartshorne poses a dilemma for this view.
Either biological parents are part creators of their children or they are not. If they are then God alone is not the creator. Classical theists accept precisely the implication that Hartshorne finds absurd, namely, that the creatures never create anything. Strictly speaking, for Aquinas, what God creates is your-parents-having-you.
Your parents had no part in your creation. The reality described by your-parents-having-you includes the decisions they make in having you. God, in creating that reality, also creates those decisions. Would this view of decision making jeopardize human freedom? Aquinas, representing classical theism, says no, but Hartshorne, representing process theism, says yes. In other words, God brings it about not only that one freely decides something, but what one freely decides Summa Theologica I, Q 19, a.
Process theists counter that multiple freedom whether between God and the creatures or among the creatures implies the possibility of wills coming into conflict or being in harmony. If this is true, then it must be possible for the will of the creatures to be at cross purposes with the divine will. We have already seen that classical theists and process theists agree that God wills the good of the creatures.
Human beings, however, do not always will their own good, or the good of other people. In those cases, on the classical view, God brings it about that people freely decide not to will the good of others. Process theists argue that this makes God responsible for evil and suffering in a way that contradicts divine goodness. Classical theists are not without responses to these criticisms.
One well-known reply, used by Augustine and Aquinas, is to invoke the distinction between divine permission and divine causation of human wickedness and suffering. On this view, the evil in the world is permitted by God in order to bring about a greater good. For example, the Exultet of the Easter Vigil, sometimes ascribed to Ambrose of Milan, speaks of the sin of Adam and Eve as a blessed fault O felix culpa! Process theists argue that there can be no distinction between permitting and causing in a being that creates the universe ex nihilo. Griffin , 63—64 and 82—83 —this is one of the few points on which process theism agrees with John Calvin Case-Winters, , On the process view, creaturely decisions are themselves acts of creation, which means that the universe is a joint product of God and the creatures.
Process theists do not see how, in creation ex nihilo , creaturely decisions that God permits are not orchestrated by God so as to fulfill the purposes God has for them. Albert Einstein is reported to have said that God does not play dice with the universe. Although he was not a classical theist, his view on this issue is in accord with that philosophy. God may, as it were, allow or permit the dice to fall where they may, but only if they fall as God desires them to fall; this seems different in name only from playing with loaded dice.
The dominant theological position in the West, which we have been referring to as classical theism, denies all relativity to God. One might suppose that the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation of God in Christ would temper disbelief in divine relativity. The trend, however, was to argue that these doctrines do not conflict with the denial of real relations in God. Claims of revealed truth aside, the core doctrine has been that God, to be God, must be in all respects absolute and in no respects relative.
As goes the contrast between absolute and relative, so go other metaphysical contrasts. Theists traditionally held that God is in all respects creator, active, infinite, eternal, necessary, independent, immutable, and impassible and in no respects created, passive, finite, temporal, contingent, dependent, mutable, or passible. This view can be interpreted either as a doctrine about the nature of God or as a thesis about the parameters of responsible discourse about God in the latter case it is called the via negativa , or negative path.
It is monopolar insofar as deity is characterized by only one side of each pair of contrasts; it is prejudicial insofar as it holds to the invidious nature of the contrasts. Classical theists certainly made provisions for speaking of God in ways that suggested divine passion and even mutability.
In a similar vein, Michael Dodds emphasizes that Aquinas did not construe divine immutability as an attribute of God nor did he think that it implies inertness or stagnation. Process theists also emphasize our limitations in knowing the reality of God, but they are not persuaded that it is best signified by only one pair of the metaphysical contraries. Hartshorne notes that ordinary language provides scanty support for and abundant evidence against the superiority of one pole over the other.
He sums this up in the principle of the non-invidiousness of the metaphysical contraries Hartshorne , If this principle is correct, and if God is conceived as the eminent embodiment of value and supremely worshipful being, then God must be conceived not in monopolar terms but as dipolar, exemplifying the admirable forms of both pairs of metaphysical contrasts. For example, rather than saying that God is in all respects active and in no respects passive, the alternative is to say that God is active in some respects and passive in other respects, each in uniquely excellent ways.
The most elegant statement of dual transcendence is in the closing pages of Process and Reality , a line of which we have already quoted. The complete quotation reads like a litany:. It is as true to say that God is permanent and the world fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent. It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently.
We saw above in the discussion of divine creativity that Whitehead indulges in poetic expression and that understanding his meaning requires looking more closely at his metaphysical categories. Above all, however, what is required is a way of making principled distinctions between different aspects of God so that the doctrine of dual transcendence does not collapse into contradiction. Let us examine the different ways in which Whitehead and Hartshorne attempt to save the doctrine of dual transcendence from incoherence.
The physical and mental poles are aspects of every real being actual entities but they are not real beings themselves. In other words, Whitehead is not a mind-body dualist. It is also important to note that, for Whitehead, human consciousness is a higher form of mentality but not the only form. Thus, Whitehead does not claim that every real being is a conscious entity. As with Leibniz, Whitehead recognizes a continuum of mind-like qualities ranging from very primitive feelings to the most advanced form of self-awareness.
Whereas Leibniz speaks of every real being—he calls them monads—as having apperception and appetition, Whitehead speaks of every actual entity as prehending , or grasping or taking account of, its environment and as striving to realize the subjective aim of coordinating its prehensions in some determinate fashion. For example, the frontal cortex of a human brain allows for more advanced mentality than one finds in a chimpanzee, whose brain is not as complex.
Whitehead is fully aware that there is an imaginative leap in applying these categories to God, but he believes the application can be done in a disciplined and systematic fashion. Whitehead conceives God as an actual entity. In God, the physical and mental poles are called the consequent nature and the primordial nature respectively. That is to say, neither can exist apart from the other and each requires the other. It is logical space, deficient in actuality apart from the consequent nature says Whitehead. The deity receives the world of actual occasions into its experience; then, comparing what has actually occurred with the realm of pure possibility, God informs the world with new ideals new aims , customized for each actual entity, for what realistically could be achieved.
Whitehead sometimes refers to this aspect of the process as the superjective nature of God. God is fluent in constantly acquiring new experiences of the world and the world is fluent in the rhythm of the birth and death of actual occasions. God is one in being a single actual entity; but God is many in the graded relevance of possibilities provided for each emergent occasion. God and the world are immanent in each other in that each experiences the other; yet God and the world transcend each other by being realities whose experiences are not entirely determined by the other.
The world creates God, not by bringing God into existence, but by creating something in God, namely the material for what shall become objectively immortal. The relation of entailment between the sentences is a function of the information provided in them. Existence, says Hartshorne, is abstract compared to actuality, which is the concrete. Unless strict determinism is the case—which would require that there is only one future that is genuinely possible—the ornithologist can exist tomorrow without hearing a blue jay call at noon perhaps he will hear another bird, or none at all.
In effect, Hartshorne lays out a three-fold distinction between what a thing is its essence or defining characteristics , that a thing is its existence , and the particular manner in which it exists its actual states or actuality. Hartshorne maintains that this distinction, familiar enough in ordinary experience, is applicable to God and is the basis for speaking of dual transcendence in deity. Between the cases of God and the creatures, however, there are important differences.
Human existence and character are fragile and subject to variation. Hartshorne agrees with traditional theism that God exists without the possibility of not existing sometimes called necessary existence or existence a se and that God is necessarily supreme in love, knowledge, and power. A closely related point is that, in the divine case, existence and essence are identical, whereas they are not the same thing in the creatures. Hartshorne agrees with Aquinas about this. Since, in God, existence and essence are the same, Hartshorne customarily abbreviates the distinction among existence, essence, and actuality to that between existence and actuality.
The importance of the distinction between existence and actuality is to demonstrate that the necessary aspects of deity do not preclude God having contingent aspects, provided they do not conflict with the necessary ones. We saw previously, in the discussion of real relations, that there must be contingent aspects of the divine being if it is to have perfect knowledge of contingent things. Aquinas resists this conclusion, in part, because he sees contingency as a kind of metaphysical virus that infects the very existence of the one of which it is a characteristic.
He says that a being whose substance has any admixture of potency is subject to decay as in physical creatures or annihilation as in the case of angels Summa Contra Gentiles I, ch. Thus, the contingencies in the divine actuality do not include the possibilities of God being selfish, cruel, or wicked as they do in the human case. The mention of angelic existence in the previous paragraph brings up a point seldom noticed in discussions of process theism.
Aquinas approximates the Hartshornean distinction between immutable existence and mutable actuality in what he says about the nature of angels. Thomists might say that Hartshorne approximates Aquinas. Aquinas holds that angels are not subject to natural decay or destruction for they are incorporeal. Like God, their existence is not affected by the flow of time. They are, however, capable of certain kinds of change. While their existence is constant, they have free will and their knowledge can increase, and in a certain sense, they can move from place to place. Classical theism holds to the necessity, eternity, infinity, independence, immutability, and impassibility of God.
Hartshorne agrees that God can be so characterized, but only with respect to the divine existence and essence. Indeed, Hartshorne agrees with Whitehead that all achieved value is necessarily finite in the sense of not exhausting all that can be. It is noteworthy that Whitehead does not say that God is not infinite, but that God is not infinite in all respects. Thus, dual transcendence does not entail that God is in no sense infinite. Hartshorne locates the infinity of God primarily in the unlimited capacity to influence, know, and care for the creatures in any conceivable world.
One may rightly demand an answer to the question: If God is finite in some respects, what prevents there being a reality that surpasses God? This is what Hartshorne calls R-perfection for relative perfection , a form of perfection that permits a contingent actuality in God that is unsurpassed by all others, excluding self. This is by way of contrast with A-perfection for absolute perfection —which applies to the divine existence and essence—which is to be unsurpassable by all others, including self. To speak of God as having dual transcendence is to say that God is both R-perfect and A-perfect, but in different respects.
To be sure, Whitehead and Hartshorne are in firm agreement, and are at pains to emphasize, that the relations between God and the world are symmetrical.
In addition, both philosophers regard God as supremely worshipful not only with respect to the divine absoluteness but also with respect to the divine relativity. Nevertheless, Hartshorne conceives God as an individual who endures through various actual states. All enduring objects are societies of actual entities; moreover, no actual entity endures through various states. This argument is curious, for it would seem to apply to actual entities as well as to societies. No non-divine actual entity preserves its entire past without distortion and loss; yet Whitehead attributes to deity—in the doctrine of objective immortality of the past in God—what no other actual entity can accomplish.
Hartshorne notes that the unique excellence of retaining the past perfectly in memory must be no less true if God is an actual entity than if God is a society Hartshorne , He argues that the consequent nature of God is itself abstract, for it is the generic property of being somehow actual or affected by others Hartshorne , 75— Thus, Hartshorne proposes that Whitehead would be more true to his own metaphysics by conceiving God as an enduring object, and thus as a society, rather than as a single actual entity.
Hartshorne acknowledged that his own theory is not without its problems. Not least of these is how to coordinate the concept of a divine temporal world-line with the relativistic view of space-time in contemporary physics Hartshorne , —; Sia , ; cf. Suffice it to say that the question whether God is best conceived as a single actual entity or as an enduring object is a major parting of the ways between process theists. The doctrine of prehension, developed by Whitehead but also enthusiastically endorsed by Hartshorne, insures that the world is, in some sense , part of God.
Actual entities, by virtue of their prehensions of one another, are internally related to their predecessors and externally related to their successors. This generalization applies equally to God, but with differences that allow for a clear distinction between the divine and the non-divine. Whitehead maintains that events in the world have a specific locus with reference to God, but God has no locus with reference to the world Johnson , 9. Hartshorne says that God is the one individual conceivable a priori —God is individuated by, though not exhausted by, concepts alone Hartshorne , To be God is to causally affect and be affected by every real being; to be a non-divine entity is to causally affect and be affected by some, but not all , creatures.
Whitehead and Hartshorne also say that God and the creatures differ in the quality of interaction. While both philosophers deny that God has location within the universe, they consider God to be in some sense a physical or material being. Since process thought affirms the goodness of God, it is clear that it denies the ancient Manichean and Gnostic ideas that there is something inherently evil in being material. Thus, in process thought, being physical does not mean having no mind-like qualities.
In one sense this is true, but in another sense it is false. However, because divinity arises from loving relationships, he argues that God could not fail to give sufficient grace to all persons and remain a loving God. Praise for the Exploring Mormon Thought series: There is nothing currently available that is even close to the rigor and sophistication of these volumes. Roberts and John A. Widtsoe may have had interesting insights in the early part of the twentieth century, but they had neither the temperament nor the training to give a rigorous defense of their views in dialogue with a wider stream of Christian theology.
Sterling McMurrin and Truman Madsen had the capacity to engage Mormon theology at this level, but neither one did. Maxwell Institute, Brigham Young University. Overview Music Video Charts. Opening the iTunes Store.