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Trinity and Process:

A Critical Evaluation and Reconstruction of Hartshornes Di-Polar Theism
Towards a Trinitarian Metaphysics
(Peter Lang: 1992)

What follows is a highly abridged summary of Greg Boyds PhD dissertation (Princeton). The purpose of
this summary is to make its conclusions more easily accessible. Ive taken several steps to downsize the
work: (1) Footnotes have all been removed, (2) minimal sectional headings have been retained, (3)
material I thought one could do without to get the essential points was removed, (4) original pagination
is gone, (5) the opening Introduction and Bibliography are not included, and (6) original wording hasnt
been tampered with except to correct misspellings and minor grammatical mistakes. It may read as if
the paragraphs should have been bulleted. Thats due to having removed material and collapsed what
was left. Please be mindful in quoting (better refer to the original) because due to editing some
paragraphs appear run-on here which in the original are separated by material.

T&P critically appropriates philosopher/theologian Charles Hartshornes Process metaphysics to
articulate an understanding of God that retains both the best of Hartshornes (Process) contributions
and essential orthodox Christian beliefs regarding God. Its a purely analytic work that seeks to explore
what can be known about God and the world based on philosophical reasoning. In the process different
aspects of CHs metaphysics and classical Christian belief are both surrendered and retained.

My interest in doing this summary stems from ongoing conversations I have with people about Gregs
conclusions but who are unfamiliar with this earlier work of his. I hope this will be enough of a summary
to give interested readers a clear picture of his essential thesis. For more specifics youll have to read the
book.

Tom Belt
Minneapolis, October 2014


















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PART I
SIX FOUNDATIONAL A PRIORI TRUTHS OF HARTSHORNES SYSTEM
CHAPTER I
The First Four A Priori Truths

There are two aspects to the truths with which metaphysics is concerned: metaphysical truths are both
necessary and categorical. We shall shortly discuss the six candidates for the status of a priori truth
which constitute the foundation of Hartshornes metaphysical system. The first four shall be discussed in
the remainder of this chapter, the fifth and sixth in chapter II.

The Three Conditions of an A Priori Truth
Condition 1: Idea Implies Reality
The first condition for an existential a priori truth which Hartshorne shall be employing in this
metaphysical system is that an axiom can be considered to be a synthetic a priori truth only if its mere
idea entails its actual existence. If an existential statement is genuinely a priori, its truth must include
necessary existence.

Condition 2: Non-restrictive and Existential
The second condition which must be met by any statement before it can be considered a priori is that it
must be a non-restrictive existential statement. An a priori truth, since it must be universally
exemplified, must be wholly positive. Its instantiation must exclude no conceivable state of affairs.

Condition 3: Verifiable but not Falsifiable
The final criterion by which Hartshorne shall evaluate candidates for a priori truth is that it must be in
principle verifiable but not falsifiable. Indeed, if metaphysical statements are to be necessary and
categorical, then they must not only be verifiable, but they must be verified in every experience.

The First A Priori: Something Exists
The first and most fundamental candidate for an a priori non-restrictive existential truth is, according to
Hartshorne, the statement something exists. This a priori functions as the fundamental axiom in
Hartshornes system. Indeed, this a priori truth is in a sense the only a priori in Hartshornes system, for
everything else in the system is simply an aspect of what it means to say something exists.

The Second A Priori: The Concrete/Abstract Distinction
The first step to be taken by way of flushing out the full meaning of the statement something exists is,
according to Hartshorne, to identify existence with definiteness, or as Hartshorne tends to prefer,
concreteness. To say something exists is, for Hartshorne, to say something is concrete. And to be
concerned about existence as such is nothing other than to be concerned about concreteness as
such. [T]he basic form of reality, then is, for Hartshorne, by definition concrete reality. Concrete
actualities are the whole of what is.

The Principle of Contrast
According to Hartshorne, the meaning of any proposition is contingent upon the meaningfulness of its
contrast. Hartshorne calls this principle the principle of contrast. [C]oncreteness as such, then,
implies a contrary with abstraction as such. To have an idea of what concreteness means, we must
have some idea of what abstraction means in contrast to it. Metaphysics as the purely general theory
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of concreteness, then, must include a theory of abstractions. The a priori truth that something
exists implies the a priori truth that something is concrete, which in turn leads to the a priori truth
that something is concrete with abstract features.

The Asymmetry of the Abstract/Concrete Distinction
Of fundamental importance for an adequate understanding of Hartshornes system is the recognition
that the relationship between the concrete and the abstract is not symmetrical. While the contrast
between concreteness and abstractness is an a priori truthand in this sense both can be said to be
fundamental truthsit does not follow, according to Hartshorne, that concreteness and abstractness
are symmetrically relation a priori in the same way. Rather, as we have already seen, concreteness is
the basic form of reality. Definiteness is the positive, hence basic idea. It is the concrete which
expresses the fullness of reality, while the abstract only expresses features, aspects, or relations of
it.

The Third A Priori: Experience Occurs
We now turn to the third fundamental candidate for a priori truth within Hartshornes system: the
statement experience occurs. Like the second a priori truth, and like all the candidates for a priori
truth which follow, the contention that experience occurs is not, for Hartshorne, separable from the
first fundamental a priori: the necessary truth that something exists. It rather is implied in this first a
priori as an integral part of its meaning. Hartshornes contention is that to say something exists is
ultimately to say experience occurs.

The Infinite Flexibility of A Priori Concepts
It is, according to Hartshorne, tautologous to say that non-restrictive existential concepts must
linguistically possess infinite flexibility. An a priori existential concept must be capable of being
meaningfully generalized to an absolutely universal level. Existence and concreteness are such
concepts because they are inclusive of any conceivable reality whatsoever. Though people and rocks and
molecules, etc., all exist, and are concrete in radically different ways, the terms can yet be meaningfully
applied to them all. They are flexible enough not only to be applied to all known reality, but to all
conceivable reality. This infinite flexibility is an inherent feature of all truly non-restrictive concepts.

According to Hartshorne, the concept of experience is flexible in just the same manner and degree as
are the concepts of existence and concreteness. It might be argued that we only know experience in
human terms, and thus do not know what it would be like to generalize this concept to a universal level.
This is, as we shall shortly see, the most common objection to Hartshornes psychicalism.

It must be acknowledged that we commonly generalize the concept of experience a great deal. We
conceive of animals as having experiences, of insects has having some sort of experience, and perhaps
even of very simple organisms as having something like experiences. Hartshornes question is the
question of why we should arbitrarily stop this generalization at some point. And his argument, which
we shall shortly examine, is that logic forbids us to draw a stopping point to this generalization.

Psychicalism: The Principle of Continuity
But can we not imagine a state of affairs which exemplifies a zero instance of experience? Indeed, is not
our ordinary conception of matter just such a concept? Is the concept of mere matter really a logical
contradictionas it must be if experience is in fact a necessary truth? In other words, is the concept of
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an experienceless something a complete negation, saying nothing positive and hence nothing
meaningless? According to Hartshorne, the concept of mere matter is indeed just this, and his
argument for this contention constitutes what has been called his panpsychistic doctrine, or as he
prefers, his doctrine of psychicalism.

What, Hartshorne asks, is the concept of mere matter, wholly devoid of mind-like qualities, but the
complete negation of human experience and all that could be analogous to it? We know what our own
human experience is in all its variety, and we can meaningfully stretch by analogy our experience to
understand in some measure other human, super-human, sub-human, and even sub-animal
experiences. But how can we know, recognize, understand, and meaningfully speak about its complete
negation? Negation, as we have already pointed out, is parasitic upon affirmation, or it is meaningless.
But the concept of a wholly non-experiential something is, it seems, just such a complete negation,
and hence it is meaningless. Thus Hartshorne argues, I do not know how matter can be interpreted
save by analogy with experience as such. What appears to be dead matter must, then, in reality be
merely habit bound mind, or at least something analogous to it. The correct view, as Hartshorne sees
it, is that while all concrete actuality has, and must have, abstract lifeless features to it, the concrete
itself is alive and is constituted by some mind-like experiences.

The Fourth A Priori: The Asymmetrical Sociality of Experience
We now turn to Hartshornes fourth candidate for an a priori truth which is also simply a working out of
the logical implications of the preceding candidates: it is the statement asymmetrical relations occur.

Experience As Necessarily Relational
If the concept of experience is indeed non-restrictive and hence infinitely flexible, it is necessary to
inquire into what its general features are which remains constant through the infinite flexibility of its
application. What is it which all experiencesfrom Gods experience down to the experience of an
electronmust have in common? In asking this, we are once again seeking to distinguish the
ontologically necessary from the contingent features of our experience of reality.

Experience must be relational. It cannot generate its own content. If to be is to be an experience as
has been argued, then it is also true that [t]o be is to be in relation. Non-relational being is simply non-
being. This, in a nutshell, is Hartshornes a priori argument for the necessary sociality of being, and its
importance within Hartshornes cannot be overstated.

To exist, then, is to be concrete, which is to experience, which in turn, we now see, is to be related. Only
the abstract features of this social concreteness can be considered as non-social. The whole of
Hartshornes metaphysics from this point on consists in working out of the implications of this sociality.

The Asymmetrical Structure of the Sociality of Experience: Feeling of Feeling
Having determined that any conceivable experience must be relational, what, we must further ask, is the
essential nature of this necessary relationality? What are the necessary a priori features of the sociality
of experience as such?

The first thing to be discovered about the sociality of experience is that since to exist at all is to be an
experience, what is experienced must itself be an experience. Insofar as feeling is a constituent of any
experience which can be understood analogously with human experience, Hartshorne can (following
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Whitehead) say that to experience is to feel a feeling. The structure of concrete givenness is thus
participatory: a present experience of feeling is constituted by its participation in another
feelingand nothing more.

Refutation of Absolute Pluralism and Absolute Monism
The crucial issue which must now be raised is how this feeling of feeling is to be understood. What is
the nature of this sociality which necessarily characterizes all experience, and hence existence itself?
How one answers this question concerning the nature of relations directly determines the whole of
ones metaphysical understanding of reality.

The first possibility is to suppose that all relations are external to the entities being related. That is to
say, we might suppose that all relations between things are accidental in that they do not essentially
constitute what those things are. Entities would be essentially as they are even if the particular relations
they are involved in did not exist. This is, in very brief outline, the position of absolute pluralism. Among
its most famous exponents are Hume and Russell.

This position is plagued by a number of serious difficulties, however, as Hartshorne tirelessly points out.
First, the principle of contrast is violated. If all relations are external, then where do we get the notion of
internal relations from? And if the latter is not real, what meaning has the former? Secondly, as is
especially clear in Hume, it is impossible to arrive at anything more than phenomenological definition of
causation if in fact all relations are external.

A second possibility is to maintain that all relations are internal to the entities which are being related.
That is to say, the relations which a thing is engaged in are essentially constitutive for that thing. The
relations are essential in that entities have no essence beyond the relations which constitute them.
Among this positions most famous proponents are Spinoza, Royce, and most recently Blanchard.

While the doctrine of purely external relations renders all relations idle, as Bradley noted, the doctrine
of purely internal relations renders them, as Bradley again noted, vicious. That is, if all relations are
internal to the entities related, the notion of a distinct autonomous entity to be related seems to vanish.
For anything outside the relation must be external to the relation, and hence it would be false that all
relations are internal.

What is more, the doctrine of purely internal relations destroys the linguistically necessary contrast with
external relations. It also, like the afore mentioned doctrine, renders all knowing, loving, hating, etc.,
unintelligible, for these relations presuppose a distinct entity to be related. And it destroys any
ontologically real distinction between the past, present and future (for the last event would necessarily
be an internal constituent of the definition of the first event).

As a final note, the doctrine of purely internal relations makes any understanding of God as ontologically
distinct from the world utterly impossible. God and the world must be eternally mutually constitutive if
all relations are, in fact,

internal.

The Asymmetrical Alternative
Exponents of exclusively external as well as exclusively internal relationality have convincingly used such
arguments as have been outlined here against each other. As far as Hartshorne is concerned, both of
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their critiques against the other are, by and large, sound. The two extreme positions thereby cancel each
other out.

According to Hartshorne, then, the stalemate between the pluralist and the monists is the result of two
equally indefensible positions showing each others weakness. And the insistence that one must locate
oneself either in one extreme position or the other is part of the weakness of both. It is, he is fond of
arguing, like two carpenters arguing about how to hang a door. One argues that there should be no
hinges, the other that the door should have hinges on both sides. Each carpenter is brilliant in showing
how the others idea will not allow the door to open. But because of the extreme polarization of their
thinking, each overlooks the equally extreme faults of his or her own position.

The solution, Hartshorne argues, is to hang the hinges on one side of the door but not on the other. In
other words, the solution to the problem of relations is to be found by maintaining that relations are
internal for one of the terms while being external to the other.

Applying this to our present issue of the nature of feeling of feeling, Hartshorne argues that the
relation which pertains between the two feelings (experiences) is internal from the perspective of the
present experience, but external from the perspective of the feeling now being felt. The past feeling
minus the present experience of it would be just what it is. But the present feeling minus the past feeling
which it feels would be a different experience altogether.

The Confirmation of Asymmetrical Relationality
Hartshorne believes that the primacy of Asymmetricality can be demonstrated both by sheer logic and
by an analysis of the concept of experience. Concerning logic, Hartshorne argues that while symmetrical
relations can be derived from the simple notion of asymmetrical ones, the converse does not hold.

The primacy of asymmetrical relationality can also be demonstrated by an analysis of the concept of
experience, according to Hartshorne. We have seen that, in Hartshornes view, experience is part of
what it means to be concrete. Since, as we have also seen, no experience can have itself as its own
datum, it therefore follows that the determinateness of any conceivable experience must essentially be
derived from the determinateness of the external datum which forms the content of the experience.

But this means that the datum experienced cannot itself be indeterminate relative to the experience of
it. It cannot itself be determined by the experience of it. For in this case there would be nothing
determinate to experience, and thus the experience could not be concrete. The concept of two
experiences symmetrically determining each other is, in Hartshornes mind, logically no more
conceivable than an experience having itself as its own datum.

The only way to render experience conceivable, then, is to suppose that the determinate object
experienced is internally related to the experience of it as its determinate content, while the experience
of it is external and thus non-constitutive of the object experienced.





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CHAPTER II
The Fifth and Sixth A Priori Truths:
Creative Synthesis and Aesthetic Value

The Fifth A Priori: Creative Synthesis
The Temporal Structure of Asymmetrical Sociality of Experience
Perception and Memory
We have seen that it is for Hartshorne an a priori truth that experience must be asymmetrically
structured at the most concrete level. Being a priori, this must be a non-restrictive feature of the world,
necessarily exemplified in every experience of reality and in every conceivable experience of reality, as
has already been argued. Like all non-restrictive concepts, this concept will be immediately exemplified
in human experience, and will then analogically extend to all of reality.

Like Whitehead before him, Hartshorne finds the key to disclosing this a priori asymmetricality within
human experience to be human perception and memory. The phenomenon of perception is thus an
illustration of the basic asymmetry necessarily exemplified in experience. But the reason for this
asymmetry, Hartshorne argues, lies in the nature of temporality. We do not, Hartshorne contends, every
really perceive a contemporary object. All perception is perception into the past.

This temporal asymmetrical structure of experience is even more clearly exemplified in the case of
memory, according to Hartshorne. In memory, unlike in perception, there is no temptation to succumb
to any apparent but illusory simultaneity. Memory, then, is the chief clue to the relativity of events to
their conditions in previous events.

To be more specific, there are in Hartshornes view two essential features of memory which together
allow it to function as the key to the asymmetrical sociality of experience. First, and most importantly, in
memory we have most clearly an instance of the present being in part constituted by the past. Memory
is something in the present conditioned by something in the past. Memory is a present experience, a
present instance of concreteness, which has as its object(s) something in the wholly determinate past. It
thus clearly exemplifies the a priori asymmetrical structure of experience, according to Hartshorne. The
present experience is conditioned by the object experienced, while the object experienced is unaffected
by the experience of it.

Secondly, and closely related to this, in memory we have our first, and really our only, clue to the nature
of causation. If, in fact, as we have seen Hartshorne argue, all of reality must be interpreted by analogy
with the experience of the human self, then it is our experience of the past influencing the present
which must, in a universally generalized form, provide us with our conception of how the past affects
the present in sub-human (or, as we shall see, in super-human) realms. Cause/effect relationships, then,
must be conceived as being something like our experience of remembering (and, much more
ambiguously, perception).

In memory as well as perception, then, we find illustrated the a priori asymmetricality of experience,
according to Hartshorne. This clarifies for us the fact that the asymmetrical sociality which is implicit
within experience is identical to the temporality which is implicit within all experience. [T]he structure
of time, then, in inherent in concreteness as such, and hence a priori.

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Prehension
The term used by Hartshorne, taken from Whitehead, to articulate this inclusion of the past into the
experiential present is the term prehension. This concept attempts to articulate the universal fact that
the present is constituted as a distinct feeling by feeling the feeling of past feelings. Present drops
of experience are said to prehend a past objectified datum, and the particular way they prehend
these past eventsthe particular way they feel the acquired feelings of these past experiences
constitutes what the present drop of experience is.

Though he modifies the concept in several ways, Hartshorne regards Whiteheads doctrine of
prehension to be one of the supreme intellectual discoveries of all time. In one conception, he
argues, it renders intelligible the nature of the relationality, connectedness and freedom of reality.
According to him, this concept renders the relationality of reality intelligible by explicating the
asymmetricality of the temporal process; it renders the connectedness of reality intelligible by
elucidating the way by which the past conditions and is contained in the present; and, as we shall shortly
see in detail, it renders the experienced freedom of reality intelligible by articulating how present drops
of experience are creative in the particular unique way they feel the accomplished feeling of the past.

Experience as a Free, Creative Synthesis
The doctrine of prehension, in Hartshornes estimation, furnishes perhaps the neatest, strongest
argument for freedom ever proposed. The act of prehending past data, we see, is in Hartshornes
scheme an act which must, to some degree, concretely transcend that data.

To experience, then, is to creatively synthesize a previous many into a novel unity. We perceive many
things, but any given concrete perception is one experience, a unity which was not present, explicitly or
implicitly, in the many. Precisely this constitutes the necessary asymmetrical sociality of experience. The
present experience creatively transcends previous experiences. And it is, according to Hartshorne,
logically inconceivable to suppose that this unity is itself determinately prescribed by the many which it
unites. The unity must, then, be a free creative synthesis.

The Ultimacy of Creativity
Since, as we have just determined, to exist is to create, the fundamental all-inclusive category by which
reality can be accurate described is, for Hartshorne, the category of creative becoming. Process
philosophy takes creative becoming rather than mere being as the inclusive mode of reality. Since the
concrete implies and includes the abstract, while the converse is not true, and since to be concrete is to
create, creative becoming must be seen, according to Hartshorne, as being inclusive of, and hence
fundamental to, being. Becoming is the richer, more concrete conception and includes within itself all
the needed contrasts with mere being. Becoming, then, is the absolute principle. Being is
secondary, abstract, and derivative.

The present concrete experience, therefore, contains the abstract; the present concrete asymmetrical
sociality of an experience contains its abstract symmetrical relations; and the present concrete
instance of becoming contains the being of the being of the past. Creativity, then, is in Hartshornes
system, as it was in Whiteheads, the universal of universals, the ultimate of ultimates, the final all-
inclusive category of metaphysical explanation.


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Atomistic Creativity
Creativity and Substance
The exaltation of creativity to the category of the ultimate, of course, stands traditional Western
substance metaphysics on its head. Whereas in traditional Western metaphysics an entity is first
(logically) a substance and secondly an event, in Process thought an entity is first (logically) an event
and only secondly a substance. It is, for Hartshorne, the creative act which is constitutive of the
substanceif that word is to be retained at allnot the substance which is constitutive of the creative
act. That is to say, substance refers to the abstract regularity of a given series of creative experiences
which, by way of this regularity, form a distinct phenomenologically defined entity relative to our
ordinary sense perspective.

It constitutes the abstract defining characteristics of a particular event
sequence.

An event, then, is not, via some enduring substance, the cause of its relatively stable self-defining
characteristics. This notion of substance can, according to Hartshorne, be given no intelligible meaning
on a metaphysical level. Rather, the substance, or defining characteristic, which constitutes the
phenomenological entity is the result of an incredible myriad of constitutive creative units of
experience carrying over some regularity from the past, but reconstructing it each moment in a novel
synthesis.

Creativity and Self-Identity
Self-identity, therefore, whether at a human or sub-atomic level, is abstract, partial and relative. It is, in
contrast, the present moment of becoming which is concrete, complete, and absolute, as we have seen.
There can, for Hartshorne, therefore be no concrete self-identity which preserves over time. The only
concrete reality is in the specious present, the present momentary experience of becoming. For
human beings, for example, the concrete self becomes anew every tenth of a second or so. This alone
constitutes truly concrete reality. Everything else concerning human self-identity is an abstract feature
of this.

Creativity and Actual Occasions
But if there is no enduring self behind or within the personal ordered series, what, one must ask,
constitutes the units of actuality which collectively constitute this series? Put another way, if the
enduring self is but an abstract feature of the concrete reality, what constitutes the reality form which
self-identity is an abstraction?

Hartshornes answer to this way, he believes, contained in the third and fourth a priori deductions of his
system. In a word, the ultimate constituents of reality must be irreducible experiential occasions, and
nothing more. Process thought takes a momentary experience as the model or paradigm for
understanding concrete reality. These momentary units of experience are called by Hartshorne,
following Whitehead, actual occasions or actual entities. Whitehead himself most succinctly
articulates this central concept of Process metaphysics when he writes, Actual entitiesare the final
real things of which the world is made. There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more
real. They differ among themselves: God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in
far-off space. But, though there are gradations of importance, and diversities of function, yet in the
principles which actuality exemplifies all are on the same level. The final facts are, all alike, actual
entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex, and interdependent.

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Given the fifth a priori of Hartshornes system, another way of expressing this understanding of actual
occasions is to say that the final real things of which the world is made are irreducible momentary
units of creative synthesis. Each actual occasion is a fleeting instance of creativity which forms a
single reality not reducible to inter-related parts. Concrete experiences, then, must be discrete and
ontologically discontinuous events: all continuity, conversely, must be abstract.

The experience of atomistic creative synthesis, then, itself constitutes the sole concrete content of the
ultimately indivisible temporal-spatial units of reality. There is nothing else ontologically more
fundamental which has the experience or which does the synthesizing. According to Hartshorne,
such a conception of a subject is an abstraction from the concrete, as we have seen. Rather, there is
no feeler over and above the togetherness of the feeling. It is the absolutely present concrete drop of
experience which has everything else.

The Mystery of Creativity
Though Hartshorne as a rationalist is not fond of paradoxesmost of them, he suspects, are really
straight forward contradictionshe nevertheless admits that paradoxes are inevitable in every system
of thought. In his own system, it is the ultimate principle of creativity which is most paradoxical. This
does not detract from the rational viability of his system, he feels, if sufficient reason can be given for
why this principle is paradoxical, and why this paradox should not be regarded as fatal. It will be
beneficial for our study to briefly examine his thinking on this issue, as this paradox shall subsequently
be a point on which we shall criticize Hartshorne.

There are two senses in which creativity poses a mystery to human thought. The first relates to the
nature of concreteness and of rationality as such. The first relates to the nature of concreteness and of
rationality as such. Rationality, according to Hartshorne, necessarily operates on the level of
abstractions. It is concerned not with the concrete as such, but with the logical laws which abstractly
characterize the concrete as such.

Concrete creative experiences, then, cannot be rationally defined by us, but must be pointed out, e.g.,
the first experience I had after walking this morning. According to Hartshorne, the richness of the
concrete can never be an object of thought, but must be experienced. One cannot think a sense
quality. Reason is concerned only with the universal features which experience exemplifies. But this
means that creative concreteness as such must always be seen as a mystery by rationality.

The second and in some ways more fundamental sense in which creativity is a mystery concerns the
question of how actual occasions arise as units of creative synthesis. How do experiences as moments of
creative unifications of past data come to be? They are not, as we have seen, fully determined by
anything antecedent to themselves, for that would be to deny the very creativity which is essential to all
experience. But if nothing outside (viz., before) the experience brings the experience into being, then
what does? The only possibility remaining is that the experience creatively brings itself into being.
Insofar as the experience is creative, it must, then, be causa sui.

The innumerable atomic experiences which constitute actual reality every instant, then, are by definition
self-created. Insofar as they are free, insofar as they transcend antecedent causal conditions, they are
not created, but creatorscreators of their own novel synthesis. The precise definiteness of any
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given actual occasion, therefore, comes from nowhere but the concrete experience itself. And, according
to Hartshorne, it is just this unifying creativity which reason can never grasp.

The concrescence of an actual occasion, therefore, is strictly unknowable, for it is non-rational until it is
complete; that is, until its creative fiat has been accomplished. Neither any contingent creature, not
even God, can know a contemporary occasion in its moment of self-determination. In this sense,
creativity is a mystery. Indeed, since the precise unity of feeling which constitutes an actual occasion is
always of past data, it makes no sense to say, according to Hartshorne, that the becoming occasion can
even know its own contemporary self.

Creativity is, therefore, a mystery not only because reason operates on the levels of universals, but
because of the nature of creativity itself. It comes from nowhere, and is unpredictable in its coming. This
is true for Godeven in relation to the creativity of Godselfas well as for all contingent creatures.

The Sixth A Priori: Aesthetic Value
Identity of Fact and Value | Experienced Facts as Acquired Value
We have seen that the a priori statement something exists logically generates the a priori statements
that something is concrete with abstract features, experience occurs, asymmetrical relations
occur, and creative synthesis occurs. Each of these was arrived at by deducing what was necessarily
implied in the preceding a priori truth. So it is here: we now ask, what is necessarily implied in the
concept of creative synthesis?

According to Hartshorne, experience, understood as a creative synthesis of past objectified feelings, as a
feeling of feeling, necessarily implies that some value is achieved. On Hartshornes view, therefore,
there is no meaningful ultimate distinction between a fact and value. Sensed facts do not arouse
emotion valuations: sensed facts are already emotion valuation. Yellow, for example, does not arouse
a lively, cheerful, light-hearted feeling which is simply association with it: to experience the colors
yellow, according to Hartshorne, is to experience just this feeling. Or again, blue violet doesnt arouse
a quiet, wistful, earnest feeling: to sense blue violet is to sense this feeling. Interestingly enough, it
seems that an increasing number of psychologists are coming to hold this view.

Creative Synthesis and Emotive Valuation
The identification of sensation and valuation is, for Hartshorne, simply the result of carrying through the
logic involved in the concept of creative synthesis. Experience, we have seen, is always asymmetrically
related to previous experiences. To prehend a past datum is to feel its feeling. The past datum
prehended is nothing more than the felt unity of a synthesis of still further past experiences not
made public. Prehension, then, is simply the enjoyment of the publicity of previous feelings.

Hartshorne is simply articulating this point a bit further when he translates feeling of feeling as
valuing of value. The past-enjoyed-feeling of an occasion is now publicly enjoyed by present occasions,
but in a new context. How could this be understood unless the present occasion found some value in the
previous occasion? How can one enjoy the feeling of another without finding some value in it? How
could one occasion participate in the feelings of another without participating in the value that occasion
valued? In short, Hartshorne believes that the identification of sensation and valuation follows
linguistically once one admits the identification of sensation and feeling. Valuation is necessarily implied
in prehension or creative synthesis.
12


It is, according to Hartshorne, largely our dominating pragmatic orientation which causes us to overlook
the value inherent in every experience. We are preoccupied with our environments utilitarian value for
us that we fail to see that it is, in a real sense, an end in itself. Sensation is used rather than enjoyed.
We key in on useful abstractions of experience, and hence miss the richness, including emotive richness,
of the concrete. It is, according to Hartshorne, to a large degree only children, artists, and primitive
people who naturally enter into the experienced world as it really isas a vast ocean of feeling in
whose aesthetic richness each experience participates. If the adult modern person is to recapture this
truth, he or she must become as a little child.

The Primacy of Aesthetic Value
We have thus far seen that Hartshorne argues that fact and value are two facets of every experience,
not two different experiences. But there are, obviously, different kinds of valuation. One can value the
truth over falsity, the right over wrong, or the beautiful over the ugly or mundane. What, we must then
ask, is the mode of valuation which Hartshorne believes to be an a priori aspect of experience, or
creative synthesis, as such?

In Hartshornes estimation, we see, it is the experience of beauty, and hence aesthetic valuation, which
is fundamental to both acting and thinking, and hence ethical or logical valuation. Hartshorne supports
this position with basically three lines of argumentation, to which we now turn.

Three Arguments for the Primacy of Aesthetic Value
Aesthetic Value and the Three Conditions for A Priori Existential Truth
The first and most fundamental way in which aesthetic value can, according to Hartshorne, be shown to
be fundamental to all other modes of valuation is to show that it is a priori, while other modes of
valuation are not. Whereas some experiences are conceivably without ethical or logical valuations,
according to Hartshorne, no experience is conceivable without some degree of aesthetic valuation.
Infants and animals experience and enjoy value, for example, but neither are ethical or logical beings.
Only aesthetic valuation, then, can meet the three conditions for a priori existential truths. Ethical and
logical valuations are restrictive insofar as they can and do fail to be exemplified. Whether they are
exemplified or not, then, is a contingent matter, contingent, for example, on whether or not one is an
adult or an infant. They cannot, then, be necessary.

But if value is indeed intrinsic to the concept of experience, then, it seems, then only remaining
candidate is aesthetic value. Hence Hartshorne argues that no experience, including an experience of
ethical or logical value, can be consistently conceived completely void of aesthetic value. If this is
correct, it follows, then, that insofar as the idea of experience implies existence, the idea of aesthetic
value implies aesthetic value (the experience of the idea itself must have some intrinsic aesthetic value).

Aesthetic Value and the Concrete
A second argument used by Hartshorne to prove the metaphysical priority of aesthetic valuations over
ethical or cognitive valuations is that it is only in aesthetic experiences that we are necessarily attentive
to the concrete as such. Both ethics and cognition are necessarily abstract (which is also why lower
animals do not share these activities with us).

13

This is, in reality, a corollary to the above mentioned fact that aesthetic values are, in contrast to ethical
or logical values, non-restrictive. It is because of this fact that only in the enjoyment of aesthetic value
are we attentive to the whole of the concrete as given. Every concrete aspect of an entity or an event
(and not just an intentionally artistic one) is an aspect of our aesthetic appreciation. Ethics and logic, in
contrast, necessitate abstraction from the concrete.

Aesthetic Value and Creative Synthesis
A final argument which strengthens Hartshornes case for the a priori status of aesthetic value, and one
which we have already touched upon, is that only aesthetic value is necessarily contained within the
definition of experience as a creative synthesis of a multiplicity of past data. For the definition of beauty
has the same structure as the definition of creative synthesis.

This definition of beauty as an organic unity contains within it the definition of experience as a creative
synthesis. Each experience, we have seen, brings together into a novel unity a multiplicity of antecedent
facts. It feels the feeling of past occasions and does so in such a way that it constitutes itself as a new
unique feeling, now available for subsequent prehensions.

The togetherness of this multiplicity must, Hartshorne argues, exemplify some degree of likeness and
difference, some similarity and contrast. The organic unity of a creative synthesis must, in other
words, be to some degree an aesthetic unity. Were the antecedent facts within the prehension
completely unlike each other, there would be no togetherness. Were they completely alike, there would
be no genuine multiplicity. For Hartshorne, therefore, to say creative synthesis is to say aesthetic
value, and to say aesthetic value, to so say creative synthesis.

What is more, the fact that each occasion must, as we have seen, transcend its antecedent conditions,
guarantees that every occasion will have some new aesthetic value to be subsequently enjoyed. This is
to say that the a priori requirement of diversity in unity within experience is one with the a priori
requirement that experience be a creative synthesis, and one with the a priori requirement that
aesthetic value be non-restrictive.

We see, then, that to experience is to experience some minimal aesthetic value. Absolute aesthetic
failure simply means no experience at all. Each atomistic experience which constitutes concrete reality
must, by definition, enjoy some intensity of aesthetic satisfaction. Indeed, for both Hartshorne and
Whitehead, its most fundamental reason for being, is precisely the acquisition of this aesthetic
enjoyment. This is what it aims at. This is what it exists for.

The intensity of aesthetic satisfaction will vary with the breadth of contrast in the unity instantiated as a
particular actual occasion. The intensity of Gods enjoyment will be greatest because God synthesizes
the entire world just past. The intensity of (say) an electron will be miniscule in comparison. The
intensity of a human experience will fall in between. But in principle, Hartshorne argues (following
Whitehead), the nature of the satisfaction is the same in every instance. It is always aesthetic.

The becoming of any actual occasion is thus driven by an appetition for aesthetic satisfaction, and the
precise nature of the actuality of any given occasion is determined by the free manner it has satisfied
that aesthetic aim.

14

To conclude, by answering the question with which we opened this inquiry into the sixth foundational a
priori of Hartshornes system, it is this production of aesthetic satisfaction which is the ultimate telos of
creativity. [T]he teleology of the Universe is directed towards the production of Beauty. Hartshorne
acknowledge his agreement with Jonathan Edwards when he says that the beauty of the world is its
final justification. Experience creates and enjoys this beauty. Metaphysics reflects upon the necessary
aspects of this beauty. And science studies the contingent features of this beauty. And they all do so
because, if Hartshorne is correct concerning this sixth a priori truth about existence, it simply cannot be
gotten away from: the aesthetic dimension of reality pervades and defines the whole of what is. To
study anything, then, is to study some aspect of aesthetics.

Conclusion: The Six Foundational A Priori Truths of Hartshornes System with Reference to the Six
Theistic Arguments
We have seen how Hartshorne defines metaphysics and understands the methodology appropriate to
this enterprise. We have seen how this methodology first tentatively postulates the statement
something exists as the basic a priori about existence. And we have seen how this methodology
deductively generates from this first a priori statement the statements something is concrete with
abstract features, experience occurs, asymmetrical sociality occurs, creative synthesis occurs, and
finally, aesthetic value is enjoyed. Together these constitute the six foundational a priori truths of
Hartshornes metaphysical system. And together they constitute Hartshornes view of the sociality of
being as such. Being, for Hartshorne, is necessarily experiential, relational, creative, and beautiful. To
suppose otherwise is for him to ultimately suppose a contradiction.

We shall in Part II see how these foundational a priori statements generate five of the six a priori
arguments for the existence and nature of God construed by Hartshorne. The ontological argument, we
shall see, is derived from the first criteria for a priori statements about existence itself. The other five
theistic arguments follow this one, each building upon one or more of the foundational a priori truths.

In the end, we shall see that each of the five theistic arguments which follow the ontological argument
are really variations on this first theistic argument, since each attempts to arrive at the existence of God
from the mere idea of God, but considered from a distinct angle. This exactly parallels the manner in
which the five candidates for a priori truth which follow the first are all ultimately variations on the first,
but considered from a distinct angle. To be sure, all of the theistic arguments are themselves ultimately
variations on Hartshornes first a priori statement something exists.

As the six foundational a priori statements of Hartshornes system have attempted to demonstrate the
necessary sociality of being as such, each of the six theistic arguments in its own way attempts to
establish an aspect of the necessary sociality of a necessary being in relation to all contingent being. The
six foundational a priori statements, and the six theistic arguments which build upon them, therefore
constitute Hartshornes a priori construction of the doctrine of God, which includes, of course, his view
of Gods relationship with the world.

Given this structure, it follows that if one is to reject or revise any of the attributes of Hartshornes view
of Deityas we shall argue Christian theology must if it is to retain the classical doctrine of the Trinity
and the Christian view of graceone must either reject the reasoning from the foundational a priori to
the theistic argument, or reject the foundational a priori itself.

15

CHAPTER III
A Critical Evaluation of The Six Foundational
A Priori Truths of Hartshornes System
1


We shall, in this chapter, critically discuss the merits and weaknesses of Hartshornes metaphysical
system as we have explicated it thus far. Where appropriate we shall offer a reconstruction and/or
supplementation of his system. Our critique shall proceed in the same point by point order in which we
elucidated the points in the preceding two chapters. This critical evaluation shall lay the groundwork for
our evaluation of the view of God arrived at via Hartshornes theistic arguments.

First A Priori: Something exists
We have already considered in some detail objections against Hartshornes most fundamental candidate
for the status of a priori truth: the statement something exists. We have argued that Hartshorne is
correct in holding that existence as such is necessary. This does not necessarily mean that our cosmos,
or any cosmos, or anything in any cosmos, is necessary. It simply means that something is necessary. We
shall in fact subsequently argue that it is only the one necessary being, God, who is necessary. Beyond
this, I have no further defense to make on behalf of this candidate for the status of a priori truth.

Second A Priori: The Concrete/Abstract Distinction
Is the Abstract Contained in the Concrete?
The first difficulty which must be raised in regard to Hartshornes understanding of the
concrete/abstract distinction and the relation between them is that it seems to assume the structure of
reality rather than render it intelligible. If all transcendentals are simply abstractions from concrete
realities, if universals have no reality over and above the concrete realities which contain them, then
these transcendentals cannot explain the ontological structure of the concrete realities. They are
descriptive only, not prescriptive.

Hartshorne might respond, as we have seen him do against Neville, that because order is a priori it
needs no further explanation. Order is simply a necessary abstract feature of things, and that is all the
justification it needs.

I have conceded that order is a priori, and that a priori truths are, in principle, self-explanatory, but for
this very reason I maintain that order as such could not be a mere abstraction. A priori truths prescribe
what structure reality must have, and thus cannot be reduced to descriptive generalizations (viz.,
abstractions from the concrete). A de facto reality governs nothing. The normativity of these
transcendentals, I thus maintain, requires that they are in some sense ontologically independent from
the concrete realities they explain. Only as such can they be rendered intelligible.

Perspectivalism
A second difficulty concerning the categories of concreteness and abstraction in Hartshorne is that they
are spoken of as being absolute distinctions. Hartshorne, throughout his writings, holds that there is an
absolute level of concreteness, from which everything else is an abstraction. Thus his whole
metaphysical enterprise is an attempt to locate and describe the ultimate level of concreteness.

1
The section on dispositions in Ch. 3 is the heart and soul of Gregs thesis. Ive kept pretty much all of it in the summary
because of its importance.
16


The question which must be raised, however, is whether this concept of ultimate concreteness or
unqualified determinateness adequately renders our experience of reality intelligible. We shall
consider this in more details when we evaluate Hartshornes concept of atomistic creativity , but a more
general word is in order here.

As Justus Buchler and Stephen Ross have effectively argued, it seems that determinateness and
indeterminateness are relative or perspectivally contingent concepts. It seems that whether a reality is
concrete or abstract, determinate or relatively indeterminate, is contingent upon the perspective from
which it is being interacted with. And, Buchler and Ross argue, there is no ultimate perspective which
can define any reality as absolutely determinate or indeterminate. The meaning of determinacy and
indeterminacy, of concreteness and abstractness, then, is therefore perspectivally contingent.

In this light, we must ask for some justification of Hartshornes contention that there is an ultimate level
of concreteness, of determinate reality. Why suppose that there is one unequivocal, non-relative and
unqualified level of concreteness which characterizes actuality as such? Our phenomenological
experiences, for example, are, in every meaningful sense of the term, concrete. We experience the
corporeal world as determinate. The world, in other words, is definite relative to our faculties of
experience. But, of course, physics tells us that our phenomenological experiences are, from the
perspective of atomic and sub-atomic events which constitute the reality we experience, abstract
generalities. Our sensed world is thus, in a sense, indefinite relative to the worlds atomistic activity (or
better, relative to an interest in the worlds atomistic activity).

Indeed, as we shall later argue in more detail, the conception of a phenomenological entity as being
really a highly complex conglomeration of atomistic occasions is, from our ordinary perspective, what
is the abstraction. An entity is indeed such a complex conglomeration, but it is also a real whole, and this
latter is more immediately real to us than the former. Or, to state it differently, definite and
indefinite derive their unequivocal meaning from the definite and indefinite aspects of our
phenomenological experience. We apply these categories to realms outside of common human
experience only analogically, and only by abstracting elements from our ordinary experience.

Thus, while agreeing that the statement something exists implies the statement something is
concrete with abstract features, we nevertheless add that what is abstract is not necessarily derived
from the concrete, and what is abstract or concrete is perspectivally defined (except, we shall argue, in
the necessary features of the self-experience of God whose essence is this Ones existence and whose
perspective on non-divine reality indexically encompasses all finite contingent perspectives).

The Category of Disposition
The final, major, difficulty we have with Hartshornes second a priori arises from its supposed exclusivity.
His supposition is that the necessary structure of experience can be exhaustively accounted for by the
categories of the abstract and the concrete. Reality is, according to Hartshorne, rendered intelligible if its
necessary features are located in concreteness and abstraction. But this supposition, we now wish to
argue, raises some difficult problems for Hartshorne, specifically with regard to the task of rendering
becoming intelligible.


17

The Problem of Causation
Hartshorne agrees with those philosophers who argue that the Humean conception of causality is
inadequate. As Ushenko, Weissman, Harre and Madden, as well as numerous others have argued, the
Humean conception of causality as simply expressing the de facto sequential uniformity of our
experience undermines the rationality of science, the common sense view of the world, and with it, the
ordinary language which is used to refer to the causative features of the world (to name just three of its
numerous problematic points). The concept of power to cause cannot, therefore, be reduced to a
mere promissory note or phenomenological if-then statement without severe undesirable
philosophical repercussions. While Hartshorne agrees with this critique, it is not clear to me how his own
theory of causation constitutes any significant improvement over Humes account. Indeed, it seems his
theory of causation is burdened with difficulties similar to, and at least as difficult as, those facing the
Humeans.

As we have seen, Hartshorne believes that his asymmetrical view of concrete relationality, his view that
present experience is constituted by a prehension of a past multiplicity, is sufficient to overcome Humes
deficiencies. He holds that causality is crystalized freedom, and freedom is causality in the making. It
is, in other words, the objectified (crystalized) nature of previously accomplished actualities itself
which, by offering itself as data for subsequent prehensions, is causation. When the free creativity of
an occasion has been exercised, when its aesthetic aim has been satisfied, its very objectivity, its
publicity, its availability as material for subsequent experiences of creative synthesis, constitutes its
causation influence on subsequent occasions according to Hartshorne (and Whitehead).

But, we must now ask, does this view of causation really explain anything? Does it render causation any
more intelligible than it was on Humes account? It does not. Once the entity has been actualized, it is
lifeless (crystalized, objectified, perished): before the actual entity is actualized, however, it is
nothing but an abstract possibility, according to Hartshorne. But abstract possibilities are wholly
dependent upon the concrete realities, and thus have no independent reality of their own. They cannot,
then, decide on (viz., cause) what is and is not to be actualized from among the possible
alternatives.

The obvious question is, how does the crystalized (viz., perished) feeling of the past creative occasion
influentially pass over to the as yet non-existent feeler of the past? How does the as yet non-actual
feeler feel (viz., prehend) the now lifeless feeling? And how does this lifeless feeling cause the
possibility of a given occasion to actualize as that occasion? In short, how does one account for the
process of becoming in which reality moves from possibility to actuality? This is precisely the problem of
causation. Hartshorne gives what seems to be an explanation:

To explain how something influences an experience, we have only to explain how this something
comes to be an object of content of the experience. The answer is simple: the objects come to be
experienced just by being there, by being actual and by having a character suitable for objects of
a given suitability of actuality, and that is all there is to it. No mechanism is required for
experience to be enabled to lay hold of its appropriate objectsIt simply is the experience of
those objects, by virtue of their natures and its nature, and nothing else whatsoever.

Now there are, I think, a great many paradoxes involved in this passagesuch as where are the actual
perished entities before they are experienced, and where is the experience, or what does it consist of,
18

which enables an actual occasion, before it is actual, to take advantage of the past actualities. How, in
other words, does it lie in the nature of a perished past object and non-existent present subject to
have the former influence the latter?

But the central point to be presently noted in this passage is that this explanation is not really an
explanation at all. According to Hartshorne, it simply lies in the nature of things that past perished
experiences can influence future (but presently only possible) arising experiences. Thus, no
mechanism is required. But surely this is to beg the whole issue. Hartshornes appeal to the nature of
experience as an explanation of the causal efficacy of the experienced past on the experiencing
present seems to be little more than this: a repetition of the problem which needs explaining.

The Need For The Ontological Category of Disposition
Hartshornes inability to render causation intelligible is the result of his restriction of the metaphysical
categories of reality to concreteness and abstraction. Given this supposition, there is no way to account
for how concrete reality intelligibly flows from abstract possibility. First, there is possibility: Then there is
actuality. And no further mechanism is needed.

With such contemporary philosophers as Harre, Madden, Weissman, and Ushenko, it is our argument
that without a concept which explications how actuality is disposed to arise from here possibility, no
intelligible rendition of causation is possible. What Hartshorne (and Hume) lacked, in other words, was
an ontological concept of disposition or power.

What is common to this dynamic tradition is precisely what Hume and Hartshorne lack: namely, the
above mentioned insight that possibility and actuality are not in themselves sufficient to exhaustively
account for reality. What is common to this tradition is the insight that we must postulate the
ontological reality of abiding power which are neither merely abstract possibilities, nor yet concrete
actualities, but which ground both, if becoming reality is to be rendered metaphysically intelligible.

As Harre and Madden have argued, to account for the becomingness of reality we must postulate an
ontological tie that binds sequential events together but which is not [itself] event-like. We must,
with Process thought, postulate creativity, but we must do so not as a mere abstraction, nor as concrete,
nor yet as a wholly indeterminate Creator (Neville). It must, rather, be postulated as a mediating force
which is particular and determinate-tending (disposed to, inclined to) without being actual, yet
deficiently determinate (non-actual) without thereby being merely abstract potential. As such, it is what
creatively moves being from possibility to actuality, from abstractness to concreteness. It is the
ontological tie that binds.

Dispositions and the Principle of Sufficient Reason
The first thing to be said about the reality of dispositions is that they are, most essentially, the necessary
and sufficient ground for all causation. Whether or not they must be conceived of deterministicallyas
necessitating all they explainshall be dealt with shortly. But presently it will suffice to simply note that
they are postulated as distinct and abiding realities to account for the power an entity has to interact
with other entities in predictable manners. They are the sufficient reason for every movement from
possibility to actuality.

19

Hartshorne, of course, rejects the supposition that any given instance of concreteness has an exhaustive
sufficient reason, which is why his view of causation is so problematic. What is new in each occasion, its
exemplification of creativity, is literally there ex nihilo.

Incorporeality of Dispositions
Dispositions are dynamic realities which are known only in terms of their actual effects. Not being
concrete (viz., actual), dispositions cannot be seen, tasted, touched or smelled. They are quite as
intangible a kind of entity as are, say, social relations. Our inability to picture the reality of
dispositions has been one of the chief grounds upon which individuals have rejected them. Our inability
to picture the reality of dispositions has been one of the chief grounds upon which individuals have
rejected them. Hume was quite correct in arguing that no one literally sees something called
causation or a power to cause. And if one limits their ontology to what is directly and distinctly
observable, then, indeed, the reality of dispositions must be denied.

But there is no metaphysically or scientifically justifiable grounds for supposing that solid material
objects must be the determiner of all our concepts about reality. Indeed, the entire enterprise of
quantum mechanics today tells against such a supposition. Below (and above) the
phenomenological level, reality becomes increasingly unpicturable. Dispositions, then, are not given in
direct sensory perception, but are rather postulated to account for the intelligible structure of all
sensory perception. In this sense, they are transcendental.

The Multifarious Levels of Dispositions
As Madden and Harre argue, we must conceive of different levels of dispositions or fields of potentiality.
We must first conceive of different levels of dispositions or fields of potentiality. We must first
distinguish between definitional dispositions and constitutive dispositions. A definitional
disposition may be thought of as that power, or cluster of powers, which defines an entitys
essencethat without which an entity would not be the entity that it is. This concept specifies what
an entity has to do in relation to other entities to be what it is. These must be invariant throughout the
career of the entity.

A constitutive disposition, in contrast, is a power which an entity may or may not possess and yet be
the essential entity that it is. A person may lose their power to speak, but they would nevertheless
continue to be a human being. But if they were to somehow have their genetic structure altered, and
thereby lose not only their speech, but all power to interact socially, they would not, or most accounts,
yet be considered human.

Dispositions, though they lack the determinateness of actuality, are, as we have said, nevertheless
specific or particular. This alone is what renders them relatively predictable and renders causation
intelligible. It is precisely the abstractness and indeterminateness of creativity within the Process
framework which hinders it from being metaphysically useful in this area. Rather, creativity must be
ontological real, and must be disposed toward being actualized in certain relatively determinate ways.

The Abiding Reality of Dispositions
The fourth characteristic of dispositions which shall be important to us in what follows is that
dispositions can be exercised over and over again, or not exercised at all. Definitional dispositions
must invariantly constitute and characterize an entity throughout its career, while constitutive
20

dispositions may come and go. The reality which abides throughout the career of an entity is dynamic,
not static. It is, ultimately, simply the particular way creativity is disposed toward actuality in such and
such circumstances. This is a things essence.

The Creative Spontaneity of Dispositions
A final and perhaps most controversial characteristic of the concept of disposition which I shall be
arguing for, against Hartshorne, is that they are spontaneously creative. In my view, we may understand
them as supplying the sufficient reason for any given event occurring without thereby necessitating, in
exact detail, just that event. Leibniz and Edwards, as well as most of the scientific field, have denied this
about dispositions or fields of potentiality. For Liebniz, the non-material, non-spatial monad had the
entire career of its actualization preprogrammed into it. The entire course of history, then, was simply
the working out of the preestablished harmony of the countless number of monads which constituted
it. So with Edwards, the dynamic disposition which relationally defined a being was created and
exhaustively predetermined by God.

Hartshorne, in contrast, argues that autonomy implies some degree of spontaneity of self-creativity,
and with this we are inclined to agree. Hartshorne, however, assumes that a reality which would supply
the sufficient reason for the becoming of an entity would, at the same time, destroy the entitys
spontaneity, and hence its autonomy. The character or disposition of an entity cannot, then, be the
sufficient reason for the actual entitys freely becoming the entity it in fact becomes. Rather, it is the
becoming of the entity which is the sufficient reason for the abstract character which the personal
ordered series the entity is a constituent of exemplifies. Character is nothing more than the balance
of past acts. It is merely a quality of a persons past actions. What is more, because each momentary
occasion must be free, there can be no abiding ontological reality which endures throughout the career
of a personal ordered series and which supplies the sufficient reason for its being what it is. As we have
seen, all continuity, all personal identity, is abstract.

I believe this to be fundamentally misconstrued. This misunderstanding of the self not only undermines
our experienced sense of continuity through time; the rejection of the principle of sufficient reason to
save freedom renders freedom, by definition, arbitrary and unintelligible. If an act is free only to the
extent that no reason or cause can be given for it, then it seems that an act is free only to the extent that
it is capricious, unintelligible, and morally irrelevant.

Dispositions as Aesthetic Subjective Aims
Is there an alternative way of rendering indeterministic freedom, a way which avoids these difficulties,
and is not incompatible with a theistic perspective? I believe the concept of disposition furnishes us with
such an alternative. As Madden and Harre have argued, dispositions need not be absolutely
determinative to function as the sufficient reason for the actions they generate. How is this to be
understood?

A beginning point is the recognition that the mechanistic (and hence deterministic) models of
dispositions which tend to be most useful in science need not be considered ultimate. Their utility, and
thus relative validity, can be affirmed, but the very recognition that we are talking metaphorically about
an unpicturable reality suggests that no one model need be taken as exhaustively definitive for
disclosing the nature of this reality. The legitimacy of models must be contextually determined.

21

Thus, if we can locate other areas of life in which the mechanistic model is not the most helpful in
disclosing the nature of dispositions as manifested in this area of life, we may, and indeed must,
compliment the mechanistic model with another.

It is the insight of Whitehead and Hartshorne that there is an aesthetic dimension to all experience
which, I believe, can furnish us with another very fruitful model of dispositions. If beauty is indeed a
priori, and if becoming is, therefore, essentially a becoming towards aesthetic satisfaction, then it is
reasonable to construct a model of dispositions which reflects this dimension of reality. I believe that the
Process concept of a subjective aim towards aesthetic satisfaction furnishes us with just such a model.

How can the spontaneity of dispositions be rendered intelligible via the model of an aesthetic subjective
aim? Turning our attention to the nature of aesthetic work itself will furnish us with the answer. This
should not be surprising either, for, if Whitehead and Hartshorne are correct, in artistic work we find
most explicitly what is universally present everywhere: namely, activity driven by an aesthetic
appetition.

Consider, then, the aesthetic drive, the subjective aim, which motivates a painter to paint a painting.
There is an aesthetic experiencean aesthetic satisfactionwhich the artist is question for, and it is,
in an ideal instance, primarily this which motivates her to embark upon her work. This relatively
determinate aim, this directed or disposed creativity, is what supplies the sufficient reason for her
particular work. When the work is completed, every aspect of the work can be hypothetically rendered
intelligible by reference to this aim which inspired it.

But if one now were to ask her whether or not some details of the painting could have been slightly
altered in certain ways and yet still have expressed the aesthetic aim she was seeking to fulfill, and if one
were to inquire whether or not a slightly different painting might have arrived at the same intensity of
aesthetic satisfaction, the answer, it seems, would be yes. There was, within parameters set by the
subjective aim, more than one way the aim could have been satisfied, which is to say that alternative
paintings could have had this same aim as their sufficient reason. The disposition of creativity which
constituted her subjective aim was relatively determinate, but not deterministic.

In other words, even if we could have known exactly what the subjective aim was prior to its
actualization, we still would not have been able to predict in exact detail what the work which satisfies
this aim would have been like. But it would have been known that any of the possible variables allowed
for by the aesthetic aim (viz., which fall within the parameters defined by the aim) would have had their
sufficient reason in this initial subjective aim. Thus, there is spontaneity, but there is no de facto
unintelligibility.

We can now summarize our argument. With Hartshorne, we agree that the achievement of an aesthetic
aim requires spontaneity. The metaphysical conditions for aesthetic creativity and for autonomous
individualitynamely, that there is spontaneityare two sides of the same coin. And, for there to be
genuine creative spontaneity, genuine freedom (not just apparent freedom resulting from an ignorance
of causes), what is spontaneously produced must be futuristically unpredictable in terms of its exact
details. The antecedent conditions which converge upon the subject and collectively constitute this drive
toward aesthetic satisfaction cannot determine in exact detail the outcome of the drive.

22

But, on the other hand, if this unpredictable spontaneity is to be intelligible, if the principle of sufficient
reason is not to be rejected, and if this spontaneity is to be non-capricious, this same spontaneity must
be retroactively intelligible.

The aesthetic model of disposition we are here arguing for seems to accomplish just this. It renders
creative acts futuristically unpredictable but retroactively intelligible. It thereby fulfills Ross requirement
for intelligible spontaneity by circumscribing without determining the act it explains, and it does this
without necessitating either the postulation of an indeterminate world totality (Ross), an indeterminate
Creator (Neville), or an unintelligible self-creation ex nihilo (Hartshorne).

This ontologically grounded dispositional understanding of aesthetic subjective aims sets the parameters
of intelligibility for a future act or event without necessitating the totality of this act or event. It
preserves the openness of the future while articulating the aesthetic dimension of reality just as the
Process concept of an aesthetic subjective aim does. But this reconstructed understanding of disposed
creativity does this while avoiding the many difficulties with causation which plagues the Process
metaphysical schema.

Third A Priori: Experience Occurs (Psychicalism)
Having critically discussed Hartshornes second candidate, we may now turn to this third: namely, the
statement experiences occur. We shall do this by discussing two objections to Hartshornes
psychicalism, considering Hartshornes response to these objections, and then refuting his responses.
And we shall end by again supplementing Hartshornes view of experience with an a priori element
which we deem lacking in his account.

The Superfluity of Universal Subjectivity
The Objection
It seems, one might argue, that experience is not a priori, for we can understand the nature of sub-
human occasions without supposing that they have any sort of subjectivity. Indeed, it seems we can
understand many human occurrences without the use of this category.

What is more, no one (including Hartshorne) holds that such things as plants, rocks, and mountains have
a subjective center. Phenomenological wholes, according to Hartshorne, are mindlessthey have no
distinct subjective centerbut each ultimate constituent of the whole, he argues, is nevertheless mind-
like. We have already called into question the notion of an ultimate constituent or ultimate level of
concreteness. Only on the arbitrary supposition that the smallest constituents of a phenomenological
whole are more real (viz.., alone actual) can psychicalism be maintained. But even beyond this, we
need to ask why we cannot understand the constituents of (say) a rock as being rock-like. We seem to
be unable to understand what it is to be a rock without an appeal to any subjectivity. Why cannot we
understand the rocks constituents in the same fashion?

It seems, therefore, that one may accept the principle of continuity and yet reject psychicalism.
According to this objection, the understanding of matter is to be seen as being analogous to our
unconscious moments, not our conscious experience. The intelligibility of the material world within this
view is seen largely as the intelligibility of an unconscious, subjective structure. Its movement is largely
the movement of unconscious twitches. Matter, in short, is experienced by another, but it is not
itself an experience.
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A Dispositional-Ordinal Interpretation of Autonomy
One final element of our rebuttal of Hartshornes response to the objection that the supposition of
universal subjectivity is superfluous consists in the fact that an account of the relative autonomy, and
hence of the creativity, of individuality can be provided without appealing to universal subjectivity.
There is, it seems, no problem inherent in the notion of a disposition which creatively generates
spontaneous features, but which does not produce an experiential subject.

Could such a disposition be described as an aesthetic subjective aim? Would this view accord with the
insight that reality has a fundamental aesthetic dimension? The answer, I believe, is yes, provided we
keep in mind that we are speaking metaphorically, not literally. An unconscious entity could be
conceived of as constituted by an internal drive to a particular actuality (leaving room for spontaneous
details) which, like all actualities, is what it is by virtue of its relationship with other actualities. Its
defining feature, however, would not be a subjective experience of aesthetic satisfaction, but a
contribution to the aesthetic satisfaction of others. It has an aesthetic role to play within the ordered
matrix of being, but its role is not that of experiencing aesthetic satisfaction: its role is rather to
contribute to the satisfaction of others (viz., conscious being). As with our sleeping twitches, such a
reality is understood by being known, not by the fact that it, like us, knows.

Thus, we may say that what all beings, experiential or non-experiential, have in common is not that they
are experiential centers, but that they are essentially dispositions towards an actualization which is
defined by a generally determinate aesthetic role to play in relation to other actualizations. This role
may, from the perspective of aesthetic experience, be strictly contributive (matter), or both
contributive and receptive (experiencing subjects).

In saying this we are, I believe, essentially agreeing with Ross that what is most fundamental to all being
is not subjectivity, but perspectivity. While we can, I have argued, have some intelligible idea of a reality
which does not exemplify experience (viz., the past, phenomenological wholes, twitches in our sleep), it
is most difficult to see how we could arrive at a coherent idea of what a perspectiveless entity would be.
Whatever is, is related, and, hence, it necessarily is constituted as a perspective on a relation. Thus, to
be is, according to Ross (following Buchler), to be an ordered related convergence of constitutive related
convergences which collectively constitute a unique perspectival center on being, a unique vantage
point, an ordered loci of relations or centered unitariness in a given location.

In this way the relative autonomy of individuals can be articulated without encumbering oneself in the
problematic notion of causation and the arbitrary, non-perspectival view of concreteness in Process
thought. We shall see that this alternation in Hartshornes psychicalism in the direction of a disposition
ordinal theory shall have significant repercussions in our reconstruction of Hartshornes view of God in
Part II.

Experience Entails and Experiencer
We have thus far argued that experience is a restrictive concept, and thus its exemplification or non-
exemplification is contingent creatures is a contingent matter. But a further important criticism must be
raised against Hartshornes view of the nature of experience. Hartshorne, we have seen, argues that
experience is all that is concretely real. There is, therefore, no subject which has an experience.
Rather, concrete experiences have an abstract subject. The abiding ever-identical agent is an
24

abstraction. But this seems, at best, counter-intuitive. Indeed, it is at least questionable whether we
can have any coherent conception of an experience without an experiencer. The very idea of an
experience seems to entail the notion of a relational interplay between an experiential subject and
another. In Hartshornes scheme, however, there is no interplay between an experiencer and what is
experienced, thus producing a distinct experience. Rather, the experience of an object constitutes,
without remainder, the concrete subject experiencing. Nothing or no one feels the feeling of the past.
The novel feeling of the past is all there is.

All of our phenomenological experiences of the world seem to negate this view. It is, we would argue,
only a predefined reductionistic understanding of what is truly real and what is abstract super-
imposed upon our phenomenal experience which could call our ordinary intuition into question.
Hartshorne attempts to explain our experience of reality by abstracting himself out of the datum which
needs explaining. It is, on this score, he, not his opponents, who has committed the fallacy of misplaced
concreteness. And one of the results of this error, we now see, is that his understanding of experience
as subjectless is misconceived.

Fourth A Priori: The Asymmetricality of Relationality (Asymmetrical Relations Occur)
We may now turn to a critical examination of the fourth foundational statement of Hartshornes system:
the statement asymmetrical relations occur. As we have seen, this statement expresses Hartshornes
conviction that concreteness is characterized only by asymmetrical relations, all symmetrical relations
being understood to be abstract. We raise three objections against this position; the first calls into
question Hartshornes logical argument for this position, the second is raised against his view of
concreteness, arguing against Hartshorne that actuality can be symmetrical related, and the third raises
questions about his view of the temporality of concreteness, specifically addressing problems implicit in
his understanding of the way the present contains the past.

Symmetrical Relationality and the Phenomenologically Concrete
Even more important for our purposes than the logical issue just reviewed is the issue of whether or not
Hartshorne is correct in maintaining that an accurate analysis of concreteness as such requires that
only asymmetrical relationality be seen as concrete. As we shall subsequently see, Hartshornes answer
to this question ultimately turns out to be crucial throughout his own construction of the doctrine of
God. We shall see that if Hartshorne is correct in his view of concreteness as necessarily asymmetrically
related, then by metaphysical necessity God cannot be antecedently actual and internally relational. We
shall, however, presently argue that Hartshorne is mistaken is mistaken in this contention.

Symmetrically Related Concreteness
The view that concreteness is necessarily asymmetrically relational is, I believe, inextricably tied up with
the reductionistic view that what is alone concrete is what all entities can ultimately be reduced to. The
view that all things, including God, are ultimately indivisible experiential moments of temporal
processes asymmetrically related to antecedent data is the result of methodologically assuming that
what is really real is to be discovered by reducing all phenomenological entities to their smallest
constituents. This is evident, I believe, by virtue of the fact that at a phenomenological level we clearly
do experience symmetrical relationality. We experience the world and the self as simultaneously given
and mutually defining.

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In Hartshornes view the mutually defining encounter with the other at a phenomenological level is
abstract. As we have seen, there are no concrete symmetrical relations between contemporaries. All
concrete relations are internal (viz., constituent of) the present experiencer, but external to the past
being experienced. Thus, what really goes on in an I-Thou encounter is that one society of actual
occasions synthesizes the other just-past society, and this other society of actual occasions then
synthesizes the now-past society of occasions which had just experienced it. According to Hartshorne,
our conscious awareness is too dull to pick up this moment by moment asymmetrical exchange, and
thus the relation seems to be symmetrical. But in fact this symmetricality represents only the abstract
features of the truly concrete asymmetrical relation.

We have already had occasion to criticize this reductionistic program. Buber essentially agrees with our
former analysis when he argues (pace Hartshorne) that it is the attempt to reduce all symmetrical
relations to asymmetrical relations which, in truth, constitutes the abstraction. Concrete reality, he
argues, is to be found in the present reciprocal relation.

Buber, like Merleau-Ponty, has done us the service of showing the necessity of preserving the
ontological integrity of phenomenological wholes. They cannot be explained away as abstractions except
by a misconstrued process of philosophy which itself wrongly abstracts from them, and defines what is
ultimately real in the light of this abstraction. It is, we again see, Hartshorne, and not the
phenomenologists, who commits the fallacy of misplaced concreteness.

We cannot, however, go all the way with Buber either. His view is essentially as non-perspectival as is
Hartshornes. Because he holds that only the symmetrical I-Thou relation is truly concrete, he seems to
view all asymmetrical relationality as being abstract. The awareness of an I which is over against the
world as an It is, he argues, a relative abstraction. Thus, the asymmetrical relation of the present to
the past or the notion of causality which results from this I-It relation also is an abstraction. In a sense,
Buber, in his own way, falls into the same reductionistic trap as Hartshorne, but in an opposite direction
in that he is searching for what is deepest in our experience.

My contention is that while Hartshorne is correct in holding that relationality or order as such is a priori,
both he and Buber are wrong in supposing that either asymmetrical or symmetrical relationality
fundamentally constitutes this order. The order of our experience includes asymmetrical and
symmetrical aspects. The perspective which constitutes this experience also constitutes what will be
taken as concrete or abstract and what will be taken as symmetrical or asymmetrical.

Can the Present Contain the Past?
A third and final criticism which must be raised concerning Hartshornes view of the relationality of
experience has to do with his notion that the present exhaustively contains the past. As we have seen,
the concrete present is asymmetrically related to the past, for present experiences contain the
experiences of the past, but past experiences are in no way conditioned by this subsequent inclusion in
the present. Past feelings are repeated in the present, but in a creatively new context. But, for
Hartshorne, the past is real in the present, and this is what accounts for the relative stability of the
temporal process. What persists from the past into the present is the past itself.

For Hartshorne nothing is lost in the process of temporality. Temporality is purely enrichment,
additionnot loss or destruction. This is not, of course, to suggest that the past is in every present
26

instance perfectly contained in the present. It is, as we shall see in the following chapters, ultimately
only God who prehends and thus contains the past perfectly. All lower entities only approximate the
divine inclusivity with their constitutive prehensions. But it is nevertheless true that nothing is lost in the
transition from the past to the present according to Hartshorne. The feelings which integrally constitute
the becoming of any present occasions live on forevermore, at least in the infinite memory of God.

One rather obvious difficulty which can be raised against this view, however, is that it would seem to
blur the distinction between the past and present. If the feeling constitutive of the past occasion is
carried over without loss to the feeling constitutive of the present occasion, it becomes unclear as to
where the past ends and the present beings. Indeed, the position seems to imply that the process of
reality is ultimately one single ever-evolving feeling. If no feeling ever perishes, but is simply included
into a more comprehensive feeling, then is not this conclusion unavoidable?

A corollary difficulty is that it seems that the distinction between knower and known breaks down if the
known is incorporated, without remainder, into the known. Hartshorne addresses this difficulty by
recalling Whiteheads distinction between the subjective and objective forms of feeling. A past
occurrence is in itself a subject, but as known it is object. A present occasion therefore feels how the
other [past occasion] felt, but not as the other [occasion] felt. Thus, to cite one of Hartshornes
examples, if we have placed trust in a fallacious hypothesis, God shall contain this truth by knowing that
we have trusted the hypothesis: but God does not in Godself trust the hypothesis. God does not feel our
trust as we feel it.

There are, I believe, at least three problems with this position: two of them are philosophical, one
theological. First, neither Hartshorne nor Whitehead explain how the transition from the subjective form
to the objective form of a feeling is made. How can a feeling endure when its subjective experiential
center is gone (viz., perished)? What accounts for the superjective nature of past experiences or the
vectoral nature of present experiences? How can the dead past be appropriated by the living present?

A second difficulty with Hartshornes distinction between the objective and subjective forms of feeling is
that it does not yet account for his view of temporality as being sheer addition. As both Whitehead and
Hartshorne (at times) admit, the living immediacy of a past occasion is irretrievably lost. But if this
must be granted, how can the present occasion experience in a new mode the same feeling which
constituted a past experience? Even setting aside for the present the first criticism raised above
concerning the mechanism for this prehension, one must indeed wonder how one can subtract
subjectivity from a feeling and yet have the same feeling. I must agree with Peters, Neville, and others
that either Hartshorne must admit that a good deal is lost in the temporal process, or he must revise his
epistemology.

The final criticism which must be raised against Hartshornes view of the presents apprehension of the
past is theological in nature. In Hartshornes scheme, God, like all other occasions, knows and
experiences only the past. Because all concrete relationality is, in his view, asymmetrical, God cannot
experience us as we experience. Nor can God know us in the process of our immediate becoming. All of
Gods experience is of the past; all of Gods actual knowledge is hindsight. And as we have just seen, this
entails ultimately that God cannot know and experience everything. God cannot, at least, know and
experience our subjective experiences in their subjectivity. Indeed, as to the subjective immediacy of our
experiences, we are wholly external to and shut off from God.
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This conception of God runs directly counter to the religious intuition, and indeed the revelational truth,
that God is present to the subjective reality of things, closer to them than they are themselves as their
creative ground. The sense of God as immanent in the very subjective immediacy of every subject and
the revealed truth of God as the ever present Creator who constitutes the essence of all things by Gods
ever creative Word is a datum not to be easily dismissed by any philosophical systemcertainly not one
which understands itself as standing within the Christian tradition.

Fifth A Priori: Creative Synthesis
We shall in Part II see the full significance of the criticisms and revisions we have made thus far in
Hartshornes system, as all of these foundational statements play a significant role in Hartshornes a
priori construction of God. But while each candidate for the status of a priori truth contributes in its own
way to Hartshornes a priori theistic view, none serves a more explicitly central role than does
Hartshornes fifth foundational statement: the statement creative synthesis occurs. Our criticism and
revisions of this statement, then, shall be of great importance when we turn to critique and revise
Hartshornes di-polar theism.

The Problem of an Antecedent Multiplicity
The first difficulty which must be raised in relation to the fifth foundational statement of Hartshornes
system concerns the fact that it requires an antecedent multiplicity of objectified data for its
conceivability. Clearly no present creative synthesis could occur unless there existed an antecedent
multiplicity of objectified data to be synthesized. There are, however, two related difficulties with this
postulate.

First, while Hartshorne makes a good case for the a priori nature of multiplicity as such (a pure unity
being equivalent to nothingness), he nowhere proves that this multiplicity must be antecedent to a
present experience. The closest he comes to making an argument for this position is found in his article
Whiteheads Theory of Prehension, when he writes: The subject prehends not one but many prior
actualities. (Otherwise the world would have temporal but not spatial structure.)

This argument does not succeed in the context of Hartshornes own system, however, for Hartshorne,
unlike Leibniz, holds that each experiential occasion is itself extended. Mental states themselves do have
a spatial structure. And this admittance, it seems, undermines the force of this argument for the
necessity of an antecedent multiplicity.

Secondly, once we have rejected the ontological preference for smallness and hence the notion that
only asymmetrical relationality is concrete, and once we have recognized the truth that the
conceivability of an experience requires the suppositions of an antecedent experiencer as we have done,
we no longer have any reason to maintain the metaphysical necessity that each experience must
temporally follow the object of its experience. If our previous revisions of Hartshornes third and fourth
foundational statements be correct, there are no grounds for insisting that every real experience, or
every concrete relation, must be a synthesis of an antecedent multiplicity of objectified experiences.

There are, of course, perspectives on reality for which this view is true. This may, for example, be an
accurate empirical observation from (say) a neurological perspective about the way creatures
neurologically and physiologically interact with the world. But it is not an a priori metaphysical necessity,
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for there is no reason to maintain that what is true neurologically is truer than what is true
phenomenologically, and phenomenologically, relations can be symmetrical.

What is an a priori metaphysical necessity is that there is an ordered multiplicity. But whether and/or
how this multiplicity exemplifies symmetrical and/or asymmetrical relationality is we contend, a
contingent matter, and thus can only be determined empirically, and from some contingent, limited,
perspective.

Already one significant feature of Hartshornes fifth foundational statement for his a priori construction
of a view of God should be clear. If experience is a metaphysical necessity, and all experience is a
creative synthesis of an antecedent multiplicity of objectified data, then, clearly, God and the world
must be coeternal partners, necessarily existent and necessarily asymmetrically related throughout all
time. The world cannot have a beginning, and cannot be wholly contingent upon a Creator.

Because of the way experienced is defined, the God-world relation lies beyond the accident of Gods
will. While the precise way non-divine reality exists is influenced by the divine will and is contingent,
the fact that there is a contingent non-divine reality is in no way the result of Gods will. It is a
metaphysical, and thus eternal, necessity. The Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo is thus
impossible. So also, then, is the Christian doctrine of God as self-sufficient unto Godself completely
impossible. The supposed a priori structure of rationality, and hence being, requires this.

The Problem of Atomistic Creativity
Arbitrary Reductionism
We have already had occasion to refer critically to Hartshornes reductionistic definition of
concreteness. This criticism may now be expanded in full. We might succinctly phrase our present
objection in Whiteheadian terms by asking why actual entities are more real than the nexus they are
constituents of.

The concrete/abstract distinction must be understood perspectivally. There is no one ultimate level of
concreteness over against which everything else is an abstraction. Concrete and abstract can never
be understood without perspectival qualification in all their contingent applications. The relative
continuity and wholeness of (say) enduring human experiences, then, is (pace Hartshorne) as concrete
as anything we can give meaning to. Phenomenological wholes cannot be reduced to their constituent
parts.

The Ontological Parity of Being and Becoming
Once we have recognized the arbitrariness of reducing actuality to atomistic occasions, we are in a
position to recognize the arbitrariness of regarding becoming as being more fundamental than being,
for this later supposition is a consequence of the first. Once we have admitted the ontological parity of
individual occasions and nexus, we have no good a priori or a posteriori reason for regarding either
being or becoming as being metaphysically fundamental to the other. Both must be prespectivally
defined.

Correlatively, there no longer remains any ground for regarding all becoming as concrete and all being as
abstract. Both being and becoming are capable of being exemplified concretely and abstractly. And, in
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fact, they are capable of being so at the same time in regard to the same subject or event, but from
different perspectives.

As we shall see more fully in our exposition below, an adequate metaphysical account of the structure of
experienced reality requires the acceptance of the ontological parity of being and becoming. The point
made here is that neither becoming nor being is conceivable alone. As we argued earlier in connection
with Hartshornes view of experience, the notion of a subjectless experience, or a subjectless becoming
(pure becoming), is unintelligible. Something must have the experience, and something must become,
and neither is intelligible without the other.

The relatively stable phenomenological wholes are thus not really abstract features of more real
atomistic occasionsunless perhaps one is speaking from the perspective of, and playing the language
game of, a physicist in which case there are different definitions of what stable, concrete, and
abstract etc. mean. From the perspective of ordinary experience, however, they are really (viz.,
concretely) stable wholes. The language of event pluralism, then, is not the ultimate language. There
is no ultimate language: there are only perspectivally relevant languages. The acceptance of the
ontological parity of becoming and being frees us from a number of entanglements of which Process
philosophy has not been able to rid itself. One of these has been the problem of accounting for the
experience of the selfs continuity through time. It is, then, to this problem that we now turn.

The Problem of the Enduring Self
Hartshornes view of all concreteness and creativity as atomistic creates for him a problem of accounting
for the phenomenologically conscious continuity of the human self (and by analogy, sub and super-
human selves) through time. The problem, in a nutshell, is this: if the enduring I of human experience
is simply an abstraction from what twenty or more different selves each second have in common, how
can I experience change? If all I am is an abstractionand, as Hartshorne admits, abstractions are in
themselves unconscioushow can I experience time? How can I distinguish the present from the
past and future if there is no real enduring self which pulls together the past, present, and futurea self
which in some measure actually transcends the perpetual flux of its own momentary experiences?
Indeed, if the extent of my actuality does not go beyond the momentary drops of experience which
arise and perish every fraction of a second, how can I even meaningfully ask the question of time?

Once again we see that it is the Process thinkers, not their opponents, who seem to have committed the
fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Hartshorne abstracts from the ordinary flow of human experience the
many minute alterations which comprise this experience. And these, by an arbitrary move, he labels
actual, while the connectedness of our ordinary experience he labels abstract. But from the
perspective of our ordinary experience and our ordinary ways of speaking, surely it is the atomistic
reduction of our continuous experience to discrete quantum jumps which constitutes the abstraction.
Our actual experience is not that of a choppy fluctuation of a myriad of independent quantum jumps. It
is rather, the experience of a relatively enduring self in interaction with a relatively enduring world.

But does our rejection of the Process view of the enduring self as abstract necessitate that we fall back
into a form of dualism, separating the self in a Platonic fashion between that which is permanent and
that which is impermanent? Is there an alternative? Is there a view of the soul, of the enduring
experiential self, which is neither concrete nor merely abstract? The question is, I believe, closely related
to our earlier raised questions concerning the possibility of conceiving of the essence of determinate
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entities in such a way that real becoming is neither denied nor placed over real being; of conceiving of
the essence of determinate entities in such a way that the continuity of the past and present is retained
without making the present part of the same feeling as the past; and of conceiving of the essence of
determinate entities in such a way that God can be said to constitute the essence of the entity, without
destroying the entitys relative autonomy. And our answer shall, in each case, be the same: we shall
argue that our dispositional-perspectival ontology provides the categories needed to accomplish this
task.

If we accept the ontological parity of being and becoming, then, we shall argue, we can, with
metaphysical justification, view God as God has traditionally been viewed within the Christian Church, as
being the fullness of being and becoming within Gods own social triunity ad intra. As shall be argued in
detail throughout Part II, the way is now open for a view of God in which Gods being consists in Gods
becoming: and this in such a way that God does not need the world. Its existence, and its salvation, are
matters of grace, not necessity.

Creativity as Causa Sui
The Paradox of Subjectless Becoming
A third criticism which must be raised against Hartshornes understanding of creativity concerns his
notion that every actual occasion is causa sui. The problem involved in this concept can be succinctly
state as follows: what or who prehends the past data as a creative synthesis? It cannot be the past
actualities, for they are the data which are prehended, and, as we have seen, no experience can have
itself as its own datum. What is more, they are not objectified, meaning that they are no longer
experiences, and thus cannot, by definition, be subjects now prehending.

But neither can any present actuality perform the prehension, for actuality, on Hartshornes and
Whiteheads scheme, is precisely what results from the prehension. There is, then, no real subject
antecedent to the prehensive occasion which may create itself via its prehension. So, the obvious
question is who or what does the prehending? If Hartshornes present self was not yet real, who or
what was the I which acted to bring the present self about? If the present self was not the cause
of the act, who acted? The past self? No. It is merely the objectified data which is creatively synthesized
to form the present self. But then who or what does the synthesizing? The possible future self? No.
Possibilities cannot themselves decide (select) their own actualization. But there seems to be no
alternative within the categories of Hartshornes system.

Free Creativity
We have thus far seen that Hartshornes asymmetrical, reductionistic, and self-begetting understanding
of creativity has raised insurmountable problems for his system in regard to the possibility of rendering
the dynamic and stable nature of experienced reality intelligible. We shall now see that it raised
difficulties in rendering human freedom intelligible as well.

Freedom and Capriciousness
Because the creative synthesis which constitutes every actual occasion must be free, which for
Hartshorne means that it must transcend the antecedent causal conditions from which it arises, the
concrescing occasion must be, to some extent, uncaused. Causation and freedom are strictly antithetical
terms for Hartshorne. But rational explanation, according to Hartshorne, always operates by tracing
causes. Thus, to the extent that an occasion has created itself freely, it has, by logical necessity,
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created itself capriciously. Freedom and capriciousness, in other words, are pretty much
synonymous in Hartshornes metaphysical system. This point is not simply an inferred feature of
Hartshornes system; he explicitly states that freedom is synonymous with capricious spontaneity. A
present occasion is on his view, free only because [n]o reason can be given from which[it] can be
deduced.

There are, I believe, at least three fundamental problems with this view, each which greatly affects our
understanding of Gods sociality. The first is that this view entails the rejection of the principle of
sufficient reason as a universal principle. The second is that it runs counter to our ordinary experience of
freedom, and thus our ordinary use of the word freedom. And the third is that this view cannot
account for moral responsibility. We shall address these problems in their respective order.

A Dispositional Account of Moral Freedom
We have thus far criticized Hartshornes atomistic, self-determining, and capricious view of creativity,
arguing rather that his understanding entails a rejection of the principle of sufficient reason, that is does
not square with our ordinary sense of freedom, and that it cannot account for the experience of a moral
dimension of our experience. However, it is not self-evident that our own dispositional view of the self,
and thus of freedom, constitutes any improvement in accounting for this last aspect of our experienced
freedom. While we have, we think, rendered an open future intelligible with our concept of intelligible
spontaneity, it is not yet clear how this openness itself explains the moral dimension of our experience
of freedom.

We must, therefore, presently inquire into the question of whether or not our dispositional view of the
self can render moral responsibility intelligible. This crucial problem is admittedly exceedingly difficult,
whatever position one espouses. But I believe that an aesthetic ontologically abiding dispositional view
of the self accomplishes the most in the directly of rendering the moral dimension of freedom intelligible
with the least severe difficulties. We shall argue that it, at the very least, is an improvement over
Hartshornes view.

Pannenberg On Moral Responsibility
Because of the relative similarities of our dispositional view of the self and Pannenbergs eschatological
view of the selfs essence, it shall prove fruitful to work towards a solution to this problem with the aid
of his reflections on this subject.

Pannenberg argues that the dilemma of locating a moral dimension in the selfs ability to choose
between alternatives is utterly unsolvable. We disagree with his contention that the notion of a liberum
arbitrium is merely an erroneously construed abstraction from the concrete human situation, since we
hold, with Hartshorne, that individual realities are characterized by some degree of genuine spontaneity:
dispositions are only generally determinative. Nevertheless, we agree with Pannenberg that this
spontaneity, this intelligible contingency, does not in and of itself constitute what we normally call
freedom. Nor can it alone account for free moral responsibility. What is more, as Pannenberg points
out, this spontaneity is not at all what the New Testament calls freedom.

The key to understanding the nature of moral responsibility, according to Pannenberg, is to realize that
responsibility is not based on being the author or originator of an act. The common suppositions that
an agent is responsible for an act only because he or she caused the act is, he believes, a mistaken
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notion. That an individual produced a certain act is, in his view, actually morally irrelevant: it can, for
example, be used to excuse the actor as well as to blame her or him.

Rather, Pannenberg argues that responsibility has to do with the essential identity of an agent. Moral
responsibility does not arise because of a heteronomous imperative which is imposed on an agent from
withoutan authority which the individual either acts in accord with or violates, thus determining the
rightness or wrongness of a particular act. Rather, responsibility has to do with the moral demand
which is constitutive of an individuals essential identity, an immanent imperative which requires that
they acknowledge their behavior as their own.

It is the eschatologically defined essence of individuals which provides the ought of their existence. It
is this which grounds the moral dimension of our experience. It is at the point of this teleologically
defined reality that the classical Humean gap between is and ought is overcome. In this light it may
be said that freedom is the ability of a person to accept this eschatological destiny.

This position is precisely what is required by a dispositional view of the human self. With Pannenberg,
we define the soul of humans in their disposition towards a future actualizationas their essential
creative telos, their subjective aim. We differ from Pannenberg, however, in that we locate the
ontological ground of this drive in an antecedent ontological reality, whereas Pannenberg locates it in
the future. One might say that in our view an antecedent reality pushes whereas in Pannenbergs
thought the future pulls. It is principally our understanding of the antecedent fullness of Gods being,
to be discussed in Part II, as well as the paradoxes involved in Pannenbergs own eschatological
ontology, which dictates our difference from him. But in any case, the views come to essentially the
same thing with regard to the issue of rendering the moral dimension of human experience intelligible.
The ought arises from the is of human futurity as experience in the present.

The Dispositional Essence of Humanity and Sin
The equation of freedom with capriciousness in Hartshornes philosophy not only prevents him from
rendering our normal experience of freedom and our experience of moral responsibility intelligible: it
also entails that his view of sin is radically counter intuitive as well as counter-Christian. The root of evil,
according to Hartshorne, is identical to the root of all good; namely, creative freedom. The spontaneity
which allows for each occasion to be self-creative also necessitates that there is always the possibility
(indeed, the inevitability) that the aims of diverse occasions will collide with each other. Thus, [r]isk
and opportunity go together. That a possibility of collision was in fact actualized, however, is the result
of no single persons (or occasions) mal intent. They are not intended by anyone. Rather evil and
suffering are the result of misfortune, bad luck. Given the inherent freedom of all occasions, there will
always be some chance escape from order: from such misfortune is the evil in the world produced.

Pannenberg discusses the nature of sin in a manner which does justice to the human experience of
moral evil as well as the Christian view of sin. He locates the nature of sin in the human proclivity to turn
away from our above described divinely ordained eschatological essence. The eschatological
constitution of humanitys essence means that humans are constituted as a drive towards self-
transcendence. Indeed, this is principally what constitutes our being made in the image of God,
according to Pannenberg. The lure of the future which defines our essential self constitutes us as self-
conscious, self-transcendent, and hence exocentric beings who can and must objectify themselves. We
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have the possibility, and the essential calling, to step outside of ourselves and orientate ourselves to
what is fundamentally other than ourselves.

But humans also share with all other humans the need to be centered, to preserve their lives over
against all threats to their distinct existences: in short, to be egocentric. This means, then, that humans
are constituted as a tension between their necessary egocentric concerns and their self-transcendent
eschatological essence. And it is in this tension that the possibility of sin arises. Sin, then, is a conflict of
human beings with themselves and their own destiny. It is, as Kierkegaard says, the despairing attempt
of the self to ground itself in itself rather than in the divine power which constitutes it. Or as Augustine
says, the sinful person is, most fundamentally, homo incurvatus in se.

It is Pannenbergs category of eschatological essence which allows him to account for sin in a way that
is not equivalent to misfortune. It is because of this abiding essence, this self-transcendent aspect of
human beings, that sin can be intelligibly portrayed as a fundamental failure to exist as authentically
human. In contrast to Hartshornes thought, there is a soul to human persons which abides amidst
their ever-changing lives, and it is this soul which constitutes the ought of their existence.

Though our concept of disposition differs from Pannenbergs concept of eschatological essence in ways
specified earlier, it nevertheless accomplishes the same end as applied to this issue. It renders
intelligible a sufficient reason for the moral dimension of human experience: something a system which
restricts itself to the categories of concreteness and abstraction cannot do. There is, in our view, a reality
which is, and which is the ought of human existence. This reality is neither identical with the strict
actuality of the human subjectfor this changes continually as Hartshorne rightly notes: nor is it
identical with mere possibilitiesfor these are contingent upon the actuality of the subject, and as such,
cannot be normative over the subject. It is, rather, the dispositional essence of the human subject, the
ontologically real and abiding aesthetic subjective aim which most essentially defines their existence.

In light [of Pannenbergs view], the fall is viewed as a mythological expression of this proclivity to
violate our own true self-identity. The ideal humanity was never present in the past: it rather is yet in
the future as our true identity. We are, in this sense, fallen from the future.

There is much to commend in this view. It is, in our estimation, certainly superior to what the categories
of Process thought allow. It does not attempt to exhaustively explain the mystery of our fallen
condition, but at the very least, it puts this condition in a perspective which accords with our own
experience and with the Christian proclamation (which a chance view cannot do).

We are, however, not convinced that this is the only, or even the best, possible avenue available for
making the mystery of the fall reasonably coherent. While our own dispositional view of the essence of
humanity can utilize much of what Pannenberg has here offered, we shall subsequently argue that a
view of dispositions which postulates their antecedent reality can understand the fall in realist-historical
terms, and do so with as much, or more, explanatory force as Pannenbergs thesis has. Our
understanding of the multifarious levels of dispositions shall allow us to contrast to Hartshornes system,
to make sense of the ontological solidarity of humanity in Adam and in Christ, a dispositional
solidarity which conditions every individual human, and a solidarity which, we feel, is presupposed in the
Bible (V.iv.5.4, VI.vii.5.4). And our understanding of dispositions as relatively open, as embodying
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genuine spontaneity, shall subsequently allow us to make sense of the counterfactual element implicit in
the concept of a fall, something Pannenberg (and Royce) have difficulty doing.

Sixth A Priori: Aesthetic Value
Divergent Multiplicity and Subjective Intensity
We have seen that both Whitehead and Hartshorne held that the intensity of an aesthetic experience is
contingent upon the variety and divergency of the multiplicity being synthesized in that experience. The
intensity of an aesthetic experience (viz., any experience whatsoever) depends upon contrast, the
amount of diversity integrated into an experience. God, we shall see, is, in Process thought, essentially
defined each moment as an unsurpassably intense aesthetic experience, for the experience of the
supreme actual occasion synthesizes the whole of the diversified just-past world.

If this equation of intensity and multiplicity is correct, then there is no possibility of defending a view of
God as self-sufficient within Godself. This equation logically necessitates the view that God plus the
world is greater than God without the world. Indeed, it requires the view that God without the world is
meaningless. God needs the world for a multiplicity of data to synthesize to constitute Gods supreme
aesthetic experience. And since being is essentially aesthetic in nature, Gods aesthetic dependency on
the non-divine world entails Gods ontological dependency on the world.

Gods divine experience is, in this view, unsurpassable by any present competing occasion, but it shall
be forever surpassed by Godself in each new moment as God synthesizes the world anew. For this new
world encompassing creative synthesis will now be synthesized with the accumulated value of all past
syntheses, so the total diversity will be greater, and thus the total synthesis with its resultant aesthetic
intensity will be greater. The intensity of Gods experience there grows eternally. There is, by definition,
no coherent maximal instance of aesthetic experience in Hartshornes (or Whiteheads) system.

But is it true that aesthetic intensity is necessarily contingent upon a diverse multiplicity? It is perhaps
true as a general rule that a more comprehensive and complex multiplicity in unity evokes a more
intense aesthetic feeling than does a simple and nearly self-identical multiplicity. But does it follow from
this that this is the principal and necessary ingredient in any aesthetic experience?

Our aim here, rather, is to simply call into question the Process claim that aesthetic intensity is
necessarily and directly connected with the scope and complexity of relations, and the claim that this is
an a priori truth, the denial of which results in nonsense. Our claim, in contrast, is that this definition is
at best a generally accurate empirical descriptive generalization of how humans experience beauty (and
even this is debatable). But it certainly is not a priori.

A second question needs to be raised. Even if it be granted that the intensity of an experience is
generally connected with the scope and diversity of an experience, does it follow from this that the
possibility for increasing the intensity of an experience is endless? Because the possibilities for finite
combinations is infinite, does it follow that [a]n absolute maximum of beauty is a meaningless idea,
meaning by beauty here the experience of beauty? It seems to me that it does not.

While there is, admittedly, no conceivable upper limit to the possible variety of being (for all possible
finite complexities are incompossible), there is, it seems, a conceivable upper limit to the intensity
with which any degree of aesthetic complexity can be enjoyed. There is, I contend, a conceivable acme
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of aesthetic experience. Indeed, the denial of this is what seems inconceivable. We are, in other words,
arguing that the mathematical infinitude of finite possibilities does not necessarily correspond to an
endless possibility of increasing aesthetic intensity.

We never experience an absolute infinity of finite complexity, but we can, it seems, at times
experience an acme of aesthetic enjoyment. In right moments one can have what might be called a
peak experience, a delectatious momentary experience in which ones enjoyment and appreciation of
an aesthetic expression or object of nature reaches a zenith. One enjoys (say) a symphony as it
progresses each moment, but it may happen that after a certain point it cannot be said that ones
enjoyment increases with each progressing moment. A pinnacle is reached and (perhaps) retained and
re-expressed with each progressing moment. Indeed, in the midst of such absorbing experiences,
increasing the intensity of the experience may, if the experience is sufficiently intense, be inconceivable
to the individual. However much the richness and harmonic complexity of the symphony may increase
after ones acme of aesthetic satisfaction has been attained, the enjoyment of the symphony does not,
and cannot, increase.

One might go farther and argue that if the concept of a supreme (unsurpassable) enjoyment of beauty,
like the concepts of supreme goodness, wisdom, love, etc., is intelligible by analogy with our own limited
(non-supreme) exemplification of these attributes, then the concept of an eternally increasing
intensity must be unintelligible. As Hartshorne admits, we have no way of rendering intelligible a
concept of supreme goodness, wisdom or love which is at once supreme and yet forever increasing. His
theistic arguments shall attempt to show that if these supreme attributes are conceivable, they must be
instantiated in a necessary being, God. But once the logical necessity of correlating aesthetic intensity
with scope and complexity is denied, it seems that the same must be said about supreme aesthetic
enjoyment.

Subjective Intensity and Objective Aesthetic Expression
We will do well to immediately forestall an obvious objection from a theistic perspective to our
argument, an argument which is frequently employed by Process theologians in support of their
position. This will not only remove one obstacle from our subsequent reconstruction of Hartshornes
doctrine of God, but will further lay the groundwork for this reconstruction by articulating the
relationship which we perceive to exist between this supposed unsurpassable divine instance of
aesthetic enjoyment and the infinite compossibilities of finite relations.

The objection is this: it seems that if God is eternally characterized within Godself as an unsurpassable
instance of aesthetic enjoyment, then the infinite compossibility of finite relations can mean nothing to
God. It seems that if God can be neither increased nor diminished by what we do, then our action,
like our suffering, must be in the strictest sense wholly indifferent to him. It seems that if we do not
increase Gods enjoyment, then all talk about serving God is meaningless and our existence is idle. In
short, it may seem that either our existences increase the value of Gods experience, or our existences
are of no value to God.

In response, I believe a distinction can be made between the subjective intensity of an aesthetic
experience and its objective expression. To attempt to make this distinction clear, we might return to
our earlier example of listening to a symphony. Though the intensity of ones enjoyment of a symphony
does not increase once the acme of his or her possible aesthetic satisfaction has been attained, this does
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not render the remainder of the symphony unimportant. Rather, each changing harmonic progression
continues to be enjoyed because of the continuance of novel variations it expresses. The aesthetic
satisfaction of the listener under ideal conditions is constant (assuming that the acme has been attained
and is sustained), but the occasion for its expression and enjoyment is changingand indeed can,
hypothetically, have an infinite variety of forms.

Perhaps an analogy which is more helpful in picturing the relationship between aesthetic satisfaction
and aesthetic expression in God is that of an ideal artist. We may conceive of a factitious ideal artist
who always accomplishes works of art so perfect that her aesthetic satisfaction in response to them is
always unsurpassably intense. But this perfection, it seems, would in no way imply that all of her works
after her first in which her zenith of aesthetic satisfaction was first attained had to be unimportant to
her. They would be important, though not as objects to improve her ideal aesthetic satisfaction. Rather,
they are valuable to her as novel expressions of this ideal enjoyment.

Why, one might ask, would such an artist want to arrive at a new expression of her aesthetic enjoyment
if it was already ideal (assuming that this ideal artist would naturally sustain this ideal intensity without
further works to produce it)? Would not her first ideal work suffice? Does not the production of new
works signify that she is aiming at more intense satisfaction? And by analogy, does not the creation of
the non-divine world signify that the divine artist is aiming at a more intense satisfaction? Why would
God create the world if God had already (eternally) attained an unsurpassable aesthetic satisfaction
within Godself?

This answer is, I believe, implicit in Hartshorne and Whiteheads own views of beauty: the spontaneous
expression of an aesthetic intensity is an end in itself. It needs no further justification. Fundamental to
Process thoughtand many other aesthetic theories as wellis the conviction that beauty is the one
aim which by its nature is self-justifying. Indeed, as Kant, von Schiller, Valery and many others have
recognized, aesthetic satisfaction is distinctly aesthetic precisely because it is wholly non-utilitarian: it is
purposiveness without purpose, spieltrieb, a drive-to-play. If this is so, then it would seem that the
on-going expression of an ideal aesthetic intensity would need no further purpose to explain it or justify
it. Our ideal artist would, therefore, enjoy a variety of ways of re-expressing her aesthetic delight, even
though these novel re-expressions could only re-express, and not increase, this delight.

We may state the matter in a different way, this time in the light of our previously articulated
dispositional ontology. Our ideal artist is essentially constituted by the disposition to produce and enjoy
with an unsurpassable intensity artistic works. But dispositions, we have argued with Hare and Madden,
are not exhausted by their exercise. They are abiding orders of creativity, particularized laws of
actualization, structured proclivities of being in its movement from possibility to actuality, and they
remain (or at least may remain) even after any given instance of their exercising. What is more,
dispositions, aesthetically understood, do not necessitate only one possible outcome. Spontaneity, we
have argued for a number of reasons, is an inherent aspect of things.

This being the case, we can I believe, now understand why our ideal artist would be motivated to re-
express her aesthetic aim and enjoy her aesthetic satisfaction in novel ways, though none of these ways
increases the intensity of her (already unsurpassable) satisfaction. Her essential self is defined (at least
in part) as a creative becoming towards an aesthetic satisfaction, and the reality of this self-defining law
of concrescence abides so long as she exists. Her enduring self-identity, her essence, is thus defined by
37

a futurity of creativity, and her actuality is defined at any given moment (at least in part) by an
unsurpassable intensity of satisfaction resulting from this creativity. Thus, this hypothetical artist cannot
but create, and she cannot but enjoy with maximal intensity her creativity, though the precise way she
creates and enjoys it is in part spontaneously generated.

Her definitional disposition is an end in itself. Correlatively, the creative variety this disposition
generates is an end in itself. And, again correlatively, her unsurpassable enjoyment of what her
dispositional essence creatively produces is an end in itself. It is all beautiful, and is, as such, its own
reason for being. And if Whitehead and Hartshorne are correct about this, we are all something like this
ideal artist in every action we performand so is God.

Summary of Part I
We have completed the first Part of our critical evaluation and reconstruction of Hartshornes a priori
construction of the doctrine of God. In Hartshornes view, the assertion of Gods existence, and the
assertion of the di-polar conception of God, is also a priori and is, therefore, already implicit in the six
foundational statements we have just examined. To modify these foundational statements, then, is
already to modify our view of God.

We have accepted Hartshornes first candidate for an a priori truth; the statement that something
exists. We have also accepted Hartshornes contention that it is necessary that something is concrete
with abstract features though we have supplemented this view with the contention that a) what is
abstract cannot be contained in the concrete, but must be normative over it; b) what is concrete and
abstract must be perspectivally defined in every contingent instance; and c) the categories of
abstractness and concreteness are not themselves sufficient to account for this stability and dynamism
of reality: the category of disposition is needed as well.

We have rejected Hartshornes third candidate for a non-restrictive a priori truth: the statement that
experience occurs. This, we have argued, is superfluous since an ordinal-dispositional concept of
perspectivity can account for the principle of continuity while rendering the autonomy of entities
intelligible. We have also argued that psychicalism is ultimately meaningless. And we have argued that
where experience does occur, it presupposes the conception of an experiencer.

We have argued that while order and relationality are a priori, this need not be characterized at a
fundamental level by either exclusively asymmetrical (Hartshorne) or symmetrical (Buber, Oliver)
relations. In every contingent instantiation of relationality, what is asymmetrical and symmetrical is
contingent and is perspectivally defined. And we have argued that Hartshornes fifth candidate for an a
priori truth, creative synthesis occurs, is erroneously constructed. There is no necessary ground for
there being an eternal antecedent multiplicity to an experience; the reductionistic view of concreteness
it presupposed is arbitrary and creates a number of problems; the conception of creativity as causa sui is
impossible, and creates a number of other insurmountable difficulties; and the view of freedom as
capricious is unintelligible.

And finally, while we have defended Hartshornes view that aesthetic value is a priori, we have argued
that his correlation of aesthetic intensity with synthesized multiplicity is not necessary. One can, rather,
distinguish between the subjective intensity of an experience, and the expression of that experience: the
former admits of an acme point, the latter does not.
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PART II
SIX THEISTIC ARGUMENTS OF HARTSHORNES SYSTEM
CHAPTER IV
The Ontological and Cosmological Arguments:
The Logic of Perfection and Di-Polar Theism

Our goal in Part II shall be to evaluate and reconstruct the conception of God which Hartshorne develops
on an a priori basis via his six theistic arguments. In each of these last chapters we shall do this with
regard to two of Hartshornes six arguments. We will then draw out the most relevant theological
implications of each argument in relation to the foundational statements previously examined, and we
shall compare these implications to the same attributes found in the classical conception of God.

The Ontological Argument
The a priori Nature of the Theistic Question
The question of God is not one among many metaphysical questions, according to Hartshorne. It is,
rather, the sole question. The existence of God is either true or false a priori according to Hartshorne.
It is either a necessary metaphysical truth, or an utter contradiction. Either the very idea of God implies
the existence of God, or the very idea of God implies the non-existence of God.

The Tetralemma of the Ontological Argument
He postulates the tetralemma as follows:

A1: Deity cannot be consistently conceived.
A2: Deity can be consistently conceived, equally whether as existing or as not existing.
A3: Deity can be consistently conceived, but only as non-existent, as an unactualized or
regulative ideal or limiting concept.
T: Deity can be consistently conceived, but only as existent.
2


The Cosmological Argument
Whereas the ontological argument proceeds from the concept of an a priori truth as such, the
cosmological argument proceeds from Hartshornes first and second exemplification of the category of a
priori truths. It operates with the modal structure of the concept of existence, which includes the
truth that something is concrete with abstract features. Its goal is to arrive at the a priori truth that
what exists is partly contingent and partly necessary, and something is divine.

The Formal Argument

A1: Nothing exists.
A2: What exists either (a) has no modal character or (b) is wholly contingent.
A3: What exists is wholly necessary.
A4: What exists is partly contingent and partly necessary, but nothing is divine.
3

T: What exists is partly contingent and partly necessary, and something is divine.


2
Im not including Gregs treatment of A1-A3. Theyre well-known. He concludes T.
3
Im not including Gregs treatment of A1-A4. He concludes T.
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Theological Implications: Gods Di-polarity
We have thus far seen Hartshornes argument that the very idea of God and the very concept of
existence entail the existence of a necessary being. What now needs to be explicated is the more precise
view of the Ones existence which these arguments necessitate. We shall see that they necessitate a
particular understanding of divine perfection which is antithetical to (and in many respects superior to)
the traditional understanding of divine perfection. But we shall go on to see that this Process
understanding contains several significant difficulties of its own.

The Classical Understanding of Perfection
Hartshorne distinguishes his own view of God from what he calls the classical or traditional theism.
The classical position, according to Hartshorne, is most fundamentally characterized by its assumption
that the concept of supreme perfection requires the absolute negation of potentiality. What has
potency is some respect, according to Aquinas for example, is deficient in that respect. Hence,
perfection which cannot be surpassed must be equivalent to the actualization of all possibility. God is,
therefore, actus purus.

As we have already mentioned, there are a number of significant points which logically follow from this
understanding of perfection. Since change, for example, seems to be the result of some deficiency in
the altered actuality (as Aristotle argued), God must be viewed as absolutely unchanging. Since time is
the measurement of change, God must also be non-temporal. And since God must be purely actual,
there can be no distinction between Gods essence and Gods existence: God must be perfectly simple
and hence must have all attributes as identical with one another. As Plantinga points out, Gods
simplicity must then be equivalent to a single predicate.

Difficulties With the Classical Understanding
There are a significant number of problems with this classical understanding as Hartshorne has,
throughout his career, tirelessly pointed out. An exhaustive discussion of this matter would take us too
far astray, but it will be beneficial to presently outline at least five central problems which Hartshorne
and others find in this classical understanding of perfection and which are relevant to our concern.

Incompossibilities
First, the very concept of a perfect actuality which cannot in any state of affairs be altered or in any
sense improved is, in Hartshornes mind, an unintelligible concept. There can, in his view, be no ultimate
sum of all perfections that is actual.

Why? Because, as Leibniz realized, values are incompossible. Red-here-now excludes green-here-
now. Actuality, according to Hartshorne, is always a selection for definiteness from among an
infinitude of indefinite possibilities, as we have already seen. Thus, the actualization-here-now of one
possibility excludesviz., is incompatible withthe actualization of all other possibilities-here-now.

Actuality and finitude, in other words, are necessary corollaries (for precisely the same reason that
finitude and contingency are corollaries). And thus, according to Hartshorne, the notion of an infinite
actuality is incoherent, as is, by necessity, the notion of an actual infinite sum of all possible
perfections. The concept of an ultimate perfection, then, when rendered consistent, requires that there
be potentiality as well as actuality.

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The Reality of Becoming
A second fundamental problem which results from the classical view of perfection of a being whose
actuality cannot be in any sense increased is that it necessarily destroys the contrast between actuality
and possibility, and hence undermines the reality of becoming. If Gods reality includes all possible
actuality, then there is nothing genuinely possible (viz., open, underdetermined) for the future,
according to Hartshorne. Actuality and possibility here become co-extensive.

The Personhood of God
A third difficulty which arises from the supposition that God is actus purus concerns the personhood of
God. As we have already noted, the view of God as actus purus entails that God is absolutely simple.
Gods essence is, in every respect, identical with Gods existence, and hence there is no objective
distinction between any of the properties of God. In God, Gods knowledge is identical with Gods will,
Gods will is identical with Gods love, Gods love is identical with Gods justice, etc. The appearance of a
multiplicity of attributes in God arises only from our inability to comprehend a perfectly simple essence.

The doctrine that God is actus purus, with all that this implies, seems to portray more of Aristotles
unmoved mover than it does the dynamic God witnessed to in Scripture and the living God
experienced by believers. It is a portrait of a beinga propertyfrozen solid in an eternally unchanging
now: an entity for whom time, change, novelty, adventure, etc., can mean nothing. This entity could
never experience these.

What is more, because God, in this view, lacks all potentiality, God must also lack such fundamental
personal traits as deciding, acting remembering, intending, etc., for these are all temporally contingent.
But it is certainly questionable, as Robert Coburn notes, whether anything which necessarily lacked
[these]capacities would, under any conceivable circumstances, count as a person.

Virtuous Mutibility
Fourthy, the classical view of absolute perfection entailed that the absolutely perfect One could not
genuinely be related to the created order. Since God does not change, even in Gods knowledge or
feeling (God is immutable and impassible), Gods relationship to the contingent changing order
cannot itself be contingent and changing. God, therefore, eternally knows and experiences contingent
reality by knowing and experiencing Gods own eternally unchanging self (without thereby destroying
the contingency of what is necessarily known).

Hence, as Aquinas says, a relation of God to creatures is not a reality in God but in the creatures.
God is, in other words, completely independent of the world, even in regard to this Ones experiences
of the world. But, Hartshorne asks, is this sort of independence and immutability really admirable (let
alone intelligible)? Is this really part of what we conceive to be (say) moral perfection?

Hartshorne goes on, then, to give an example of a parent who is independent of his or her daughters
happiness or sadness. This parent is above the contingencies of the child, and indeed, the parents
sate of beinghis or her happiness, thoughts, feelings, etc.are precisely as they would have been had
the child never been born, or had the child gone through radically different experiences. Is there
anyone, Hartshorne asks, who could regard such a parent as ideal? Far from being a moral ideal, is this
independence and immutability not the ideal of a despotic tyrant?

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Moreover, is not Hartshorne correct in showing that our ordinary presuppositions, and therefore our
ordinary word meanings, are directly counter to calling the notion of absolute independence and
unchangeableness good? While it is true that certain characteristics, such as virtuous ethical
commitment, are more admirable the more immutable they are, is it not a detestable characteristic to
be affectively immutable? It seems that unless God is in part conceived of as possessing potentiality, our
conception of God will be less than ideal, and indeed our speech about Gods perfection will lack an
analogical base.

Logical-Type Objection to the Ontological Argument
The fifth and final difficulty with the concept of absolute perfection which is relevant for our discussion
is that the ontological argument cannot work when this conception is employed in it. It falls under what
Hartshorne regards to be the strongest of the classical objections to the ontological argument: the
logical-type objection.

The argument runs as follows,

Existence is on a different logical level, or of a different logical type, from a predicate, being more
concrete, and hence an addition to the mere predicate, not contained in it[a] mere universal or
definable abstraction such as perfection cannot entail an actual individual exemplifying the
universal.

Existence, and the properties which characterize it, are on two different logical levels according to this
argument. An abstract property cannot itself imply the individual instantiation of that property. Defining
what a property is does not itself prove that there is an entity which possesses that property.

The problem, put another way, is that if the property/instance distinction cannot here apply, then the
only real existence the property of supreme perfection necessitates is the existence of the abstract
property itself. But in this case the ontological argument turns into a mere tautology. It simply states
that what is necessary is necessary. But that there is an actual individual instance of the perfection of
necessary existence has no yet been proven.

If the ontological argument is going to work, then, we need a conception of perfection which allows for
the property of perfection to be abstract, but the instantiation of perfection to be concrete and
contingent while being, at the same time but in another sense, necessitated by the concept. The classical
idea of perfection as actus purus clearly does not allow for this.

Once one admits potentiality into God, however, the difficulty disappears as we shall see. According to
Hartshorne, that God is perfect is abstract, necessary and unchanging. But how this perfection is
actualized each moment is concrete, contingent and forever changing.

The Neo-Classical Conception of Perfection
Perfect as Moral Coincidence
The solution to the five difficulties posed by the classical understanding of perfection can be solved,
Hartshorne says, by simply rejecting the unwarranted notion that Gods perfection must exclude
potentiality. In this view, then, God is not infinitely actual. Rather, Gods perfection is that God is
infinitely capable of actuality. Gods perfection is not that He exhaustively actualizes all possible value
42

(this is impossible), but that there is no consistent set of possible values He could not enjoy. Gods
actuality encompasses all actuality: and Gods potentiality encompasses all potentiality. Gods
perfection, in other words, consists in the modal coincidence of all actuality and possibility in Gods own
being.

The Concrete/Abstract Distinction
If Gods possibility are co-extensive with possibility as such, and if, as we have already argued, the
simultaneous actualization of all finite possibilities is logically incoherent, then it seems to follow that
Gods present state of being, what God is now actually, is not the greatest possible state of being.
There is, strictly speaking, no such thing. According to Hartshorne, actual states of beingincluding
Godsare always finite, and hence capable of increase or enrichment. But then, one must ask, in what
sense is God unsurpassably perfect?

It is at this point that the first and second a priori truths of Hartshornes metaphysical system, and the
cosmological argument which arises from them, become most relevant. According to Hartshorne, as we
have seen, it is an a priori truth that something is concrete with abstract features. Absolute non-being
is incoherent, and existence is incoherent except as exhibiting concreteness and abstractness. Being a
priori, this abstract/concrete distinction must find exemplification in God as well. The necessarily
existing Deity which the ontological argument arrives at must be, in some respects, concrete, and in
other respects abstract, which means God must, in some respects, be necessary, and in other respects
contingent.

This, in a nutshell, is the neo-classical understanding of Gods di-polarity. What is abstract is what must
necessarily characterize Gods actuality whatever actual divine state is being exemplified. What is
concrete is the particular way this abstract character is being contingently exemplified at a given
moment. Or again, what is necessary is that God is: what is concrete is how God is.

In light of this, we can understand the sense in which God is and is not unsurpassable, according to
Hartshorne. What the ontological and cosmological arguments attempt to prove is that it is a necessary
ingredient in Gods abstract character that (a) it is always instantiated, and (b) whatever state God is in,
it is unsurpassable by another being or by Godself at that time. The necessity of Gods being, then,
pertains to the abstract fact that God exists, and that God exists without competition. But this is not to
say that God is unsurpassable by Godself in a subsequent state. What God concretely is at any given
moment is a matter of contingency. And because of the incompossibility of all possibilities, this can, and
indeed must be, always surpassed by God in a subsequent state.

Recalling from chapter one that [t]he concrete is the inclusive form of reality, from which the abstract is
an abstracted aspect or constituent, it may be said that Gods abstract pole is Gods necessary and
hence unchanging identity, required by the concrete. Gods abstract pole is the necessary abstract
enduring self-identical identity required by the ever fluctuating divine process. It constitutes the
unchanging self-defining law of Gods eternal infinitude of possibilities required by the concrete
finitude of God. The divine perfection is thus understood as a modal coincidence in that Gods abstract
and concrete characteristics are at any given time unsurpassed, and, in the case of the abstract
characteristics, unsurpassable. Gods actuality is inclusive of all actuality, and Gods possibilities are
inclusive of all possibilities.

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The Advantages of the Neo-Classical Concept of Perfection
We have, in outline form, explicated Hartshornes understanding of divine perfection as arrived at by his
ontological and cosmological arguments which build from the idea of God itself and from the first two of
his six foundational statements. But, we must ask, does this di-polar understanding of perfection avoid
the pitfalls of the classical conception? It seems that on most accounts it does.

First, the neo-classical conception specifies in what respects the perfect be unchangingly perfect, and it
does so in such a way that it avoids the paradoxical attribution of all possible value to one actual being
which plagues the classical conception.

Secondly, because it defines perfection as the coincidence of modality as such, it can specify the way in
which the perfect can be abstractly and eternally perfect and admit the concrete flux of time. Whereas
the classical understanding could not genuinely relate God to time, the neo-classical understanding
makes God the perfection of temporality, the supremely temporal being.

Thirdly, because the neo-classical conception of the necessity of the perfect Individual embodies
contingencyindeed, the contingency of this One is inclusive of all contingencythis Individual is more
readily understood in personal terms than the conception of God as actus purus. The personal attributes
of intentionality, decision, recollection, action, anticipation, etc., are also exemplified, in a superlative
manner, in the concrete existence of this One.

Fourthly, the neo-classical understanding of perfection can adequately specify the manner in which the
perfect One is virtuously immutable, and virtuously mutable. Gods self-defining characteristics (what
God is in all possible circumstances) are necessary, and hence eternal, non-threatened, and unchanging.
Thus Gods love, goodness, adequacy of knowledge and power, etc., are unsurpassable and invariant.

But what God concretely experiences every moment is contingent and thus eternally changing. Thus, the
way God is loving, good, omni-influential, and all knowing, is unsurpassably sensitive to, and thus
affected by, each and every non-divine actuality each moment. Here we have a model of divine
perfection in which goodness and love mean something of what they do in their normal
applications.

A Critical Evaluation And Trinitarian Reconstruction Of Di-Polar Theism
The neo-classical conception of divine perfection has a great deal to comment itself over the classical
tradition. But the philosophical and theological advantages gained by this definition of perfection are not
without a price, however. Neither is the conception of perfection wholly free from difficulties of its own.
In the remainder of this chapter we shall examine what this price tag is, what these difficulties are, and
inquire into the possibility of achieving the advantages of the neo-classical view, but without paying the
high price it exacts as well as avoiding the difficulties it embodies.

Is the World Necessary to God?
What is the price tag to be paid for the advantages of the neo-classical definition of God? As we have
already intimated, it is most fundamentally this: the neo-classical definition of perfection necessitates
that the contingent world be seen as being a necessary co-existent alongside God. The God-world
relationship lies beyond the accident of Gods will. God and the world are equally necessary: one
logically (and thus ontologically) requires the other to be what it is, and both are required by the
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supposed a priori structure of rationality as such. The traditional concepts of God as unsurpassably self-
sufficient within Godself apart from the world and thus the traditional concepts of the creation and
salvation of the world as acts of grace, not necessity, must here be jettisoned.

First, as we have seen, both the ontological and the cosmological arguments require that God have an
abstract and concrete pole. God must conform to the second a priori, and only in this way does the
ontological argument avoid the logical-type objection. But God must also conform to the third a priori
God is concretely an experiencewhich further means, in light of the fourth and fifth foundational
statements, that God must be asymmetrically related to an antecedent multiplicity and must be
concretely constituted as the creative synthesis of this past data.

A second closely related argument for the eternality of the non-divine world is again implicit in the
cosmological argument. This theistic argument, we recall, concluded that what exists is partially
contingent and partially necessary, and something is divine. It did not and could not say and
everything is divine. It is for Hartshorne an a priori truth that the divine and non-divine form a
necessary contrast with one another.

Yet a third reason as to why the neo-classical concept of divine perfection arrived at by the ontological
and cosmological arguments requires the necessity of the non-divine world can be seen in the light of
the sixth foundational statement of Hartshornes system: the a priori truth that aesthetic value is
experienced. If the intensity of aesthetic experience is dependent upon the massiveness of a creative
synthesis, and this creative synthesis is necessary, then God would be forsaking the ground of beauty
itself by neglecting to create a world with a multiplicity of non-divine agents to be appreciated.

The concept of perfection which the ontological and cosmological arguments arrive at, then, entails that
God is not free to refrain from creation. This would be for God to violate Gods own necessary character,
and would violate all of the other a priori truths (as Hartshorne sees them) as well. There must, then, be
a necessary being, and there must be contingency: these truths the first two theistic arguments of
Hartshorne have proven.

But as they are set forth in Hartshornes system, it is also necessary that these truths are not and cannot
be satisfied in God alone. There must also be a non-divine reality. Our task shall be to attempt to
maintain the truth which these two arguments seek to establish but to do so without paying the price
Hartshorne pays to maintain them; without, in other words, maintaining the apparently correlative
supposition that the non-divine world is also necessary, and hence that its existence is not a matter of
grace.

The first step in this direction shall be to consider a philosophic difficulty internal to the neo-classical
conception of perfection. This shall provide the basis for our proposed reconstruction of the view of God
arrived at by Hartshorne via these two arguments.

The Problem of Abstraction in God
We earlier criticized Hartshornes theology of abstraction on the grounds that it cannot account for the
normativity of transcendentals over concrete reality. If, as Hartshorne contends, abstractions are
contained in the concrete, if they have no abiding reality in any sense independent of the concrete,
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then, it was argued, they can be descriptive only. They have no prescriptive (and thus explanatory) value
whatsoever. They are simply the abstract feature which contingent reality happens to exemplify.

But a priori truths, which constitute the highest level of abstraction, cannot be rendered intelligible in
this fashion. They prescribe what reality must be, and thus cannot be contingent upon what contingent
reality happens to be. Hartshorne, we argue, wrongly rejected Whiteheads (inconsistently held) realist
interpretation of the eternal forms.

This problem becomes the most acute when we consider Hartshornes understanding of Gods abstract
character. The problem, in a nutshell, is that there seems to be no way within Hartshornes system for
rendering intelligible the necessity of Gods character. Character, we have already seen, is for
Hartshorne merely the de facto abstract characteristics of the past spontaneity of a nexus of actual
occasions. It is nothing in and of itself.

But then how are we to understand the necessary normativity of Gods abstract character? If [t]he
absolute pole is an abstraction from the contingent, changing, and temporal God, how is it absolute?
Hartshorne attempts to answer this by arguing that Gods character is utterly unique: unlike all
contingent abstract characters, what defines God as God is definable a priori. This is Gods unique
metaphysical status. Thus, whereas contingent beings have a quasi-primordial feature which
generally (but not normatively) characterizes them throughout their life span, only God has an
absolutely fixed and ungenerated general style of self-identical character, an abstract element of strict
invariance individual to him.

The problem with this answer however, is that it does not seem that Hartshorne has construed his
general theory of abstraction in such a way that it can intelligibly account for this metaphysical
uniqueness in God. The abstract character of contingent societies of occasions is intelligible within the
context of his system, but only because this abstract character is contained in the past decisions which
the present society now prehends. The society continues to roughly exemplify the same abstract
character because (viz., contingent upon) its free creative synthesis has this particular past, with such
and such particular features, as its primary antecedent material to now add to. The actual contingent
decisions of the past now place restrictions on the freedom of the present society which in turn
guarantees the continuance of roughly the same abstract characteristics for that personal ordered
series. What is more, the whole process receives at every new moment a new subjective aim from
God which further specifies how the abstract identity of a series will be exemplified at that moment.

Consistent with Hartshornes theory, the abstract character in these instances is nothing in itself: it only
describes the general characteristics of what is real; namely, the past society of free actual occasions. It
is the actual just-past society which grounds the abstract characteristics. And, in these contingent
instances, the abstract characteristics are relatively normative over the present society becausebut
only becausethe actual objectified data and the real divine subjective aim must be prehended by the
present becoming society of actual occasions.

But what allows us in the case of the divine society to conceive of abstractions as yet contained in the
concrete, but not in any sense derivative from or grounded in it? How can the normative character
of God neither be derived from the concrete, nor yet be in any sense autonomous in relation to the
concrete? Hartshorne, it seems, wants to have it both ways.
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Moreover, what grounds these abstract features if it is nothing actual? How can these abstractions be
invariantly normative when they have no reality over and above the contingent occasions they are
supposed to govern? Or to phrase this question in Process categories, who or what lures the concrete
pole of God from moment to moment, and does so with invariant force? Where does the concrete
pole of God get its determinative subjective aim?

Nothing Hartshorne has said about the general nature of the abstract/concrete relationship, nor about
the universal/instance relationship, allows us to conceive of an abstraction ruling over contingent
experiences with invariable authority. How this is so in God is left unanswered. Hartshorne simply
asserts that such must be the case.

The crucial question, however, is again how this law can be a law if it is simply an abstract description
of how a particular set of spontaneous actual occasions in fact prehend each other. The abstract law is
what is illustrated: how can it also then be the cause of the illustration? To be more specific, how can
Gods unsurpassable goodness be invariably and eternally normative over Gods concrete actuality if in
fact this abstract goodness is nothing real in itself over and above the (otherwise) contingent divine
concrete states?

Our argument shall be that without the postulation of a necessary divine actuality, without the
supposition that Gods essential actuality is identical with Gods abstract character, the a priori
necessities which define Gods eternal character are unintelligible. To this argument we now turn.

The Necessary Actuality of God
Whitehead, we believe, saw something which Hartshorne overlooked; he understood that the
intelligibility of Gods stable character amidst Gods contingent interaction with the contingent world
requires the view that God be, in some degree (at least), antecedently actual. What Hartshorne has
understood as Gods abstract character, Whitehead took to be Gods primordial pole. And in
Whiteheads system, this pole is no mere abstraction. Gods subjective aim to be Godself concretely in
response to the world is, pace Hartshorne, grounded in something: it is wholly derivative from [Gods]
all-inclusive primordial valuation. The perfection of this subjective aim is not abstracted from the
consequent nature of God, but rather issues from the completeness of [Gods]primordial nature.

Unfortunately, however, Whitehead largely takes back with one hand what he gave with the other when
he describes this primordial nature as being actually deficient and unconscious. For now the nature
of Gods primordial feeling, valuation, and actionthe very things which render intelligible Gods
contingent feeling, valuation and actionare rendered problematic. The very completeness of the
primordial pole which would have rendered the consequent nature of God intelligible itself becomes
unintelligible when it is now described in terms which render it less conscious and less actual than
the consequent nature it explains. Hence, all of the personal attributes and activities which Whitehead
otherwise gives to this primordial pole, attributes and activities which would render his conception
advantageous to rendering Gods contingent activity intelligible, are hereby qualified to an extent that
they are rendered philosophically useless. It becomes, for example, extremely difficult to understand
how God can make the decisions and valuations which God must make in this Ones primordial pole
when God is, in this pole, unconscious.

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Whitehead thus correctly saw that the intelligibility of Gods relationship to the world (and hence the
intelligibility of the world process itself) requires that the necessary self-defining features of God be
identified with a reality, a reality which is more than an abstraction and which, in fact, is complete
and unconditioned in relation to the contingent temporal process. The categories of his system,
however, did not allow him to carry this insight through to its end. Likewise Hartshorne, therefore, the
full actuality of God must here be viewed as being constituted as a prehension of antecedent (non-
divine) data.

Once the Process requirement that each occasion must creatively synthesize antecedent data is
rejected, however, and once the Process view that an entity is nothing over and above an experience is
rejected, we are, I believe, free to go all the way with Whiteheads insight. The perfection of God, that
which defines Gods self apart from all interaction with a non-divine reality (viz., is unconditioned)
must be identical with a necessary and actually abiding reality. As to Gods necessary existence, God
does not have the abstract features of goodness, love, awareness, etc. God isactuallygoodness,
love, awareness, etc.

To use traditional terminology, Gods abstract essence is Gods necessary concrete existence. The a
priori features which abstractly identify God as God constitute Gods essential actuality. Gods
actuality is not, therefore, simply a contingent exemplification of divine attributes.

The abstract attributes of God are, on this account, given an intelligible normative status over all of
Gods contingent activity. The absolutely fixed and ungenerated style of God, the law of Gods
concrete contingent activity, is simply the aseity of Gods eternal actuality. Gods necessary character is
not paradoxically contained in Gods contingent actuality: it is, rather, identical with Gods eternal
actuality.

The Relativity of Perspectivity
We have previously qualified Hartshornes concrete/abstract distinction by espousing the insight of
Buchler and Ross that concreteness and abstractness (as well as all derivative concepts of actuality,
potentiality, being, and becoming) are perspectivally contingent concepts. Yet if left unqualified,
this view becomes inherently atheistic, as it is in Buchler and Ross. Why? Because, as Ross himself notes,
Gods all-inclusivenessis incompatible with the principle of perspective. Thus, there is, for him, no
encompassing order, no total explanation of things, and hence no being whose perspective (viz.,
awareness, scope of interaction, etc.) is all-inclusive.

If a belief in God is to be retained, then, the perspectivity of which Buchler and Ross speak must be
qualified. And, in fact, our previous description of a being whose essence is this Ones essential existence
already presupposes such a qualification. If Gods abstract characteristics are identical with Gods
eternal actuality (concreteness), then clearly the distinction between abstractness and concreteness
breaks down at this point.

Correlatively, the doctrine of ordinal metaphysics that to be is to be in perspective here breaks down,
for concerning the necessary existence of this Ones reality, there is no perspective in which the abstract
essence is distinct from the concrete existence. What makes God God throughout eternity is this Ones
necessary definiteness. From the standpoint of contingent divine activity, and from the perspective of
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finite creatures, this necessary actuality is abstract. But this perspectival conditionality arises only with
the creation of, and interaction with, non-divine, hence finite creatures.

All of this is, in so many words, to say that we are conceiving of a being who can exist utterly alone, self-
sufficiently. If such a reality is possible, then the concrete/abstract distinction and the doctrine of
perspectivity are not a priori in the sense that they must always be instantiated. If such a reality is
possible, moreover, then the doctrine that there is no encompassing world order must also be seen as
unnecessary. If such a reality is possible, then there can be no contradiction in the supposition that there
exists a being, whose essence is identical with this Ones necessary existence, and whose perspective on
reality encompasses all actual and possible perspectives.

Yet it remains true that if finite creatures exist, then their interaction with the world must be
perspectivally qualified. To say finite is to say finite perspective. We must then define reality in
terms of perspectivity. It is concerning contingent realities that it must be said that something is
concrete and something is abstract (for, as Aquinas held, the separation between essence and
existence is one of the marks of contingent beings). And we must admit that to be concrete or to be
abstract is to be concrete or abstract relative to some perspective.

It is thus necessarily true that if finite contingent beings exist, there must be something concrete with
abstract features from some perspective. And, of course, this if, this possibility, is as a possibility
eternal and necessary. In this conditional sense, the abstract/concrete distinction and the perspectival
definition of reality is a priori. Conscious finite beings could not think and speak without them.

It is thus yet appropriate for us to distinguish between the abstract and concrete poles of God, for
there are perspectives within which these categories have meaning. The eternal actuality of God is, from
the perspective of Gods contingent activity, abstract, for it abstractly characterizes all of this contingent
divine activity. But, pace Hartshorne, we cannot regard this distinction to be absolute, any more than we
can take any concrete/abstract distinction to be absolute. It is, rather, perspectivally contingent. From
the perspective of the necessary eternal actuality itself, from the perspective of One who is not
contingent and limited to a finite perspective, the eternal actuality is itself concrete. Since none of our
concepts can be freed from their perspectival conditionality, however, this divine perspective can only
be spoken of by analogy.

Necessity and Contingency in God
It no doubt appears at this point that we have simply worked our way back to classical theism with all of
its concomitant paradoxes. If, in fact, Gods essence and necessary existence are identical in our view,
then, it seems, that we must, with the classical view, maintain that how God is (Gods existence) is as
eternal, as necessary, and as unchanging as is the fact that God is (Gods essence). And if this be the
case, we are it seems again faced with the earlier discussed paradoxes of defining perfection as actus
purus, of accounting for incompatibilities, of accounting for real becoming, of accounting for a genuine
personal sociality between God and Gods contingent creatures, of rendering determinism intelligible
(since contingency has been now ruled out), etc.

I am not convinced, however, that the classical and neo-classical conceptions of God exhaust the viable
alternatives, and I do not believe that our own view necessitates the classical view. We must, first of all,
question whether it is really the case that the possibility of God having no eternal necessary actuality
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(Process thought) and the possibility of God being completely eternally actual (classical theism) are
logically exhaustive of all theistic possibilities.

In other words, is it the case that between the [neo-orthodox] position that Gods essence is abstract
and Gods existence is concrete, and the [classical] position that Gods essence and Gods existence are
exhaustively defined by one another, there lies no alternative? Indeed, do not the severe difficulties
which, we have seen, are involved in both positions suggest that neither of them is entirely correct, and
thus that the truth must lie somewhere between these two extremes? We do well, then, to at least
investigate the possibility of a mediating position.

The essential question we are concerned with is this: can God be at once eternally actual, and
unsurpassable in this actuality, and yet genuinely partake in contingent states? Is there a sense in which
God can be eternally and necessarily concrete and contingently concrete? Can Gods essence be Gods
essential self-defining existence but not necessarily the totality of Gods existence? Could we not define
the possibility of contingency into the very essence of God so that God, though this One exists
concretely in this necessary mode, yet can exist in a contingent mode as wellwithout violating Gods
essence? Can God be necessary and contingent in different respects, but not in such a way that Gods
necessary features are merely abstract?

Attempting to render an affirmative, intelligible and defensible answer to these questions will be the
primary task of the remainder of this work. For the remainder of this chapter, however, we simply wish
to argue for the bare possibility of such a position. Presently, the only force of persuasion it has is the
manner in which it avoids the difficulties of both the classical and the neo-classical views as well as its
internal cogency and its compatibility with the essence of the Churchs traditional view of God as triune
(for whom this consideration is compelling). Our critique of the view of God arrived at in the next four
theistic arguments shall serve as the basis upon which this proposed reconstructed view is filled out and
substantiated.

Let us therefore ask once again: is there any logical contradiction involved in the notion that Gods
actuality could be eternal in one sense, and contingent in another? That one being could be at once
necessary and contingent is, it seems, in itself unproblematic, least of all from a Process perspective.
One of the contributions neo-classical theism has made has been to show the general intelligibility of
just this proposition.

What is problematic, however, is the contention that both of these senses, concern Gods actuality.
According to Hartshorne, necessity and contingency can be consistently applied to one God only if they
apply to different aspects of God. And this, for Hartshorne, means that they cannot both refer to either
Gods actuality or to Gods abstract character. One attribute must refer to one pole: the other attribute
to the other pole. It is the validity of this argument which must now be challenged.

The Analogy of Co-Existing Occasions of Varying Durations
Beyond the already discussed difficulties with this understanding of the di-polarity of God, one must
wonder what is intrinsically contradictory about saying that a being can be actual [and contingent] in
different respects? Why cannot one aspect of the divine actuality be necessary and eternal, and another
aspect of Gods actuality be contingent? It seems that, in at least one sense, even Process thought must
admit that this is possible in terms of its own categories.
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According to Process thought, any given society of actual occasions can be made up of entities whose
living immediacy and specious present varies from one another considerably. A specious present,
according to Hartshorne, can vary about as far as the imagination can stretch: from less than one
millionth of a second to more than a century.

Now it seems that there is no a priori reason why a specious moment may not be eternal, though the
society which it dominates over includes occasions whose specious present is finite. Just as the
mind, the dominate occasion of the human person, consists of specious presents whose duration vary
from those occasions which it rules over, so too we might conceive of Gods essential self as an eternal
specious present which encompasses other specious presents of finite durations within itself.

So far as I can see, then, there are no grounds for supposing a priori that the specious present of an
experiencing actuality could not be both definite and actual, while being at the same time endless in its
duration.

Hartshorne and Gods Actual Infinity
Our case for the possibility of an actually infinite aspect of God within the structure of Process thought is
rendered firmer when we realize that Hartshorne himself admits, however reluctantly, that his own
system of thought logically requires that there be a sense in which God is actually infinite. Though he
has, as we have seen, repeatedly insisted that actuality is always finite, he has conceded that in at least
one respect God must be actually infinite. Hartshorne concludes:

there must be for him [God] an infinite aspect even of the consequent [viz., actual, contingent]
nature, since this involves a perfect memory of all the past and hence contains a numerically
infinity of remembered events.

Hence, even in Process thought itself one must admit the conceivability, and indeed the metaphysical
necessity, of an actual infinity. The divine mind which perfectly remembers the infinite past must be
actually infinite. This is not an absolute infinity, an infinity of all possible value, but it is an infinite
actuality nonetheless. And if this much be granted, there are clearly no grounds on which to argue that
either a subject, or an experience of a subject, could not hypothetically be infinite in time or space.

The only remaining question, then, is whether or not one subject could be both infinitely and finitely,
both necessarily and contingently, actual at the same time. Here again I see no reason to deny this. One
subject can, in Process terms, be constituted by numerous occasions of varying durations of subjective
immediacy, as we have said. But then what in principle is there that disallows the possibility of a subject
who is necessarily constituted by an everlasting subject and/or experience, on the one hand, and yet
who has finite contingent experiences on the other? I can see none.

My specious present is in one respect very longhence my ordinary sense of time is distorted in
such experiences. Yet the fact that I am at least tacitly conscious of the bustle around me shows that I
also have, at the same time, occasions whose specious present is much shorter. Every sensed
alteration in my environment is, in Hartshornes view, a new specious present for some actual
occasion(s).

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Thus experience, including the experience of consciousness, can be multifarious and multidimensional.
Indeed, at a human level it always is. Hartshorne, of course, argues that it is only the lowest dimension
of consciousness the minute alterations in our experience which are truly concrete. Our experience of
wholes, whether they be in art, music, or the world around us, is abstract. But this supposition we
have already shown to be the result of an arbitrary reductionistic presupposition. Once the definition of
concrete and abstract are recognized as being perspectivally contingent, the actuality (concreteness)
of our phenomenological experiences, as well as (from a different perspective) the actuality of the
minute alterations which, in one sense, comprise these experiences, can be admitted. To say that our
normal sense of consciousness is multifarious is thus to say that our dominant perspective always
encompasses relatively tacit perspectives.

Prima facie, then, no obvious absurdity is committed in maintaining that God can be, in one sense,
necessarily actually infinite while further maintaining that God can also be, at the same time but in
another sense, contingently actually infinite. This is, from another angle, simply to say that God can have
a necessary eternal perspective on Godself which may (it is a contingent matter) include a perspective
which encompasses non-divine perspectives. God is eternally and necessarily defined by this ones
eternal experience of Godself, and this experience may encompass, and find expression in, the
interaction of non-divine creatures.

Our purpose, it must be noted, has not been to argue that in fact Gods necessary actuality is composed
of an eternal specious moment. This would, it seems, entail that God is timeless ad intra which, we
shall argue, is an exceedingly difficult doctrine to uphold. But we shall subsequently argue that there are
alternative ways of rendering the antecedent actuality of God intelligible. Our purpose here has simply
been to render intelligible, even within a Process framework, the possibility that God is actually infinite,
and to render intelligible by analogy the contention that this necessary infinite actuality does not entail
that God cannot also be contingently actual in Gods relationship to non-divine reality.

But how are we to understand the relationship between the eternal actuality which defines Gods
eternal being and the contingent actuality which constitutes Gods concrete involvement in the
continent world? In what sense is the classical position correct in maintaining that Gods essence is
Gods existence, and in what sense is it wrong?

Necessary Self-Defining and Contingent Self-Expressive Characteristics
It must first be said that the necessary and eternal self-defining characteristics of God, that which
constitutes Gods antecedent actuality, cannot necessarily include any given actualized contingent
aspects of God (viz., the creation of the non-divine world). This would, I believe, involve us in a
contradiction. The necessary being qua necessity cannot include given non-necessities as integral
features of this Ones self-definition. And, moreover, no particular contingency can by definition be
necessary.

Hartshorne, for his part, rightly perceived and articulated the exclusion of the contingent from the
necessary in God. But he wrongly inferred from this that Gods essential self-definition must therefore
be merely abstract (since actuality, for him, is always in principle finite and contingent). We have rather
suggested (what shall later be substantiated more fully) that an actuality can be infinite and necessary
while also being in different respects finite and contingent.

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When we say that God might be actually eternal and actually contingent, therefore, we do not mean to
suggest that God is essentially defined by both an eternal and contingent actuality. God is essentially
defined only by this Ones necessary actuality. Thus we have not in the preceding said simply that Gods
essence is Gods existence, but rather, Gods essence is Gods essential existence. For if there can be
contingency in God, then Gods existence can encompass more than what this One essentially and
necessarily is. God can be more than necessary. Thus, God is necessarily constituted by a necessary
actuality, and precisely this divine necessity is open to the spontaneous creativity which brings forth a
non-divine reality and a contingent mode of experienceboth for God and the created creaturewith
it.

The second point which needs to be said is this: however we understand this openness of Gods
necessary actuality to contingency, it is clear that this openness, when actualized, cannot be foreign to
Gods necessary actuality any more than it can be necessitated by this necessary actuality. Were it
foreign, it would violate the necessary actuality of God which constitutes the a priori conditions of being:
and were it necessitated, it would not be contingent.

Rather, we propose that the contingent openness of God, when actualized, be understood as expressing
Gods antecedent actuality. It is neither necessitated by nor foreign to the antecedent actuality of God.
It rather constitutes the creativity of God by which God expresses GodselfGods eternal, self-sufficient
fullnessin creatively novel and contingent ways. We can, in short, conceive of the necessity and
infinite antecedent actuality of God as being open to the infinitely possible forms of finite expression.
The creation of non-divine perspectives is one mode of such expression.

Our rejection of the Process correlation of aesthetic intensity and scope of creative synthesis has
laid the groundwork for this proposala proposal to be carried out in its aesthetic dimension when we
consider Hartshornes aesthetic argument. For if being is, as we have conceded, fundamentally aesthetic
in its valuational dimension, then the unsurpassable being of God, Gods infinite and complete
antecedent actuality, can be understood most fundamentally as the unsurpassable intensity of an
aesthetic satisfaction. And since the intensity of an aesthetic satisfaction is not, pace Hartshorne,
contingent upon an antecedent multiplicity, we can conceive of this Ones antecedently actual
existenceviz., Gods self-defining aesthetic delightas being unsurpassable, self-sufficient, and as
being unconditioned and independent of the world (so long as it is conceived of as inherently
relational, as shall be explicated below).

Finally, if in fact the expression of an aesthetic satisfaction is an end in itself, as we have argued with
Process thought, then we can begin to conceive of the inherent intelligibility of Gods contingent
aesthetic expression of Godself in creating a non-divine reality. We can now being to conceive of how
the contingent actuality of God in relation to the non-divine world can be seen as being valuable and
enjoyed both by God and the non-divine created beings who share in this aesthetic adventure without
this relationship being seen as being necessary to Gods essential existence as it is in Process thought.

The Possibility of a Triune Conception of God
It is appropriate in this chapter in which we are, following Hartshornes logic, outlining a theistic position
to be filled in by the content of the following four theistic positions, to outline one final and extremely
important factor which is already implicit in our reworking of the view of God at which the ontological
and cosmological arguments arrive.
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If in fact it is necessary to postulate the antecedent actuality of God to intelligibly satisfy the
requirements of Gods necessity as the ontological and cosmological arguments purport to demonstrate:
and if in fact it is correct that being is necessarily relational as Hartshorne has argued, then our theistic
reflections already point strongly in the direction of a view of Gods essential being which includes within
itself relationality. For if the necessary being is necessarily actualand all other non-divine beings only
contingently sothen the actuality of God must be self-sufficient. And if this self-sufficiency is to be
intelligible, then it must in and of itself satisfy all of the a priori conditions of rationality and meaning.

All of this implies, we believe, that God, in Gods essential self-actuality, must contain within Godself
relationality. Indeed, in the light of Hartshornes sixth a priori which we have, with qualification,
accepted, this divine rationality must be understood as being fundamentally aesthetic in nature. To be
sure, because the divine antecedent actuality must be self-sufficientin need of no other reality for its
essential constitutionthis divine relationality must be characterized by an unsurpassably intense
aesthetic experience.

This means, if we are correct, that to consistently conceive of the necessary being which the ontological
and cosmological arguments seek to demonstrate is to already conceive of a being who is necessarily
actual, b) is self-sufficient in this actuality, c) is open to express Godself in contingent modes, d) is
internally relational, and e) enjoys within Godself an unsurpassable intensity of aesthetic satisfaction.

We shall subsequently attempt to show that the doctrine of the Trinity, when reworked in the light of an
aesthetic dispositional ontology (largely following the model of Jonathan Edwards), expresses just these
necessary features of God.

Summary of Chapter IV
We have in this chapter attempted to establish the following: a) that Hartshornes conception of the
ontological and cosmological arguments leads to his di-polar conception of God by virtue of his
conception of what is and is not a priori; b) that, while there are certain philosophical and theological
advantages to the Process conception of perfection, implied in these two arguments, over the classical
conception, there are a number of significant problems with both views as well; c) that our modification
of the fundamental a priori elements of Hartshornes thought frees us to conceive of God in a way which
retains the eternal self-sufficient actuality of God as in the classical conception, but without entailing
that God is actus purus; d) that this revision allows us to preserve what is advantageous in both the
Process and classical views while avoiding the difficulties of both; and e) that this conception of God
already points in the direction of a view of the divine actuality which is internally relational and
fundamentally constituted by an unsurpassably intense aesthetic satisfaction.









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PART II
SIX THEISTIC ARGUMENTS OF HARTSHORNES SYSTEM
CHAPTER V
The Design and Epistemic Arguments:
The Omnipotence and Omniscience of God

Whereas the ontological and cosmological arguments, as Hartshorne develops them, work through the
nature of an a priori truth itself and through the a priori truth that something is concrete and something
is abstract, the design and epistemic arguments which we shall be concerned with in this chapter
develop the a priori theistic content of the third, fourth and fifth foundational statements of
Hartshornes system. Whereas the ontological and cosmological arguments seek to establish on an a
priori basis that God necessarily exists and that God is in different respects both necessary and
contingent, the design and epistemic arguments attempt to develop an a priori view of what this
necessary being who is concretely and contingently instantiated must be like.

What is more, whereas the ontological and cosmological arguments seek to establish an a priori outline
of Gods perfection and di-polar nature, the design and epistemic arguments seek to establish, more
specifically, the perfect nature of Gods influence (omnipotence) and Gods knowledge (omniscience).
They attempt to show, in short, that the concepts of experience, asymmetrical relationality, and creative
synthesis imply, a priori, a necessary divine experience which is prehended by all and which thus
influences all (design argument), and a necessary divine creative synthesis which synthesizes all
(epistemic argument).

The Design Argument
The design argument is perhaps the oldest recorded theistic argument, extending all the way back to
Plato. It has been extensively employed throughout the history of philosophy both by Christian and non-
Christian theists. Yet, until its revision in Hartshorne, no one ever thought of this argument as being
anything other than an a posteriori argument. Herein consists Hartshornes most unique contribution to
the design argument.

The Tetralemma of the Design Argument

A1: There is no cosmic order.
A2: There is cosmic order but no cosmic ordering power.
A3: There is cosmic order and ordering power, but the power is not divine.
T: There is cosmic order and divine power.
4


We shall again treat Hartshornes response to each of these alternatives in their respective order.

The Epistemic Argument
The epistemic argument is relatively young in the history of philosophy. The argument is, according to
Hartshorne, implied in Kants distinction between phenomena and noumena: an entity can intelligibly be
said to be a thing-in-itself (ding an sich) over and beyond all of its appearances only if it be supposed

4
The review and responses to A1-3 are excellent. Ive not included them here. See TP for the details.
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that there is a transcendental non-sensory intuition of this thing (for if it were sensory the object would
again be an appearance).

The epistemic argument received its most refined articulation and cogent defense up to that point in
time in the philosophy of Josiah Royce. Royce argued that we cannot even err about that which is in
principle unknowable. The true, or what is true about reality, must be defined, then, in terms of what
can be adequately known by some knower. In other words, the possibility (and certain reality) of human
error in knowledge presupposes a standard of knowledge which transcends all finite possibilities. For
Royce, this ultimately works out to imply that our concept of finite knowledge entails for its intelligibility
an infinite knower whose knowledge of reality is coextensive with reality itself. In arguing thus, he was
closely anticipating Hartshornes own argument.

The Tetralemma of the Epistemic Argument

A1: Reality (or truth) is in no way dependent upon knowledge.
A2: Reality is actual or potential content of non-divine knowledge.
A3: Reality is potential content of divine knowledge (what God would know if he existed).
T: Reality is actual content of divine knowledge

We shall, again, treat each of these in their respective order.

A1: Can Reality Be Defined Independent of Knowledge?
This is, in Royces terms, the first conception of being, the realistic conception of being. It holds that
the knowledge of a given reality makes no difference to the given reality which is known, and hence
that the given reality or any given reality can be adequately defined apart from the knowledge of it.

All of our ideas, and indeed the meaning of our language, arise from, and have meaning only in
reference to concrete experience (of which knowledge is a high level example). It is, therefore, not
simply the case that there could be no reason to believe that x is real if there is, and can be, no
experiential evidence for it. Even more fundamentally, the contention is that apart from some
conceivable experience, a supposed idea or phrase is really a pseudo-idea and a pseudo-phrase.

This observation, however, produces an apparent paradox, for reality always transcends its humanly
experienced, perceived, and known content. The point here is that we always assume, and must
assume, the meaningfulness of speech about the transcendent aspect of experienced reality. How else,
Royce asks, could we conceive of our experience and ideas about reality as being in error, or only
partially true? How can reality be a standard against our knowledge unless it transcends our knowledge?

Yet we also assume, and must assume, that our concept of reality is meaningful only insofar as it is
immanent in experience. Indeed, the possibility of error, Royce again points out, not only requires a
transcend aspect to reality, but also that this transcendent aspect is not foreign to the known. How
could reality be a standard of our knowledge if it were completely foreign to our knowledge?

The obvious question which these facts necessitate is this: how can the transcendent be transcendent
while yet being in some sense immanent (viz. not foreign)? It is Hartshornes (and Royces) contention
that this question, when thoroughly thought through, leads to the necessary postulation of an
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omniscient necessary being. In any case, the possibility of defining knowledge and reality independently
seems impossible.

A2: Could the Ideal Knowledge Be Hypothetical?
A2 grants the argument in A1: reality must transcend what is humanly experienced (known) and yet this
very transcendence cannot be defined apart from some ideal possible form of knowledge. But, the A2
proponent asks, why suppose that this ideal knowledge is anywhere actual? Might not the hypothetical
content of this ideal knowledge simply specify what we, or any finite knower, would know under ideal
conditions? Does it not merely specify our tentative and heuristic definition of reality that to which we
aspire in our cognitive endeavors? In short, is not the content of the ideal knowledge which defines
reality identical with the concept of potential knowledgethat which a knower such as ourselves has
the potential to know under (unfortunately non-existent) ideal conditions?

Hartshornes response is that there are elements of reality which not only transcend human knowledge,
but which do so necessarily. There are, in other words, features of reality which are not even the
potential content of human knowledge, or any knowledge from a finite perspective. Various aspects of
the past and various events in galactic space are two examples of such unknowable realities, according
to Hartshorne.

An Objection
A defender of A2 might conceivably attempt to refute this objection to her thesis by making the
following distinction: there is perhaps a meaningful difference between what is the potential content of
human knowledge in fact and what is the potential content of human knowledge in any possible world.
In other words, it may in fact be perfectly true that much of the past is irrevocably lost to human
knowledge, and indeed that most of what occurs in deep space is eternally hidden from human
knowledge (and perhaps all other finite cosmic knowers, in case they exist). But it doesnt follow from
this that such information is necessarily hidden from human knowledge. And just this, the argument
goes, is why we commit no logical contradiction in accepting the contention that reality and knowledge
must define each other, while yet denying that an omniscient being necessarily exists.

Rebuttal
While we admit the meaningfulness of the above distinction, it is, I think, difficult to defend as
conceivable the supposition that humans, or any finite creatures, could even hypothetically (viz. in any
possible world) arrive at a state of affairs such that their knowledge was coextensive with reality. The
partiality of finite knowing does not seem a posteriori, but a priori. It seems, in other words, that
limitation and partiality of knowledge is built into the very concept of a finite knower, just as we earlier
saw that imperfection in other respects is built into the conception of contingency. Beyond what has
already been said relative to this issue, there are, briefly, three other arguments to be made in support
of Hartshornes position.

First there is the problem of the knowledge of the pre-historic past. We assume that this remote past
was real, but it seems that no finite knower or group of finite knowers could even hypothetically know it
exhaustively.

But might it not have been possible in some world for knowers such as ourselves to have always existed?
Might not the absence of humans (or similar knowers) for billions of years be due to one of the non-
57

ideal circumstances which in fact limit our knowledge, but which dont preclude the counter-factual
possibility that we might have existed? I suspect this possibility to be a pseudo-possibility. As we have
seen, the concept of an eternal contingency is equivalent to an eternal accident, a wholly irrational and
irrevocable surd. The temporality of a contingent race seems as necessary as the temporality of a
contingent star and as we have seen, no star can meaningfully be affirmed as non-contingent.
Moreover, since this hypothetical eternal race would not have their essence as being identical with their
existence (thus they are not necessary) they could not, in and of themselves, satisfy within themselves
the a priori categories. Hence the sufficient reason for their existence must lie outside themselves. They
are, in a word, contingent. So what, we must therefore ask, accounts for their existence and for their
existence being just the way it is?

Secondly, it does not seem that finite creatures, in any possible world, can know anything in particular
exhaustively. It does not seem to be a merely contingent fact that all our knowledge is approximate at
best. We are, as has been said, perspectivally conditioned creatures. We always see, and must
necessarily see, from some limited perspective. Given finite creatures, this is a priori.

But to know anything exhaustively is to know it from all perspectives. This we cannot do. Finite
knowledge is thus limited not only quantitatively, but qualitatively, and hence cannot function as an
even hypothetical ideal knowledge. To be contingent is, as Hartshorne describes it, to be fragmentary.
But this means that the ideal knowledge which is presupposed in our conception of reality which
transcends our knowledge cannot be accounted for by appealing to possible worlds where conditions for
finite knowers might be different.

A3: Could Ideal Knowledge Be the Potential Content of Divine Knowledge?
Even if one grants that reality cannot be defined as the potential content of human knowing, even
if one grants that reality must be defined in terms of a knowledge which is not fragmentary viz.
which is omniscient does it follow that such a knowledge must be actual? Could not one
conceivably argue that such knowledge is ideal, not actual? Might we not, in other words, define
reality in terms of what God would know if God existed?

This alternative can, I think, be quickly refuted on the basis of what we have already explicated in
Hartshornes system. The ontological argument has already shown us that if God is possible, God is
necessary. The if of A3 can, therefore only be equivalent to, if God is not logically impossible.
But this it cannot mean, for A3 already has conceded that reality must be defined in terms of what
God would know in terms of ideal knowledge. And what sense can be made of the defining
reality in terms of a logical contradiction?

T: Reality is the Actual Content of Divine Knowledge
The notion of potential divine knowledge, then, is internally inconsistent. With what, then, are we
left? According to Hartshorne, T alone remains. Reality is the actual content of divine knowledge.
Our knowledge, according to Hartshorne, is fragmentary because of internal defects (confusion,
doubt, a lack of concepts adequate to interpret our precepts and of precepts adequate to distinguish
between false and true concepts). As such it cannot, even hypothetically, itself account for the ultimate
definition of reality. This, to some degree, would be present with any contingent, perspectivally limited
creature. Only a form of knowledge which is free from such defects can define reality.

58

Having now articulated the essential elements of the design and epistemic arguments we are in a
position to critically examine the view of God arrived at by means of them.

Theological Implications of the Design Argument: Gods Power
The Logic of Omnipotence
The design and epistemic arguments, we have seen, arise out of the concept of reality as necessarily
ordered and necessarily knowable. They build upon the third, fourth, and fifth foundational statements
of Hartshornes system. Together they attempt to demonstrate that a necessary cosmic Orderer and
necessary cosmic Knower exist. What must now be explicated is the type of power and knowledge
which these arguments necessitate.

The Classical View of Gods Power
The classical view of omnipotence, according to Hartshorne, says simply that whatever happens is
divinely made to happen. While this is an enormous generalization, it must be conceded that this is not
far from what the dominant theological voices in the church have traditionally tended to say, or at least
imply. Thankfully, this divine omnicausaul position was usually not worked out with perfect consistency.
But the point nevertheless stands. Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas (to name a few) can hardly be said
to consistently depart from this view. The power of God was, therefore, generally defined as absolute
and perfect, and by this was meant unlimited and exhaustive.

Difficulties With the Classical Understanding
As with the classical understanding of divine perfection, there are five fundamental difficulties which
Hartshorne finds with this classical understanding of omnipotence.

Individuality Means Self-Determination
The first criticism of the classical view of omnipotence has already been raised in our previous
discussion of Hartshornes refutation of determinism. We here saw that, according to Hartshorne,
individuality and relative self-determination are mutually implicative. Individualsmust be in some
measure self-managed, agents acting to some extent on their own, or they are not individuals. If, then,
creaturely existence is nothing over and above the expression of Gods power, of Gods will, then it is,
ultimately, simply God over again. From this it follows that if God is to create a world which is, in any
measure distinct from Godself (viz. for God to create any world), God must surrender, to some degree,
Gods sole possession of power.

Absolute Omnipotence is Pragmatically Meaningless
A second argument against the classical view of omnipotence also has been previously alluded to in the
earlier context of Hartshornes refutation of determinism and thus need only be reviewed here. We
have already seen that the concept of absolute determinism fails to meet the pragmatic criterion of
meaning. It could not be acted upon or in some sense lived by.

By the same means, the view that God has power to determine every detail of the contingent world fails
to meet the pragmatic criterion of meaning. How could we possibly act on a belief that we have no
power to autonomously act? How could I determine my actions in such a way that I significantly reflect
the fact that the determination is really made by another agent? How could my actions reflect the
authentic belief that my actions are permissively (but certainly!) ordained by my Creator? Hartshorne
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seems correct when he argues that the only way humans (and indeed all agents) can act is in
accordance with the belief that the future is at least partly determinable by us.

Freedom of God Destroyed
A third difficulty with the classical view of omnipotence, which has also been alluded to previously, is
that once one claims that creatures have no autonomous power, and hence no autonomous self-
determination, one loses all hope of speaking analogically about Gods self-determination. How,
Hartshorne asks, starting from zero, is there a path to the concept of the supreme case? Only if
humans constitute at least a minimal instance of what God is in the maximal instance can we speak
meaningfully of God. If God is said to be genuinely self-determining (viz. not simply free in a
phenomenological, compatibilistic sense), then humans must be, in some small measure, self-
determining as well, and in a non-compatibilist sense. Their actions must be, to some extent, non-
determined by agents and factors other than themselves.

The Problem of Evil
A fourth problem which the classical view of God raises in an acute way is the problem of evil. The
problem, as traditionally understood, is this: if God is all good, and all powerful, then why is there evil in
the world? For if God is all good, God would want to prevent or eliminate it. And if God were all
powerful, God would be able to prevent or eliminate it. Yet evil continues to exist. Hence, God must
either be less than all good, or less than all powerful, or both.

There have, of course, been a number of solutions proposed for this problem from the classical
perspective, and the contemporary discussion of the matter has taken up a vast body of literature.
Given the restricted interest of this work, we cannot even begin to enter into a full discussion of the
issues involved. We presently wish only to locate the central dilemma the problem of evil poses for the
conception of God as actus purus.

The classical understanding led to the view that Gods power was simply the supreme power to act, not
the power to be supremely acted upon: it meant that Gods power was simply the power to be the
supreme cause of events after Gods own plan, not the power to be in any sense supremely caused, to
be the supreme effect of non-divine willing.

Religiously Inadequate
The final difficulty with the classical understanding of the supreme power is that it is not religiously
adequateit is not genuinely worshipful. It is not, in effect, the sort of power we ordinarily deem
laudable, but is, rather, a despotic conception of power, according to Hartshorne.

If God in fact ordains (whether effectually or permissivelywhatever that distinction amounts to)
the whole of the created order, then the best analogy for God is that of an absolute tyrant who rules
over every feature of the lives of those in this Ones kingdom. But this, surely, is not the highest, most
praiseworthy, conception of power. As with the doctrine of Gods immutability, the central problem
with this traditional conception of Gods power, according to Hartshorne, is that it exemplifies only one
side of possible metaphysical contrasts of God.

The Neo-classical View of Gods Power
The Definition of Power in the Light of Hartshornes Foundational Statements
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In contrast to the traditional understanding of power as the ability to control others, Hartshornes
Process metaphysics generally defines power as self-creativity responding to others self-creativity. The
concept of power is really but a sub-category of the concept of prehension. The power of a given
actual occasion is its ability to create itself by prehending past objectified data in such a way that it is
available toand hence influential oversubsequent actual occasions. The more attractive a new
objectified occasion is to a subsequent occasion, the more power it can be said to have.

The supreme society of actual occasions thus exemplifies the supreme instance of what it is to be
significantly prehended by other actual occasions. The availability for prehension of all other (non-divine)
occasions is minute in comparison, and their influence too is comparatively small. Gods power, in
contrast, in infinitely superior to the intensity and scope of these non-divine instances of power, but this
difference is a difference of degree, not kind.

A Critical Evaluation of the Neo-Classical View of Gods Power
There is, we have thus far seen, much to commend the Process view of Gods power as an alternative to
the classical view. What must now be examined, however, are the problematic features of this Process
view itself. We shall see that this view itself runs aground on metaphysical difficulties as well as
difficulties which arise from the distinctly Christian perspective we are assuming throughout this work.
Thus, while there are, I believe, many advantageous elements in this view of divine power which ought
to be appropriated, it shall nevertheless be argued that this view is fundamentally at odds with central
elements of the Christian proclamation, and that there are no good metaphysical grounds for
undertaking the radical re-evaluation of the content of the Christian proclamation which would (we shall
show) be necessary to accommodate the Process view. Rather, the view which the Christian-trinitarian
proclamation presupposes, we shall argue, is precisely the sort of view which metaphysics requires when
it is properly understood.

The Unintelligibility of Freedom
As we have already noted, one of the major positive features of Hartshornes design argument is that it
preserves creaturely freedom and renders possible our intelligible talk about Gods freedom. But the
manner in which freedom is employed in the design argument also constitutes one of its major
weaknesses, for, as we have seen, freedom has not been rendered intelligible in Hartshornes system.

Freedom and capriciousness are not, as Hartshorne implies, strictly identical. Contingency or spontaneity
is necessary, but not sufficient, to account for what we normally call freedom. All of reality embodies
spontaneous features, but only humans (and perhaps, to a far lesser extent, higher mammals) exemplify
the sort of openness to the future combined with rational deliberation which constitutes what we
normally call free decisions.

Correlatively, the evil of the world and bad luck are not necessarily identical. The Hitlers and Stalins of
the world are not simply the result of a myriad of actual occasions making, with the best of intentions,
unfortunate decisions. They are, rather, whole beings who have evil intentions and make evil decisions
based on these intentions. It is the Process reduction of phenomenal wholes to atomistic occasions
which transforms genuine moral evil into bad luck.

Hartshornes view of ontological becoming as a subjectless, instantaneous popping into existence is,
we have argued, unintelligible. Becoming presupposes some form of an antecedent subject which
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endures throughout the process of becoming. Becoming is essentially creative self-determination, but
this presupposes that there is a self which is creative. Hartshorne has rightly argued that the individuality
and creative self-determination are mutually implicative, but this means that his inability to render
creative self-determination intelligible also renders his view of individuality unintelligible. Concretely,
there is for Hartshorne no enduring individual, and this, as we have seen, creates numerous problems for
his metaphysical system.

The Metaphysical Bondage of God
A second criticism which has been raised against Hartshornes view of Gods powerGods omni-
influential relationship to the non-divine worldis that God is not on this view significantly free. This
may seem paradoxical since this view is, if it is anything, a view which exalts universal freedom. Yet a
closer look at the position reveals, as several have pointed out, that the God of Hartshornes system is, at
least to some extent, a necessitarian God.

For one thing, in this system God must by logical necessity have a world, some divine world or other, as
we have seen. For God must concretely constitute Godself as a creative synthesis of the objectified data
from this world. What is more, God must prehend the whole of the divine order with equal sensitivity.
God must of necessity, then, make an ideal response to this data, and must, in turn, be available to be
prehended to all creatures.

Moreover, God must then eternally remember the good as well as the evil; God must be perfectly just as
well as perfectly loving; God must suffer the evil suffered in the world and enjoy the good enjoyed in the
world. In short, to appeal to Hartshornes favorite analogy, God is bound to have a body which God
cannot have complete control over, and God must passively experience and responsively influence this
body in strictly and eternally necessary ways.

Response
Hartshorne has a response to this objection which, I believe, adequately answers the majority of these
criticisms. A central mistake which, Hartshorne claims, such criticisms as these make, is that they assume
that Gods absolute ideal character necessitates that the possibilities for God are reduced to the best
possiblewhich is to say, to one alternative. This is very clear, for example, in an article by David
Mason in which he writes that to insist that God, of necessity, selects the best possible implies that
God is not, finally, free to choose from among genuine alternatives

Hartshornes response is to note that the concept of the best possible is systematically misleading. In
any given situation calling for a free decision, there will be at the time of decision no singular best
possible response: there will only be alternatives which at that time are as likely to be as good as any
of the others. What is more, as we have seen, possibilities are never as definite as actualities. The phrase
best possible, however, assumes the opposite: possibilities are here as definite as actuality. Only on
this supposition could one say that there was a possibility which was the best possible. But this, we
have already argued with Hartshorne, destroys the contrast between actuality and possibility.

To say, then, that God always and of necessity acts in an ideal manner is not to say that Gods
alternatives are narrowed to one. Such a view would indeed violate the fifth a priori of Hartshornes
system. There could be no creative synthesis were there no openness to Gods response to the world.
But God, in Hartshornes view, has numerous alternatives to decide between, though Gods decision will
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always be ideal. Since an object always influences but cannot dictate the awareness of itself, we
influence God by our experiences but do not thereby deprive him of freedom in response to us.

The Necessity of the Non-Divine World
As I see it, the central difficulty with Hartshornes view (and Process theologys view in general) lies in the
misconceived fifth candidate for a priori truth of Hartshornes system. Because creative synthesis must
occur, according to Hartshorne, God must have a world, prehend the world, reconstitute Godself every
moment in response to the world. All of the necessitarian features of the di-polar view of God follow
from this statement, not from the fact that God must be perfectly good and respond to the world in an
ideal way.

To say that God, according to Hartshorne, is necessarily bound to the world and a particular way of
responding to the world because God lacks an individual self-sufficient actual reality of Gods own is to
make this same point from a different angle. But if, in fact, as we have argued, Hartshornes fifth
foundational statement is not a genuine a priori truth, and if in fact this is not necessarily universal, but is
rather contingent, then the way is open for viewing Gods bond to the world as a matter of Gods
gracious will rather than as a metaphysical necessity. To say that Gods internal actuality is eternally
constituted as an unsurpassably intense aesthetic satisfaction, that God therefore does not need the
multiplicity of the non-divine world to be satisfied, and that Gods bond to the world is therefore one
of expressing, not constituting, who this One actually is, is again to make this same point from a different
angle.

We may argue this from yet another direction. Hartshorne has rightly seen that to always act in an
ideal manner does not abrogate the possibility of deciding how concretely to act. There can at any
given moment be for God a number of alternatives which are equally good. Given this much, we may say
that if Hartshornes fifth foundational statement is rejected, then the way is opened for supposing that
for God to create or to not create is, in some significant sense, equally good. Once the statement
creative synthesis occurs is seen as contingent and empirical rather than as metaphysically necessary,
the way is open for conceiving of a God who is as great in this Ones essential constitution without the
world as with the world.

As Father Sokolowski points out, it is just the supposition that God is as great without the world as God
is with the world which distinguishes Christianity from paganism and lies behind all of the distinctively
Christian concepts of creation and salvation as matters of grace, not necessity. According to Sokolowski,
because creations being an act of grace is so fundamental to Christian theism that, when it is not
affirmed, everything distinctively Christian within Christianity begins to disintegrate. The fundamental
God-human relation which is revealed as contingent and gracious otherwise becomes a relation of
necessity, and the central concept of grace is thereby necessarily ruled out.

The Activity of God
A third criticism which has been raised against Hartshornes view of Gods power is that God cannot, in
this view, genuinely act, or initiate events, in the world. The activity of God is problematic in Hartshorne,
I argue, not because his view of God contains a high view of Gods passivity, but because Hartshorne
has not yet resolved on a general level the paradox of how an experience can prehendbefore the
experiencing agent existspast data which have now perished.

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As we have seen, Hartshorne simply defines experience as that which creatively carries the old dead into
the new living. But this definition, we have argued, renders nothing intelligible and thus is, as such, but a
label for the problem in need of explanation. Until causation as such is rendered intelligible in
Hartshornes system, Gods causative influence on the world must remain unintelligible.

And even if we grant that God can intelligibly act within the framework of Hartshornes system, it
nevertheless remains true that God is necessarily bound to act only as God is acted upon. The third,
fourth, and fifth foundational statements of his system necessitate this. As to the concrete pole of God,
God is necessarily an experience which is asymmetrically related to antecedent data which provides the
content of this experience, and God is concrete only as this One synthesizes this antecedent data. After
this synthesis, and only as a result of this synthesis, can God act by influencing the non-divine occasions
which shall again subsequently become data for this Ones own self-constituting prehension. And this
act is not even on or towards the other selves, but only on Godself. God changes the world only by
changing this Ones self which the world must prehend.

Still yet, Hartshornes understanding of divine power as it relates to Gods activity is problematic in that
he contends that power must mean influence. This is, we have seen, for Hartshorne an a priori truth,
the denial of which results in meaninglessness. But, it seems, that it is meaningful to speak of coercive
power in certain respects. We have conceded to Hartshorne that the conception of total control destroys
any coherent notion of autonomy, but this does not entail that power must always be equivalent to
persuasion. It does not, in short, mean that the concept of coercion is meaningless.

Hence, when a mother grabbed onto the arm of her child as he was about to run into the street in front
of a car, we would naturally say that the parent exercised unilateral control overshe coercedthe
child. She didnt simply persuade the child to stop running. This doesnt, of course, mean that the
parent at that moment controlled every thought, every feeling, every cellular movement in the childs
body: the child remains an autonomous individual. But with respect to the activity of running into the
street, the child was unambiguously coerced.

The analogy demonstrates two things. First, it shows, pace Hartshorne, that talk about a person coercing
another person is meaningful, for it is possible to exercise unilateral control over another individual
without thereby destroying their individuality. The only kind of coercion Hartshornes system rules out is
exhaustive coercion over every aspect of anothers beingin which case, we concede, the other is not
truly other at all. But this is not what we normally mean when we talk about coercive power. Hence, it
must be concluded that Hartshorne has not demonstrated that divine coercion is impossible. As David
Basinger has insightfully argued, no Process theologian or philosopher has yet successfully explained why
it is that God should be limited, by metaphysical necessity, to utilizing merely persuasive power.

The second point the above analogy makes is this: coercive power is not always an unethical thing to
exercise. This runs directly counter to the frequently expressed Process claim that persuasive power is
always more admirable than coercive power. Even if God could exercise coercive power, as the classical
view portrays it, it would, it is claimed, be wrong for God to do so. But this they have not proven.

The Problem of Special Revelation
God can only operate along the lines specified by the metaphysical categories of Process thought, and
this, we see, means that God can only act universally and responsively. God can only create Godself as a
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new synthesis of the past and offer Godself as the dominant data to be prehended by the multiplicity of
actual occasions which shall constitute the concrete world in the next instant. In Hartshornes system, at
least, there is no other conceivable form of action. Any other conception violates supposed a priori
truth. God can thus move history only by moving Godself. Indeed, since it is always Godself alone which
God directly changes, Ogden is quite correct in stating that in a literal sense, [Gods] creative
actionis not an action in history, but an action that transcends it God is, as Whitehead says, the
transcendental principle of concretion, nothing moreby metaphysical necessity, nothing more.

One primary consequence of this is that all claims to special revelatory acts of God must be judged as
being mythological. But this position, in our estimation, is disastrous for Christianity. Who is the God
revealed in Jesus Christ and proclaimed throughout the Old and New Testaments if not One who reveals
Godself through initiating particular, radically new, events in history? As Barth notes, the biblical
concept of revelation is precisely the opposite of myth. It does not tell us about a relation between
God and man that exists generally in every time and place and that is always process. Rather, the
revelation of this God is always specific and particular.

Gods Activity and Key Christian Doctrines
To render our objection to Hartshornes conception of divine power, and thus of divine activity, more
explicit, we shall briefly elucidate some of its implications for key Christian doctrines.

Christology
What becomes of our view of Christ when the initiating, specific, and unique nature of divine activity is
ruled out? It is not difficult to discern. The distinctiveness of Christ can, in this case, only refer to the
special way in which he represents what is true of all people. Ogden makes this quite explicit when he
writes,

The claim only in Jesus must be interpreted to mean, not that God acts to redeem only in
the in the history of Jesus and in no other history, but that the only God who redeems any
historyalthough he in fact redeems every historyis the God whose redemptive action is
decisively re-presented in the word that Jesus speaks and is.

Several crucial features of the implications of Process thought for Christology must be noted
here. First, it is not Gods initiative which can account for the decisiveness of Jesus. God simply did what
God always must do: God responds to creatures in an ideal way. Thus, the credit for the distinctiveness
of Jesus goes to the man Jesus. This must, at best, constitute a radically adoptionistic Christology.

Second, whatever redemption means in this passage, it again is not a free act of Gods grace. That God
does redeem at all, let alone in and through all of history, is the result of Gods being metaphysically
bound to Gods own body. Redemption can be nothing God initiated: if redemption occurs, whatever
it means, it must, on the terms of the Process system, be the result of creaturely initiative, followed by
Gods response.

And third, it is not clear how Jesus could decisively be anything in any significant sense of the term. If
this re-presentation happened once, one would think that it could, and indeed should, happen again.
Nothing in terms of the world environment has changed. If it has not, that is, it seems, mere
misfortune. The eph hapax of Hebrews (10:10) is hence reduced to nonsense.
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The center of the Christian faith, the proclamation that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto
himself (II Cor. 5:19), is clearly reinterpreted, if not overhauled, in a damaging fashion in this scheme. A
metaphysical scheme which does not allow for such a fundamental feature of Christian revelation must,
from our perspective, be judged as being misguided.

In the case of Hartshorne, the central point of error is his fourth and fifth foundational statement. It is
because God, like all actualities, must be asymmetrically related to antecedent data, and because God,
like all actualities, must be constituted as a creative synthesis of these antecedent occasions, that his
system flies in the face of traditional Christianity at this point. We shall argue in the final section of this
chapter that our modifications of the foundations of Hartshornes system allow us to articulate the
dynamic nature of God which Process thought has sought to articulate, but to do so without
necessitating the low Christology which it necessitates.

Gods More Than Necessary Love
Hartshorne defines love most fundamentally as social awareness. The act of being sensitive and
responding appropriately to others is love. One notes immediately that, under this definition, Gods love
and Gods power are co-extensive. They both refer to the same reality, though in slightly different ways.
In the end, they both are different ways of saying creative synthesis. Love refers to the scope and
qualitative perfection of the prehensive act, and power refers to the relevance for subsequent data of
the prehensive act, its superjective character (which is, of course, contingent upon the prior scope
and perfection of the act).

The difficulty this raises for Christianity is precisely the difficulty raised concerning Gods freedom
earlier. It can be expressed succinctly in the following question: can the biblical notion of Gods love be
at all intelligible unless God is free not to love, or at least free not to love in the surprising manner that
God in fact loves? Is the biblical concept of Gods love for humans exhaustively intelligible as an abstract
metaphysical necessity?

As with Guntons and Nevilles critique of Gods freedom discussed above, we disagree that the perfect
and necessary love of God in any sense limits God as these two seem to suggest. This is rather a
freedom of Gods perfect character. But we nevertheless sympathize with Gunton in feeling that the
metaphysical account of Gods love does not do full justice to the biblical account of Gods love.

The love of God revealed in Christ has, as Aulen notes, a spontaneous, an unpredictable, a radically
unexpected quality to itwhich is not simply the result of our metaphysical ignorance. The God who is
defined as love is not only necessary: this One is, as Jngel has argued, more than necessary. Jngel
argues that God is the One who is love, but in a way which can neither be surreptitiously gained nor
coerced, which is entirely unnecessary and thus is more than necessary.

We cannot concur with Jngel that Gods love is entirely unnecessaryif he means this literallyfor
this would make Gods love contingent. If we are understanding him correctly, the result would be that
the difference between the statement God is Love and the statement God is Hate would,
presumably, be a matter of Gods contingent will. We would have a Scotian voluntarianism of the worst
sort. We rather argue, with Hartshorne, that the statement God is love is a metaphysical necessity,
being an aspect of Gods eternal character.
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But the second part of Jngels statement is, in our estimation correct and crucial to the issue at hand.
Gods love is not only necessary. It cannot be circumscribed by the logical necessities of human thought.
If we are to remain true to the revelation of God in Christ, our account of the metaphysical necessity of
Gods love must leave room for an aspect of Gods love which is more than necessary. This Hartshorne
does not do, and the reason is that his fourth and fifth foundational statements claim to exhaustively
define the being of all things, including God.

Salvation by Grace
Hartshornes denial of an eternal, necessary, actual aspect of God leads him to deny that God can act in
any other way than as a cosmic responder. This view further necessitates that he deny that there
could exist any trans-necessary dimension of Gods love. And all of this, we here contend, has
implications for the traditional Christian understanding of salvation which are nothing short of
catastrophic.

Because God can initiate no radically new and particular action in the world, it cannot be the cases, on
this view, that God graciously, and therefore unexpectedly, justifies and transforms humanity through
the salvific work of Christ. Because God acts only as responding to our act, any attempted view of
salvation in this framework must, of necessity, be ultra-Pelagian. God appreciates us only as we are
worthy of appreciation; God enjoys us only as we are, in fact, enjoyable. God could not do otherwise.

What is more, it is not clear to me that the concepts of salvation, justification or grace can even
have any recognizably Christian meaning in Hartshornes scheme as it stands. What would we be
saved from? A state of sin? But since there is no abiding essence to individuals (let alone to humanity
as a whole, see below), since we are, quite literally, a new self every moment, there can, it seems, be no
slavery to sin to be rescued from. There may be individual sins (though it is hard to see how these
would be more than misfortunes), but the traditional Pauline concept of sin as a noun (not a verb),
as a transcendental binding condition, can have no meaning here.

The Solidarity of Fallen and Redeemed Humanity
An integral aspect of the biblical conception of sin and salvation, an aspect frequently overlooked by
contemporary Christians, is the concept of the solidarity of humanity in its fallen and redeemed states.
We are, in our fallen state, in Adam, and we are, in our redeemed state which we presently
fragmentarily participate in and are destined to become, in Christ. Contrary to much popular Christian
thinking and acting, sin and salvation are not merely, nor even primarily, individualistic affairs. In
Adam and in Christ are not just abstract summations of what happens to take place on an
individual level. The scriptural assumption is that they are abiding transcendental realities which
describe what we are precisely because they are, to a significant extent, normative over what we are.
They not only reflect us: they are us.

It is, however, quite clear that no sense can be made of such transcendental realities in Hartshornes
system. The exclusivity of the categories of abstraction and concreteness, his particular non-perspectival
understanding of abstraction and (correlatively) his reductionistic conception of concreteness, all
prevent him from having any room in his system for a realist understanding of transcendentals.

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If the character of an individual is merely the abstract characteristics of a myriad of actual occasions
over time, having no normativity over what those actual occasions become, how much more abstract is
the character of humanity as a whole? And if an individual as a phenomenological whole is really
but an abstraction from a series of actual occasions (and is thus so viewed by God), what ontological
status could characterize the conception of the reality of humanity as a whole? It can only be more
abstract. We cannot, then, in any real sense be in Adam or in Christ. We fall and rise strictly on our
own.

Prayer
Central to the traditional concept of being a disciple of Christ, of growing in the Christian life, is the
concept of prayer. There are, of course, a number of different kinds of prayer, but for our present
purpose we are interested only in petitionary prayer. Other forms of prayer are less problematic within
the context of Hartshornes thought.

Because God can take no special, particular, and radically new action in his view, it is not surprising to
hear Hartshorne admit that petitionary prayer is problematic at best within the context of his system.
God will respond to us as God must respond to us (with, of course, creative variables), and thus the
notion of God hearing and answering the prayers of this Ones children simply makes no sense. God
is available for our prehension, and prayer or no prayer, that is all the help we are going to get! Only if
God can and does have power to unilaterally intervene in the life of this Ones children can this
practice mean anything more than reminding [ourselves] that we are in the divine presence.

Eschatology
One final implication of Hartshornes concept of divine power and activity needs to be brought out
before we turn to the theological implication of the epistemic argument. Since God is, in Hartshornes
view, necessarily tied to the world as the data for this Ones self-constitution, it follows that a) the sum
value of the world must increase; and b) that this increase can never end. The value forever increases
because each new divine synthesis is combined with Gods memory of the infinite past and hence
becomes richer, and this progress can never end because it is an essential ingredient to Gods self-
constitution (and greater intensities of satisfaction are always possible). This conception, however,
embodies several difficulties which must presently be examined.

The Ontological Ground of Creativity
We do not, in contrast to some, find the concept of an eternity of progress itself problematic. The
mistake here is in assuming that Hartshorne is ever talking about a finite universe comprised of finite
and limited components. True, the universe at any given moment is, according to Hartshorne, finite.
But the universe, taken as the non-divine reality as such, in infinite.

How can this be? Because the logically possible number of finite combinations is infinite. Finite
multiplicities as such are infinitely compossible. And, mathematically speaking at least, there are no
grounds for contending that in an infinite amount of time all possibilities must be realized. Our own
difficulty with Hartshornes concept of eternal progress is thus not its supposed logical impossibility, but
its lack of an ontological foundation in the context of Hartshornes thought.

Possibility is, Hartshorne realizes, contingent upon actuality. The principle of transcendence lies in the
element of futurity implicit in every existing occasion. But it is at this point that the problem arises.
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For all particular contingent actualities might not have been. Hence all future possibilities might never
have been. Yet the possibility of no possibilities (because of the possibility of no actualities) is, we have
with Hartshorne argued, false a priori.

The principle of transcendence or (as Hartshorne usually prefers), the principle of creativity as such,
then, cannot lie in contingent actualities. A necessity cannot be grounded in a contingency. But, as
Whitehead insightfully remarked, the general possibility of the universe must be somewhere. But
where if not in contingent actualities?

God cannot here be appealed to, for, as we have seen, the actuality of God in Hartshornes thought is
itself the result of contingent possibilities. Concretely, God is contingent. And the abstract pole of God is
simply a general description of what the contingent actualization of divine possibilities exemplifies. So
how is one to account for the necessity of creativity, when it is admitted that possibility is contingent
upon actuality, but it is not admitted that actuality can be necessary?

My criticism of Hartshornes doctrine of the eternal progress of the world, then, is that it has no
ontological foundation. As Walter Kasper has argued, [t]he miracle of becoming something more and
something new can only be explained through participating in a creative fullness of being. It is just this
fullness of being which is lacking in Hartshornes account. Only a necessary actual being who is
antecedently complete and inexhaustibly full (more than necessary) within this Ones self can ground
an eternity of creative becoming.

The Eternality of Evil
A second criticism which arises from a more theological interest concerns the status of evil in
Hartshornes view. We have agreed with Hartshorne that evil is the result of misused or unfortunately
used creaturely freedom. And we have recognized that Hartshornes design argument, for all the
ambiguity of his own conception of freedom, nevertheless renders this fact concerning the origin of evil
less ambiguous than traditional theodicies. There is here the ontological openness of the future which
is necessary for a genuine free-will defense.

The difficulty we find in this system, however, is that because God and the world are both eternal, and
necessarily so, and because freedom (e.g. capriciousness in Hartshorne) is inherent in being, there can
be no hope of God ever ridding the created order of its evil. Hartshorne is himself very explicit on this
point. If creaturely freedom is defined as capriciousness, and if, therefore, the possibility of good entails
the possibility of evil, and if, finally, all of this is a priori, then it follows that evil is a permanent feature
of the non-divine world. Any hope of ever conquering it, of ever ridding the world of pain and suffering,
is thus strictly illusory. The eternal and necessary world is, for Hartshorne, eternally and necessarily free,
and God is not free to have it any other way. We cannot be coerced, so all that God can directly give us
is the beauty of his ideal for us to which our response has to be partly self-determined. But if this is
all God can do, how can God head off universal chaos by unilaterally limiting freedom in any particular
instance?

If order is a prioriand I agree that it isthen it is logically impossible for all occasions to
simultaneously veer from the divine subjective aim in such a way that universal chaos would ensue. But
if freedom is a prioriand I agree that it isthen it seems that there can be no logical grounds for
preventing this simultaneity. Indeed, if cosmic progress is a priori as Hartshorne claimsI would argue
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that it is not!then not only is universal chaos necessarily excluded, but even a general worsening of
the cosmic situation is excluded. But this exclusion, it seems, is something which Hartshornes system
cannot consistently promise.

This difficulty arises, I believe, because the a priori of relationality, creative synthesis, and aesthetic
enjoyment is understood to be world-contingent by Hartshorne. Only if the a priori of order, freedom,
and aesthetic satisfaction is satisfied in the infinite actuality of Godmaking all other orders, freedoms
and aesthetic experiences contingentcan this paradox of Hartshornes system be resolved.

The time of the creations groaning in travail (Rom. 8:20-22) shall here be finished, for the entire
cosmic order shall be set free from the bondage of decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children
of God. Indeed, so wonderful shall be the eschatological deliverance of the creation that Paul can say
that our present sufferings are not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed in us. If
Hartshorne is correct, such a hope is impossible.

The Theological Implications of the Epistemic Argument: Gods Knowledge
We have in this chapter thus far outlined Hartshornes design and epistemic arguments. We have
further examined the positive features of the theological implications of the design argument over the
classical position, and have then gone on to critically evaluate these implications in the light of their
internal difficulties and adverse repercussions for Christian theology. We must now do the same with
regard to the second argument we are concerned with in this chapter: the epistemic argument.

The Classical View of Gods Omniscience
Until the time of the Socinians, the belief that Gods omniscience included all future events was not
generally questioned. The classical understanding of Gods knowledge was in general that God knew all
things, including the future, perfectly, without change, and hence in a timeless fashion. Because God
was seen as actus purus, and, hence, perfectly simple and immutable, Gods knowledge was generally
seen to be identical with Gods power, will, love, etc.


Difficulties with the Classical View
Internal Consistency
First, we must recall the difficulties which we discussed concerning the timeless perfection of God itself.
The very concept of timeless perfection, we saw, runs into the problem of incompossibilities; it
seems to subjectivise and render illusory the reality of becoming; it undermines the contrast between
possibility and actuality, and hence it undermines any ontological distinction between the past, present,
and the future; it renders unintelligible the personhood of God; and it bypasses all of those aspects of
perfections which attach to virtuous mutability. Since the classical understanding of Gods perfect
knowledge is an aspect of its understanding of Gods perfection as such, all of these criticisms now
attach to omniscience as it is classically defined.

Other criticisms, however, arise specifically in relation to this classical understanding of omniscience.
Perhaps foremost among them is the suspicion that a God who knew reality in a timeless mode would
not know what time it was. A timeless God, in other words could not truly be omniscient. God would
indexically know what events follow what events, but this One could not know what it is to be in the
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now, with just this past, with just this future, and with just this experience of the temporal passage of
becoming from one to the other. For all moments are, per hypothesis, simultaneous with this One.

The Neo-Classical View of Gods Omniscience
Summary of Hartshornes View
To state it most succinctly, the view of omniscience arrived at through the epistemic argument is that
the perfection of Gods knowledge consists in God knowing as actual all that is actual, and as possible all
that is possible. Gods knowledge includes an exhaustive memory of the infinite past as actual, and a
comprehensive scope on possibilities for the future. Only in this way, we saw, can the value and reality
of the past not be lost; and only in this way can God, with infinite wisdom, offer each new occasion with
a relevant subjective aim which maximizes the possibilities of good, and minimizes the possibility of evil.
But this means that God does not, and cannot, have an actual (viz. determinate) and exhaustive
knowledge of the future.

The Advantages of The Neo-Classical View of Omniscience
First and foremost, this view clearly avoids any form of determinism.

Secondly, Hartshornes view also clearly preserves the intelligibility of the distinction between possibility
and actuality as well as the future and the past which the classical view obscured.

Thirdly, because Hartshorne views God as temporal, there is no problem with squaring omniscience
with the flow of time.

And finally, Hartshornes view, at least insofar as it affirms the temporality of God, is biblically more
sound than the classical view. God genuinely moves with the created order in time as the Bible
portrays God.

A Critical Evaluation of the Neo-classical View of Gods Knowledge
Hartshornes view of Gods knowledge, we have seen, has some significant advantages over the classical
understanding of this attribute of God. There are, however, some serious difficulties with this view
which must now be attended to.

Can God Know Our Subjectivity?
We have seen in our treatment of the epistemic argument that God knows the cosmic order by
prehending the creative synthesis of each just-past actual occasion. This means, as Hartshorne explicitly
states, that there can be, strictly speaking, no interaction among contemporaries. God, like all other
actual occasions, prehends how a previous occasion felt, but not as the occasion felt. A past occurrence
is in itself subject, but as known it is object. God, therefore, can only know us when our subjectivity has
perished, when we have become objectified.

We have already alluded to the significant conflict this view creates with one of the most fundamental
human religious institutions: namely, the conviction that God is closer to me than I am to myself. God
may know about my experience after it occurred, but God, in Hartshornes scheme, cannot know my
experience from the inside, and God cannot know me as I am having the experience. In my concrete
experience, I am locked into my solitary subjectivity.

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Once we have rejected the asymmetricality of all concrete relatedness as an a priori truth, there is no
longer any metaphysical necessity to hold this position. We shall argue that our dispositional view of the
self opens up for us a way of maintaining creaturely autonomy while asserting the presence of the
Creator in the contemporary essence of the creature.

Is the Contemporary World Real?
Beyond the religious applicability of Hartshornes doctrine of Gods actual knowledge as being
exclusively knowledge of the past, there is a further, closely related philosophical problem. We have
seen Hartshorne argue in the epistemic argument that reality and Gods knowledge must be
coextensive. Reality or truth cannot be defined apart from divine knowledge. But if God has no
knowledge of the contemporary world, does this not entail that the contemporary world is not real?
How can Hartshorne assert the existence of something which God cannot know? Is our subjective
becoming real? Hartshorne never denies it. Yet it is not known, and cannot be known, by God.

As we have already noted, the central difficulty here is that Hartshorne holds that all concrete relations
must be asymmetrical (past in the present) because of his reductionism, and Hartshorne has restricted
his ontology to the abstract and the concrete. And as we have seen, this means that he cannot render
becoming intelligible, for the move from the abstract to the concrete here must be capricious, atomistic
and subjectless. What is now clear is that this also ultimately entails that this moment of becoming
cannot fit Hartshornes own definition of realitythat which is known by God.

Is The Future in Gods Hands?
A third difficulty also concerns the unhappy relationship between Hartshornes understanding and the
biblical presentation of Gods knowledge. We have applauded the neo-classical view for allowing, in
contrast to the classical view, the future to be intelligently open, and hence for humans to be genuinely
free. To the extent that it does this it is, we believe, not only philosophically more sound, but biblically
more sound as well.

We must, however, now qualify this by arguing that while it is true that Scripture presents humans as
free and morally responsible, it also portrays God as being sovereign over this creaturely freedom, viz.
as knowing and predetermining whatever is necessary to guarantee this Ones over-all design for human
history. Hence in Scripture God can, when appropriate, decree that certain events are going to come to
pass as a manifestation of this Ones Deity (e.g. Isa. 41:26, 42:9, 44:7-8, 45:21). For example, God at
some point predestinated, and hence foreknew with some definiteness, the crucifixion of Christ (Rev.
13:8, Acts 2:23, 4:48). Indeed, it was predestined from the foundation of the world that there would be
an elect body in Christ (Eph. 1:3-11).

In contrast, Hartshornes account of Gods knowledge of the future can do nothing with the biblical
account of Gods predestinating and foreknowing activity. On his account, God, by metaphysical law,
cannot determine what God might wish to determine, and hence foreknow, concerning future events.
Only the most general abstract outlines of the future can be known, for nothing definite can be
predetermined. This God cannot take any initiative. This God can act only as acted upon. And it is for
this reason that the God witnessed to in Christ and Scripture has so much more control over this Ones
creation than does the God of neo-classicalism.

The Eternal Object of Gods Knowledge
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We have reviewed a number of arguments which lead Hartshorne to suppose that the world is
necessary and eternal alongside of God. One of these arguments was that without a world there would
be no multiplicity for God to prehend, and hence no material from which God could re-constitute
Godself concretely for an aesthetic satisfaction. To say, as Hartshorne says, that Gods knowledge must
always have a non-divine content, is in effect, to state this same argument another way. The world, by
availing itself to Gods knowledge (prehension) every moment provides the material by which God
concretely becomes God anew every moment. Hartshorne makes this point from a different angle when
he writes, is not the notion of a knower knowing himself absurd? Could even God observe a mere
privations? I hold that we have no right to suppose this, since we have no idea what he would be
observing as the objective situation.

The assumption here is that merely knowing oneself is a mere privation, even in the case of God.
Why? Because there is no experiencer over and above the experience which constitutes a subject-
now. Moreover, experience needs some content, and hence must be related to some other object.
Hence, the experience which constitutes God-now cannot have God as its content. It must have
what is not God: namely, the non-divine world.

A corollary to this argument is that we have no concept of a self except as distinguished from other
selves. Unless the I is distinguished from others, there can be no coherent meaning to I. Thus, unless
God is eternally distinguished from non-divine selves, we cannot, in Hartshornes view, conceive of God
as knowing Godself as a self.

But, of course, if it is supposed that God is antecedently social within Godself, if God is already eternally
self-differentiated and self-sufficient, complete and full within this sociality, then there is no need to
posit an eternal world to give God an object of knowledge (and love, and fellowship, etc.). The Trinity, as
C.S. Lewis noted, allows God to be seen as a genuine self, without positing an eternal contrast
between this self and non-divine selves. We shall expand this in our reconstruction in the following
section.

The Problem of the One and Many
There is, we have heard Hartshorne say, no interaction between contemporaries. Every occasion is, in
the present, locked in its own subjectivity. By the time it is known by another, the occasion has died,
perishedbecome objectified data. Even God waits (by metaphysical constraint) for the occasion
to attain its satisfaction, to achieve its subjective aim, before God can participate in its feeling.

The philosophic problem this raises, in an acute way, is the problem of the one and many. The difficulty
with Process thought is that if, at moment x, every actual occasion is isolated in its subjectivity from
every other occasion, it seems that we have a momentary instance of complete non-relationality? True,
every occasion is related to past occasions, and true every occasion shall momentarily be related to
future occasions: but we nevertheless seem to have complete non-relationality, complete pluralism, in
the contemporary universe. What, we must ask, unifies the many and makes them intelligible at
moment x? What do they all have in common?

It is of no avail to attempt to answer this question by appealing to the category of the ultimate,
creativity. For creativity is not a reality which unifies many, it is not an actual entitywhich does
anything. It is, rather, simply the generic name for all doings. It has no character apart from the
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specific occasions it describes. And hence, as Neville argues, it is, in fact, a statement of the ontological
problem, not the answer to it.

As we have already seen, ontological normativity requires antecedent actuality. Hence, universal
creativity cannot be divorced from the actuality of the Creator, as Neville has argued. And, as Neville
also argues, the unity of the cosmos must be located in this same antecedent actuality.

Nor is it possible to argue that the unity of the cosmos is sufficiently accounted for by the unity of each
actual occasion as it unifies the cosmos into its own self-constituting synthesis. This pluralistic solution
does not account for the unity of the others [viz. other actual occasions] of the ontological many, for
each of those others unifies the many in its own way. Alternatively, it might perhaps seems that God,
considered as an actual occasion, is the exception to this which saves the theory, for Gods unique
synthesis is all encompassing. Yet this too fails, for this unification comes too late. In any strictly
contemporary moment, we have only a many. What God synthesizes is the just-past in the immediate
present. But, as to the immediate present itself, the divine synthesis is one of the unrelated many
which needs unification.

Hartshornes metaphysics, then, runs aground on the problem of the one and the many. It does so, I
believe, for the exact same reasons it cannot account for the reality of the contemporary world. Indeed,
these are really identical problems. The unintelligible plurality of the contemporary world is simply an
aspect of the unknowability of the becoming of the contemporary world. The problem of an unrelated
many is, from a different angle, the problem of the unknowability of the many all over again.

The Problem of the Theory of Relativity
A final frequently voiced criticism of Hartshornes view of Gods knowledge of the world is that it
conflicts with Einsteins theory of relativity. If, as relativity theory implies, we cannot meaningfully speak
about cosmic simultaneity, then, it seems, the notion that Gods prehends the whole cosmos every
moment and offers it a new subjective aim every moment is meaningless. Hartshornes view, in
other words, seems to presuppose an absolute time which both God and the cosmos move within.

Hartshorne has, for the most part, been content to leave this problem unsolved, though as we have
seen, he repeatedly stresses how paradoxical, if not unintelligible, the alternative to his position is (viz.
the timeless view of God). As difficult as it is to conceive of divine time in the light of relativity theory,
surely it is less difficult than conceiving of divine timelessness which nevertheless causes and is related
to temporal events, some of which are self-determining. Hartshorne is attempting to avoid the notion of
cosmic simultaneity by denying that Gods prehension of the cosmos is a single prehension, that is, a
single divine state. Rather, he suggests that Gods concrete prehension of the cosmos is multifarious.
Gods prehension of a multiplicity of actual occasions in one temporal-spatial location is a different
prehension than Gods prehension of a multiplicity of occasions at another temporal-spatial location.

Hartshorne himself admits that he has mixed feelings about this solution. One particular worry is that
it seems that the idea of God as an individual though cosmic being iscompromised. This I take to be
something of an understatement. If Hartshornes suggestion were adopted, then, it seems he could no
longer speak about a consequent nature of God. He rather would have to speak about consequent
natures of God, for each divine prehension, recall, constitutes Gods concrete self. If there are a
multitude of prehensions, then there must be a multitude of divine concrete selves.
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Hartshornes proposal must, I believe, be considered unsuccessful. The problem remains. What has not
been sufficiently recognized, however, is that the problem of relativity physics is not endemic to Process
thought alone. The criticism is frequently thrown at Process thinkers (and they frequently throw it at
themselves) when in fact it is a problem which any theistic system must face. It is precisely the
equivalent to the problem which the principle of perspectivity poses for theism which was discussed
earlier. Even the timeless view of God must wrestle with it, for the supposition of an eternal
simultaneity of time is prima facia no more inherently compatible with relativity theory than a temporal
point of simultaneity.

If, in fact, there is no absolute frame of reference in which universal contemporeity makes sense, calling
it eternal will not create such a reference point. If every perspective is limitedbound to a time-space
reference pointthen a single all-encompassing perspective, whether temporal or nontemporal, is
impossible.

A Trinitarian Reconstruction Of The Neo-classical View of Gods Power and Knowledge
As the design and epistemic argument spell out the content of the perfection which the ontological and
cosmological arguments outline as necessary, so our present reconstruction of the view of God arrived
at by the design and epistemic arguments shall begin to fill in the content of our Trinitarian
reconstruction of the neo-classical view of God.

The Necessary Relationality of God
We have repeatedly seen that one centrally significant implication of Hartshornes metaphysical system
is that the non-divine world must be seen as a metaphysical necessity alongside the necessary divine
reality. This, we have seen, is the result of a) Hartshornes contention that being is necessarily relational;
b) his view of actuality as exclusively atomistic; c) his view of experience as necessarily asymmetrically
related to its objective content; and d) his view of experience as necessarily consisting of a creative
synthesis of an antecedent multiplicity.

We have, however, argued that b, c and d are erroneously constructed as a priori. Relationality is indeed
a prioriabsolute unity being conceptually equivalent to nothingnessbut, we have argued, concrete
reality need not be conceived of as exclusively atomistic, concrete relationality need not be strictly
asymmetrical, and experience need not consist in creative synthesis. These are partial and contingent
aspects of reality; they are not non-restrictive and a priori.

The first and foremost consequence of this is that the a priori truth of relationality can now be satisfied
without the postulation of a contingent non-divine multiplicity to be prehended by God. The necessity
of relationality can be satisfied in the necessity of the divine being itself. God is necessarily relational to
Godself. All intelligibility, we argue, is satisfied by this. There is no further metaphysical necessity of a
non-divine world.

This point is really simply restated in a different form as we recall the metaphysical difficulty embodied
in Hartshornes theory of abstraction as applied to God. The necessity of Gods character, we have
argued, is unintelligible unless grounded in, and indeed identical with, a necessary infinite actuality. God
must have an eternal, infinite actuality which is at once Gods essence and Gods essential existence.
Without this antecedent and primordial actuality, the view of Gods necessary and actual relationality
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apart from the world would be unintelligible, as it is within Hartshornes system. If Gods eternal
character is merely an abstraction from contingent divine actual occasions, then clearly an actual self-
sufficient (because necessary) relationality could never characterize Gods eternal character.

But once we postulate a necessary actuality to render intelligible the a priori abstract character of God
as required by the theistic arguments, we are not only free to now postulate an actual relationality
within God: we must do so. For again, pure, independent, solitary simplicity is unintelligible. But just this
is what we would have to conceive in order to conceive of Gods necessary, primordial, independent
actualitywere it not internally relational.

The Necessary Object of Gods Knowledge
The view of the one necessary being as being necessarily constituted by internal relationality provides
for us the answer to Hartshornes argument for the necessity of the world based on the necessity of
Gods knowledge and Gods love having a proper object. For having refuted the unnecessary features of
the foundational statements of Hartshornes system which his theistic arguments arise from, we may
now say, and indeed must say, that the only thing which the one necessary reality necessarily knows
and loves is Godself.

Again, if God is conceived of as alone necessarily actual, and thus as consisting of an eternal self-
differentiated relationality, and if it is granted that the concept of experience requires the conception of
an experiencing subject, as we have argued, then it can no longer be argued that the notion of a
knower knowing himself [alone] is absurd. Nor could it any longer be argued, as Hartshorne argues,
that God would be foolish or do the worst possible thing if God chose not to create the world. For
the necessity of the divine self-differentiated actuality cannot be essentially altered, for better or for
worse, by contingent considerations. It is as great, at least as to its necessary features, with
contingent non-divine expressions as without them.

If we may now utilize the language of Scripture, we may, in the light of our reconstruction, view Gods
essential being as eternally consisting in the event of the perfect knowing and loving of the Father and
Son in the power of the Spirit. The very conception of the biblical God as the one who not only loves,
but is love, implies this.

If in fact a non-divine world is not a metaphysical necessity, and if in fact God is a metaphysical
necessityand with God, Gods knowledge and Gods lovethen it is necessary that God be conceived
of as being self-differentiated and that this self-differentiation consist in Gods social knowledge and
love. As necessary, the God-defining social action within Godself must be in need of (contingent upon)
no other, but must be sufficient unto itself. God must then be metaphysically defined as just the event
of this eternal, divine, self-sufficient knowledge and love.

The One whose power is this Ones love, and whose love is this Ones knowledge, is the necessary and
eternal divine event which structures and internally satisfies, in and of itself, all rationality and which
further grounds all contingent being. The contingent relationality, rationality, love and knowledge of
non-divine being has its source in the necessary relationality, rationality, love and knowledge of this
social and eventful One. The fundamental purpose for the being of contingent reality, as shall be argued
in chapter VI, is to express (not constitute) the fullness of the One who has freely, and therefore
graciously, called it into being.
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The Trinity and Divine Activity
Earlier in this chapter we saw that Hartshornes understanding of Gods actuality produces a view of
Gods activity which is problematic for philosophical, and certainly doctrinal, reasons. We saw that the
problem of causation was left unsolved and that this view ruled out the possibility of God taking any
unique and radical action in the world. This in turn affected all of the central tenets of the Christian
faith.

In the light of our revision of Hartshornes foundational concepts, it should be clear that the problem of
God only acting as acted upon does not apply to our reconstructed view of God based on Hartshornes
theistic arguments. God can only act as acted upon in Hartshornes system because God is only actual as
made actual (at least in part) by non-divine creatures. Gods actuality is nothing over and above the
contingent creative synthesis of the just-past multiplicity of the world. So, of course there is, as it were,
no surplus actuality to make any radical initiative in the world. Gods responsive (passive) self-
creativity is all the activity God can enact.

But if, as we have argued, it is not a priori that actuality necessarily consists of a creative synthesis of
antecedent occasions, then obviously, it cannot be an a priori truth that Gods actuality must consist in
such a creative synthesis. Thus, God does not have to derive the material for Gods actual self-
constitution from non-divine objectified entities.

But this in essence entails that the difficulties raised against Hartshornes view of Gods activity do not
apply here. For if God is relationally actual within Godself, apart from the world, then Gods activity
need not simply be a response to what the world has just done. God can, as God chooses, take the
initiative in the world. Once we admit a primordial, non-contingent and socially self-sufficient actuality
to God, thenbut only thenGod can be conceived of as a truly free Creator. God is free to create, or
not create; to determine or leave undetermined; to allow the creation to freely run its course, or to
intervene and alter its course. God has, as it were, the surplus of actuality sufficient to act in this
fashion.

The Trinity and Key Christian Doctrines
The Trinity and Christology
The Trinitarian and Christological controversies of the early Church took place at different times and
were historically only remotely related to each other. This fact, however, must not cloud the fact that
these two orthodox confessions are really mutually implicatory. Each necessitates the other. Our
critique of Hartshornes system on this point is sufficient to already demonstrate that the Churchs
Christologythe view that in Christ God united Godself to humanity in a distinct and decisive way
cannot stand without the Churchs traditional understanding of God as triune.

Only if God is antecedently actual, relational, and self-sufficient in relation to the world can God be free
enough to do what Scripture proclaims that God did in fact do in Christ Jesus. Only a God who is
eternally social within Godself can perform the more than necessary feat of opening up this sociality
to what is fundamentally other than Godself. Only a God who is socially and self-sufficiently triune as
lover, beloved and loving can take the radical and completely unprovoked initiative to take upon and
within this Ones self the full nature of a non-divine self in order to effect wholeness in the whole of the
non-divine creation. Only a God whose self-defining disposition toward aesthetic and social delight is
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perfectly satisfied within Godself could be free enough to redefine Godself in perfect conjunction with
the self-defining disposition of a human individual. And only a God who is self-differentiated within
Godself could do this without thereby ceasing to be God.

In short, only a God who does not need the world can genuinely become incarnate within the world
and graciously save the world. Neither a static solipsistic God, nor a dynamic but dependent God, can
render intelligible the revelatory fact that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself (2Cor.
5:19). Only the internally relational One, whose actuality is in surplus, is more than self-sufficient or
more than necessaryonly this One renders intelligible this revelatory fact, and with it, all the
metaphysical categories.

The Trinity and Grace
It is in no way coincidental that the view which renders the orthodox conception of Christ intelligible at
the same time renders the Christian theme of grace intelligible, for the grounds of intelligibility are in
both cases the same: namely, the conception of a God who is internally social and self-sufficientmore
than self-sufficientwithin Godself.

We have seen that Hartshornes view of God cannot allow for grace, for what this God does God does
only as a response, and this out of metaphysical necessity and metaphysical need. God can only offer an
initial subjective aim to the creaturewhich is to say that God can only re-create Godself in a way which
is relevant to a subsequent creatures prehensionand even this offer is made not of abundance, but
out of Gods own metaphysical need for a subsequent aesthetic satisfaction.

Once the foundational elements which give rise to this neo-classical conception of God are refuted,
however, this difficulty is avoided. A God who is in need of none other is supremely free for the other,
and when this freedom is actualized, it is done so not out of need, but out of abundance, out of grace.
As God creates the world before the world could offer anything to God, and thus out of grace, so God
re-creates the fallen world order before this world order could benefit God, and thus out of grace.
Only the God who is free to be alonefor this One is never alonecan out of the abundance of this
Ones eternal self-sufficient actuality take the gracious initiative to save lost humanity. As Scripture
portrays the matter, this initiative is performed through the fact that God graciously renders Gods
eternal sociality supremely inclusive to encompass the other. In the language of the New Testament, the
Father comes to us in the person of the Son through the power of the Spirit, in order that we and the
whole created order might have access to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit (Eph.
2:18).

The Trinity and Prayer
The same internally social conception of God which renders the Churchs understanding of Christ and
salvation intelligible rendersfor the same reasonsthe Churchs understanding of petitionary prayer
intelligible. Whereas God can, in Hartshornes scheme, do no favors as we have seen, a self-sufficient
God whose essential actuality is not contingent is free to actively inspire, hear and respond to particular
cries in particular ways as this One sees fit. This God is not bound to operate at all times in all places in
the same metaphysically necessitated way.

Only such a view of God as this could have the resources to share, unnecessarily, the governing of the
world with this Ones children through prayer. Only this One can conceivably have the abundance of life
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and confidence to share with radical inferiors the risk and adventure of working towards the largely
undetermined future through faith, action and prayer.

If Gods actuality were exhaustively determined by the previous acts of contingent creatures, and if God
were bound to the created order as an ingredient in a single organism, then this could not be the case.
Only the more than self-sufficient God is free to act in a more than universal, metaphysically
determined, exclusively responsive, way.

The Trinity and the Eschaton
It is this same internally social conception of God which alone grounds the creativity and progress of the
world order. So long as creativity is viewed as an abstraction from atomistically conceived concrete
entities, it cannot be rendered intelligible, as we have seen. A descriptive abstraction, we have argued,
cannot be given a metaphysically prescriptive role. As Rahner, Kaspers and others have argued, only if
there is an encompassing wealth of potentiality resident within an actuality which logically precedes the
world at every moment can the self-transcendence of the contingent world be explained.


The Trinity and the Triumph of the Kingdom
Along these same lines, we have seen that the God of the neo-classical theism cannot promisecannot
even hopeto eventually overcome evil in the world. To be sure, Ford is correct in admitting that this
One cannot even promise that this world, as it concerns human beings, will not end up catastrophically.
The sharing of power which constitutes the multiplicity of all beings is in no way voluntary on Gods
part, and thus it would violate the freedom inherent in the necessary non-divine order for God to make
such a promiselet alone promise that evil shall be overcome altogether. This, we argued, goes directly
counter to the eschatological vision given us in the resurrection of Christ.

Again, not coincidentally, it is only a Trinitarian conception of God which provides the metaphysical
framework within which such a promise could be intelligibly made by God and intelligibly understood by
the recipients of this promise. Only if God is independent of the world as to this ones essential
existence can God hold the final outcome of the world process in this Ones own hands. There is, we
have agreed, a sharing of power. Gods decision to create non-divine individuals entailed a limitation on
Gods self in that the autonomy of the creature means some degree of autonomous power. And we
have agreed that this sharing of power also entails that the future is not completely predetermined:
that even for God some significant aspects of the future must remain concretely unknown. But if the
sharing of life, and therefore of power, is voluntary on Gods part, this One can with divine wisdom
control the degree and extent of its use.

In sum, then, only a God who is complete within Godself, and only a God whose completeness is more
than necessary, open to contingent expression, can do what Scripture portrays this One as doing. Only
if God is neither only abstractly necessary nor only actually necessary, only if God is both necessarily (in
essence) and contingently (in expression) actual, can this necessary and exalted balance between order
and freedom be maintained in a way which is internally coherent and which expresses the view which
the biblical view of God presupposes. Only here can the triumph of the Kingdom be promised while
freedom and needed cooperation of the subjects are at the same time maintained.

The Trinity and the Problem of the One and Many
79

We have seen that the central reason why Process thought illustrates the problem of the one and the
many so acutely is because it cannot concretely unify the multiplicity of the world at any given moment.
The unity of the world is always de facto unity, a synthesis of a previous multiplicity. But this new unity
itself instantly becomes a member of a new multiplicity. This problem is itself the result of the view that
asymmetrical relationality alone is concrete, and that experience must be constituted by a creative
synthesis. Once these concepts are rejected as a priori, the way is open to begin to render the problem
of the one and many a bit less problematic.

The Necessary Determinate Trinity and the Unity of Being
If in fact it is the case that the a priori categories are satisfied in the one necessary being, as they must
be since all else is contingent, and if relationality is indeed a priori, then God must be one and many
within Godself. The unity of God is precisely the social relationality which constitutes this Ones being.
And the multiplicity of God is precisely the divine Persons who are knowingly and lovingly
encompassed and mutually defined by this unity. The Persons, in this view, are not first distinct and
only secondly related, for in this case the relationality would be contingent. Rather, the Persons and
the relation are both necessary, and hence the Persons are inconceivable apart from the relationality.
The I and the Thou which defines the reciprocal eternal loving event of the Trinity are inseparable
from the relationality which unites and defines them.

Summary of Chapter V
We have in this chapter expounded and evaluated Hartshornes design and epistemic argument as well
and the theological implications of these two arguments. Like the theological implications of the
ontological and cosmological arguments, we have found that Hartshornes view of God avoids many of
the difficulties of classical theism, but produces a number of severe philosophical and theological
difficulties of its own. Through our revisions of the foundational structure of Hartshornes thought, we
have attempted to show that one can construct a view of God from these theistic arguments which still
retains the advantages over classical theism, but does so without entailing the difficulties of neo-
classical theism. And the fundamental ingredient in our reconstruction, we saw, was the recognition of
the primordial necessary actuality of God, and hence of the primordial necessary sociality of God. When
properly understood, then, the a priori arguments thus far examined point not in the direction of a
necessary God-world relation, but in the direction of a necessary God-God direction: they point, in other
words, to what can be considered to be the abstract skeletal outline of the doctrine of the Trinity.

A number of crucial questions yet remain. Chief among these is the question of how we are to conceive
of the relationship between the necessary and contingent actuality of God. Also yet unanswered is the
question of how this contingency in God relates to the contingency of the world. How is the triune God
immanent within the world process? How does God constitute the innermost being of created things, as
Neville argues, while yet allowing for the relative autonomy of these creations? And how is creaturely
freedom and divine freedom related? In short, left largely unanswered thus far is how a Trinitarian view
of God works out into a Trinitarian metaphysics.

We shall attempt to address these in our final chapter in which we consider the goodness and the
beauty of God as arrived at via Hartshornes moral and aesthetic arguments. We shall attempt to show
that the view of God these arguments necessitate, when considered in the light of our revised
foundational statements, is something akin to the traditional view of God as triune.

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PART II
SIX THEISTIC ARGUMENTS OF HARTSHORNES SYSTEM
CHAPTER VI
The Moral And Aesthetic Arguments:
The Goodness and Beauty of God

We have thus far seen that the necessary sociality of being as such entails the necessary sociality and
self-sufficiency of God once certain mistaken features of Hartshornes system are rejected. Once the
supposed asymmetrical view of concrete relationality, the view of experience as creative synthesis, and
the atomistic conception of actuality are rejected as a priori, the remaining features of Hartshornes
system argue, on an a priori basis, for a view of God as the only necessary reality. This necessary divine
reality, we have further argued, must be omni-influential over a free creation, and must be omniscient
though this One need not have a creation to be influential over, nor need this One have a creation as the
object of knowledge. Nothing is necessary save God.

We shall, in this final chapter, see this conclusion reaffirmed and further filled out by our examination of
Hartshornes moral and aesthetic arguments. Our argument shall be that, when corrected, Hartshornes
moral and aesthetic arguments require something like the traditional trinitarian view of God, a God who
is internally relational and self-sufficient. Moreover, we shall argue that only such a view of God as this
can render coherent the necessary goodness and beauty of the one necessary reality.

The Moral Argument
Introduction
Consistent with the format we have been following, we shall follow the tetralemmic form Hartshornes
moral argument takes with his global argument as found in Creative Synthesis and Philosophical
Method.

The Tetralemma of the Moral Argument

A1: There is no supreme aim or summum bonum whose realization a creatures action can
promote.
A2: There is a supreme aim, which is to promote the good life among some (or all) creatures
during their natural life spans.
A3: There is a supreme aim, which is to promote the good life among creatures after death or
in heaven.
T: There is a supreme aim, which is to enrich the divine life (by promoting the good life among
creatures).
5


God as the All-Inclusive Summum Bonum
If A1-3 are considered to be refuted, then the only remaining alternative is to conceive of a necessary
reality which consciously encompasses and eternally remembers and appreciates the good achieved in
human life and which also constitutes the in a word, is to admit the existence of a morally perfect God.
Hence Hartshornes moral argument arrives at the conclusion that there is a summum bonum, and it is

5
Gregs development of Harthornes points in TP are excellent but Ive chosen not to include them in the interests of keeping
this summary as short as possible. CH concludes T.
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to enrich the divine life (by promoting the good life among creatures). The theistic implications of this
argument shall be treated shortly. But first we must consider the last of Hartshornes theistic arguments:
the aesthetic argument.

The Aesthetic Argument
We have, with the preceding arguments, noted the novelty of Hartshornes a priori approach in relation
to arguments which preceded it in the history of western philosophy. With the aesthetic argument,
however, it is not simply the case that Hartshornes a priori approach is new. The very concept of a
formal aesthetic theistic argumentdistinct from the design argumentis unique to Hartshorne.

The Tetralemma of the Aesthetic Argument

A1: There is no beauty of the world as a (de facto) whole.
A2: There is beauty of the world as a whole, but no one enjoys it.
A3: There is a beauty of the world as a whole, but only non-divine beings enjoy it.
T: There is a beauty of the world as a whole and God alone adequately enjoys it.

A1: Could the World Be Devoid of Beauty?
Hartshorne argues that A1 could be true only if a) the world were wholly monotonous, or b) the world as
a whole was wholly chaotic. The first alternative, however, cannot be correct according to Hartshorne
because reality is essentially active and free and all radical monotony is secondary and artificial. If all
concrete existence is a free creative synthesis, all stability being abstract, then the world taken as a
concrete whole cannot be radically monotonous. But neither does the second alternative succeed for
reasons given against A1 of the design argument. Absolute chaos, like absolute unity, is unintelligible. It
is equivalent to nothingness, and hence violates the first of Hartshornes a priori truths.

Hartshornes refutation of b is successful, but our revisions of his atomistic conception of concreteness
might be thought to render this refutation of a unavailable to us. If concrete reality is perspectivally
defined, as we have argued, then we cannot say that all mundaneness at a phenomenological level is
abstract or secondary. Might the world, then, be more like a rock when taken as a whole than an
ocean of feeling as Hartshorne envisions?

My response is that even something as mundane as a rock is not without its aesthetic value. If beauty is,
as Hartshorne has argued, a complex unity among a relational multiplicity, then even a rock possesses or
constitutes some degree of beauty. The value may be meager from our perspective: the rocks internal
relationality, for example, is no doubt more exciting when considered at a sub-atomic level, and its
external relationality is, perhaps more exciting when considered as a relation amidst a scope of relations
far more vast than humans can ordinarily enjoy. But from every perspective there is a related
multiplicity, and hence some aesthetic enjoyment. Radical mundaneness, therefore, is not only
secondary, as Hartshorne says, it is non-existent.

A2: Could the Aesthetic Value of the World be Unknown?
Hartshornes response to the supposition that the beauty of the world, taken as a whole, could be
unknown follows the same pattern of thought laid out in the epistemic argument against the
supposition that there could be elements of reality which are unknown.

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First, in the very thought of the beauty of the world we are, to some degree, enjoying the beauty of
the world. To thus maintain that no one ever experiences this reality is self-refuting.

Closely related to this, the supposition that there is an unknowable realityor an unappreciable
beautyis internally incoherent as the epistemic argument has already shown. As Santayana says, A
beauty not perceived is a pleasure not felt, and is a contradiction. Thus, to say that the world as a
whole has some degree of beauty but that it is not enjoyed by anyone is to affirm and deny the same
thing.

A3: Could the Aesthetic Value of the World Be Enjoyed Only By Non-Divine Creatures?
The repetition of the logic of the epistemic argument is again evident in Hartshornes refutation of A3.
Hartshorne writes,

Our enjoymentis utterly disproportionate to the beauty in question. This disproportion would
be an absolute basic flaw in reality, such as never could be eliminated. It must have always
obtained, and it could not be merely contingent, but must rather be an eternally necessary yet
ugly aspect of things. Always God ought to have existed to enjoy his creation, and always he
failed to exist. To think such an eternal deficiency is to form a thought without intrinsic reward.
Nor has it any pragmatic value either. It is just a drooping of spirits, not a genuine concept. Its
real meaning is as an experiment to bring us to the realization that the beauty of the world could
not fail to have its spectator.

The first point in this passage is that the fragmentary experience of the beauty of the world by such
finite creatures as human beings is utterly disproportionate to the very concept of the beauty of the
whole. This again parallels Hartshornes refutation of A2 of the epistemic argument; the supposition that
our fragmentary knowledge of reality is disproportionate to the whole of reality. As reality must be
defined in terms of a knowledge adequate to its totality, so the beauty of this reality must be defined in
terms of an appreciation adequate to its totality. For this task, human appreciation cannot suffice. All-
inclusive beauty thus entails, according to Hartshorne, an all-inclusive appreciator of beauty.

There can be an all-inclusive beauty only if there be an all-inclusive appreciation of beauty, and
what could that be if not a cosmic sympathy? Cosmic beauty as a value must be actualized in
some cosmic experience.

The second central point of the passage quoted in refutation of A3 is that the deficiency implied in the
supposition that only non-divine creatures experience beauty would be necessary, not contingent,
deficiency. This too parallels Hartshornes refutation of A2 of the epistemic argument. There, we saw,
the limitations of finite creatures in terms of their knowledge (and hence of their appreciate of beauty)
was not contingentas though these limitations could ever be wholly overcome. Such fragmentation
is, rather, part of what it means to be contingent finite creature. We do not, and cannot, experience
reality with perfection.

But it is impossible, according to Hartshorne, for a necessary truth to be ugly. The necessity of beauty
means that the necessary features of the world cannot be ugly or indifferent. To be regrettableugly
or indifferentmeans that one would prefer an alternative. But concerning necessary truths there are
no conceivable alternatives. Hence, valid metaphysical insights must constitute truistic beauty.
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Necessary truths are, therefore, necessarily positive, and thus it cannot be a necessary truth that there is
(regrettably) no appreciator adequate to the beauty of the world as a whole.

Finally, and closely related to this, the passage cited above notes that the concept of the missing God
is pragmatically meaningless. Given that there is a beauty to the cosmos as a whole, what pragmatic
significance is there in adding that no one appreciates it? Because it is a strictly negative concept, it can
make no difference in our thought or life. Thus, the only positive content the A3 supposition has is by
negation: it shows us that the beauty of the world could not fail to have a spectator.

T: God the All-Inclusive Beauty of the World
If A1-3 are agreed to be untenable, then, according to Hartshorne, the only remaining alternative is T:
There is a beauty of the world as a whole and God alone adequately enjoys it. The God who has
previously been shown to be the all-inclusive contingent synthesis of the world, and hence the all-
inclusive, all-sensitive, and omni-influential orderer; the God who has previously been shown to be the
all-inclusive and perfect knower of the world as well as the One who inspires and eternally encompasses
its moral value, is now shown to be the all-inclusive beauty of the world.

God experiences, appreciates and incorporates within Godself the beauty of the world as a de facto
whole at every moment. The world contributes to, and is thus immortalized in, the ever increasing
beauty of God. The sixth foundational statement of Hartshorne, aesthetic experience occurs, thus
works out to entail that a divine aesthetic experience occurs.

The Theological Implications of the Moral Argument: Gods Goodness
Difficulties With the Classical Conception of Gods Goodness
We have at this point in previous chapters first discussed the classical conception of the attribute under
discussion before moving on to difficulties implicit in this conception. Concerning both the goodness and
beauty of God, however, we see no need for a distinctive exposition of these attributes, for the classical
tradition has, on the whole, offered little on these attributes which has not already been covered in our
discussions of Gods perfection as such, Gods power, and Gods knowledge.

The Futility of Religious Service
In contrast to Process thought, we find no difficulty with the classical conception of God being good in
and of Godself, apart from any interaction with a non-divine world. So long as the divine reality can
intelligibly be understood as being that which alone is necessary, there exists no difficulty in ascribing
supreme goodness to this reality apart from any contingent good relations this One may or may not
have.

The difficulties which attend the classical conception of Gods goodness rather attach to the fact that
there is, in this view, no room for God to be consistently understood to step out of this Ones necessity
and interact with contingent creatures. Just as a statically conceived conception of Gods perfection
could not consistently leave room for any genuinely contingent mutual relationship between God and
the worldviz., it could not leave room for Gods contingent but supreme passivity, Gods contingent
and hence changing knowledgeso too this static conception cannot conceive of Gods goodness in
such a way that our contingent good achievements make any difference to this One.

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And again Hartshorne writes, If Gods awareness of us contributes no value to God, then our existence
is idle. The glory of God is the inclusive value; if we add nothing to it, then our existence adds noting to
reality as a whole. Thus, unless Gods concrete experience of goodness is contingent in the sense of
being open to our contingent achievements, it seems that all service for God is really irrelevant to God.
Whatever Gods goodness comes to, then, it has nothing to do with us in the classical scheme.

Can Gods Goodness To A Contingent World Be Absolutely Non-Contingent?
A second closely related difficulty involved in asserting the goodness of God while yet hold that God is
pure act is that it becomes problematic as to how God can be good to us who are contingent while yet
being wholly non-contingent. A minimal definition of goodness as an ethical category might be that it
consists in a recognition of the needs of another and responding to this other in a manner favorable to
the other. But if God is in no respect contingent, how are we to conceive of God responding to our needs
at all, let alone in a good fashion? If God is devoid of all potentiality, and hence all passivity, how can
God respond to anything?

A related problem can be raised in the light of the problems we have noted in connection with the other
classical attributes we have examined. If God knows us by knowing Gods own eternal and unchanging
essence, and if our actual contingent states thus do not contribute to Gods knowledge but rather arise
from this divine knowledge (Gods knowledge, according to Aquinas, is causative, not responsive or
inferential), then, while a fortunate life may be inclined to call God good (for the good fortune is
divinely caused), would not an unfortunate life be justified in calling God evil?

Or to say it another way, if Gods eternal knowledge is identical with Gods power, then Gods eternal
knowledge of evil must be identical with Gods power to cause evil (Gods permissive will). But in this
case, how is God to be called all good? Neville seems consistent when he concludes that from the
supposition that Gods willing and knowing (they are identical) lie behind all things one can conclude
that Gods character is only as good as experience shows it to be as creator of just this world and no
more. This is another version of the difficulty in accounting for evil within a theistic system when
genuine openness to the future, genuine freedom, is in principle rules out.

The Neo-Classical Conception of Gods Goodness
Gods goodness, within Hartshornes system, is essentially identical with Gods knowledge, power, and
love. It consists in the abstract principle that God always responds to actual occasions in an ideal
manner. God prehends and immortalizes the concrete goodness of the contingent world as an
ingredient in this Ones own new self-constitution. And God in turn offers Gods own newly constituted
self to be prehended by the non-divine world. The goodness of God, then, refers to the supreme
sensitivity with which God considers and responds to others, and the unsurpassable appropriateness
and influential relevance of the subjective aim which God offers each occasion at the beginning of its
concrescence. The divine aim is what is ideal for the individual creature as well as what is ideal for the
whole cosmos.

Since Gods altruism and self-interest coincidethe world is Gods own bodyGods goodness to the
world is at once Gods goodness to Godself. For God to do evil to the world would be for God to do evil
to Gods concrete self, for this new divine self must utilize the just past world as material for its self-
constituting aesthetic experience.

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It is important to note in all of this that though Gods concrete expression of goodness is contingent, and
though Gods experience of the goodness of the world ever increases as the sum value of the world
increases, it is nevertheless not the case that Gods goodness itself increases. God does not become
better.

Gods categorical supremacy encompasses both ideals which do and do not admit of maximal instances.
According to Hartshorne, for example, Gods beauty does not admit of a maximal instance, for there is
no conceivable maximal instance of beauty. It therefore increases. Gods power, however, is eternally
unsurpassable, for there is a conceivable maximal instance of power, namely, omnipotence (meaning,
all conceivable power, given a multiplicity of powers).

So it is with Gods goodness. The abstract quality of goodness has an intelligible maximal limit. This
defines Gods abstract being eternally and unchangingly. God thus does not improve ethically. How God
is concretely good at any given moment and how God concretely experiences goodness at any given
moment are contingent. But that God is supremely good is necessary and cannot be improved upon.

A Critical Evaluation of the Neo-Classical View of Gods Goodness
The Unintelligibility of Moral Responsibility
Hartshornes conception of Gods goodness, we see, has some definite philosophical advantages over
the conception of Gods goodness when God is conceived of as actus purus. But as with the other neo-
classical divine attributes we have examined, it also has several difficulties which must be examined and
which, we shall argue, ultimately necessitate a trinitarian reconstruction of this Process understanding
of God.

The first difficulty which the neo-classical conception of Gods goodness faces is that it has not yet
rendered intelligible free moral responsibility, and hence, moral virtue. We have already argued that
morally responsible freedom is not intelligible so long as freedom is equated with sheer spontaneity as
Hartshorne argues. Chance, regardless of how complex it is, cannot itself produce moral responsibility.

Creativity and freedom, we have argued, are what move something from possibility to actuality, from
the past to the present, from abstraction to concreteness. But this move cannot be intelligible, certainly
not intelligible as morally responsible, so long as there is no category to mediate it. So long as
concreteness and abstraction are the only two categories, the move between them must be irrational,
for this move is not itself either concrete or abstract. The leap here is necessarily capricious and
subjectless, for being neither concrete nor abstract, there quite literally is nothing left in the universe of
Process thought to give this leap a reason or a subject matterlet along a moral dimension.

Now it is true that Process thought attempts to mediate this leap by appealing to the category of
creativity and the concept of Gods superjective nature which offers each occasion a subjective aim, as
we have seen. Creativity, in this scheme, purportedly grounds the fact that things advance, and the
superjective nature of God purportedly grounds how they advance.

This move, however, is problematic, for given the ontological principle, it is also held that creativity is
only an abstract description of actual occasions, and hence cannot coherently function as a prescriptive
abiding law governing actual occasions. Moreover, the subject aim from God is conceptualized as
preceding the concrescence of the actual occasion, and hence it cannot account either for the freedom
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of the occasion or for the essence of the occasion. The subjective aim is what the occasions decision is
about: it cannot, therefore, account for the occasions decision itself. The freedom of each occasion,
we have therefore argued, is capricious and self-less, and, among other things, this cannot be squared
with moral responsibility.

In contrast to this, we have argued that freedom presupposes an antecedent creativity which is not a
mere abstraction and is more determinate than the Process view of creativity as such. It presupposes a
creativity which is ordered, which is predisposed, to actualize itself in certain ways: in this case, disposed
to be rational, to deliberate between alternatives, to be constituted by moral principles, etc. And it
presupposes that this disposition, this ordered creativity, is constituted of the essence of the agent, not
antecedent to it. This, we maintain, is the dominant subjective aim of the self, and it doesnt therefore
antedate the self. It rather constitutes the essence of the self.

Hartshornes metaphysics, however, understands creativity indeterminately and abstractly, and he
understands the subjective aim as being antecedent to and non-constitutive of the self. Hence the
leap from abstraction to concreteness is not ontologically mediated. And hence neither the
conception of human freedom, nor the conception of Gods freedom, can have an intelligible moral
dimension to it in his system. The goodness that humans achieve, and thus the goodness that God
experiences and remembers, must ultimately be understood to be the goodness of fortune, not
responsible volition. And this, clearly, is drastically at odds both with our ordinary experiences as well as
with what is meant in Scripture, in the Church, and in most ordinary theistic talk about Gods goodness.

Gods World-Dependent Experience of Goodness
We have seen that Hartshorne argues, against the classical tradition, that God must have a contingent
aspect to God if God is to be open to the genuinely contingent acts of goodness performed by the
creature. We cannot, in the classical view, be said to serve God unless our acts make a difference to
God. This critique we regard to be essentially correct.

A problem arises, however, when Hartshorne further argues that our contribution to God must mean
that God would be less without it. The sum total of Gods experience of goodness (though not the
quality of Gods abstract character) would be less if God did not experience and remember our moral
achievements.

This inference does not necessarily follow. If we can distinguish between the inner self-sufficiency of
God and the outward expression of this sufficiency, as has been argued (III.vi.3, IV.iv.2), then we may
conceive of human (and other creaturely) acts in such a way that they do contribute to God, but do not
thereby increase God. The value of creaturely acts is experienced and eternally appreciated by God, and
in this sense they contribute to Gods contingent experience of goodness. But this contingent divine
experience of goodness is not what constitutes the essence of Gods experience of goodness. It rather
expresses in a novel way the unsurpassable experience of goodness which is already Gods from all
eternity. This essential goodness of God is not merely abstract, but rather constitutes Gods necessary,
concrete, eternal social actuality. And as necessary, it is not world-dependent.

Gods More Than Necessary Goodness
As we have seen, the goodness of God for Hartshorne is equivalent to the metaphysical requirement
that God prehend the totality of the world with perfect sensitivity and reconstitute Godself in an ideal
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way, thus offering to the subsequent world and aim which is ideal for its own subsequent self-creativity.
In contrast to Gunton, Mason, Neville and others, we have no difficulty with the concept of the
necessary goodness of God itself. We agree with Hartshorne that a freedom to sin or do less than
what is ideal is not a genuine freedom. It is, therefore, no limitation on God to say that God is necessarily
good.

Our difficulty with the neo-classical conception of divine goodness lies elsewhere. First, as we have
already argued in relation to the other attributes of God, the necessity of Gods abstract goodness has
not been rendered intelligible in Hartshornes scheme. There is no sufficient reason for why the actual
occasions which constitute Gods concrete nature in fact always become in an ideal manner. Every other
actual occasion becomes in a certain fashion because of the subjective aim offered it by God and other
antecedent occasions (plus uncaused spontaneity). But there is no reality, no antecedent actuality,
guiding the concrete pole of God. Gods abstract nature purportedly functions in this capacity, yet
abstractions are supposed to be dependent upon the concrete, not vice versa. The necessity of Gods
character, we therefore argue, cannot be an abstraction from the concrete pole of God. It must itself be
actual, and eternally so. And what God is contingently must be based on this, not the other way around.

Secondly, even if one grants the intelligibility of the necessary goodness of God according to Hartshorne,
it must from our perspective be pointed out that this conception does not yet capture, or even allow for,
a biblical view of God whose goodness is more than necessary. Because Gods goodness must be
expressed, and expressed to a necessary world orderin other words, because God is not antecedently
actual and therefore internally social in Hartshornes schemeGod is not able to go beyond the strictly
necessary.

Hence, in this system of thought God is not free to go beyond the necessarily ideal good response to the
world. God is not free to take the radical, and unexpectedly good, initiative which Christianity claims
God can, and has, taken. God is metaphysically good, in Hartshornes scheme, but this goodness
exhausts Gods goodness. God is not good out of the unnecessary overflowing abundance of this Ones
being, but only insofar as the situation, combined with the metaphysical laws, requires. Gods goodness
is limited to the goodness we should expect: it cannot surprise us.

As such, the neo-classical conception of divine goodness cannot allow for, let alone render intelligible,
the gracious and particular goodness of God witnessed to in Scripture. We shall subsequently argue that
our aesthetic conception of Gods internal sociality, when coupled with our previously developed
category of disposition, allows for an intelligible rendering of both the necessary and the more than
necessary aspect of Gods goodness.

The Theological Implications of the Aesthetic Argument: Gods Beauty
Difficulties With The Classical Conception of the Beauty of God
The beauty of God has not been a dominant theme in the classical tradition. The concept of Gods
beauty has found some expression in a handful of theologians and in certain Church hymns, but as Barth
notes, it has, on the whole, been ignored. The difficulty of the concept in a classical scheme again
surrounds its applicability to a view of God as actus purus. It is these difficulties which we now need to
render explicit before turning to an evaluation of Hartshornes view.

The Unintelligibility of a Beautiful Actus Purus
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According to Hartshorne, the very notion that God could be beautiful apart from this Ones interaction
with a non-divine world is mistaken. And since the view of God as actus purus supposes this, it is
untenable. Thus, Hartshorne says,

First-type (classical) theism endeavors to persuade us that God has all the value of variety except
variety. The reply is that the value of variety is variety, just as the value of unity is unity.

Could the variety and unity of God, conceived of as triune, perhaps render the classical concept of
unsurpassable beauty intelligible, as we have been suggesting? Hartshorne, in continuation of this same
passage, argues that it could not.

Even the trinity gives no sufficient, even if only conceivable, contrast. What is required is
maximal contrast, not only on one level, as between the persons of the Trinity, but between
levels within the unity of Godfor instance, between the contingent and the changing and the
necessary and immutable.

The argument here is basically that if God were absolute in all respects, if God were actus purus and thus
devoid of all potentiality, then even the supposition that this God is internally related does not help in
rendering intelligible the unsurpassable beauty of God. For this contrast is not extremeit is on one
level.

Such a self-related God would therefore lack the beauty of rich contrast such as the contrast between
the contingent and the necessary. Such a self-related God would also lack the wide divergent multiplicity
of contrasts found in the non-divine world. Thus, the concept of the Trinity does not itself render
intelligible divine beauty. The non-divine world is, for Hartshorne, necessary to account for this.

Finally, it is, as we have seen, logically impossible for God to enjoy all possible value simultaneously, for
values are incompossible. God cannot enjoy the value of just this actual world which could have
occurred at just this time and place. The exclusion of possibilities is one central mark of contingent
actualities.

Hence, time is required to accrue contingent value, and, we are reminded again, there is for Hartshorne
no maximal limit to possible variety and hence aesthetic value. Thus, the time of this accretion is eternal.
The understanding of God as actus purus, however, misses all of this and thus must be judged, in
Hartshornes view, as being ill founded.

The fundamental presupposition to this criticism, of course, is that the intensity of an aesthetic
experience is directly proportionate to the scope and complexity of the variety which constitutes the
experience. But just this we have already had occasion to reject, at least as a necessary truth. It is true
that God, conceived of as triune, would not within Godself possess all possible value, for, as Hartshorne
rightly argues, the value of variety is variety, and finite possibilities are incompossible. What is more, if
we are talking about God ad intra, apart from any relationship to a non-divine creation, all talk of finite
actualities is in any case beside the point.

God and the Beauty of the World
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A second difficulty concerning the issue of Gods beauty within a classical theological framework we find
more compelling: it has to do with Gods openness to the beauty of the world. If potentiality is
conceived of as a deficiency, and hence is thought to be an unworthy characteristic of God, then it must
be asked how God can be open to experience the temporal beauty of the contingent world as the
aesthetic argument requires. This is, in essence, another way of stating our previous objection
concerning a purely actual Gods inability to be open to and appreciate the goodness of the contingent
world. If God possesses all possible beauty, and thus is open to no further increase; if God is pure
actuality, and thus is in no respect contingent and passive; and thus, if the apparently contingent
relationship between the purely necessary God and the wholly contingent world is in fact real to the
world, but not to God, then, it seems, the world has nothing aesthetic (or otherwise) to genuinely
contribute to God.

In this view God is, as it were, locked up in Gods own beauty. The beauty of the lives we, with God,
create in ourselves and in others, must in the end be idle, as Hartshorne says. This is both counter
intuitive, and involves the difficulties raised in A1-3 of the aesthetic argument. The beauty of the world,
it was there argued, must be appreciated to be meaningfully conceived and spoken of. But how is this
intelligible unless God has the potentiality to do so, and thus the contingent relativity to do so?

The Neo-Classical Conception of Gods Beauty
The Centrality of Gods Beauty
In sharp contrast to the classical tradition, the beauty of God is a central concept for Hartshorne, as it is
for all Process thought. This is what should be expected given the sixth foundational proposition of
Hartshornes system. The fundamental telos of every actual occasion is, we have seen, as aesthetic
satisfaction. Everything aims at creating itself as a synthesis of past objectified data, which is to say that
everything aims at being constituted by an aesthetic experience of a multiplicity of unified contrasts. To
be is to be an aesthetic experience and the material for subsequent aesthetic experiences.

Since God, in Process thought, is no exception to the metaphysical principles, but is, rather, their chief
exemplification, God too is to be defined, most fundamentally, as the supreme, all-inclusive, aesthetic
experience of the world. God is the completed ideal of harmony of the world. God is the poet of the
world who appreciates the beauty of the world and furthers this beauty by transforming it as a
contribution to Gods own self-constituted and self-defining aesthetic experience.

As aesthetic experience is, therefore, the most concrete and most fundamental thing by which reality
can be defined, so the divine aesthetic experience is the most concrete and most fundamental thing
which can be said about God. Gods power, knowledge, love and goodness are in reality all aspects of
Gods beautyGods appreciation for the beauty of the world, and Gods aim at constituting Godself by
an ever-increasing intensity of aesthetic satisfaction.

Advantages of the Neo-Classical Conception of Gods Beauty
It is clear that this position avoids the difficulties of attributing beauty to God when God is conceived of
as actus purus. There is here no difficulty of conceiving of how God could contain, within Godself, all
possible aesthetic value. This possibility is simply denied. There is here no problem of finite
incompossibilities. Possibilities are realized successively, and aesthetic richness increases as the new
possibilities are actualized and synthesized with Gods infinite memory of past actualities. And there is,
clearly, no problem in the neo-classical account in maintaining Gods openness to the beauty of the
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world. God is concretely defined by Gods contingent openness to, and transformation of, the aesthetic
value of the world.

A Critical Evaluation of the Neo-Classical View of Gods Beauty
Hartshornes conception of Gods beauty, we see, is in some respects more defensible than any
conception within the classical framework for the simple reason that the concept of beauty presupposes
potentiality. The concept of pure actuality and unsurpassable beauty thus seem mutually
incompatible. Still, as with the other neo-classical attributes of God we have examined, the neo-classical
conception of divine beauty is not without its own problematic points.

The Necessary Material for Gods Beauty
The first objection which must be raised against Harthsornes conception of Gods beauty is that, as with
his rendition of the other attributes of God, it necessitates the eternal existence of the world. As God
needs an eternal counterpart to be concretely perfect, an eternal other to know, an eternal non-divine
multiplicity to influence and be influenced by, and an eternal free self to create and appreciate, moral
goodness, so we now see that God needs eternal data to synthesize into an aesthetic experience. Gods
concrete aesthetic experience is thus completely world-contingent. All of these arguments say
essentially the same thing, but with a different emphasis.

If God needs the world to attain a maximal self-defining aesthetic experience, then the fact that the
vectoral quality of this self-constitution furthers the beauty of the world is again simply a matter of
necessity, not grace. God seeks to render the world beauty because God has to do so. God cannot
choose to be the poet of the world, any more than God can (for the same reasons) choose to create
the world. God is, in this conception, a poet metaphysically bound to her pen, and metaphysically bound
to the material she must work with. Clearly, in such a scheme, the radical surprising, unexpected and
gracious freedom of God portrayed throughout the biblical narrative can only be heard as utter
nonsense.

The Necessary Absence of the Beauty of Grace
The point we are arguing here may be expounded upon further by the following observation: it seems
that there is, in Hartshornes conception of the beauty of the world and the beauty of God, one form of
beauty which is necessarily lacking: namely, the beauty of grace. The aesthetic value in experiencing a
life, a wholeness, a lovean aesthetic satisfactionwhich was in no sense necessitated, is ruled out.
The beauty of the experience of that divine love which is not contingent in any regard upon the worth of
its object, but rather creates the worth of its object in its very act of loving, is utterly unintelligible in
Hartshornes scheme. Grace and love, defined in this sense, violate a priori truths.

But this, it seems to me, is a negative necessary truth in Hartshornes scheme. This denial is, to use his
own terms, a thought without intrinsic reward. To some of us at least, it seems that this constitutes an
eternal, an unchangeable deficiency in the nature of things. It seems to constitute an eternally
regrettable state of affairs. Always it would have been beautiful for such unconditional gracious love
as this to have existed, but always, and by metaphysical necessity, this love failed to be exemplified. The
universe can only know love which takes into account the intrinsic value of the object loved. It can never
know that love which creates the value of its object in its very act of loving.

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But if, as we have seen Hartshorne contend, necessary truths can only be positive and indeed beautiful,
how could such a potential beauty be necessarily lacking in reality? Hartshornes only response can be
that the concept of grace I am talking about is neither beautiful nor even possible. It is mere verbiage.
Love means adequate awareness of the value of others. Thus, a love which is not constituted by
such an awareness is, for Hartshorne, nothing coherent.

The fact that there are some people who think they experience this kind of love from God, and therefore
think that it makes sense to talk about a love such as this, must be, for Hartshorne, wholly illusory.
Unconditional love, a love which is not based on the intrinsic worth of its object, a love which initiates
and does not only respond, can on a metaphysical level have no coherent meaning for Hartshorne. To
state it most bluntly, then, this entails that the central feature of the Christian worldview must be
considered wholly illusory and utter nonsense on Hartshornes scheme.

We, in contrast, have had occasions to reject the foundational statements which have brought about
this anti-Christian view of love. Our modifications and supplementations of the candidates for a priori
truth in Hartshornes thought opens the way for our rejection of this aspect of his system. For this
implication of his system is, like everything else, ultimately simply a working out of these foundational
propositions. Because of our revisions, then, we can intelligibly affirm that God is complete within
Godself. And hence we can intelligibly affirm that what God does with and to another, or whether
there even be another at all, is all a matter of grace, not necessity. Indeed, not only can we say these
things: on an a priori basis, we must say these things.

The Necessary Denial of the Beauty of Gods Victory
There is a third criticism, related to the second, which needs to be raised. We have already seen that a
final victory over all forms of evil is impossible in Hartshornes scheme. The necessary freedom of
creatures is such, in his view, that the non-divine world can never be rid of its evil. On a high level of
freedom (viz., human freedom), this means that the world will never be rid of forms of oppresion,
injustice, hatred, violence, cruelty, etc.

But wouldnt it be beautiful if this were possible? Wouldnt it be beautiful, in other words, if the
eschatological promises of the New Testament were at least a historical possibility? But now the
question must be asked, how could such a beautiful hope be necessarily excluded from the world in a
schema where metaphysical truths are, supposedly, truistically beautiful? How could there be such a
necessary deficiency in the world? If such beauty is necessarily ruled out, it must constitute a virtual
self-contradiction. But how can a self-contradiction be beautiful and, for millions, at least, inspiring?

If this hope is in fact self-contradictory and absurd, it is not obviously so. Indeed, one could argue that
the intelligibility of such a hope is at least tacitly presupposed in our most significant ethical endeavors.
Do we not presuppose the coherence and beauty of this hope when we work towards bringing an end to
(say) world hunger? Is it only the particular children who are suffering in this particular time and space
that we are trying to savethough we secretly know that starvation will always be an earthly fact? Or is
it not also hunger itself, considered as a general fact, that we are fighting against? Do we really engage
in nonsense when we experience anger and work against not just particular social evils here and there,
but against evil as such?


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The Inconceivability of an Eternally Increasing Aesthetic Intensity
The final difficulty which must be raised against Hartshornes conception of Gods beauty has already
been touched on. We thus need only mention it here. It is this: while we concede that an ultimate
simultaneous combination of all possible contrasts is not intelligible, we have argued that an ultimate
intensity of aesthetic experience is conceivable. Indeed, it is the concept of an every-increasing
intensity of aesthetic experience which does not seem genuinely conceivable.

But is it not the case that we can always imagine a more intense experience than any experience we
have ever had, and simply increase this conception infinitely? We know the relation between our peak
experiences and our more mundane experiences, so may we not now, by analogy, conceive of an
experience next to which our own peak experiences are mundane? And having done this, can we, as it
were, climb up the ladder infinitely to conceive of how Gods experience is eternally intensifying?

I do not deny that it is possible to analogously conceive of Gods infinitely intense experience in this
way. This is roughly how we conceive of all of Gods other attributes. But the decisive issue is not
addressed by this thought experiment. With regard to Gods love, Gods goodness, Gods knowledge,
etc., we climb up the ladder of analogy to conceive of the particular attribute, assuming that when we
reach it, we can go no further. There is no conceivable further to go. Gods love, Gods goodness,
Gods knowledge, Gods power cannot be improved uponeven by God. An absolutely unsurpassable
exemplification of these attributes is conceivable, however vaguely.

The decisive question is why Gods self-defining aesthetic experience should differ from these other
attributes in this regard. There is a basis in our experience, in our logical thinking itself, for saying that
the possible combinations of finite forms are endless. But we have no such grounds, I argue, for
supposing that the intensity of Gods experience, in contrast to every experience we have ever had, is
eternally improvable. An intensity of experience does depend on a harmonious multiplicity, but we know
from experience that the intensity of an experience can reach a threshold, even though the quantity of
what we are experiencing cannot.

Thus, as we can analogously conceive of a maximal instance of goodness and love in God, so, I maintain,
we can analogously conceive of a maximal instance of divine aesthetic satisfaction. And this is enough to
show that the link between a diversified harmony and the intensity of an aesthetic experience is not
necessarily proportional. If one insists that it is so for God, one is making this aspect of Gods being a
blatant exception to the manner in which we treat all of the other divine attributes.

Gods Goodness and Gods Beauty: A Trinitarian Reconstruction
In Chapter IV we outlined a conceivable alternative to the neo-classical view of Gods perfection which
at once captures the advantages of the neo-classical view over against the classical view, while avoiding
the difficulties of both the neo-classical and the classical view. This, we suggested, consisted in a view of
God as self-sufficiently actual, and, hence, as internally related.

We further outlined in that chapter a view of God wherein the self-sufficient actuality of God could be
conceived of as necessary, while yet allowing for a contingent expressive actual aspect to Gods being.
Our rejection of Hartshornes thesis that concrete relationality is necessarily asymmetrical, and that
experience necessarily consists of a creative synthesis, opened the door to this alternative. We could
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now conceive of God in such a way that Gods essence was identical with Gods self-defining existence
without necessitating the difficult view of classical theism that God is actus purus.

In our reconstruction in chapter V we sought to confirm and further fill out this thesis with specific
regard to the issues surrounding Gods power and knowledge. There, we argued, the difficulties of
classical theism as well as the internal difficulties and anti-Christian implications of Hartshornes view
could be avoided only by postulating a view of God as self-sufficient, and, hence, as necessarily internally
related, but who nevertheless has potentiality for contingent expression. Gods power, we therefore
argued, is the power to create, or not to create (viz., because God is internally relational, Gods power
towards whatever is non-divine is free and gracious): and Gods knowledge need not be knowledge of
non-divine subjects, but may have Godself as its sole content. Hence, who God is at any moment is
defined by God alone, though how God is expressed is defined by the totality of what is real (which may
or may not involve non-divine realities).

In what follows we wish to complete our trinitarian reconstruction of Hartshornes view of God as
arrived at by the six theistic arguments, built up from the six foundational propositions of his system.
We shall in this section be seeking to further substantiate and render more coherent the trinitarian
alternative we are proposing. We shall argue that only by postulating something which approximates
the traditional trinitarian view of Godand postulating it in such a way that certain elements of Process
thought are retainedonly in this way can we avoid the previously discussed difficulties of both classical
and neo-classical theism concerning the goodness and beauty of God.



The Benevolence of the Trinity
Once we have determined that God is to be conceived of as antecedently actual, internally relational,
and more than self-sufficient, there is no longer any need to postulate an eternal world to provide the
ground and the material for Gods concrete experience of goodness. God is, in this view, good within
Godself, and this means that God can experience goodness within Godselfapart from the world: Gods
goodness ad intra is not simply abstract. In contrast to all possible and actual evil, God experiences
Gods own triune sociality as unsurpassably good.

The More Than Necessary Benevolent Openness of the Trinity
The eternal goodness of the Trinity does not, in our reconstruction, necessitate any view that God is not,
or could not, be open to appreciate the goodness of the contingent world. Our agreement with the
classical tradition in affirming that Gods essence is identical with Gods (necessary self-defining)
existence did not, we have seen, rule out the presence of genuine contingent elements in God, for God
can be more than what defines and constitutes Gods necessary actuality.

This openness to contingency is all that is logically needed to avoid the classical paradoxes of relating a
necessary actus purus to a contingent world. God can be immanently involved in the contingent
temporal processes of the world, in the manner in which Hartshorne specifies, while yet being eternally
and self-sufficiently actual within Godself. Indeed, we have argued that Gods contingent pole requires
an antecedently actual pole to be rendered intelligible.

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Hence, the goodness which characterizes God in any particular contingent circumstance, then,
expresses, but does not essentially constitute, the concrete goodness of God. God does enjoy and
appreciate the relative goodness of the world as God participates with it in overcoming evil, but God
enjoys it as an external expression of this Ones own eternally perfect goodness, not as an essential
constituent in this Ones experience of goodness.

The benevolence of the Trinity, then, consists in the fact that God unnecessarily creates a world to share
in the aesthetic experience of existence. It consists in the further fact that God is unsurpassably good in
this Ones creation, and ceaselessly works with the world to bring about Gods foreordained Kingdom in
the worldthe final extinguishing of all evil from the earth.

What is more, the benevolence of the Trinity consists in the fact that God is continually leading the
world, with much cost in suffering to Godself, to the place where it can, in its own non-divine way,
reflect the goodness which characterizes the goodness which God eternally enjoys within Godself. And
the benevolence of the Trinity consists in the fact that God appreciates, and eternally remembers, the
goodness acquired in the world along this journey, transforming it in a way that feeds back into the
world to further its progress.

The Trinity and the Beauty of God
The Unsurpassable Intensity and Inexhaustible Expression of Gods Triune Beauty
We have agreed with Hartshorne that the experience of beauty presupposes a harmonious multiplicity.
There can be no aesthetic harmony, and hence no aesthetic satisfaction, without a unified multiplicity.
This is, in a sense, the aesthetic dimension to the problem of the one and the many. But we have
disagreed with Hartshorne (following Whitehead) that the intensity of an aesthetic satisfaction is
necessarily proportionate to the quantity and complexity of what is aesthetically unified. There can be,
we have argued, no necessary proportioning between aesthetic quality and quantity. This denial, we
shall now see, has tremendous significance for our understanding of Gods essential being.

If God is, as the theistic arguments all attempt to demonstrate, a being greater than which none other
can be conceived, and if, as Hartshorne has argued, beauty is inherent in the idea of existence itself,
then the unsurpassable reality of God must be an unsurpassable experience of beauty. What this means
for the supposition that the unsurpassable reality is internally related and self-sufficient is that a) this
internal relationality must be most fundamentally defined as an experience of beauty, and b) this
experience of beauty must be utterly unsurpassable.

Our previously argued distinction between the intensity of an aesthetic experience and the quantity of
contrasts synthesized in an aesthetic experience renders these implications intelligible and explains their
concomitant difficulties. Gods essential and necessary existence is, on this scheme, most basically
defined by the unsurpassable intensity of aesthetic enjoyment which characterizes the triune sociality of
God. God experiences Godself with an intensity which can under no circumstances conceivably be
improved upon. As with Hartshorne, we are here most fundamentally defining Gods transcendence in
terms of Gods aesthetic satisfaction.

But against Hartshorne we are also affirming that this aesthetic satisfaction is the same whether or not
there is a non-divine world for God to enjoy. God is no greater for fellowshipping with the world, for it
is Gods fellowship with Godself, not the world, which constitutes and characterizes the necessary
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unsurpassability of Gods aesthetic satisfaction. Gods gracious fellowship with the non-divine world
simply expresses this primordial eternal fellowship.

To use Whiteheads terminology, it is the perfection of subjective form defined in terms of strength
(viz., intensity) which defines God as God ad intra. It is this qualitative category which expresses the
necessary perfection of God. But, pace Whitehead, this God-defining intensity is not dependent on the
comparative magnitude or massiveness of what is experienced. It is only Hartshornes (and
Whiteheads) insistence that the perfection of God must be defined quantitativelywhich is itself
derivative from their theory of aesthetic satisfactionwhich prevents Hartshorne from seeing Gods
aesthetic self-definition as being absolute in the same sense as is Gods ethical self-definition.

Does this then mean that the multiplicity of the non-divine world which God experiences means nothing
to God? We have already seen that this does not follow. It is only Hartshornes belief that intensity
and massiveness are necessarily correlated which leads him to suppose that (say) a work of art must
be constitutive of an artists experience for the work to be genuinely related to, and significant to, that
artist. Hence, too, the world, in his view, must be a constituent of God for the world to matter to God.

In contrast to this, however, we have maintained that a work of art can be significant to an artist not as a
constituent of the artists experience, but as an expression of it. If the artist, under ideal conditions, has
attained a zenith of his or her ability to intensely experience beauty, then it is as an expression of
aesthetic intensity that the work will be experienced. The work cannot constitute an increase in the
intensity of the hypothetical artist: it rather constitutes the occasion for the expression of the
unsurpassable intensity which is already present.

So we may, I believe, conceive of Gods relationship to the world. Since God has freely chosen to
actualize Gods potentiality to be Creator of a non-divine world, God can create and appreciate the
aesthetic value (and hence the moral value) of a non-divine world. The world becomes part of Gods
concrete contingent experience, and is, in this sense, constitutive of God. To this extent we side with
Hartshorne over and against the classical tradition.

But, we further hold, this God-defining zenith of aesthetic intensity has been constituted in the triune
sociality of God from eternity. This is necessary, and as such it is neither increased nor diminished by the
contingent and temporal affairs of the world. Rather, Gods experience of the contingent worldindeed,
the entirety of Gods contingent poleserves to express the eternal divine intensity of Gods triune
self-experience. Hence, God enjoys the worldthe world means something to Godnot as an
essential element in Gods necessary self-constitution, but as an expression of Gods self-constitution.
The world provides a new occasion for the unsurpassable beauty of God, defined in terms of divine
intensity, to be expressed and in a sense repeated in a novel form. The entire process of the
contingent, temporal order, then, can be said to be constituted by Gods aim at expressing Godselfthe
infinite delight of the triune socialityad extra. Since Gods deity-defining intensity of aesthetic
satisfaction is infinite, the potential for expressing this delightful beauty is inexhaustible.

Divine Suffering and the Beauty of the Trinity
Does this view that God is eternally and unsurpassably satisfied within Gods eternal triune sociality
imply that God does not partake in the suffering of the world? Is the portrait of God we have here
painted a view of God as insensitively independent in Gods own self-contentment? If Gods self-
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experience is unsurpassably intense, regardless of the state of the worlds state of affairs, is not the
virtuous mutability of God undermined? Are we not back in the position of God as actus purus?

In chapter IV, we utilized the analogy of an experiential subject who was composed of actual occasions
with differing specious presents to argue that a subjectviz., Godcould be both actually necessary
and actually contingent in differing respects.

There is, it seems, no contradiction in maintaining that a being can be self-content on one level, and yet
suffer at another. For example, a person need not sacrifice their self-love, their contentment with who
they are, their own internal fullness of life in order to genuinely enter into the sufferings of another.
Indeed, it seems that the person who enters into the sufferings of others with a sense of internal fullness
is in a better position to genuinely enter into these sufferings than one who lacks such fullness.

To speak more specifically, a person who suffers for another because she needs the othere.g., needs
this other to make her feel good about herself, to feel loved and needed, etc.is more inclined to yet
have herself as the object of concern, and thus more inclined to be, to that extent, shut off to the real
needs of the other. In contrast, one who enters into solidarity with a sufferer but who is self-content,
who loves herself, who possesses an internal fullness which is not destroyed by the suffering, is free to
have the sufferer as the sole object of her concern. She is free, in a sense, to forget herself in devotion
to another. In the case of the former person, one who needs the other to arrive at her self-love, the
act of entering into solidarity with a sufferer is an expression of her deficiency. In the case of the latter
person however, the act of entering into solidarity with a sufferer is an expression of her wholeness. And
the more whole she is, the more perfectly she can suffer with and for the other.

We may, then, conceive of God as one who is both unsurpassably self-content in Gods essential
sociality, while being, at the same time, fully incarnated in the sin and suffering of the world in Gods
expressive sociality. Indeed, implied in what we have argued thus far is the supposition that God is free
to enter into and redeem the sufferings of the world fully precisely because God is eternally self-
sufficient within Godself.

The Expressed Delight of God in Suffering Grace
But how, it must be asked, can the suffering God, epitomized by the cross, express the unsurpassable
intensity of Gods triune aesthetic satisfaction? The answer, as I see it, is that it does so by expressing, in
the most extreme manner possible, the more than necessary love of God. The qualitative self-defining
triune experience of God in eternity is expressed and repeated ad extra in the extreme contrast
between the unsurpassable love of God for humanity and the unworthiness of humanity for this love.

This is the beauty of grace. The beauty of Gods eternal sociality is expressed in the beauty of the
unnecessary, radical act which shows the unthinkable extreme to which God will go to establish sociality
with anotheranother who in sin wants nothing more than to be rid of this sociality. The intensity of
the social union of the Trinity is, when it is turned outward, the suffering intensity of Gods gracious love
for social union with free and fallen humanity. The enormity of the gulf and the extremity of the sacrifice
needed to cross it, all reveals outwardly in time the intensity of the love and beauty which defines God
inwardly throughout eternity. The suffering intensity ad extra is an expression of the divine intensity ad
intra.

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There is another aspect to our reply to the question we are considering. The intense love manifested in
the cross expresses in its own way the intensity of the love which binds the eternal Trinity. But it does
not yet express the intense delight of God ad intra. This it shall do, however. God does not, of course,
delight in dying on a cross as a man. But God does delight in the harmonic sociality between God and
Gods creation which this act shall bring about and is already in the process of bringing about. The cross
expresses the intensity of Gods social love, and it brings about the expression of Gods social delight in
the ultimate victory of the Kingdom of God. The eternal triune dance of God with God shall incorporate
the dance of God with the world, and the latter shall express the former.

Jonathan Edwards And The Divine Aesthetic Disposition Ad Intra and Ad Extra
We have distinguished between the unsurpassable intensity of aesthetic satisfaction which eternally
defines God as God and the multiplicity of non-divine contrasts which expresses God as God ad extra.
This, we have seen, allows us to intelligibly hold together Gods dynamic immanence in the contingent
world (with Hartshorne) with Gods primordial self-sufficient actuality (with the classical tradition). We
must, however, now inquire more precisely into this relationship between the ad intra divine aesthetic
intensity and the ad extra creaturely expression of this intensity. How is Gods internal triune sociality,
Gods necessary and essential pole, related to Gods creaturely sociality, Gods contingent and
externally expressive pole? The answer, I believe, lies in our previously articulated concept of
disposition.


The Concept of Disposition
In continuity with a large segment of the dynamistic strand of Western philosophy, a strand best
exemplified in a theological context by Jonathan Edwards, we have opted to call this reality
disposition. It is, as we have argued, this concept alone which can render causality, becoming,
spontaneity, and freedom intelligible. It is the reality of dispositions which constitutes the enduring
dynamic essence of beings though their actuality is in constant flux. And it is this reality which
functions as their sufficient reason, without thereby necessitating their every action or every detail
which characterizes their actuality. The ontological parity of being and becoming are grounded in the
reality of dispositions which mediates between them.

Jonathan Edwards On The Dispositional Essence Of The Trinity
These observations can, I believe, now be fruitfully applied to our understanding of God and this Ones
relationship to the world. And, as we have said, the theologian who is, in our estimation, most helpful in
providing for us a paradigm for how this can be accomplished is Jonathan Edwards.

Though Edwards on occasion slips back into speaking of God in strictly classical terms, his overall view of
God is thoroughly dynamic and very untraditional. For Edwards, Gods essence consisted most
fundamentally in a primordial divine disposition to enjoy with a maximal intensity Gods own social
existence. And Gods existence, in turn, was most fundamentally defined by Edwards as the exercise of
this primordial divine disposition. In this sense Gods essence and existence were one for Edwards, for
there never was a time when Gods essence was not fully realized as Gods existence. Gods being was at
once identical with Gods power (disposition) and the exercise of Gods power ad intra. Edwards
understanding of the triunity of God arises out of this conception.

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According to Edwards, the Father is the essence of the Godhead in its first subsistence. The perfection
of this first divine subsistence entails, according to Edwards, that the Father is not only fully actual but is
also disposed to communicate himself through perfect self-reflexivity: the Father is disposed to
have a perfect idea of himself or to see himself reflected. This Ones perfection is not, then, actus
purus in the classical sense, but is, rather, a dispositional actuality. With Hartshorne, Edwards would
affirm that the Fathers perfection is a perfection of potentiality, but he would not thereby deny that this
entails that it is also a perfection of actuality.

This perfect idea of the Father, when actualized (as it eternally is, for the Father could never be less
perfect) brings forth (eternally generates) the Son who is the perfect repetition of the Father. The
Son is everything the Father is, except his existence is derivative whereas the Fathers is direct. The
Son is, as the New Testament proclaims, the perfect Logos, image, form or expression of the
Father. And this constitutes deity subsisting in a second mode.

Edwards goes on to suppose that the Father not only eternally knows himself perfectly, but loves
himself, in the person of the Son, with a perfect intensity. This too is part of the God-defining disposition
of the Father. [T]he Father loveth the Son as a communication of himself as begotten in pursuance of
his eternal inclination (disposition) to communicate himself. Similarly, the Son who is the perfect
repetition of the Father, and thus of the Fathers inclination to love, reciprocates in a perfect way, in an
infinite degree, the love of the Father. Here the deity becomes all act, for the divine essence itself
flows out and is, as it were, breathed forth in Love and Joy. This constitutes yet another manner of
subsistencethe Third Person of the Trinity.

We need not accept the particular manner in which Edwards works out his doctrine of the Trinity along
the lines of Lockean psychology to appreciate the insightful if not revolutionary manner in which
Edwards combines a dynamic view of God with a view of God as being self-sufficient and eternally full
within Godself. Gods being is defined by Gods eternal disposition to delight in Godself and the eternal
actualization of this disposition within the triune life of God. It is the unsurpassable intensity of the
beauty of the divine socialitytheir shared love to an infinite degreeand Gods eternal inclination
to eternally be such, which defines God as God and thus most fundamentally distinguishes God from
creation, for this divine sociality needs no other sociality to be what it is. Yet, because this social
actuality is something which is always aimed atit is eternally the exercise of the Fathers disposition
which brings it aboutthere is, we shall see, eternally room for expansion. Because God, for Edwards,
is not merely actual but is also disposed, this One can be self-sufficient without being locked up in
eternity. Gods being is defined as an eternally on-going event, and an event which is dynamic and open.

Thus, while there is some inconsistency in Edwards on this point, it is true to the general tenor of his
thought to say that God is not for him actus purus in the sense that all possible actuality is experienced
in an eternal moment. The divine disposition, though always and necessarily results in the unsurpassable
delight of the triune God, can do so in novel ways. And this means, as we shall now turn to see, that
there is room for the creation of a genuine contingent world to share in this sociality.

Edwards On The Trinity And The Creation Of The World
The full benefit of the dynamic trinitarian conception of God which Edwards conception of disposition
opens up for us is seen in this articulation of how the doctrine of the Trinity relates to the doctrine of
Creation. The essential disposition of God, we have seen, is to communicate himself. This applies first
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and foremost to the Father whose eternal disposition to communicate himselfto see, understand,
love, and delight in himselfgenerates the Son in his perfect likeness.

But it also applies to the Son as well. As the Fathers perfect likeness, the Son is disposed to love and
delight in the Father. And the perfect communication of the Father and Son is the Holy Spirit. Thus,
the essential being of the Father works out, via the concept of disposition, to the necessity of a triune
conception of God. Neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Spirit is conceivable apart from each other.
The Godhead, for Edwards, is essentially dispositional, essentially the exercise of this disposition, and
thus essentially and actually triune.

This disposition to communicatewhich is, in essence, Gods disposition for socialityis perfectly
satisfied within the Trinity. The general thrust of Edwards thought (despite some inconsistencies cited
above) is that God is completely self-sufficient. The world is not necessary for God to be God. The triune
actuality of God is in itself unsurpassably delightful, unsurpassably beautiful, to each member of the
Trinity. It cannot, in essence, be increased.

But the divine disposition to communicate and delight in itself, while being satisfied within the Trinity, is
nevertheless inexhaustible in Edwards view. There is, then, no deficiency or limit in the dynamic
actuality and life of the Trinity: there is, rather, an inexhaustible abundance of life. Edwards simply
denies the classical Aristotelian notion that all potentiality and movement implies deficiency. The triune
actuality which the divine disposition eternally aims at and eternally arrives at unsurpassably
satisfies the aim of God: yet still, the divine disposition to communicate abides. Edwards concurs
with Madden and Hare that dispositions may endure even after their exercise . And, in the case of the
one necessary reality, the endurance is eternal.

The disposition of God to create the world, to see Godself repeated or mirrored in a novel way, is
the same disposition which constitutes God as unsurpassable in this Ones trinity. Gods aim for
delightful sociality with the creaturely world is essentially one with Gods aim to delight in Godself. But
it is, as such, an expression of who God actually is, viz., of who God is as eternally satisfying this Ones
dispositional nature. It is not identical with this divine disposition as a feature of God which is essential
to the satisfaction of this divine nature.

It is, therefore, Edwards basic thesis that the world expresses, but does not constitute, the perfection of
Gods beauty, even though Edwards himself lacked the necessary distinctions in his aesthetic theory to
articulate this thesis consistently.

The Divine Disposition and the Freedom of the World
The Eternal Spontaneity of the Trinity
With Edwards we may hold that Gods essential being is an eternal eventthe event of the perfect and
eternal exercising of Gods disposition to be God; the eternal event of God relating to Godself with
unsurpassable beauty and love; the event of God eternally becoming triune and celebrating this trinity.
And with the dominant strand of Edwards thought, we may further hold that the actuality of the triune
life perfectly satisfies this primordial divine disposition, precisely because this actual life is unsurpassable
in the intensity of its love and beauty.

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But, in contrast to the dominant strand of Edwards thought, we are compelled to maintain that the
unsurpassability of the divine life describes the inner quality of Gods sociality in distinction from
whatever quantity (scope) of aesthetic contrasts this divine sociality may or may not create. The
constitution of Gods essential deity has nothing to do with the universal scope and complexity of the
non-divine beauty God encompasses. This latter capacity of God constitutes Gods contingent actuality,
not Gods necessary actuality. The scope and complexity of the non-divine beauty which God
encompasses expresses, but does not constitute, the quality of life which defines God as God.

Moreover, we are compelled to part with Edwards by maintaining that the way this unsurpassable
qualitative divine life is arrived at, the precise manner in which God actualizes this Ones disposition to
relate to Godself as God, involves spontaneity. That God is God, that God is unsurpassably related to
Godself as Father, Son and Spirit is necessary: but how God in detail enjoys this triune sociality is not.
There is contingency, spontaneity and freedom within the divine life, even before and apart from the
creation of the world.

It is this distinction between the intensity and scope of an aesthetic experience, and this element of
spontaneity internal to the eternal divine sociality, which allows us to assert, with consistency, both the
self-sufficiency of the triune God and this Ones gracious, immanent involvement in the contingent
world. For on this scheme, the creation of the world and Gods real involvement in the world are one of
the contingent ways God has chosen to exercise Gods disposition to be God.

In the most fundamental sense, the tradition has been correct in saying that God created the world for
his own pleasure. The contingent act of being Creator, Savior, and Sanctifier is the way God has now
creatively chosen to delight in Godself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. If you will, the eternal ecstatic
dance of the Trinity now aims at expressing itself through creating new partners in their dance. Gods
necessary self-portrait now freely includes a strokea bold and daring strokewhich is the free world
in which God will paint Godself on the cross, and thereby paint Godself on the throne.

Hence, the ceaselessly spontaneous life of the triune God now encompasses the risky adventure of
creating a non-divine order and wholly submerging Godself in this order. With Barth, Jngel and
Moltmann we proclaim the Scriptural truth that God is now not willing to be God without humanity.
And God is willing to die with humanity to achieve this will.

The Divine Disposition and the Essence of Humanity
The conception of the divine disposition and its relationship to the contingent world which we have here
been arguing for allows us now to answer an issue which, we have seen, is highly problematic within a
Process framework. This is the issue of how God can be conceived of as immanent within the human
subject, without thereby destroying the free autonomy of the subject. How is it to be held, at one and
the same time, that a) God is closer to the essence of the creature than the creature is to itself, while b)
the creature is nevertheless distinct from God?

Process thought, we have seen, maintains the distinctness of the creature from God, but cannot affirm
that God is immanent in the subjectivity of the creature. God thus only experiences and knows the
individual after the individual has become. This, we have seen, is not only theologically inadequate,
but philosophically inadequate as well.

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Royce and Neville, on the other hand, maintain that God is indeed dynamically immanent in the
subjectivity of all subjectsthe subjective aim is God in a determinate formbut they cannot then
consistently specify how the creature is, in any significant sense, autonomous from God. In the end,
there is but one real agent in the world, though this One can take the form of contingent creatures. In
the end, creatures are but the termini of Gods creative act.

How are we to arrive at a position which can assert immanence without implying pantheism or assert
autonomy without denying immanence? I believe that the revised Edwardsian aesthetically conceived
concept of disposition worked out in this work provides for us the needed category. The very category
which, we have argued, was needed to mediate between causation and determinism, between
abstraction and concreteness, between freedom and capriciousness also, we now claim, mediates
between the immanence of God and the autonomy of the creaturefor precisely the same reason it
mediates between the other polar concepts.

We may most effectively argue this point by first defining what a non-divine reality is, and then pointing
out the way in which the concept of disposition allows us to articulate the dependence, and
independence, of this non-divine reality in relation to the divine reality.

Edwards and Hartshorne On the Nature of Non-Divine Reality
We have seen that both Edwards and Hartshorne argue that God is most fundamentally distinct from
the world in terms of Gods beauty. God is distinct in many other ways too, of course, but for both of
these thinkers the aesthetic uniqueness of God is what is most fundamental. With this we have agreed,
though we have redefined the definition of divine beauty from a quantitative to a qualitative
conception. God can thus be defined, most fundamentally, as the unsurpassably intense event of
beauty.

It follows, then, that non-divine reality can most fundamentally be defined in terms of its surpassable
beauty. This too is precisely in keeping with the thought of both Edwards and Hartshorne. A reality is
non-divine if it is the subject of, and/or the contributor to, a surpassably intense aesthetic satisfaction.
One may also define non-divine reality, and its contrast with divine reality, in terms of its limited
perspective on beingits limited receptivity to, and activity upon, other beings. But this, again, is not
what is most fundamental if one accepts with Edwards and Hartshorne the fundamentally aesthetic
nature of being.

Gods Relationship to Non-Divine Reality
The disposition of God to create a non-divine realitywhich is itself a contingent feature of Gods
necessary disposition to be Godis thus a disposition to create experiential centers of, and contributors
to, non-divine beauty. It is a disposition to create a matrix of relations with ordinal centers, each of
which enjoys and/or contributes to an approximation of divine beauty. The divine disposition diffuses
itself (Edwards) into a multiplicity of dispositions which aim at a unique actualization, a unique
perspective on reality, which is defined either as a contribution to, and/or an experience of, beauty.

It is at the point of this diffusion that the distinction between God and the non-divine world occurs.
The multiplicity of dispositions toward non-divine realities are themselves non-divine in their
concrescence. The termini of Gods creative act is not (as with Neville) the creaturely act itself, but the
beginning of the (not wholly determined) disposition of the creature which shall act. The non-divine
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disposition arises out of Godit is an aspect of Gods self-disposition to delight in Godselfand results
in what is not God.

As with Edwards, we can in this way assert that Gods creativity is, in one sense, the substance of
bodies, the ens entium of all things, without thereby endorsing pantheism. But this is in our scheme
carried through more consistently than was possible in Edwards because we have not held that this
creativity toward non-divine realities is in any sense necessary. The relative autonomy of the non-divine
dispositions is manifested in their autonomousviz., not divinely determinedcreativity, though their
relative dependence is manifested in their tie to the primordial disposition of God as the ground of their
creativity. The divine ground defines the parameters within which the preordained role of the entity
within the matrix of being can be played, though exactly how this creativity is in particular actualized is
their own doing. The divine ground thus defines the essence of the non-divine creature without thereby
undermining the autonomous integrity of the creature: indeed, it is the divine ground of the creatures
essence which allows the creature space to be autonomous.

The Paradoxical Dispositional Essence of Humanity
The relative autonomy of the creation is most clearly exemplified in the activity of humans. For the
dispositional essence of ordinary humans is not only a subjective aim to creatively fulfill a divinely
granted destiny, but is also a disposition to do so in a manner which includes rational deliberation. Our
freedom, in other words, is not only the freedom of undetermined spontaneity, and not only the
freedom to creatively fulfill a preordained general plan, but also the freedom to do so with and through
rational choice. But this element of our disposition implies that we have the ability to paradoxically turn
away from our essential God-given destinythe very dynamic drive which constitutes our soul. Our
disposition, in other words, is in part a disposition toward self-disposing. Our essential self is
paradoxically open to the possibility of destroying our essential self. We have the creative capacity to
radically abuse the ground of our creativity. We have the freedom to live in contradiction to the
subjective aim which is, we have seen, the ought which serves as the call over our lives. And this
means, in a word, that we have the freedom to destroy our true freedom.

The Dispositional Solidarity of Humanity
Why is there presently such a powerful and universal inclination to turn away from our exocentric call
and live a life in contradiction to our God-given essence? The self-disposing away from our original
essence is no mere occasional individual decision. As the Scripture consistently portrays it, this turning
away rather characterizes humanity as a whole, both at an individual and a societal level. Indeed, as
Edwards rightly saw, the very universality of sin in the history of humankind would demand the
postulation of some sort of corporate solidarity in some sort of fall, even if we had not been told this
in Scripture. Only upon this supposition, Edwards argued, can this universal penchant toward evil be
accounted for.

Now we have, following the lead of Madden and Hare, maintained that dispositions must be seen as
being multifarious in their scope and generality. The concept is implicit in Edwards and Leibniz as well.
They are all powerful particulars, but they are particular at many different levels. This observation may
now serve to begin to render intelligible the unity of humanity in its self-disposing away from our
original divine call.

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Whereas the reductionistic methodology of Process thought cannot account for the biblical portrait of
the solidarity of humanityanymore than it can account for the phenomenological wholes or the
transcendental wholes (e.g., morphogenetic fields) which some of the organic sciences are at
present postulating, the dispositional-ordinal approach we have been utilizing not only allows for, but
requires, the supposition of such realities.

There is no vacuum between Gods primordial disposition to be God, and the smallest, shortest
conceivable even (if there be such events) within the created order. Every event has its sufficient reason,
and this sufficient reason is to be found in the antecedent reality of a disposition to be something like
that event. Any other supposition results in the Process paradox of events occurring ex nihilo, without a
reason and without a subject.

This being the case, there is no problem in understanding the unity of humankind at a fundamental (or
transcendental) dispositional level. The reality of what humanity is has its sufficient reason in the
reality of a creative disposition of being to be human. The subjective aim of God is not simply to
atomistic occasions, as Hartshorne and Process thought in general maintain. Nor is it simply constitutive
of individuals, considered as phenomenological wholes. Beyond this, God has an aim for humanity as a
whole, and this aim, being a dispositional reality, is constitutive for what humanity is. Humanity, like
individual human beings, has a soul.

But as with the constitutive disposition of individuals, it is also an aspect of this fundamental disposition
that we actualize this disposition freely. Humanity is disposed to be self-disposing. As with individuals,
then, humanity as a whole has the ability to turn away from what it essentially is and attempt to be what
it is not. It has the ability to turn away from its proper role in the created order and attempt to define its
own roleto its detriment, and the detriment of the creation it is a part of (as we are seeing, for
example, in our present ecological crises).

This self-disposing need not be seen as the act of a transcendental will, distinct from the wills of the
individuals which corporately constitute humanity. It may, rather, be conceived of as the mutual
influence our self-disposing has on one another. At a transcendental level, as Sheldrake has been
attempting to prove on a biological basis, we affect and modify one another. In the same way that an
event in my body has some effect on my whole person, the total organism which constitutes my self, so
the self-disposing acts of individuals can be seen as affecting the self-disposition of humanity as a whole,
and vice versa. As ancient peoples (especially in the East) seem to see much clearer than modern first-
world people, sin is not principally individualistic. In a very real sense there is no strictly private sin.

It is the biblical proclamation that we have all fallen in Adam. With Edwards we would agree that even
if Scripture had no revealed this, some such transcendental fall, and some such transcendental
solidarity, would have to be postulated to account for the phenomenon. That something has gone
fundamentally awry with humanity, and with us the whole world, is an insight shared in the mythology
of most of the worlds major religions. The Church has traditionally attempted to come to terms with
this insight through various theories of how humanity as a whole is tied to the fall of Adamusually
conceived of as a singular, historic individual. The theories have ranged from a realist understanding (we
were actually there in Adam) to the Federal Head theory (Adam was our representative) to the
social influence theory (Adams fall began a lineage of bad examples).

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A dispositional understanding of the matter could, I believe, incorporate valid elements from all these
theories. Indeed, the treatment of Jonathan Edwards on this matter does just this, though he leans most
strongly towards a realist understanding . There is a real, though not actual, identification of all humans
with Adam (whether Adam be understood as an individual or a state of being). There is here also the
truth that Adam represents us, for in a real sense, we all fall, to some extent, when one falls. And it is
also true that Adam represents what we all actually become, what is in fact true of each one of us.
And, finally, there is also here a dimension of social influence, though we need not restrict this to the
examples society sets before us which we inevitably imitate. We influence each other also by affecting
the transcendental-dispositional essence which we all share.

Human Solidarity and the Incarnation
Our understanding of the dispositional solidarity of humanity not only illuminates what we are in
Adam, but also what we are in Christ. If in Adam we are all infected with a distorted disposition, an
inclination to turn away from our eschatological essence, in Christ our essential nature has been, in
principle, restored. Christ was who we most essentially are, and he was this under the universal
conditions of the fall.

Though we cannot of course here even begin a discussion of the accomplished work of Christ, what
ordinarily falls under the topic of the atonement, it can at least be said that the concept of disposition
opens the way to a conception of the work of Christ which would effectively mediate between the
objective (Anselmian) and subjective (Abelard) poles which have characterized most Christian
reflection on this issue throughout the Churchs history.

The work of Christ can, on the one hand, be seen as objective, for he really has realized anew the
eschatological essence of humanity. He has, as Irenaeus conceived of it, begun to recreate a new
humanity. The effect of his objective achievement is increasingly bringing salvation, wholeness, and
shalom to humanity in this transitional stage. Eschatologically, humanity has been made right with
the Creator.

Ye the work of Christ can, on the other hand, also be understood in line with subjective theories of the
atonement. Indeed, it can be said that within this framework the two theories traditionally treated as
antithetical come to the same thing. For the dispositional reality which Christ restores is at once an
objective (though not actual) reality which also constitutes the innermost self of each individual.

Thus, in contrast to Process thought which, we have seen, must limit the significance of Christ to a
representation of what God does at all times in all places, and which undermines this work as being a
gracious self-initiated work of God, the dispositional ontology we have proposed allows for an
intelligible understanding of the work of Christ more in line with Christian tradition, as utterly unique
and gracious.

The Two Natures of Christ
Our modified understanding of Edwards understanding of disposition can, we believe, also lay the
groundwork for a fruitful understanding of the person of Jesus Christ in line with the Chalcedonian
Confession as well as with modern non-substantival categories. On this too, nothing more than a
summarizing word can be said.

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As has been frequently pointed out in recent times, the most fundamental difficulty which the
traditional understanding of Christ poses for the modern mind concerns its substantialist categories:
Christ is said to be two natures in one person. If the concept of an enduring substance as the
ground of an entitys actual attributes has become problematic to the categories of modernity, how
much more problematic is the concept of two such realities crammed into one personwithout
division and without confusion?

A dispositional understanding of essence, however, while it by no means abrogates the paradox of the
God-man, does render this paradox more intelligible within the dynamic categories of our contemporary
milieu. Within the framework of this ontology, Christ may be said to be distinct from all other human in
that in this one person the disposition which defines God as God, and the disposition which defines
humanity as human, converged. In Christ, and through Christ, the unsurpassably intense sociality of God
is replicated ad extra.

Thus, we might say that the dynamic essence of the man Jesus was wholly taken up into the dynamic
essence of God so that God now aims at Godselfas God eternally doesbut now God does so
through this one man. In this one man, God achieves Godself anew. The necessary triune disposition for
primordial satisfaction now encompasses this spontaneous feature: it now encompasses the person and
work of this one man. The event of God, one might say, now includes the event of the man Jesus, and
through him, the event of the entire creation. The Incarnation is thus most fundamentally the dynamic
convergence of these two events.

Christ does not here cease to be a man, for his non-divine relationality, his non-divine perspective on, or
role within, being is retained. The concrescence of his human disposition is yet what it is. But just as this
human God is disposed to be God. The Word became flesh (Jn. 1:14). Precisely through the subjective
aim which constitutes the man Jesus, the subjective aim which constitutes God as God is creatively (viz.,
unnecessarily) achieved anew. The dynamic nature of dispositions allows this to be affirmed without the
problematic connotations which the traditional substantival categories have for the modern mind. And it
arrives at this dynamic conception without the radically unorthodox implications which, we have seen,
the Process scheme necessitates.

The ultimate effect of this dynamic Incarnation is the redemption of the world. In the expansion of the
divine sociality to essentially include the man Jesus, the process of the Trinity expands to include the
process of the world (Jn. 17:24ff). The ceaseless achievement of the expression of Gods deity in the
Trinity will now eternally include the expression of beauty of the non-divine order, and all of this
through Christ. This is the Good News of the New Testament.

Conclusion: Hartshornes Thought And The Construction Of A Process Trinitarian Metaphysics
It will perhaps be helpful to conclude this work by summarizing, in as succinct and schematic a manner
as possible, the basic conclusions we have arrived at.

1. We have argued that Hartshornes thought can be best understood by locating six fundamental
statements which form the foundation of his metaphysics. These are the statements something exists,
something is concrete with abstract characteristics, experience occurs, experience is concretely
asymmetrically related to its object, creative synthesis occurs, and aesthetic value is experience. All
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of these statements are, in Hartshornes understanding, a priori. Indeed, the latter five are, in his view
simply aspects of the first a priori, something exists.

2. While we accepted Hartshornes a priori methodology and much of his analysis of what is and is not a
priori, we rejected Hartshornes contention that the asymmetricality of relationality and experience as a
creative synthesis is a priori. These latter statements are, we have contended, the result of an assumed
ontological preference for the small. In contrast to this, we accepted the anti-reductionistic insights
from Buchlers and Ross ordinal/perspectival metaphysics and Merleu-Pontys Phenomenology that all
manifestations of being are on an ontological par with one another.

3. We have further argued that Hartshornes concrete/abstract distinction, while a priori, is not
exhaustive, and is in itself insufficient to provide a through metaphysical description of reality. The
mediating category of disposition, we have argued, is also needed if the becomingness of being from
abstraction to concreteness is to be rendered intelligible.

4. We have agreed that the aesthetic dimension of experience is its most fundamental teleological
dimension, we have nevertheless argued against Hartshornes and Whiteheads quantitative analysis of
the aesthetic experience in which they hold that the intensity of an aesthetic experience is necessarily
dependent upon the magnitude and complexity of an antecedent prehended multiplicity.

Our contention has been that virtually all of the alterations we have made in Hartshornes
understanding of God have arisen from these foundational adjustments to his system. And, moreover,
virtually everything in Hartshornes system which placed it at adds with the trinitarian view of God as
traditionally related and self-sufficient, arose from these elements in Hartshornes system.

5. We largely agreed with the neo-classical view of Gods existence and power arrived at via
Hartshornes ontological and cosmological arguments. We have concurred with Hartshorne that there
are insurmountable difficulties with the classical understanding of divine perfection, and we argued that
there is much in the neo-classical view which is an improvement over the classical view.

But we have also demonstrated that the neo-classical view itself runs into difficulties because,
theologically, it necessitates the existence of a non-divine world and, philosophically, it cannot render
intelligible the necessary abstract character of God. We have maintained that a view of God as
internally social, as along actually necessary, and as actually infinite while nevertheless being open to
contingent expressions of this antecedent necessity, fulfills all a priori requirements and retains the
advantageous elements of both the classical and neo-classical views of God while avoiding the
difficulties of both.

6. Similarly, we largely agreed with the view of God arrived at via Hartshornes design and epistemic
arguments. We have maintained, with Hartshorne, that there are numerous difficulties in the classical
conception of Gods power and Gods knowledge, and that the neo-classical view, therefore, offers some
advantage over this view.

But there are, we have nevertheless seen, grave difficulties with the neo-classical view itselfall owing
to what we deem to be erroneously construed foundational aspects of Hartshornes system. The world
is again necessitated. Freedom has not yet been rendered intelligible. God is unnecessarily restricted in
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this view. A great deal of what Scripture and Christian tradition wants to say about God is here
necessarily ruled out. And there are a number of other unsolved philosophical quagmires in this view.

The advantages of both the classical and neo-classical views are retained while their disadvantages are
avoided, we argued, the moment we assert (and render metaphysically intelligible) that God is alone
necessary, is internally social, is antecedently full and self-sufficient, but is nonetheless open to a
contingent expression of this antecedent divine fullness. And this we can do once the erroneous
foundational aspects of Hartshornes system are rejected.

7. We were again largely in agreement with the view of God arrived at by Hartshornes moral and
aesthetic arguments. We concede to Hartshorne that there are serious difficulties involved in the
classical understanding of Gods goodness and beauty, and thus that the neo-classical view has some
advantage over it. But, we have also shown that the neo-classical view itself has difficulties which are,
again, the result of erroneously construed foundation aspects of Hartshornes a priori system.

Hence, the world is again necessitated here. Moral value is yet unintelligible. The more than necessary
(viz., gracious) goodness of God as portrayed in Scripture is here unintelligible. Indeed, the beauty of
grace and the goodness of an ultimate triumph over evil are here necessarily ruled out, and this, we
insisted, constitutes (per impossibile) a necessary ugly truth in the universe. And, finally, a great deal
of what Scripture wants to say about God simply cannot intelligibly be said within this system.

Once one admits the inherent, necessary, self-sufficient sociality of Gods essential being, however, the
advantages of both the classical and neo-classical views are retained while the disadvantages of each are
avoided. Indeed, once the erroneously construed features of Hartshornes system have been modified,
then the rest of his system not only allows for this internally social view of God: it metaphysically
requires it.

8. We have, finally, attempted to show (in outline) that when this is further worked out in the light of
Edwardsian aesthetically conceived concept of disposition, we arrive at a trinitarian view of God in which
Gods being is understood to be this Ones free becoming, without thereby sacrificing this Ones self-
sufficiency. Indeed, Gods eternally creative becoming establishes this Ones self-sufficiency. We further
arrive at a dynamic understanding of God in which God graciously opens Godself up to encompass the
becoming of the world as an aspect of this Ones own self-realizationagain, without thereby
compromising Gods self-sufficiency. And, finally, we arrive at a view of God in which the revealed truths
of the Incarnation, the solidarity of humanity in Adam and in Christ, and the redemption of the
world are rendered intelligible within a thoroughly dynamic worldview, but without the unorthodox
implications of doing so from a strictly Process perspective.

Hence we have arrived at what constitutes the outline for a trinitarian dispositional metaphysics,
grounded on a priori truths, and compatible with the dynamic, non-substantival process categories of
modernity as well as with Scripture and the Christian tradition. The relationship between the Trinity and
the world process is that the creative process of the self-sufficient God graciously grounds and
encompasses the creative process of the world. And the ultimate result is the worlds redemptive
sharing in the eternal self-delight which characterizes and constitutes the creative self-becoming of the
triune God.