Is God in Process?:
A Critical Examination of A. N. Whitehead’s Process Theism
Daniel Chungsoon Lee, Th.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Theology Mokwon University
I. Introduction
Traditionally, Christian theology has aimed to ask and explore the existence and characteristics of God, which is the basis and starting point of Christian faith.
It can be said that the doctrine of God is the central point that illuminates other Christian doctrines.
However, traditional concept of God has often established a monotheistic yet transcendent God.
This concept of God is mainly based on the Bible, but under the influence of Greek philosophy, it developed into the doctrine of the Trinity.1
1 Although Christianity has monotheism, which has its roots in Jewish theology, it formulated the doctrine of the Trinity following the era of Jesus and the New Testament. The belief in God as the Trinity is a unique idea in the tradition of monotheism.
This traditional view of God is called ‘theistic supernatural God,’ which means the transcendence and personality of God. In other words, Christianity has traditionally believed in a God who transcends this world and is a personal God who communicates with humans.
However, this traditional view of God has been criticized as being an ideological and psychological projection of the political rulers of the feudal era and the modern monarchy, rather than the dynamic image of the living and active God that the Bible comprehensively shows.
Furthermore, with the development of reason and science since the modern era, criticism has been raised that this kind of God is no longer the so-called ‘Deus Ex Machina’ that solves the real problems of humanity immediately.
In addition, the tragedy of the Holocaust during World War II once again confirmed that the traditional God does not intervene in solving human problems, and questions about the existence of God have been raised. In this context, Anglican Bishop Robinson argued in his book, Honest to God, that the mythical and metaphysical concept of a transcendent God, such as ‘a being up there, out there, a white-haired old man who reigns and rules over the world he created,’ is no longer useful, and that the God of the Bible must be found in the midst of life and history.2
2 John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 11.
Robinson’s criticism later gave birth to the theology of God’s death on the one hand, and developed into attempts such as Tillich’s existential theology, Latin American liberation theology, and American process theology on the other.
The process philosophy and theology influenced by the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861~1947) and his followers is a compelling example of an attempt to propose a new concept of God for a new era.
Hosinski, a philosopher, referred to Alfred North Whitehead as “one of the most profound and important philosophical minds of the twentieth century.”3
Whitehead sought to develop his unique understanding of God, which encompassed both the transcendence and immanence of God, based on his process philosophy.
According to John Cobb and David Griffin, “The position they hold in common is widely known as ‘process philosophy’ and the theological movement influenced by it is accordingly called “process theology.’
The term ‘process’ rightly suggests that this movement rejects static actuality and affirms that all actuality is process.”4
It generally emphasizes being in process and becoming rather than static being or substance in the actual world.
On the other hand, Whitehead himself frequently called his process philosophy ‘a philosophy of organism,’ and this is an interpretation of the world as an intricately connected whole.
Whitehead’s organismic worldview basically shows how the world is comprised of, its individual elements are related to one another, and how the world is making a creative advance.
Undoubtedly, this worldview paved a way to the development of new philosophy and theology including the concept of God.
Marjorie H. Suchocki points out,
“Alfred North Whitehead’s organismic philosophy gave Cobb the means to address more successfully the intellectual problems of Christian faith. A through-going relational base displaced the primacy of self-sufficient substance.”5
3 Thomas E. Hosinski, Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, INC., 1993), 1.
4 John Cobb and David Griffin, Process Theology: an Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1987), 7.
5 Marjori H. Suchocki, God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (Spring Valley: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989), 108
This article aims to examine the content and meaning of the concept of God presented by Whitehead in order to answer some questions about traditional concepts of God. In the main body of this article, the characteristics of his view of God are examined, such as God as an actual entity, the two natures of God, God as creativity, and process theodicy.
In the conclusion, the significance and critical points of Whitehead’s concept of God are pointed out.
II. Theoretical Background of Whitehead’s Process Theism
Whitehead’s theistic philosophy is very suggestive and sheds profound light on our study about God. Specifically, the concept of God has an important place in the Whitehead’s philosophy. For Whitehead, the concept of God is required to explain the fundamental structure of the world. “God, for Whitehead, is an essential element that could not be substituted in the coherence of his metaphysical image of the physical world.”6
As Hosinski points out, “God is a necessary element in Whitehead’s understanding of the universe and there is an important sense in which God can be called ‘creator’ of all entities.”7
6 Nelson Shang, “The Centrality of God in the Process Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead: A Critique of the Post-Deistic Era,” Journal of Arts and Humanities 3 (2020/2), 127.
7 Hosinski, Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance, 25.
Whitehead also raises the importance of this issue by claiming,
"Today there is but one religious dogma in debate: What do you mean by ‘God’? And in this respect, today is like all its yesterdays. This is the fundamental religious dogma, and all other dogmas are subsidiary to it.”8
In his main writings, “Whitehead dealt extensively with God as an indispensable part of his metaphysical system, as that without which there would be no order or novelty and, hence, no world.”9
The concept of God, in this regard, is the final one that completes his process cosmology and functions as a ground of his process metaphysics.
His ultimate concern in the religious and metaphysical explorations is concentrated on the understanding of God.10 Whitehead’s concept of God, of course, is quite different from traditional Christian concepts of God because it is based on his process metaphysics and cosmology, which understands a reality of the world not as a static concept of being but as a dynamic concept of becoming.
According to Whitehead, “the modern world has lost God and is seeking him.”11
8 Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York: Fordham University Press, 1996), 68-69.
9 John W. Lansing, “The Nature of Whitehead’s God,” Process Studies 3 (1973), 143.
10 There are controversies on whether or not Whitehead’s concept of God is necessary in his metaphysical system and he was really theist or remained as agnostic. According to scholars, however, Whitehead made a significant change of his philosophical religious views after experiencing the loss of his youngest son and then gradually developed his idea of God in terms of a panentheism as an essential component in his process metaphysics, coming out of his earlier agnosticism. Whitehead accomplished the concept of God which was glimpsed in his early writings as his metaphysics was formulated. See Lewis S. Ford, The Lure of God: A Biblical Background for Process Theism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), 8-10; Victor Lowe, Understanding Whitehead (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966), 232; Bertrand Russell, Portrait from Memory (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956), 93.
11 Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 68
The reason for this is applied to the whole history of Christianity. That is to say, the history of Christianity, in particular, the history of the doctrine of God, made modern people face the times of the loss or death of God
More precisely, in Process and Reality he criticizes the representing notions of God applied to Western Christianity: the notion of God as an aboriginal, eminently real, transcendent creator second, the notion of God as an imperial rulers; the notion of God as a personification of moral energy; the notion of God as an ultimate philosophical principle.12
He insists that those traditional concepts of God are far away from the Galilean origin of Christianity.
He claims:
The history of theistic philosophy exhibits various stages combination of these diverse ways of entertaining the problem. There is, however, in the Galilean origin of Christianity yet another suggestion which does not fit very well with any of the three main strands of thought. It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralists, or unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operated by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world.13
12 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978), 342-343.
13 Ibid., 343.
In Religion in the Making, Whitehead, on the other hand, presents his position of God, generally analyzing the concepts of God appeared in the world religions.
According to him, there are also three types on understanding of God in the world.
1. The Eastern Asiatic concept of an impersonal order to which the world conforms. This order is the self-ordering of the world; it is not the world obeying an imposed rule. The concept expresses the extreme doctrine of immediate.
2. The Semitic concept of a definite personal individual entity, whose existence is the one ultimate metaphysical fact, absolute and underivative, and who decreed and ordered the derivative existence which we call the actual world. ... It expresses the extreme doctrine of transcendence.
3. The Pantheistic concept of an entity to be described in terms of Semitic concept, except that the actual world is a phase within the complete fact which is this ultimate individual entity. The actual world, conceived apart from God, is unreal. Its only reality is God’s reality. The actual world has the reality of being a partial description of what God is. But in itself it is merely a certain mutuality of “appearance,” which is a phase of the being of God. This is the extreme doctrine of monism.14
14 Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 68-69.
Whitehead harmonizes the Semitic transcendental God and the Asiatic immanent God, and the monotheistic God and the pantheistic God.
This is why we call his concept of God ‘a panentheism.’
According to his panentheism, this world and the universe are an appearance which expresses an aspect of the being of God; God is immanent as the order giver and value creator in the whole processes of creation.
God is included in all creatures.
Hence, the world and all things exist together with and in the being of God.
John Cobb clarified the meaning of Whitehead’s pantheism, defining it as the doctrine that all is in God.
Cobb states:
It is distinguished from pantheism, which identifies God with the totality or as the unity of the totality, for it holds that God’s inclusion of the world does not exhaust the reality of God.Panentheism understands itself as a form of theism, but it criticizes traditional theism for depicting the world as external to God.15
15 Alan Richardson and John Bowden, eds., The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983), 423.
III. Main Themes of Whitehead’s Process Theism
Whitehead’s process theism can be discussed through several themes: God as an Actual entity, God’s Two Natures, God as Creativity, and Process Theodicy.
1. God as an Actual Entity
In Whitehead’s process metaphysics, it is an actual entity that really exists as a final reality and is the fundamental unit of all things.
The actual entities are “the final real things” and “the drops of experiences.”16
16 Suchocki, God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology, 13
These actual entities are interdependent and interrelated. This universe is the organism that is comprised of all kinds of actual entities
. All actual entities are open to one another and operate with all together; they are momentary and relational realities.
All actual entities themselves have subjective and objective, mental and physical dipo lars; they have function of active perception and passive datum.17
In this sense, all existing beings, which influence and feel one another, are not only a whole dynamic unity but also a living organism. They are moving because they are alive.
They are in process and becoming.
According to Whitehead, God as a concrete being is also an actual entity. God is not an exception to all metaphysical principles.
For him, God is not an abstract being who is considered an absolute, perfect being.
Thus, like all other actual entities, God is also dipolar, mentally and physically, and relational, formative, and societal. God is an actual entity that seeks its satisfaction with its feeling and subjective aim.18
However, God is different from all other actual entities in the sense that God not only prehends all other actual entities and relates them; but God functions as a formative element in all the processes of creation.
“God is the infinite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity.”19
That is to say, God is both temporal and non-temporal reality.20
This means that, although God is the same concrete reality as other actual entities, God is not the actual entity in birth and death.
God is always with all the processes of becoming, change, and novelty of actual entities.
But God is the actual entity as a mediator who includes all of them and makes them possible.21
17 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 108.
18 In this sense, God’s power acting on the world is limited. A. N. Whitehead, Adventure of Ideas (New York: Free Press, 1963), 276- 277.
19 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 348.
20 Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 92-93.
21 Kenneth F. Thomson, Whitehead’s Philosophy of Religion (Hawthorne: Mouton Publishers, 1971), 57.
Whitehead’s concept of God is the same as other actual entities but a special sort of an actual entity, i.e., an imperishable actuality. It is God who gives the initial aim to all concrescent moments in the world. It is God who offers the origin of actual entities’ subjectivity. It is God who provides the lures for the individual actual entities to actualize.
In this sense God is the principle of concretion; namely he is that actual entity from which each temporal concrescence receives that initial aim from which its self-causation starts. That aim determines the initial gradations of relevance of eternal objects for conceptual feeling; and constitutes the autonomous subject in its primary phase of feelings with its initial conceptual valuations, and with its initial physical purpose.22
22 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 244.
2. God’s Two Natures
According to Whitehead, like other actual entities, the nature of God is analogically dipolar. God as an actual entity has two natures: primordial nature and consequent nature.
He holds,
Thus, analogously to all actual entities, the nature of God is dipolar. He has a primordial nature and a consequent nature. The consequent nature of God is conscious; and it is the realization of the actual world in the unity of his nature, and through the transformation of his wisdom. The primordial nature is conceptual, the consequent nature is the weaving of God’s physical feelings upon his primordial concepts.23
Thus, his view of God is called ‘dipolar theism.’
That is to say, just as all actual entities have both subjective and objective sides, both mental and physical side, God also has both conceptual and physical nature. But this does not means that God has two dual realities. Rather, it means that God has two aspects as one actual entity.
According to Whitehead, the primordial nature of God means a pure ideal, or mental nature. In other words, God is “the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality.”24
23 Ibid., 345.
24 Ibid., 343.
The consequent nature of God, on the other hand, means the objectification of the world in himself, i.e., the nature operating in the creation of the world. Regarding the primordial nature, God is away from the concrete reality in the world. Thus, according to Whitehead, the primordial nature of God has no feeling or consciousness of fullness and is not influenced by love, hatred, suffering, and pleasure of the world.
In other words, the primordial nature of God is neither directly related to the facts the world nor restricted by any actualities.
This means the selfness, eternity, and transcendence of God. The primordial nature of God, on the other hand, has the role of including, ordering, and classifying eternal objects as pure potentials, so that those eternal objects can be used as the datum by other actual entities. This means the function of God as the principle of concretion.
According to Whitehead, “God is the principle of concretion, namely, he is that actual entity from which each temporal concrescence receives that initial aim from which its self-causation starts.”25
God gives all actual entities comprised of the world their subjective aims. In this sense, God is considered to be an original ground that limits all creations of actual entities.
Whitehead argues for this:
“Each temporal entity, in one sense, originates from its mental pole, analogously to God himself. It derives from God its basic conceptual aim, relevant to its actual world, yet with indeterminations awaiting its own decisions.”26
He goes on to say,
“God is the aboriginal instance of this creativity, and is therefore the aboriginal condition which qualifies its action. It is the function of actuality to characterize the creativity, and God is the eternal primordial character.”27
According to John W. Lansing, the functions of the primordial nature of God can be summarized in three points.
“First, it grades the eternal objects in terms of their relevance to one another. ... Second, it grades the eternal objects in terms of their relevance for inclusion in particular actual occasions. ... Third, the primordial nature of God makes this graded relevance effective in the world through providing the initial aim for each concrescent occasion.”28
25 Ibid., 244.
26 Ibid., 224.
27 Ibid., 225.
28 Lansing, “The Nature of Whitehead’s God,” 144.
In order words, initial aims are derived from God.
In these three functions the primordial nature of God is manifested and realized.
For Whitehead, God as the primordial nature is not directly related to actual entities; rather, he is indirectly related to actual entities through eternal objects.
Therefore, the primordial nature of God means conceptual evaluation, unlimited potentiality, initial aim, and effective power that relate actual entities to eternal objects. In this sense, God as the primordial nature is everlasting, non-temporal, and unchangeable. On the other hand, in addition to the primordial nature, God has the consequent nature which is directly related to the world. The consequent nature of God means the concreteness of God in which actual entities in the world are objectified. Due to the consequent nature, God is able to have relationship with the world and accept results of various acts from the world. This means the way that God has relationship with the world. However, God accepts them as the subject and by his own ways, i.e., his own decisions. Here are involved both the activity and passivity of God.29
29 Daniel Day Williams, “How Does God Act?,” Process and Divinity, eds. W. Reese and E. Freeman (LaSalle: Open Court Publishing Company, 1964), 175.
More specifically, God as the consequent nature means that God has essential relationship with all things in the world. God prehends all actual entities as they are when they occur, takes them into himself, and relates those to reality of God. This is why God is temporal.
Due to the consequent nature, God continues to accept actual entities and is thus being changed. All what we do in this world influences God’s reality.
So, it can be said that God is like organism of organisms who prehends all organisms and includes them into God himself. All actual entities, at the same time, are prehended, memorized, and accepted by and they are then immortalized in the consequent nature of God.
In this context, God is called “the fullness of all actual entities” in which all actual entities are everlastingly preserved. On the contrary, all actual entities get objective immortality in the consequent nature of God and remain as data for next creation.30
God’s consequent nature is also explained in terms of the relationship between the God and the world. In a word, “God and the world conversely to each other in respect to their processes.”31
Whitehead makes it clear by saying
“God and the World stand to each other... God is the infinite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity. The World is the multiplicity of finites, actualities seeking a perfect unity. Neither God, nor the World, reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty.”32
Hence, God’s concrescence in the consequent nature of God means a process which leads various prehensions to ultimate unity.
That is to say, God’s consequent nature leads all feelings in the actual world into a unity of feelings.
Thus, for Whitehead, “God is the great companion--the fellow-sufferer who understands.”33
30 Robert B. Mellert, What is Process Theology? (Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1975), 46.
31 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 349.
32 Ibid., 348-349.
33 Ibid., 351.
For Whitehead, the relationship between God and the world is expressed in a paradox.
That is to say, God is one in terms of a unity of feelings but has concrescent diversity in process.
On the contrary, the world consists of many but attains a consequent unity in the process.
Therefore, while the world is one as well as many, God is many as well as one.
This constitutes a basic structure of process cosmology.
He holds,
The world is primordially one, namely, he is the primordial unity of relevance of the many potential forms; in the process he acquires a consequent multiplicity, which the primordial character absorbs into its own unity. The World is primordially many, namely, the many actual occasions with their physical finitude; in the process it acquires a consequent unity, which is a novel occasion and is absorbed into the multiplicity of the primordial character. Thus God is to be conceived as one and as many in the converse sense in which the World is to be conceived as many and as one.34
For Whitehead, God of the consequent nature is inevitably related to the world and both God and the world are comprised of a unity.
Of course, this does not mean that this world itself is God because God is immanent in the world as a function of aesthetic evaluation, formative factor of the actual world, and prior ground.
In a similar way, all things in the world are supported, grown, and maintained by those functions of God. So, Whitehead maintains,
“the power by which God sustains the world is the power of himself as the ideal. He adds himself to the actual ground from which every creative act takes its rise. The world lives by its incarnation of God in itself.”35
34 Ibid., 348-349.
35 Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 156.
Therefore, while God of the consequent nature means that God is an actual entity that is directly related to the world, God is distinct from other actual entities; that is, God is not perishable or temporal entity.
God is an everlasting entity because the consequent nature is inevitably connected with the primordial nature in God.
In other words, the two natures of God are not the combinations of two different natures; they are two as well as one and, namely, the two natures of God mean two aspects of an undivided reality.
Hence,
“God is the primordial creature; but the description of his nature is not exhausted by this conceptual side of it. His ‘consequent nature’ results from his physical prehension of the derivative actual entities.”36
36 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 31.
3. God as Creativity
Another term that characterizes Whitehead’s concept of God is ‘creativity.’ Whitehead prefers creativity to creator, which is traditionally ascribed to God.
Whitehead does not agree to the concept of God as a transcendental and supreme being who creates from nothing. In his metaphysics, God as an ultimate being is ‘creativity’ or ‘creating activity’.
The word ‘creativity’, for him, is a fundamental principle of creation and formation. It indicates to us that the creation of God is involved in all processes of the universe.
Thus, Whitehead claims that God does not exist before the creation but exists along with all the creation.37
37 Ibid., 343.
Whitehead’s view on creativity is different from that of classical theism, which holds that only God is truly creative. For him, creativity is the same as the concept of ‘matter’ in Aristotle’s philosophy.
It does not have its own character.
It cannot be explained by all other things.
It is the “ultimate notion of the highest generality at the base of actuality.”38
He maintains about the functions of ‘creativity’ in more details:
‘Creativity’ is the universal of the universals characterizing ultimate matter of the fact. It is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which is the universe conjunctively. It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity. ‘Creativity’ is the principle of novelty. An actual occasion is a novel entity diverse from any entity in the ‘many’ which it unifies. Thus ‘creativity’ introduces novelty into the content of the many, which are the universe disjunctively. The ‘creative advance’ is the application of this ultimate principle of creativity to each novel situation which it originates.39
38 Ibid., 31.
39 Ibid., 21.
In other words, the function of God as creativity is to get each actual entities ready for development by offering them initial aims and make possible a transition into novelty in the process of concrescence in terms of prehension, evaluation, selection, satisfaction, and determination.
It can be thus said that without God as creativity is produced nothing; without God as creativity exists nothing.
This means that God as creativity is engaged in all the process of creation, evolution, and transition of all things. Therefore, he also said, “God is the one systematic, complete fact, which is the antecedent ground conditioning every creative act.”40
God, however, does not exist without regard to the world.
God is not creator who created the world once for all in an ancient time.
God is meaningful only with the world. In other words, “there is no meaning to ‘creativity’ apart from its ‘creatures,’ and no meaning to ‘God’ apart from the ‘creativity’ and the ‘temporal creatures,’ and no meaning to the ‘temporal creatures’ apart from ‘creativity’ and ‘God.”41
So, it can be said that God is creativity who is always involved in all the processes of creation in and with the world. Whitehead does not set the relationship between God and the world as a symmetrical relationship, but as a master-servant relationship.
For him, God exists for the world, and at the same time the world exists for God.42
40 Whitehead, Religion in the Making, 154.
41 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 225.
42 Chul Chun, “Divine Kenosis and Creation of Nature: Focusing on Alfred North Whitehead’s Metaphysics,” Studies on Life and Culture 67 (2023), 33.
Whitehead makes this point clear in his famous antithetical statements:
It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent. It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many. It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently. It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World. It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.
It is as true to say that God creates the World, as the World creates God.43
Just as both the primordial nature and consequent nature are inseparable elements in understanding God, both God and the world are engaged in the process of creation.
“Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty.”44
God’s creative activity is a kind of adventure that involves risk.
Whitehead argues how God and the world works together in the process of creation:
God and the world stand over against each other, expressing the final metaphysical truth that appetitive vision and physical enjoyment have equal claim to priority in creation. But two actualities can be torn apart: each is all in all. Thus each temporal occasion embodies God, and is embodied in God. In God’s nature, permanence is primordial and flux is derivative from the world: in the World’s nature, flux is primordial and permanence is derivative from God. Also the World’s nature is primordial datum for God; and God’s nature is a primordial datum for the World. Creation achieves the reconciliation of permanence and flux when it has reached its final term which is everlastingness―the Apotheosis of the World.45
43 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 348.
44 Ibid., 349.
45 Ibid., 348.
According to Lewis Ford, God should be an actual entity among other actual entities in order to make Whitehead’s metaphysical system coherent.
This means that God also has physical prehensions, so that God directly experience the world. Ford describes what kind of relationship God and the world make in the following way:
Therefore, in this vision, God and the world form an ecosystem, wherein both contribute to each other.
God provides each event with its aim or lure toward which it moves.
The event actualizes itself, influenced by the possibilities that God has provided, but also becoming something in its self-production by appropriating elements out of its past. This result is then experienced by God.
In this way, the world enriches God.46
46 Ford, The Lure of God: A Biblical Background for Process Theism, 11.
4. Process Theodicy
Since the beginning of human history, questions have always been raised about the suffering and death of innocent people through natural disasters, wars, and various unjust incidents.
In theology, this question is called ‘theodicy’.
In other words, it is a question of how we can justify the existence of God in such tragic situations.
How can such tragic things happen when God is the creator and ruler of the entire universe?
If God is good, how can we understand the suffering and evil that humans often experience on this earth?
It is a question of whether a good God and evil can coexist.
Whitehead’s process theism has presented a very unique interpretation of the problem of suffering and evil. In a word, Whitehead understands God’s omnipotence differently, which conflicts with the problem of evil.
Since God does not coerce anything in the universe but only persuades, he is not responsible for evil.
Rather, it is said that it is caused by human misuse of their freedom.
Traditional theology explained God as a power that governs everything, and ultimately viewed God as governing every detail of the world process.
Therefore, whenever the problem of evil was raised, it resulted in contradictions to the omnipotence of this ruling God, and furthermore, it was explained that evil ultimately does not exist.47
47 St. Agustine is a good example. He believed that evil does not exist, but it is the absence of good (privatio boni) that and is caused by human beings. Jenny Teichman and Katherine C. Evans, Philosophy: A Beginners Guide (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999), 45.
Whitehead understands this differently. According to him, all things are in process and connected to each other, and they are continuously changing and being created dynamically, becoming events.
God is one of these entities, but unlike entities that exist for a finite period of time and then disappear, God is an entity that does not disappear.
All entities exist through the influence of previous entities and the entity called God.
The word ‘influence’ here is important, because it means that the causal relationship that occurs between entities is not achieved through a process of coercion, but through a process of mutual influence, or in other words, a process of persuasion. This rule also applies to God.
That is, God also influences other entities in a persuasive manner, and he himself is influenced by other entities in the same way. God, who affects and is affected by the world, cannot control the self-realization of finite events. To quote Whitehead’s famous expression, “God is the great companion―the fellow-sufferer who understands.”48
That is to say, for Whitehead, God is the God of persuasion, not coercion, the God who influences the world, not dominates it.49
More specifically, God’s love for creatures is always persuasive and responsive.
Whitehead the power of love exercised by God, saying that the Galilean origin of Christianity is based on “the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love”.50
48 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 351.
49 Ian G. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990), 29.
50 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 343.
In this context, God’s omnipotence is limited within the framework of the world process by terms like persuasion and influence.
This makes a very important contribution to explaining the problem of evil occurring in the world.
That is, evil is caused by human free decisions and activities, not by God. An important question arises here.
Then what is the nature of evil? How can we explain natural disasters that occur regardless of human will? In this regard, Whitehead’s process theodicy follows the tradition of free will of all things.
That is, God cannot force his will even on nature. God can only try to influence the processes that take place in nature through persuasion.
All entities, including humans, enjoy freedom and creativity, and God cannot overturn these.
Therefore, each entity can ignore or reject even God’s persuasion. In other words, each entity has no obligation to respond to God’s demands.
In this way, God is also exempted from responsibility for moral or natural evil. If we focus on God’s persuasive activities in this way, we can avoid attributing the problem of evil to God. Of course, this does not solve all the problems of God’s omnipotence, transcendence, and perfection.
However, through this logic of Whitehead’s process theodicy, God is no longer responsible for the suffering and evil that humans experience. This is the advantage of Whitehead’s process theodicy.
Whitehead logically explains the problems of suffering and evil that humans experience better than any other theology.
In other words, natural disasters are part of the natural process, and the problem of evil that humans experience, such as the Holocaust, is the result of humans’ misuse of their freedom.
The good God constantly persuades all things to pursue goodness.
From this perspective, the creation of the world was not finished all at once, but is still ongoing, and God and humans are co-creators who participate in this process of creation.51
51 Lucien Price, Dialogue of Alfred North Whitehead (New York: The New American Library, 1964), 297.
IV. Conclusion
As examined above, Whitehead recognized the problems of the traditional doctrine of God of Western Christianity and attempted to present an alternative based on his own unique process philosophy.
He criticized both the Western monotheistic tradition and the Eastern immanent and pantheistic tradition, and presented ‘panentheism’ that integrated them all.
His idea of God can be called ‘process theism’ based on process-philosophical metaphysics, and its great significance lies in overcoming and supplementing the ‘transcendental theism’ of traditional Christianity.
Now, I would like to present the significance and critical points of Whitehead’s concept of God in several ways. First, Whitehead understands God as an actual entity.
More specifically, God, who is an actual entity, is a ‘divine process’ that enters the life of this world, exists with all things, and grows together with the temporal world.
This is consistent with the biblical truth that God is “above all and through all and in all”(Ephesians 4:6, NRSV).
This God and the world have a dynamic internal relationship rather than a master-servant relationship.
Therefore, God affects the world and is affected by the world.
As the world is in God, so God is in the world.
As God transcends the world, so the world transcends God.
As God creates the world, the world creates God. All are co-creators.
God’s creative power acting on the world is limited, because all creatures have their own causes and purposes, and exercise their own power.
The mythical and metaphysical concept of a transcendent God, as Robinson pointed out, as “a being up there, out there, a white-haired old man who reigns and rules over the world he created,”52 is now discarded.
52 Robinson, Honest to God, 11.
Instead, through Whitehead, the biblical God who lives and moves dynamically with all creatures in the midst of life and history is restored.
Second, Whitehead’s process theism emphasizes the God of creative, responsive, and persuasive love, thereby revising the traditional concept of God, namely, God as an unchanging and insensitive absolute, God as an omnipotent ruler, God as a dominant controlling force, and God as a universal moralist. God, who is one of the actual entities and in the midst of processes, is a loving God who limits himself and guides the world through persuasion.
Such process theism can have a positive effect on the life of Christians.
That is, if Christians believe in the God presented in process theism, they will live a life that is open to God’s creative love while having a sense of responsibility for their own self.
This allows Christians to form a spirituality that opens their hearts to others and practices love actively for them.
Ultimately, process theism will encourages Christians to form a community that embraces all humans and other creatures in society and throughout the ecosystem.
Third, process thought, which views reality as a process, helps us to correctly understand the Christian faith in God and His creation.
The insight that God is a being who is constantly active and guides with a holy purpose in creation and history, and who renews all things, is an important core of Christian faith.
This traditional confession of faith is consistent with process theism that God is the ultimate agent who persuades creatures toward his goal in the process of creation.
The fact that process theism views God as a being who re-actualizes new elements that were not realized in the world is also consistent with Christian faith that believes in the possibility of new life, ultimate newness, and resurrection in God. Fourth, the God of Whitehead’s process theism is a being who opens up the room for the freedom and self-creativity of creatures.
Therefore, all creatures are able to work for continuous creative change and the realization of new possibilities through the persuasive love given by God.
This is very consistent with the Christian faith in the life of a disciple for the realization of the kingdom of God on earth and the preservation and renewal of the created world. In this respect, process theism can help in the formation of Christian discipleship and ecological spirituality.53
53 Ultimately, this spirituality can help us to formulate “the biblical vision of shalom.” Clark M. Williamson and Ronald J. Allen, Adventure of the Spirit: A Guide to Worship from the Perspective of Process Theology (Lanham: University Press of America, Inc., 1997), 31.
Fifth, Whitehead’s process theism can be a useful tool for effectively conveying Christian faith to modern people who pursue scientific thinking and lifestyle in the age of science.
All things, including God, continue to change and develop in process.
This is consistent with the principles of modern science.
In this respect, process theism stimulates Christians to be more open to scientific thinking.
Further, tit will enable to make a bridge between Christian faith and modern science for a common good. Despite this significance, there are also limitations and criticisms regarding Whitehead’s process theism.
It is very significant that God is considered an actual entity and described as a living God who dynamically relates to all beings in the world, but how should we understand the traditional concepts of God’s omniscience, transcendence, and perfection when this happens?
In addition, many other questions can be raised. In particular, the part where he describes God as an actual entity while considering it as a special actual entity that does not experience birth and death is still a controversial issue.
In Whitehead’s process theism, is God really an actual entity or an exceptional being?
If God is still an exceptional being who enjoys privilege, isn’t this a contradiction in logic? Whitehead said that we should return to the religion that originated from the vision of Jesus of Galilee, a religion based on the power of love and persuasion.
This idea has great merit, but it often loses its power in reality where the reality of evil is vividly experienced. Furthermore, for those who confront the problem of evil head-on and fight it, a cosmological view that explains everything in process and organism may make this struggle itself meaningless.
This is because evil can also be a changing actual entity. This point is related to the problem of ‘theodicy’ and the problem of ethics.
Can God, as creativity rather than the creator, be the object of worship?
Why should we worship such a God?
How should process theism be applied and developed to Trinity theory?
In what way should the connection between process theism and the theory of the Trinity be advanced?
Many issues are still under discussion.
To that extent, Whitehead’s philosophy and process theism are incomplete ideas that require further research and systematization.
Therefore, just as Whitehead found affinity with his ideas in Eastern thought, his process philosophy, especially process theism, should be further logically developed and systematized through continuous dialogue with Eastern thought and religions, and numerous modern theological and biblical achievements.
Bibliography
Barbour, Ian G. Religion in an Age of Science. San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1990. Chun, Chul. “Divine Kenosis and Creation of Nature: Focusing on Alfred North Whitehead’s Metaphysics.” Studies on Life and Culture 67 (2023), 27-42. Cobb, John and David Griffin. Process Theology: an Introductory Exposition. Philadelphia: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996. Ford, Lewis S. The Lure of God: A Biblical Background for Process Theism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978. Hosinski, Thomas E. Stubborn Fact and Creative Advance. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, INC., 1993. Lansing, John W. “The Nature of Whitehead’s God.” Process Studies 3 (1973), 140-150. Lowe, Victor. Understanding Whitehead. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1966. Mellert, Robert B. What is Process Theology?. New York: Paulist Press, 1975. Price, Lucien. Dialogue of Alfred North Whitehead. New York: The New American Library, 1964. Robinson, John A. T. Honest to God. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002. Richardson, Alan and John Bowden. eds. The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1983. Russell, Bertrand. Portrait from Memory. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1956. Shang, Nelson. “The Centrality of God in the Process Metaphysics of Alfred North Whitehead: A Critique of the Post-Deistic Era.” Journal of Arts and Humanities 3 (2020/2), 122-135. Suchocki, Marjori H. God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology. Spring Valley: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1989. Teichman, Jenny and C. Evans Katherine. Philosophy : A Beginners Guide. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1999. Thomson, Kenneth F. Whitehead’s Philosophy of Religion. Hawthorne: Mouton Publishers, 1971. Whitehead, Alfred North. Religion in the Making. New York: Fordham University Press, 1996. _______. Process and Reality. New York: The Free Press, 1978. _______. Adventures of Ideas. New York: The Free Press, 1961. Williams, Daniel Day. “How Does God Act?” Process and Divinity. Eds. W. Reese and E. Freeman. LaSalle: Open Court Publishing Company, 1964. Williamson, Clark M. and J. Allen Ronald. Adventure of the Spirit: A Guide to Worship from the Perspective of Process Theology. Lanham: University Press of America, 1997.
한글 초록
과정철학과 과정신학의 창시자인 알프레드노쓰화이트헤드(Alfred North Whitehead, 1861~1947)는 서구기독교의 전통신론의 문제를 인식하고 자신만의 독특한 철학을 바탕으로 그 대안을 제시하고자했다.
그의신론은과정철학 적형이상학에바탕을둔과정신론으로부를수있는데, 전통기독교의‘초월적 유신론’을비판점을극복하고보완한다는데큰의의가있다.
본논문은전통적 인기독교신론에관한문제를해결하고발전시키는데화이트헤드가제시한 과정신론의내용과통찰이도움이될수있다는전제에서출발하여, 그가제시 한과정신론의개요와의미를살펴보는데연구의목적이있다.
먼저화이트헤 드과정신론의이론적배경에대해서간략하게살펴본후, 본논문의 본론부분 에서는과정신론의특징을현실재로서의신, 신의두본성, 창조성으로서의 신, 과정신정론등의주제들을중심으로살펴본다.
결론부분에서는 화이트헤 드 과정신론이 갖는 의의와 비판점을 몇가지로 나누어 설명한후 향후 계속 연구되어야 할 주제들을 제시한다.
주제어 : 알프레드 노쓰 화이트헤드, 과정철학, 하나님, 과정신론, 과정신정론
Abatract
Is God in Process?: A Critical Examination of A. N. Whitehead’s Process Theism
Daniel Chungsoon Lee, Th.D. Assistant Professor, Department of Theology Mokwon University
Alfred North Whitehead (1861~1947), the founder of process philosophy and theology, criticized both the monotheistic tradition of the Western tradition and the immanent and pantheistic tradition of the East, and presented ‘panentheism’ that integrated them all. His idea of God can be called process theism based on process philosophical metaphysics, and it is significant in that it overcomes and complements the ‘transcendental theism’ of traditional Christianity. This article starts from the premise that the content and insight of process theism presented by Whitehead can be helpful in resolving and developing the problems of traditional Christian concept of God. The purpose of this study is to examine the outline and meaning of process theism presented by him. First, we briefly review the theoretical background of Whitehead’s process theism, and then in the main body of this article, we examine the characteristics of process theism, focusing on topics such as God as an actual entity, the two natures of God, God as creativity, and process theodicy. In the conclusion, we explain the significance and critical points of Whitehead’s process theism in several ways, and then suggest topics that should be studied in the future.
Keywords : Alfred North Whitehead, Process Philosophy, God, Process Theism, Process Theodicy
접수일: 2025년 2월 2일, 심사완료일: 2025년 2월 28일, 게재확정일: 2025년 3월 1일
한국기독교신학논총 136집
https://doi.org/10.18708/kjcs.2025.4.136.1.39
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