“Rationalism never shakes off its status of an experimental adventure....Rationalism is an adventure in the clarification of thought, progressive and never final. But it is an adventure in which even partial success has importance.”
The reality of God can be studied from a variety of perspectives — including theology and philosophy among countless organized religions. Many religious institutions continue to perpetuate dogmatic perspectives, ultimately fueling the divide amongst diverse viewpoints. War, political turmoil, slavery and injustice are the products of such factions — everything is connected.
To help reconcile these destructive issues, people around the world need to adopt an appreciative awareness. This creative process involves the following four steps: commit oneself, engage in honest conversation and listen carefully, spend time in solitude thinking and reflecting, and sometimes the consequence transforms one’s worldview.
In Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead by C. Robert Mesle, the author argues, “Our world is very much in need of an intellectual, scientific, and spiritual vision that can draw many different people into a unified conversation, while still stimulating further exploration and challenge” (218).
Drawing people into a unified conversation requires one to understand the distinction between objective and subjective referents to God. Subjective referents to God are more personal and derive, in part, from strong human emotions such as anger, ecstasy and helplessness. Whereas objective referents to God recognize God as a limited concept, a sense of Mystery.
According to God Reflected: Metaphors for Life by Flora A. Keshgegian, “To speak of God as mystery avoids the opposition that the terms transcendence and immanence tend to set up. To say that God is mystery is to acknowledge that God is in some sense unknowable or that we cannot fully know God” (17). Objective referents also relate to that about which people should be ultimately concerned or that to which they should be ultimately committed; it is the power upon which the best that is possible depends.
According to Do We Worship the Same God?: Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Dialogue edited by Miroslav Volf, “God’s reality is not dependent on human religious constructions” (39). Therefore, objective referents to God must be taken into consideration during the pursuit to find common ground within several different faiths. Subjective referents don’t necessarily need to be negated, they simply need to be acknowledged as subjective and further explored to uncover the deeper, universal meaning.
According to America’s Four Gods by Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, “Two people with different images of God may see signs of divine intervention in midst of the same event, yet interpret God’s actions and motivations differently” (29). Diverse perspectives are potentially valuable if handled properly with respect and an open mind; sharing differing viewpoints is part of the creative process and develops appreciative awareness.
In Alfred North Whitehead’s book Process and Reality, he states, “There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly” (xiv). This view of Whitehead’s is consistent with the concept of God as Mystery; humans possess a limited capacity of understanding. Therefore, no human can possibly claim complete certainty when it comes to a specific religious ideology.
One may have faith in God, but understanding the root of that faith is essential. Possessing faith as a belief despite evidence of the contrary, runs the risk of idolatry. Ludwig Wittgenstein declared, “At the foundation of well-founded belief, lies belief that is not founded” (Worship 38). Faith is personal and doesn’t need to be confined to a specific, organized religion. “Process-relational theologians reject the idea of faith as mere ‘belief without evidence’ in favor of faith as fidelity to the open-ended search for what is true and good, a search that at its best engages us continually in a relational process” (Process-Relational 1572).
What is the distinction between believing in God versus simply believing in the words used to describe God? The constructs of language, as well as words themselves, present an obstacle that must be taken into consideration and understood. “Theology is a human endeavor, an intellectual, conceptual activity that relies on language. In other words, in order ‘to do’ theology, theologians need to be able to think, to imagine, and to give expression to their thoughts and imaginings in language. These are the tools theologians have available. These tools allow theologians, and all of us, to talk about God and to know God. But they also set limits on who God is and what we know about God. Our understanding of God is limited by what we can think, imagine, and say” (Reflected 16). Metaphors become the language of God, which further illustrates the concept of God as Mystery.
Humans need to worry less about understanding Mystery and focus more on realizing the magnitude of Mystery before them. An emerging approach to this method is through process- relational philosophy. “Process philosophy is an effort to think clearly and deeply about the obvious truth that our world and our lives are dynamic, interrelated processes and to challenge the apparently obvious, but fundamentally mistaken, idea the world (including ourselves) is made of things that exist independently of such relationships and that seem to endure unchanged through all the processes of change” (Process-Relational 185). This approach combines philosophy, theology and science in an exploration of truth.
Process philosophers “argue that there is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have consequences for the world around us. This stance requires us to challenge and reject the prevailing philosophies and theologies that give primacy to Being over Becoming, to independence over relatedness, to things over processes, to the idea that the human spirit is fundamentally isolated from the social and natural web in which we clearly all live and move and are becoming” (203). This wholesome approach views the world and everything in it as part of a constant, interconnected flow of experience.
Whitehead offers an analogy for studying the process-relational approach, “The true method of discovery is like the flight of an aeroplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight in the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation” (Process 5). Process philosophy is a speculative philosophy and needs to remain grounded in rational thought at its core. Therefore, Whitehead’s analogy provides a guideline for such speculation. One must have part of a rational idea in mind to further explore before contemplating new aspects of that rational idea. Once contemplation has taken place, it’s necessary to return to rational thinking to ensure the idea remains true.
Whitehead’s analogy is applicable to the issue of integrity. Process philosophy is a wholesome approach, and integrity relates to a state of being whole or undivided. Intellectual integrity and moral integrity present the biggest issues from a religious perspective. Can one separate intellect from religion? The last step of Whitehead’s analogy involves vetting new discoveries with rational thought. If the new discovery is inconsistent with rational thought, it’s void. However, if a person identifies with a creationist religion and still believes in evolution, his or her intellectual integrity may been compromised. The issue of moral integrity involves recognizing the nasty history of various religions. If one belongs to a religion despite its violent past, does he or she compromise their moral integrity?
“Whitehead suggested that morality is tied up with breadth of vision. If I see my life as totally disconnected from others, no moral vision is possible. It is only as I see that you and I are connected, that our lives and actions affect each other, that the possibility of ethical thought and action emerges” (Process-Relational 346). The idea of lives and actions affecting each other reiterates interconnectedness and pertains to the concept of power.
Plato holds the notion “that anything that possesses any sort of power to affect another, or to be affected by another, if only for a single moment, however trifling the cause and however slight the effect, has real existence; and I hold that the definition of being is simply power” (1221). While process philosophers accept the view of becoming rather than being, Plato’s notion still applies. Process philosophy rejects a definite future, the future does not exist until it becomes actualize. Therefore, the present moment is the being of becoming. All humans inherently possess power.
Power comes in different forms. Unilateral power involves one party in a relationship having all the power, coercion and possessing the ability to make others do as you want. Relational power involves persuasion, patience, persistence, integrity, forgiveness and the ability to suffer. “Unlike unilateral power, relational power is not competitive in the sense of being mutually exclusive. Relational power is like love: The more we love each other, the more both of us can grow in love” (1357). Unilateral power dominates the political landscape, distorting human understanding of the inherent power each person possesses.
“We are so trapped in political, economic, and social structures of unilateral power that it often seems foolishly idealistic to take love and relational power seriously as models for life and social change. Yet, the Buddha, Gandhi, Jesus, and Martin Luther King Jr. are obvious public examples of great relational power. They lived out of a relational vision” (2287).
Relational power is achievable in this existence and may be exactly where humanity is headed. Process philosophy reexamines the ultimate power of God and presents an alternative perspective. “A God who cannot control the world but who can suffer with us and draw us forward in love is a God who offers radically new responses to the ancient cry of human suffering” (1572). This view of power better addresses the question of why God has allowed such horrible things to happen.
Human suffering isn’t to be blamed on God, for he is still good. “God is good because God shares the experience of every creature—every pain, joy, hope, despair, failure, and triumph. God is not an impartial, disinterested observer of the world but the uniquely ‘omni-partial’ and totally interested participant in every relationship there is. God knows what it is like to be you and me and ‘them’ and the animals and plants we all eat. In the fullest sense possible, then, God is love: God is perfect relational power” (2287).
In the tradition of Jerusalem the word “God” refers to a perfect being. However, the term “perfection” has more than one meaning. There’s the perfection of changelessness and the perfection of love or care. The perfection of changelessness is linked to unilateral power, and its traits include omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence. As a perfect being God is not susceptible to change. Yet, the perfection of love or care is consistent with relational power. Because God is steadfast love, God changes in relation to the beloved; this is where the notion that God suffers with those who suffer and rejoices with those who rejoice comes in. God is omniscient in the sense he knows all possibilities and all actualities, but he doesn’t know which possibilities will be actualized until a subject chooses to actualize them.
Actualized possibilities yield experience. And ultimately, “there is one kind of reality— experience. But experience has both its physical and mental aspects” (728). The mental aspect refers to one’s soul. “Your soul (mind or psyche) simply is the current cumulative flow of your experience” (795). The physical aspect enables one to be aware of such experience. “Complex animal bodies like yours are organized precisely to channel experience and organize it into a single individual who is able to achieve awareness and direct the whole organism away from harm and toward food, etc.” Again, “This individual experiencer, which draws together the vast wealth of experience of the cells composing your body, is your mind” (696). The mind and body operate together as one to create reality.
“A process-relational vision of this world of experience calls us to a wider ethical responsibility toward all creatures. Animals have value for themselves, as well as for us. Consequently, we have ethical obligations towards them. It is obvious that process-relational thinkers lean towards the vision of John Stuart Mill, the nineteenth-century philosopher who insisted that actions are right or wrong not because of some abstract duty but because they have consequences for people’s lives. Actions are right as they tend to make life better and wrong as they tend to make life worse. Mill emphasized that ethical obligations arise because of a creature’s capacity for pain and pleasure.
Process-relational thinking gives ever greater depth and force to Mill’s vision that we have obligations not only to human beings, ‘but, so far as the nature of things admits, to the whole sentient creation’” (749). Understanding the reality of God has significant consequences reaching far beyond oneself. While many religions share common beliefs at their core, they continue to act as barriers dividing people. Whether the barriers are intentional or not isn’t the issue. Every organized religion controls its own undetermined future, and they need to adapt as time revels new research and discoveries. An unwillingness to change or adapt will further segregate the collective conscious of humanity.
“[D]o different beliefs about God make people think differently, act differently, or live differently? If they don’t, then perhaps God is as good as dead, because God seems not to matter in our modern world” (Gods 2). From a historical perspective, religions have significantly influenced the motivations and actions of individuals, whether on a conscious or subconscious level. History also reveals the hypocrisy of religious institutions, and this history is more readily available today in the digital age.
The modern world needs a new intellectual, scientific, and spiritual vision of God independent of traditionally organized religion. A unified vision has the potential to alter the habits and lifestyles of humanity. “As Aristotle and others have pointed out, character is shaped by decisions that become habits. The self that has these habits is known only in the flow of experiences, decisions, and actions, not in something mysterious that underlines them” (Process-Relational 906).
If people got in the habit of actively engaging in God-talk, they would gain an appreciative awareness through the creative process. Understanding the complex nature of God and the interconnectedness of reality will lead to a better world—a world humanity is capable of achieving through collaboration and love. After all, “process-relational thought offers us a vision of reality that helps us to understand what we all deeply know to be true” (980).
Originally written for a Religious Studies course in 2013.
