Panentheism – All you want to know

Pan-en-theism is not to be confused with pantheism, although they have some things in common. Panentheism is the belief that God is in the world the way a soul or mind is in a body; pantheism is the belief that God is the world and the world is God. There are many names for this worldview. Some call it finite-godism because, in contrast with traditional theism, it believes that God is not infinite in nature and power but finite or limited.

Others label it dipolar or bipolar theism since, in contrast to traditional monopolar theism, it holds that there are two poles to God, namely, an actual temporal pole and a potential eternal pole. Because of these differences from traditional theism, some wish to call it quasi-theism or qualified theism. Still others, viewing its affinities with pantheism’s identification of God and the world, prefer the title panentheism.

In the contemporary world the major form of this position is represented in process theology, which holds that the finite, bipolar God is in a continual process of change. In this form it is sometimes called organicism because of its stress on the organic relationship of all factors of the world process. It is the bipolar type of panentheism with which we will be most concerned in this chapter.

An Exposition of Panentheism

Panentheism did not begin in the modern world. The pre-Socratic philosopher Diogenes (5th century B.C.) held that God is to World as soul is to body, a root model that is still in currency among panentheists. Further, both Plato’s Demiurgos and Aristotle’s Unmoved Mover were finite gods that would fit into the broad category of panentheism. But the most influential forms of panentheism in the modern world emanate from Alfred North Whitehead and his successors.

The Process Panentheism of Whitehead

There were many influences converging in the Whiteheadian view of God. The ancient philosopher Heraclitus (fl. 500 B.C.) had noted that a man “could not step twice in the same river; for other and yet other waters are ever flowing on.” This process view of the world was later developed by Hegel (d. 1831) into a developmental unfolding of God in history.

Herbert Spencer (d. 1903) expanded the Darwinian biological hypothesis into a Cosmic Evolutionism. Following the process evolution of Spencer, Henri Bergson developed a creative evolution (1907) involving spontaneous “leaps” produced by the élan vital which he later identified as God (1935).¹ This identification of God with the evolutionary world process was a significant moment in the development of process panentheism. Even before Bergson’s identification, Samuel Alexander’s Space, Time and Deity (1920) had presented one of the pioneer works on a process view of God.

But despite the various contributions of these early process panentheists, the award for the first systematic presentation of bipolar theism is rightly given to Alfred North Whitehead for his classic Process and Reality (1929), followed by Adventures of Ideas (1933) and Modes of Thought (1938). It is to Whitehead’s understanding of God that we now turn our attention.

Process and Permanence. For Whitehead, the world is constituted by both process and permanence. The permanent element in the temporal world is the potential element (called “eternal objects”) and the process element is the actual element (called “actual entities”). “Continuity concerns what is potential; whereas actuality is incurably atomic,” he wrote. For “it belongs to the nature of a ‘being’ that it is a potential for every ‘becoming.’ This is the ‘principle of relativity.’” A kindred principle, the “principle of progress,” states: “how an actual entity becomes constitutes what the actual entity is.… Its ‘being’ is constituted by its ‘becoming.’ “²

Process, however, cannot stand alone in a metaphysical system. Permanence must be snatched out of flux; those who disjoin the two elements find no solution to plain facts, argued Whitehead. Permanence is found on two levels:

(1) In the temporal world permanence is found in the eternal objects or what he calls “forms of definiteness” which resemble platonic forms except that they are constitutively connected with the sensible world (whereas Plato’s Forms were not). So, for Whitehead, “it is not ‘substance’ which is permanent, but ‘form.’ ”

(2) In the non-temporal or eternal realm the element of permanence is found in what is called “the primordial nature of God,” the nature of God as the orderer of all eternal objects. In the temporal world, however, actual entities and eternal objects are respectively the process and permanent sides of reality. An understanding of each of these is crucial to comprehending Whitehead’s process panentheism.

1. Actual Entities. The most fundamental reality in Whitehead’s system and the only actuality is what he calls “actual entities.” They are the “final real things of which the world is made up.” For “every actual occasion exhibits itself as a process; it is a becomingness.” It is an “event” whose outcome is a drop or “unit of experience.” So “in the becoming of an actual entity, the potential unity of many entities—actual and non-actual—acquires the real unity of the one actual entity; so that the actual entity is the real concrescence of many potentials.” That is to say, “events become and perish. In their becoming they are immediate and they vanish into the past. They are gone; they have perished.”³ In short, they are becoming but never really are. Hence, the doctrine of becoming is balanced with the doctrine of perishing. But once perished, actual occasions pass only “from the immediacy of being into the not-being of immediacy.” But this does not mean they are nothing, for “they remain stubborn fact.”⁴ What the actual entity loses subjectively by perishing it gains objectively. Forms suffer changing relations; they perpetually perish subjectively but become immortal objectively. They lose final causality, which is the internal principle of unrest in things, and acquire efficient causality.

Once an actual entity perishes and becomes objectively immortal it can act as an efficient cause for other actual entities that are in the process of “concrescence” or coming to be. For all efficient causality moves from the past to the present like tradition. Final causality, on the contrary, operates in the present. It is the “subjective aim” of the actual entity, namely, that which controls its process of becoming. In Whitehead’s words, “The subjective aim is this subject determining its own self-creation.” This it does by determining its own “subjectve form,” that is to say, by determining how it will “prehend” its data.”⁵

Prehension is simply the “process of ‘feeling’ the many data, so as to absorb them into the unity of one individual ‘satisfaction.’ ” There are two kinds of prehension: negative and positive. Since the “principle of relativity” shows that every actual entity has a definite relationship to every other actual entity, it must be either absorbing (positively) or rejecting (negatively) them.

A positive prehension is a definite inclusion of another item in the universe, and a negative prehension is a definite exclusion of items from any positive contribution to the subject’s own internal constitution. If the prehension is of another actual entity it is called “physical prehension.” If it is of an eternal object, it is called “conceptual prehension.” For all actual entities are dipolar for Whitehead, involving both physical pole and a conceptual pole.⁶

A fundamental concept to Whitehead’s understanding of actual entities is what he calls the “ontological principle.” This principle declares that “every decision is referable to one or more actual entities, because in separation from actual entities there is nothing, merely nonentity.” Stated otherwise, “Everything must be somewhere” or “no actual entity, then no reason,” for “it is a contradiction in terms to assume that some explanatory fact can float into the actual world out of nonentity.”

Hence, there is nothing more fundamental than an actual entity. “There is no going behind actual entities to find anything more real.… God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence in far-off empty space.”⁷

1. Eternal Objects. Actuality is the element of process in the temporal world but “eternal objects” provide the element of permanence. Eternal objects are like “platonic forms” that ingress into the temporal world from the realm of eternal possibility. “Thus the metaphysical status of an eternal object is that of a possibility for an actuality.” They are like abstract “universals” that are understood by their concrete manifestation in the temporal world. Hence, sounds, colors, or scents are called “sense objects.” As such they are “forms of definiteness” or “pure potentials” for the specific determination of facts. So “there is no character belonging to the actual apart from its exclusive determination by selected eternal objects.” Since an actual entity may be definite in more than one way, it may possess more than one form of definiteness or eternal object. And despite the fact there are no novel eternal objects, nor can these eternal objects change, nonetheless there is variance from one occasion to another in respect to the difference of modes of ingression. That is, while an eternal object is just itself in whatever mode of realization it is involved, yet there may be “more than one grade of realization.” The eternal objects are in themselves simple but they may be formed into complex groups and relationships called “propositions.”⁸

Because eternal objects are simple they may be negatively prehended in toto. Because they are pure potentials, they can be prehended negatively, for “the actualities have to be felt [positively prehended], while the pure potentials can be dismissed [prehended negatively]. In their function as objects this is the great distinction between actual entities and eternal objects. The former is a stubborn matter of actual fact while the other never loses its nature as potential.⁹

God and the World. With this bit of Whiteheadian metaphysics in mind we are prepared to understand his bipolar panentheism. God too is an actual entity with two poles: an actual pole which is the world and a potential pole beyond the world. The latter is called God’s “primordial nature” and the former is his “consequent nature.”

1. God’s Primordial Nature. Despite the fact that eternal objects are the forms of definiteness for actual entities, they are in themselves indefinite and unordered. They are pure potentials and as such they cannot order and relate themselves; only an actual entity can do that. But since not all eternal objects have ingressed into the temporal world, Whitehead finds it necessary to introduce a nontemporal actual entity (viz., God in his primordial nature) as the orderer of eternal objects. He wrote, “If there be a relevance of what in the temporal world is unrealized, the relevance must express a fact of togetherness in the formal constitution of a non-temporal actuality” [viz., God in his primordial nature]. That is, “by reason of the actuality of this primordial valuation or pure potentials [i.e., God], each eternal object has a definite, effective relevance to each concrescent process,” for “apart from such ordering, there would be a complete disjunction of eternal objects unrealized in the world.” As orderer of eternal objects, God is like a backstage director who organizes and lines up the actors, making them “relevant” for their moment of “ingression” on the stage of the temporal world. Without such ordering there would be chaos among the unrealized eternal objects and no orderly ingression into the world.¹⁰

The foregoing illustration should not mislead one into thinking there is a real difference between God’s primordial nature and the order of eternal objects. They are in fact the same. For “viewed as primordial, he is the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality. In this aspect, he is not before all creation, but with all creation.”¹¹

This is why God is a finite but primordial creature who does not create eternal objects; for his nature requires them in the same sense that they require him. Without God there would be no order among eternal objects, and without eternal objects there would be no primordial nature of God.

1. God’s Consequent Nature. Like all actual entities, the nature of God is dipolar. The conceptual pole of God is the order of eternal objects; the physical pole is the order of actual entities. The former is the permanent and nontemporal dimension of God, and the latter is the process and temporal pole of God. There are two reasons in Whitehead for positing a consequent nature of God: (1) Like every other actual entity, God must be dipolar; for the physical pole is needed to complete the vision of the conceptual pole. That is, since God’s primordial nature is “deficient” and “unconscious,” it needs the consequent nature to realize its own subjective aim or self-creative urge. That is, it demands the concrete fulfillment of its conceptual vision. (2) God’s consequent nature is necessary because of the principle of relativity which holds that every entity in the universe must be related to every other entity. Since God in his primordial nature is relative only to eternal objects, there must be another “side” to God which can be related to actual entities. “Thus,” wrote Whitehead, “by reason of the relativity of all things, there is a reaction of the world on God.”¹² So, as the primordial pole answers to God’s relevance to eternal objects, the consequent pole manifests his relation to actual entities. Thus by virtue of both poles God is related to all items in the universe, both potential and actual.
2. God’s “Superject” Nature and Evil. The consequent nature of God as enriched or satisfied by prehensions in the temporal world is sometimes referred to as the “superject” nature of God. It is the repository of all achieved value in the universe and is available for prehension by other actual entities. As the storehouse of all that God has accomplished in the actual world, it contains the permanent and progressive achievement of good in the universe as envisioned by God in his primordial nature. It is by virtue of God’s immanence in the temporal world that the world is saved from Chaos. The world “passes into the immediacy of his own life” by “a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved.” Of course not everything can be saved. Some things simply cannot be salvaged because they do not fit into a given concrescence. Evil, then, is that which is inconsistent or incompatible with the total process by which nothing is lost but is “saved by its relation to the completed whole.” Not every pigment can be used to complete the envisioned painting; many will be incorporated and others must be rejected, but the completed whole will be achieved with as little exclusion (evil) as possible for a finite God who is working with the given of this world in process.¹³
3. God and Creativity. Since each actual entity is separate and even causally independent from every other actual entity, there must be something which provides a “definite bond” between all actual entities and yet explains how each is distinct from the other. Whitehead calls this principle “creativity.” It is his attempt to relate pluralistic subjects to each other while avoiding monism. Creativity “is that ultimate principle by which the many, which are the universe disjunctively, become the one actual occasion, which are the universe conjunctively.” In fact, “every actual entity, including God, is a creature transcended by creativity it qualifies.” However, creativity is “without a character of its own in exactly the same sense in which the Aristotelian ‘matter’ is without character of its own.” But creativity “is not an entity in the sense in which occasions or eternal objects are entities.” Rather, it is more of a general metaphysical character which underlies all actual entities. Like Spinoza’s infinite substance, it underlies all the individual modes that are its characteristics. Whitehead contended that “in all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents.… In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed ‘creativity;’ and God is its primordial, nontemporal accident.” Accordingly, “no value is to be ascribed to the underlying activity [creativity] as divorced from the matter-of-fact real world.”¹⁴

Creativity is a kind of “substance” which is real only by virtue of its “accidents.” It is the potential unity which binds together the actual unity of the world. Like Plato’s “receptacle” it imposes common relationship on all that happens. It can thus be termed a real potentiality or the actualization of a passive capacity of the whole world process. Creativity is the actualization of potentiality, and the process of actualization is an actual entity or occasion.

Thus creativity is the real potentiality that binds together the many actualities of the universe into the form of their own novel unity. As such, “creativity is the principle of novelty” which introduces new patterns of definiteness by forming a disjunctive unity into a new oneness.¹⁵

1. God and Negative Prehensions. Creativity is not only the principle of potential unity but by way of negative prehensions it is the principle of actual separation. Negative prehension provides the “machinery” by which creativity operates. For unless some things were eliminated from a given process of concrescence, that actual entity would become everything, which would be monism. It is only by definite exclusion of other actual entities from a particular actual entity that monism is avoided. So negative prehensions are absolutely essential to pluralism. They are a “positive fact” in the coming to be of every actual entity because what is definitely excluded is at least as important as what is definitely included. As the sculptor forms a statue, what is cut away from a block of stone is as important as what remains. In this sense we may understand Whitehead when he wrote that “the negative judgment is the peak of mentality.”¹⁶

God has no negative prehensions of eternal objects, since all potentials are included within his vision of reality. No potential is absent from the unity of God’s subjective aim. It is in this way that all things are one potentially while remaining many actually; reality is potentially monistic but actually pluralistic. God in his dipolar nature corresponds to these two dimensions.

He is the bipolar combination of the eternal potentials and the temporal actualities; he combines both the infinite vision and the finite realization. God has both abstract conceptualization and concrete materialization. God is both beyond the world in his eternal potentiality and in the world in his temporal actuality. The eternal and unchanging potentials of God are being actualized within the changing space-time world.

The Process Panentheism of Charles Hartshorne

Process panentheism has taken two main courses since Whitehead: the empirical (represented by Bernard Loomer, Bernard Meland, and Henry Wieman) and the rational (championed by Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, and Shubert Ogden). Hartshorne defends his bipolar theism by way of the ontological argument in contrast to the more empirically grounded approach of Whitehead. A comparison and contrast with Whitehead will help us to focus on the significant contribution of Hartshorne to panentheism.

The Similar Bipolar Model

For both Whitehead and Hartshorne,¹⁷ God has two poles: an actual pole and a potential pole. The potential pole is the order of all that can be, and the actual pole is the order of all that is. The former is God’s “mind” and the latter is his “body.” The potential pole is God’s conceptual vision and the actual pole is the physical realization of that vision. Since the actual world is in constant process of becoming and perishing, the actual pole of God is perishable, whereas the potential pole is imperishable.

Further, the potential pole is both absolute and eternal, but the actual pole is relative and temporal. The potential pole is infinite and the actual pole is finite; God, then, is potentially infinite but actually finite. He has a pole of changeless possibility and another of changing activity. The former is called primordial nature and the latter, his consequent nature. For both Whitehead and Hartshorne, then, God is bipolar.

The Contrast Between Bipolar and Monopolar Concepts of God

Both Whitehead and Hartshorne would agree in contrasting their bipolar model of God to the monopolar model of classical theism. In the classical view God is creator of the world; for panentheism, God is only the director of world process. For theism. God created the world out of nothing (ex nihilo); for panentheism, creation is out of something eternally there at the other pole (ex hulās). It follows that a theistic God is in sovereign control over the world, whereas the panentheistic God is working in cooperation with the world.

In the former view, God is independent of the world; in the latter, God is interdependent with the world. Further, the theistic God is unchanging in essence; the bipolar God is constantly changing with the world. With regard to perfections, the God of theism possesses all possible perfections eternally and concurrently, whereas the God of panentheism attains perfections successively and endlessly. In all of these ways both Whitehead and Hartshome are in basic agreement against classical theism.

The Methodological Differences Between Hartshorne and Whitehead

The most basic differences between Hartshorne and Whitehead are not metaphysical but methodological. Whitehead’s methodology is basically empirical by contrast with Hartshorne’s highly rational approach to reality. Whereas Whitehead begins with descriptive generalizations, Hartshorne starts with analytic concepts. The former is more scientific and the latter more logical in methodology. Whitehead’s starting point is hypothetical, based only on empirical necessity or adequacy; Hartshorne’s point of departure is categorical, based on logical necessity.

Therefore, like scientific hypotheses, Whitehead’s position could be falsified by empirical inadequacy; but Hartshorne’s can only be rejected by showing contradictions within it. In general, Whitehead is more a posteriori in approach and Hartshorne is more a priori. In keeping with this difference it is not surprising that Whitehead has a kind of teleological argument for God’s existence but Hartshorne is a stout defender of the ontological argument.

Hartshorne’s Ontological Argument and His Dipolar God

According to Hartshorne, all thought must refer to something beyond itself that is either possible or actual; for wherever there is meaning there must be something meant. The only thoughts which are less than possible are contradictory ones. Total illusion is impossible, since illusion necessarily presupposes a backdrop of reality.

But the existence of a necessary being is at least possible–there is nothing contradictory in the concept of a being that cannot not be. However, with a necessary being the only way it can be is to be necessarily; a necessary being cannot have a mere possible existence. It follows, therefore, that a necessary being must necessarily exist. So all meaning implicitly affirms God in reference either to what he has done (God’s immanence), namely, his consequent nature, or else in reference to what he can do (his transcendence), namely, his primordial nature.

Hence, nothing either possible or actual can have meaning without reference to God. Without God as the universal ground for meaning, there is no meaning in the universe. Nothing can have objective meaning unless there is a realm that is objectively meaningful. Hence, the only way to oppose the ontological argument is to make an absolute disjunction between thought and reality. This, according to Hartshorne, is impossible. Meaning and reality must meet at some point; this point we call “God,” who is the bipolar ground for all reality both possible and actual.

The Metaphysical Differences Between Whitehead and Hartshorne

There are a number of modifications Hartshorne made to the Whiteheadian concept of God. One of the more significant ones is the fact that while Whitehead considered God a single actual entity, Hartshorne views God as a society of actual entities.¹⁸ For Hartshorne, God is a cosmic Mind resident in a Body (the world). A mind for Hartshorne is really a society of many thoughts.

But since Whitehead’s claim that God is an actual entity made it possible for him to claim that God is an actual entity like all others and not an exception to metaphysical principles, Hartshorne must maintain that God is modally different from the world and not univocally the same. God is a necessary being and all others are contingent. There is then an analogous relation between God and the world.

There is also a distinct difference between Whitehead and Hartshorne on how God grounds the world. For the former, the world is based on God’s subjective aim, that is. God’s vision for this particular world. For Hartshorne, on the other hand, the world is grounded in God as the logically necessary basis for all contingency. The former is concerned only with God as the ground for this particular world; the latter sees God as the universal and necessary ground for all possible worlds.

In this respect, Whitehead’s God is the universal subject, but Hartshorne’s God is the universal object or objective reference point for all meaning. Thus while in Whitehead only actual entities can be causes or reasons for things, in Hartshorne, God, who is a series or society of entities, is the cause of the world. In short, Whitehead’s God is only concretely necessary to explain this particular world; but Hartshorne’s God is universally and logically necessary to explain all possible worlds.

John Cobb’s Modifications of Bipolar Theism

Cobb belongs in the overall process panentheism of Whitehead and Hartshorne, but he offers two significant changes. First, Cobb rejects the implied disjunction between the two separate poles of God in the Whiteheadian scheme of things. God, like man, is a unity and acts as a unity and not in just one pole as such. For instance, God’s subjective aim or vision for everything is not to be limited only to his primordial nature but is to be associated as well with his consequent nature.¹⁹

Cobb’s second modification of panentheism relates to the initial phase of God’s subjective aim. He takes a less “Calvinistic” view than Whitehead who contended that the initial phase of the subjective aim is derived from God. Not so, argues Cobb; for if every subjective aim is derived exclusively from God, we cannot avoid determinism. Hence, “the subjective aim of the new occasion must be formed by some synthesis or adaptation of these aims for which it [the actual entity] is itself finally responsible.”²⁰

Cobb agrees with Hartshorne against Whitehead that God is a society (or living person) and not a single actual entity for several reasons. First, if God were a single entity he could never know satisfaction (which is a culmination of a process involving many actual entities), as other persons can. Further, God’s causal efficacy for the world is more like that of completed occasions than that of a single actual entity.

Finally, as a society of entities we can explain how God can remember everything from the past, because he is knowing himself and he never experiences the loss of his own identity.

Like Whitehead, Cobb finds it necessary to posit “creativity” as the ground of everything including God. Creativity is “that apart from which nothing can be …, the actuality of every actual entity.”²¹

Shubert Ogden’s Contributions to Panentheism

Whitehead came to panentheism from the field of science and math, Hartshorne approached it out of a logical context, Shubert Ogden arrived by way of Bultmannian existentialism. Ogden felt Heidegger was right that one cannot understand the world (objectively) unless he has a prior understanding of his own existence in the world (subjectively). Bultmann convinced Ogden that modern (secular) man has forced us to demythologize the Bible. The net result of demythologization is two parties: God and man.

Heidegger adequately analyzed man but Hartshorne is the key to understanding God. Ogden has several reasons for choosing Hartshorne. First, Hartshorne’s process theology avoids the antinomies or contradictions Ogden sees in traditional theism (see below). Second, Hartshorne proved for Ogden the necessary theocentric counterpart of Bultmann’s anthropocentrism.

Ogden’s Dipolar Model of God

God, for Ogden, has two poles: one of absoluteness and one of relatedness. Thus God is both absolute and relative.

1. God’s Relatedness. As relative, God is related to all that is. The world, made up of many actual entities, is the body of God. God is related to the world as “I” am in my body, namely, by direct internal relations. Thus God’s sphere of action is with the whole universe. In accordance with Whitehead’s principle of relativity, every actual entity is related to every other actual entity by either positive or negative prehension. God is related to all by “sympathetic participation,” which synthesizes in each new occasion the whole of achieved actuality.²²

God gives value to our lives in two ways. First, he is responsible for the concrescence of actual entities which constitute our bodies and for the structure and order of the actual world. In this way he can call forth our life’s worth in the world. God alone makes life worthwhile; without him absurdity is unavoidable. Second, God gives to our lives eternal value. All actual entities return to him and become immortal as eternal objects.

God makes an “imperishable difference” and in him our lives “find their ultimate justification.”²³

Since the world is God’s body, his reality as an actual entity is dependent on the world. This does not mean that God is dependent for the fact that he is but only for what he is. God’s nature is dependent on “what actual state of the infinite number of states possible for him is in fact actualized.”²⁴ So God’s body is contingent even though it is necessary for him to have a body which is in fact eternal.

1. God’s Absoluteness. Ogden understands God’s absoluteness by analogy, that is, by taking univocal notions and applying them to God in an eminent way.²⁵ Ogden distinguishes God’s absoluteness from the traditional theistic sense of the word. His dipolar God is absolute in terms of his relativity, that is, by “relative absoluteness.” First of all, God is absolute by his inclusion of all beings, for to experience is to experience God. Further, God is absolute in relations by virtue of his internal relatedness to every actual entity in the universe. God’s perfectness lies in his continual openness to change, that is, by successive perfecting. God is not statically completed perfection, as in classical theism, but a “dynamic maximum of possibilities.”²⁶ Also, God is absolute in knowledge in the sense that at every stage in the ongoing process everything that exists is within his sphere of relation. Finally, God is absolute in his temporality. God is the “eminently temporal one.” His perfections are continually increasing because “anything we do to advance the real good either of ourselves or of one another is done quite literally to ‘the glory of God,’ as an imperishable contribution to his ever-growing perfection.…”²⁷

In short, God is absolute in that his “being related to all others is itself relative to nothing but is the absolute ground of any and all real relationships.” His absoluteness is an absolute relatedness to all else and, hence, his perfection is a perfect relativity with all the value in the temporal world.

Ogden’s Argument for God’s Existence. For Ogden, God’s existence is morally necessary. He agrees with Hartshorne that it is impossible to deny that meaning has a necessary ground. Ogden, however, seems to develop this thinking in a kind of moral argument for God’s existence that may be summarized as follows:²⁸

(1) All judgments imply meaning, value, and purpose in the universe.

(2) It is self-defeating to deny the possibility of making meaningful judgments.

(3) Hence, there must be meaning, value, and purpose in the universe.

(4) But meaning requires a ground; value requires a value-giver, etc.

(5) Hence, there exists a ground of meaning and giver of value, etc. (God).

There seems to be a teleological element in this argument, but Ogden rejects the traditional teleological argument on the ground that it points to a God “wholly other” than the world. For Ogden, the true view of God “is that God is nothing external to the world’s order but is that order itself fully understood—analogous to the way in which the human self or person is not anything merely additional to the unified behavior of its body but is what enables us to understand and account for such unified behavior.”²⁹

Ogden’s Rejection of Classical Theism: The Antinomies

Ogden sees three insoluble contradictions in the traditional notion of God as a timeless, changeless, and unrelated being. These he calls the antinomies of creation, of service, and of relationship.

1. The Antinomy of Creation. The classical theistic God is a necessary being and his act of creation is one with his eternal and necessary being. And yet the contingent world is supposed to flow from him in a free and nonnecessary way. This, for Ogden, leads to the “hopeless contradiction of a wholly necessary creation of a wholly contingent world.”³⁰ In other words, if God’s will is identical with his necessary essence, then creation must flow necessarily from it. This is contrary to the traditional theistic claim that creation flows from God freely and contingently. Therefore, classical theism must be corrected by Ogden’s neo-classical theism by means of the doctrine of God’s relative necessity. God is not absolutely necessary and, hence, creation of a contingent world need not be absolutely necessary.
2. The Antinomy of Service. There is a contradiction in classical theism, claims Ogden, between God’s absolute and completed perfection on the one hand and man’s service for God on the other. God is conceived by theists as “statically complete perfection” that can neither be increased nor diminished by anything else. Yet the theist is called upon inconsistently to live his life in service “for” God. But if God cannot increase in perfection, then no significant service can ever be rendered “for” him. But it is not so with the process God of panentheism; he can be significantly served, for whatever we do for him actually adds to his enrichment and the increase of his value and perfections.
3. The Antinomy of Relationship. This is the antinomy most often repeated by panentheists, and it involves the supposed isolation of the theistic God from the world. The God of classical theism is the changeless and independent cause of all other things: the world depends on God but God does not depend on the world. But, according to Ogden, all genuine relationships involve mutual dependence, a reciprocal give and take. From this it follows for Ogden that the world is related to God but God is not really related to the world. Theism involves a God who is in monopolar isolation from the real world. Such is not the case with the mutual interdependence of the panentheistic God of Ogden. It is for these reasons that Ogden feels impelled to reject the God of theism for the God of bipolar theism.

A Summary of Major Tenets of Panentheism

There are significant intramural debates among panentheists as to both methodology and metaphysics. However, our concern here is to summarize the major points common to most panentheists or at least characteristic of the movement as a whole.

1. First, God is related to the world as a soul or mind is related to a body; the world is God’s body. God is intimately and internally related with the time-space world. God is not identical with the world, as in pantheism; nor is God actually distinct from and independent of the world, as in theism. God is identical with the world in his body, but there is more to God than the world. God also transcends the world as a mind transcends or is more than a body.
2. Second, God has two poles: a potential pole that is beyond the world and an actual pole which is the physical world. God is absolute, eternal, and infinite in potentiality but is relative, temporal, and finite in actuality. The imperishable pole is God’s primordial nature and the changing pole is his consequent nature. But God—like all actualities—is bipolar in construction.
3. Third, the world is not created ex nihilo, that is, out of nothing;it is formed ex hulās, that is, out of something eternally there at the other pole. God, then, is not a world Creator but a cosmic Director. Hence, God is not sovereign over the world but works rather in cooperation with the world. Both matter and mind are eternal. Mind does not come from matter, as in atheism; nor does matter come from mind, as in classical theism. Rather, matter is eternally directed by Mind.
4. Fourth, God and the world are interrelated and interdependent. The world depends on God for its necessary ground, and God depends on the world for his manifestation or embodiment. The world depends on God for its existence and God depends on the world for his essence. God and the world are as interrelated as mind and body in the modern scientific and organistic sense of the terms.
5. Fifth, God is continually growing in perfections due to the increase in value in the world (his body) resulting from human effort. All achieved value not only significantly enriches God but is immortalized and stored in God’s consequent nature. The universe as God’s body is undergoing perpetual perfection and enlargement of value.
6. Sixth, evil is an incompatibility with the given possibility of world process. Evil will not be ultimately defeated and destroyed; not all good possible is actually achievable. God will overcome all evil that it is possible to defeat with our cooperation. But God is finite and it is not possible to overcome all evil. Hence, there will be no final or inevitable triumph.

An Evaluation of Panentheism as a World View

Panentheism provides some extremely valuable insights into the nature of reality, particularly as a corrective of some forms of theism and as an alternative to pantheism. First, some of the more important contributions will be noted.

Some Positive Contributions of Panentheistic Thought

Panentheists do not lack in either the ability to see problem areas in other world views or in the attempt to construct a positive alternative to them. Some contributions in each of these areas may be noted briefly.

1. First, there is a commendably strong argumentative type of metaphysics presented by panentheists. Their arguments for God vary from ontological (Hartshorne), to teleological (Whitehead), to moral (Ogden), as do those of classical theists. And there is a sustained attempt to present a reasoned approach to reality, as opposed to the purely experiential or fideistic positions. Panentheists rightly recognize the unavoidability of doing metaphysics, and they attempt to do it in a way subject to truth tests.
2. Second, panentheism avoids the self-defeating identification of God and the world involved in pantheism (see previous chapter). God is not identical with the world, although he is intimately related to it. God is in the world but panentheists reject the pantheist’s view that God is the world. God transcends the world in a way not provided for in pantheism.
3. Third, panentheism provides some important insights into the nature of God’s interaction with the world. It rightly stresses the significance of God’s real relationship with the world. God is intimately and really relating and interacting with the world on a two-way street of communication. Without this facet of personal interaction any concept of God as personal is seriously lacking.
4. Fourth, following from the former contribution is the fact that in the panentheistic view of God there is an appropriate emphasis laid on the immanence of God. God is really in the world; he is not “Wholly other” or merely beyond the world. The world is not external and independent of God; without him there would be no world. Only by God’s immanence in the world is it saved from chaos.
5. Fifth, panentheism points up the need to explain the dynamic God of Christian revelation in more than purely static essentialistic Greek categories. The God of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures is more than a static unchangeable Essence or a platonic Super-Form; he is a personal God of ceaseless creative activity. He actively sustains the creative world process. He is active in history and manifest in nature. To explain the Christian God in pure Greek categories of Being is to dress him up in the straitjacket of essentialism, rather than to see him in the light of his dynamic and changing actions and interpersonal relationships.

Many more insights can be gained through the writings of panentheists, including an explanation of novelty and creativity, the operations of a natural theology, the need for analogous God-talk, and the nature and operations of the incarnate and cosmic Christ. Space does not permit their enumeration here.

Some Important Criticisms of Panentheism as a World View

Focus must be shifted now to the inadequacy of panentheism as a metaphysical model or world view. There are a number of reasons why panentheism fails as a world and life view.

1. First of all, it should be observed that panentheism’s bipolar concept of God is inadequate. Cobb saw this and struggled to overcome it to some degree. But there is no way to overcome it without overhauling it in the direction of theism. Fundamentally, if God has both an actual pole and a potential pole, one is faced with disturbing metaphysical questions. How can God actualize his own potentialities? Potentialities cannot actualize themselves any more than empty cups can fill themselves. Capacities do not fulfill themselves; they must be activated by something outside themselves. Anything passing from potentiality to actuality, from what is not to what is, depends on some actuality to ground it. Nothing does not produce something; possibilities to exist do not materialize on their own.

The attempt to avoid this problem by positing creativity as a ground in which God, as the primordial creature, finds it possible to actualize his own potentials will not help the panentheistic cause. It is self-destructive to the system to posit something like Whitehead’s “creativity” with reality status outside the bipolar actual entities of the world. Only actual entities actually exist in the world, and beyond the world only potentialities exist, namely, eternal objects. Creativity cannot be a real ground in a Whiteheadian system; only actual entities are real causes.

Should a panentheist wish to revise the Whiteheadian system by giving a reality status to something beyond God in which he is grounded, then his “God” turns out not to be God after all. For if there is a real creative ground for the bipolar “God,” then it is this pure actuality beyond the bipolar potentiality-actuality that is really God. In short, panentheism needs a theistic God in order to ground its “God,” which turns out after all not to be God but to be a giant creature needing a more ultimate and real cause of itself.

2. Second, not only is the bipolar God less than ultimate, he is also not really absolute and unchanging. But both absoluteness and unchangingness are necessary metaphysical conclusions. Not everything can be relative; all that is relative must be relative to something that is not relative, that is, to something that is absolute in itself. Everything cannot be to-another unless there is something that is in-itself. Likewise, change makes no sense unless there is the unchanging basis by which change is measured. If all were changing there would be no way to measure the change. But on the admitted ground that there is real change, the panentheistic metaphysic must be pushed to an unchanging ground for all change, including the change occurring in its “God.”

At best the God of panentheism is only potentially absolute, for it is only his potential pole that is beyond the relative and changing world. However, a potential absolute is not actually absolute and neither will it serve as a reference point for what is actually relative and changing. Whatever has a potentiality can change, since it has the potentiality to be other than what it is.

But as the first criticism above observed, whatever has a potentiality cannot actualize itself. Hence, there must be beyond every potentiality-actuality (including the panentheistic “God”) a pure actuality to ground it. But whatever is pure actuality with no potentiality at all cannot change, for there must be a potential or possibility for change or else change cannot occur. Hence, this pure actuality (which is how many theists understand God) cannot change.

3. Third, the panentheistic theodicy (explanation of evil) is inadequate. It will suffice here merely to summarize some of the central objections leveled against the panentheistic solution to evil. (1) In view of the apparent permanence of natural laws and the persistence of evil, what guarantee is there that a limited, finite god can ever achieve a better world? (2) Of what value is it to individual men that a god is allegedly being enriched by the storing of value achieved in the world? The serial appearance of maximal good over the next billions of years is of little profit to individuals now and is surely of no enduring value to those who do not survive with individual immortality but only as an eternal object. (3) Why does a god who cannot ultimately triumph over evil engage in such a wasteful project? His personal enrichment at man’s expense scarcely seems to be a worthy reason. If a god is in no sense free to stop the process or is unable to see the eventual consequences, then we are led to another criticism. (4) How can anyone worship a god so impotent that he cannot even call the whole thing off? Is not such a god so paralyzed as to be perilous? (5) Further, how can the panentheistic god achieve a better world via human cooperation when most men are totally unaware of such a god or his purposes? (6) In addition, how can such a finite and limited god assure us that there is any real growth in value in the universe? The world process, as it is available to our understanding, does not manifest the alleged growth in value nor does the supposed enrichment of this god allegedly available to us appear to make increasing good in the world any easier for us. (7) Finally, does the supposed increase of value in the general process justify the countless numbers of individual evils suffered to gain it? What significance is there in suffering for the individual?
4. Fourth, the basic presuppositions of panentheism are mistaken. For one thing the whole system is built on a misapplication of an anthropomorphic bipolar model of God’s relation to the world as the soul (or mind) is to the body. This is a classic error of man creating God in his own image. Further, panentheists confuse God’s unchanging attributes with his changing activities. Thus what God is is reduced to what God does. There is activity but no Actor, movement but no Mover, creation but no Creator. Beginning with an anthropomorphic bipolar model of God, it is no wonder that the god of panentheism emerges finite, limited in knowledge, goodness, and power, and in possession of a physical body like the rest of us. Whatever else may be said of this whittling of God down to man’s level and form, it is surely not the God presented in the Bible.5. Fifth, the claim that the God of panentheism is the God of the Bible is unfounded. That the Bible speaks of God as engaging in temporal and changing actions is unquestionable. Indeed, the Bible uses many evocative metaphors of God drawn from human analogies. God is said to “repent” (Jon. 3:10), to use his “arms” (Ps. 136:12) and “eyes” (Heb. 4:13). But surely no reasonable interpretation of Scripture would take these any more literally than the symbols which speak of God as a “rock” (Ps. 18:2), a strong “tower” (Prov. 18:10), or as having “wings” (Ps. 91:4). To understand these metaphors a consistent view of Scripture must keep sight of the fact that these images are mutually conflicting (some being mineral and others animal or human images of God). Further, they do not fit with some clear metaphysical descriptions of God as a spirit (John 4:24), as infinite (Ps. 147:5), and as unchanging (Mal. 3:6; Heb. 6:18; James 1:17).

Further, the God of the Bible is not a finite, struggling, dualistic Greek god on the order of Plato’s Demiurgos who creates ex hulās, out of eternally preexisting matter. Rather, the God of the Bible is the supreme “I AM” (Exod. 3:14) who alone is eternal and who brings everything else into being ex nihilo, from nothing (Gen. 1:1; Heb. 1:2; 11:3; Col. 1:17; John 17:5; Rom. 4:17).

In addition, the God of Scripture is unlimited in knowledge and controls the course of human events (Rom. 8:29; Eph. 1:4–10; Dan. 4:25). He is infinite in power and perfections (I Kings 8:27; Ps. 71:15; 147:5; Job 42:2). What is more, the God of Christian theism is not a temporal being; he is eternal. He is the “I AM” (Exod. 3:14) who has ever been and ever will be (Ps. 90:1). It is he “alone who has immortality” (I Tim. 6:16) and who “created this world of time” (Heb. 1:2, Knox).6. Sixth, panentheism’s criticisms and qualifications of traditional theism are mistaken.

That is to say, Ogden’s alleged antinomies are not only ungrounded but turn out in favor of theism over panentheism. For example, the so-called antinomy of creation is built on the mistaken notion that a necessary Being must necessarily create. But as Aquinas pointed out over seven hundred years ago, the only thing a necessary Being must will necessarily is the necessity of his own being. Everything else is contingent and need be willed only contingently. God must be God, but God need not create.

God does not have to do anything; he simply has to be God. One need not view God as less than absolutely necessary in order to secure the contingency of the creative act. God must will his own good, but he may or may not will to create any other good.

Likewise, the alleged antinomy of service is based on a confusion about the nature of God. While it is true that no act of the creature can add a single perfection to an already absolutely perfect theistic God, it is nonetheless also true that the believer’s worship and service are eternally significant and for the glory of God. The theistic God does not need our service to add to his perfections; but he does desire it, which is even a higher motive. We cannot add to God’s attributes by our service in the world, but we can contribute to his activities in the world.

What service we render for God adds nothing to God’s nature, but it does contribute significantly to his plan for this world. That is, it is personally pleasing and satisfying to God that we do his will; it does make a significant and eternal difference. God does care what we do and it does glorify or magnify who he is and what he wills when we serve him.

Finally, Ogden’s so-called antinomy of relationship is likewise built on a mistaken notion. It is true that properly speaking the creature is related to the Creator, the relative to the Absolute, the changing to the Unchanging, and not the reverse. The pillar does not change its relation to the man when the man moves on the other side; it is the man who changes his relationship to the pillar. Nevertheless, the relationship of the pillar and man is different in both cases and in both cases it is a real relationship.

An unchanging God does not need to change in order to engage in changing relationships. Furthermore, God can interact without being interdependent. God does not need man’s love but he desires it, and mutual desire is sufficient for the reciprocity demanded by interpersonal relations. God’s love is one-way in the sense that he does not need our return love, but it is two-way in the sense that he wants it.

Not only is interpersonal reciprocity possible with a being who is unchanging love, but it is possible in a much more secure and higher sense.

One can never be absolutely sure of the love of a finite being who can or may change his love and who does not have the infinite power to secure it from temporality or outside forces. Only the absolutely loving and powerful God of Christian theism can provide the highest level of real, interpersonal relationships with man.

Summary and Conclusion

The panentheistic world view is that of a finite and (usually) bipolar god whose actual pole is identified with the changing temporal world and whose potential pole is the eternal possibilities beyond the world. This god is infinite neither in power nor perfections but is growing in the latter by the cooperation of man in the achievement of value which is thereafter stored and preserved in God. Panentheism may best be seen as a half-way house between traditional theism and pantheism.

With the latter panentheism stresses the immanence of God, and with the former it attempts to preserve some meaningful sense in which God is more than the world (viz., transcendence). Panentheism is the descendent of the god of Greek philosophy. Add to the finite, dualistic world of Plato’s Demiurgos the changing world process of Heraclitus and the developmental unfolding of God in the historic process (à la Hegel) and one is brought to the modern bipolar process god of Whitehead.

In attempting to avoid the extremes of some other views of God and by developing a positive metaphysics of its own, the panentheistic view has provided some important insights, such as its arguments for the existence of God, its rejection of the pantheistic identification of God and the world, and corrections in a rigid Greek essentialistic view of God.

It has appropriately stressed God’s immanence, provided important insights into his relational interaction with the world, and rightly rejected a static view of an inactive God for a dynamic God engaged in ceaseless creative activity.

However, as a total world view, the God of panentheism does not fill the bill. The basic dipolar concept of God as eternal potential seeking temporal actualization is self-defeating. No potential can actualize itself; and if there is some pure actuality outside the panentheistic God that actualizes it, then one must posit a theistic God of pure act in order to account for the panentheistic God. Further, a finite changing god must have a not-finite (i.e., infinite) and unchanging basis and ground for its change.

The relative presupposes the absolute, for what is to-another relates ultimately to what is in-itself. There are, in addition, some serious problems with a panentheistic solution to evil. A finite god cannot guarantee the defeat of evil, holds out little prospect of a better world, and seems to be engaging in an extremely wasteful project at our expense for his own enrichment.

Finally, the claim that such a god is Biblical is unfounded and the criticisms of theism are unjustified. By comparison a theistic God is more adequate both metaphysically and personally.

SELECT READINGS FOR Panentheism

Exposition of Panentheism

• Alexander, Samuel. Space, Time and Deity.
• Bergson, Henri. Creative Evolution.
• Cobb, John. A Christian Natural Theology.
• Hartshorne, Charles. The Logic of Perfection.
• ———. A Natural Theology for Our Time.
• Ogden, Shubert. The Reality of God and Other Essays.
• Whitehead, Alfred N. Process and Reality.
• ———. Adventures of Ideas.
• ———. Modes of Thought.

Evaluation of Panentheism

• Brown, Delwin, et al. (eds). Process Philosophy and Christian Thought.
• Cousins, Ewert. Process Theology.
• Geisler, N. L. “Process Theology” in Tensions in Contemporary Theology, ed. Alan F. Johnson and Stanley N. Gundry.
• Owen, H. P. Concepts of Deity.
• Reese, William (ed.). Process and Divinity.
• Williams, Daniel Day. What Present-Day Theologians are Thinking.

¹ Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution and Two Sources of Morality and Religion.

² Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 95, 33–35.

³ Whitehead, pp. 27, 129, 126.

⁴ Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, pp. 304–5.

⁵ Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 44–45, 130, 134, 320–21.

⁶ Whitehead, pp. 66, 35, 366.

⁷ Whitehead, pp. 68, 73, 37, 28.

⁸ Whitehead, pp. 32, 367; Science and the Modern World, p. 150.

⁹ Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 366.

¹⁰ Whitehead, pp. 48, 64, 392, 169.

¹¹ Whitehead, pp. 521, 70, 134, 46, 392.

¹² Whitehead, pp. 527, 33, 135, 523.

¹³ Whitehead, pp. 169, 525, 529, 518.

¹⁴ Whitehead, pp. 95, 66, 31, 340, 135, 47.

¹⁵ Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas, pp. 192, 241, 130 f.; Process and Reality, pp. 31–32.

¹⁶ Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 362, 72, 346, 66, 7.

¹⁷ Hartshorne, Man’s Vision of God and The Logic of Perfection.

¹⁸ Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection, pp. 64–67, 93–94.

¹⁹ John Cobb, A Christian Natural Theology, p. 178.

²⁰ Cobb, p. 178.

²¹ Cobb, pp. 204, 210.

²² Ogden, The Reality of God, p. 58 f.

²³ Ogden, “How Does God Function in Human Life?” in Christianity and Crises, XXVII, 8 (May 15, 1967), pp. 106–7.

²⁴ Ogden, The Reality of God, p. 10.

²⁵ Ogden, The Reality of God, p. 59.

²⁶ Ogden, “Theology and Philosophy: A New Phase in the Discussion” in Journal of Religion XLIV, 1 (January 1964), p. 7.

²⁷ Ogden, The Reality of God, p. 59. See Hartshorne, “God as Absolute, Yet Related to All,” p. 24.

²⁸ Ogden, “Love Unbounded” in The Perkins School of Theology Journal, XIX, 3 (Spring 1966), p. 14.

²⁹ Ogden, “God and Philosophy: A Discussion with Antony Flew,” a review of God and Philosophy by Antony Flew in Journal of Religion XXXXVIII, 2 (April 1968), p. 175.

³⁰ Ogden, The Reality of God, 17 f.

Geisler, N. L. (1976). Christian apologetics. Includes index. (193). Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.

Panentheism – All you want to know