Late Modern Metaphysicians | Classics in the Philosophy of Religion

LATE MODERN PANTHEISTS

From Classics in the Philosophy of Religion, by James Fieser

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CONTENTS

• Edward Caird: Religion as Consciousness of Infinite Unity (from "Philosophy", Evolution of Religion)

• Samuel Alexander: God as Spacetime in Transition (from Space, Time, and Deity)

• Alfred North Whitehead: God as the World's Creative Harmony (from Process and Reality)

By the early twentieth century, the philosophy of religion was undergoing a major shift driven by rapid discoveries in modern science. For centuries, traditional Western religion relied on a classical view of God as an omnipotent and unchanging creator who made the world from the outside, and intervened from above. However, nineteenth-century developments in evolutionary biology and physics changed how scholars understood the natural world. We could no longer view nature as a fixed machine built by a heavenly architect, but rather as an ongoing, open-ended process of growth and change. This created a dilemma for academic thinkers. On the one hand, if the universe itself is constantly evolving and interconnected, then a static and distant God no longer made sense alongside modern science. On the other hand, the modern trend in philosophy was to either give up on God or reduce faith to mere emotion. A group of late modern philosophers attempted one final and ambitious project: they completely redesigned the concept of God from the ground up to fit an evolving universe. The resulting theories were radically untraditional and had little resemblance to orthodox Christianity. Edward Caird used evolutionary idealism to argue that human religion naturally evolves over time, moving from primitive nature worship to a growing awareness of an infinite and underlying unity behind all things. Samuel Alexander proposed that space and time are the fundamental reality, and that "deity" is simply the next higher quality that the universe is naturally striving to produce as it evolves. Alfred North Whitehead devised a "process philosophy" that viewed God as a relational partner with the universe who offers possibilities for order and harmony, rather than an all-powerful ruler. For these thinkers, God was not transcendent being sitting in a remote heavenly realm, nor was God reduced to a set of traditional doctrines to be accepted on faith. Instead, they treated God as the creative principle built into the very fabric of an unfolding universe. This offered a way to stay religious without denying modern science.

The broad historical term for their approach is "pantheism", meaning that "all that exists is God", or, in this case, the evolving cosmos itself is God. This stands in contrast with the traditional view of a transcendent God existing outside of and separate from the cosmos that he created. (Whitehead's view commonly goes by a variant of this term called "panentheism", meaning all-in-God). This common theme in all three of these philosophers is no coincidence. For, their books were first presented as part of the Gifford Lectures series, which was explicitly designed to accommodate philosophical approaches to divinity without reliance on miraculous revelation. Adam Gifford himself, who founded the series in 1887, conceived of God pantheistically as an immanent presence pervading all space and matter. Other famous pantheistically-inclined philosophers who delivered Gifford lectures included Bernard Bosanquet, Josiah Royce, Henri Bergson, among others. They too were inspired by evolutionary biology and rejected the image of a distant heavenly architect in favor of a divinity that evolves within nature itself. In hindsight, the writings of these philosophers represent the last major effort in Western philosophy to build grand and original metaphysical systems to explain the divine. Shortly after this period, the rise of analytic philosophy shifted the field away from creating such metaphysical models, and focused instead on language and logic. But during this transitional time, these philosophers believed that metaphysics could still bridge the gap between science and spiritual life.

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EDWARD CAIRD:

RELIGION AS CONSCIOUSNESS OF INFINITE UNITY

Edward Caird (1835–1908) was born in Greenock, Scotland, the youngest of seven children in a family with academic and clerical ties. His father was an inspector of customs. He studied at the University of Glasgow and later at Oxford University, where he became a fellow of Merton College and developed interests that ranged across philosophy, classics, and history. After several years teaching at Oxford, he returned to Glasgow in 1866 to assume the Chair of Moral Philosophy, a position he held for nearly three decades. There he became one of the leading figures in the British Idealist movement. During these years he published widely, lectured throughout Britain, and participated actively in university life, eventually serving as Master of Balliol College, Oxford, beginning in 1893. His most important writings include A Critical Account of the Philosophy of Kant (1877), The Evolution of Religion (1893), and The Evolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers (1904), works that secured his international reputation. He retired from academic life in 1907 and died the following year at the age of 72. The selections below are from two of his publications.

In the first section, Caird summarizes Hegel's idealistic view that reality is one living, organic whole. First, Hegel offers what he calls a philosophy of reconciliation. No distinction is ever truly absolute in his view. When two thinkers disagree, we shouldn't assume one is simply right and the other wrong. Instead, each side usually sees something true, and their clash pushes us toward a fuller truth that includes both. Second, Hegel pictures the universe itself as a vast organism. No single part of it can be understood alone, the way you can't understand a hand cut off from the rest of a body. Every part points back to the whole, and every change we see is really just one phase of the whole thing growing and developing. Third, Hegel insists this organism must be spiritual, not merely natural. Nature alone is too limited to hold everything that exists. Only a self-conscious mind can actually overcome the tensions and oppositions we run into. This is why, for Hegel, the universe reaches its highest expression in human life itself.

The next section applies this same idea of organic unity to the history of religion. Caird argues that my religion represents my ultimate stance toward the universe as a whole, which makes it the highest expression of my own consciousness. Because of this, the history of religion stretches across the full range of human experience, and that makes it hard for scholars to find one trait common to every faith. Caird illustrates just how wide this range is. Religions have swung between terror and love. Some have obsessed over a future life, while others ignored it completely. Some have treated nature as a manifestation of the divine, others as a mere tool, and still others as an illusion. Despite this enormous variety, Caird insists that modern ideas about evolution push us to look for a single underlying principle running through all of it. Underneath these different forms, he argues, we can trace one inner life, continually working toward its own full self-realization.

The next section describes three types of consciousness I move through: awareness of the world, awareness of myself, and a third, divine synthesis that unites the two. I naturally look outward first. I become a citizen of the external world through my senses and appetites long before I ever explore my inner life. But even the least reflective person eventually develops an unavoidable self-consciousness, an awareness that separates me from the things I know. This inner awakening brings a painful sense of my own dependence. It also brings a fierce desire to bend the entire universe to my own satisfaction. To escape the friction between a limiting outer world and my own insatiable self, I rely on a third element of consciousness: the recognition of a divine principle that unites both realms. This religious synthesis lifts me above both slavish submission and tyrannical self-assertion. It replaces raw appetite with reverence toward something higher than myself. Even early, seemingly superstitious faiths satisfy this same need, since they round out my scattered perceptions of the world into one unified whole. In the end, religion binds me to both nature and society under a single protecting principle. It offers me a picture of existence that lifts my spirit into a lasting peace.

The final section explores how my finite mind can find its place within this absolute unity. Caird argues that my very consciousness of God is built into intelligence itself, since it is already assumed in everything I know, whether about the external world or about myself. My existence is shaped by a constant back-and-forth between external objects and my own internal desires. But this ongoing exchange only works because it rests on one all-embracing divine unity, in which everything lives and moves together. Because I am a rational being, I naturally reach beyond whatever moment I'm in. My thought cannot stay locked inside isolated perceptions or my own selfish concerns. Instead, reason pushes me to see my own experiences as parts of one larger whole, which means I have to rise above my own individuality to grasp what is universal. This is the paradox at the heart of it: my finite mind connects to the divine precisely by reaching beyond itself. There, I discover a lasting foundation of existence, one that carries all the struggles of my finite life back into eternal peace.

HEGEL'S VIEW OF ORGANIC UNITY (from "Philosophy" in The Progress of the Century, 1901)

[In philosophy] the work of the nineteenth century has been one of mediation and reconciliation. It has been an endeavor to break down the sharp antithesis of philosophical and scientific theories that was characteristic of an earlier time. In the writings of the greatest thinkers, the oppositions of materialism and spiritualism, of sensationalism and idealism, of empiricism and a priori speculation, of individualism and socialism, all the great oppositions of theoretical and practical philosophy, which formerly were held to be absolute and irreconcilable, have been modified, restated, reduced to the relative antagonism of the different aspects of one truth. The great controversies of the past have thus passed into a new phase, in which absolute statements pro and con have become, as it were, antiquated; and the question is no longer whether a particular doctrine or its opposite is true, but what are the elements of truth and error in each of them, and how we can attain to a comprehensive view of things, in which justice is done to both. And if it be asked, what are the principles or ideas that have suggested this reconciling work, and have been the guides of the greatest scientific or philosophic writers in attempting to achieve it, I think the answer must be that they are the idea of organic unity, and, as implied in that, the idea of development . . .

The philosophy of Hegel derives its power from the way in which it strikes what, as I have already said, was the key-note of the nineteenth-century philosophy. In the first place, it is a philosophy of reconciliation, which attempts, through a criticism of the oppositions of philosophical theory, to reach a point of view in which they are all seen to be subordinated to the unity of one principle. His attack upon the "law of contradiction," as formulated by scholastic logicians, meant simply that absolute distinctions are unmeaning, and that the only real differences are differences within a unity. On this principle he tried to show that all the oppositions of thought and things which have found expression in philosophy are relative oppositions, which find a solution or reconciliation in the life and movement of the whole. Hence he maintained that in all the great controversies that have divided the world, in metaphysics and psychology, in ethics and theology, the combatants have really been co-operators. Both sides, to use the expression of Leibnitz, have been "right in what they affirmed and wrong only in what they denied." And their conflict has been the means of the evolution of a fuller truth than that which was contained in the doctrine of either party. In the second place, Hegel is guided throughout by the conception of the universe—and, in a sense, of every even relatively independent existence in it—as an organism, every element in which implies the whole, every change in which is a phase of its self-evolution. For his logical doctrine of the "notion" (as Begriff is commonly translated) means simply that we do not see anything truly until we comprehend it as a whole, in which one principle manifests itself through all the difference of the parts and—just through their distinctions and their relations—binds itself into one individual—reality. In this sense, everything just so far as it has an independent individual existence at all is an organism. Lastly, while thus conceiving the universe as organic, Hegel maintained that it is not a natural but a spiritual organism. For the limited scope of a natural organism and its process cannot be regarded as commensurate with a universe, which comprehends all existence, whether classed as organic or inorganic. Only the conscious and self-conscious unity of mind can overreach and overcome such extreme antagonisms, and reduce them all to elements in the realization of its own life. We must, therefore, think of the universe as an organism which includes nature, but manifests its ultimate principle only in the life of man. We may add that in all this Hegel attempted to show that he was only working out in the sphere of speculative thought what Christianity had already expressed for the ordinary consciousness, according to its half-pictorial methods of representation.

THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS (from Evolution of Religion, 1893)

The Principle of Unity in the Evolution of Religion (Lecture 1)

Without as yet attempting to define religion, or to give any precise account of its characteristics, we may go so far as to say that a man's religion is the expression of his ultimate attitude to the universe, the summed-up meaning and purport of his whole consciousness of things. How, and how far he rises above the parts to the whole; how, and how far he gathers his scattered consciousness of the world and of himself to a unity; how, and how far he makes anything like a final return upon himself from all his fortunes and experiences, is shown more clearly in his religion than in any other expression of his inner life. Whatever else religion may be, it undoubtedly is the sphere in which man's spiritual experience reaches the utmost concentration, in which, if at all, he takes up a definite attitude towards his whole natural and spiritual environment. In short, it is the highest form of his consciousness of himself in his relation to all other things and beings; and, if we want a brief abstract and epitome of the man, we must seek for it here or nowhere. But just for this reason the problem presented by the history of religion contains in an intensified form all the difficulties which we find in all the other aspects of man's life. All the complexity and diversity, all the opposition and conflict, which make it so hard to find a principle of law and order in the life of man as a physical, moral, and intellectual being, reach their extreme form in his religious history.

Connected with this is a difficulty which has troubled many writers on the science of religion -- the difficulty of finding any one quality or characteristic which is common to all religions; for in his religious life man has sounded the whole gamut of possible forms of consciousness, from the highest inspiration to the lowest superstition. To take only a few instances: there are religions of terror and religions of love, religions of hope and religions of despair, religions in which the gods seem to be worshipped mainly as beings who can help or hinder man's effort after his own finite ends, and religions in which he is called on to make absolute surrender of all such ends, and even to merge his very life in the finite. Whatever element be named as essential to religion, it seems easy to oppose negative instance to it. For instance, Kant tells us that "without a belief in a future life no religion can be conceived to exist." But, to mention only the most obvious facts, the early Jewish religion was without such a belief; and, if some idea as to a life beyond the grave has formed part of most religions, yet there are many in which it was by no means a prominent or important part. The religions of classical antiquity were for the most part centered in the domestic or the national life, and the immortality thought of by their votaries was the immortality of the family or the state. On the other hand, there have been nations, such as the Egyptians, for which the concerns of the other world and the future life seemed altogether to dwarf the interests of the present. The Egyptian lived among tombs whose size and splendor reduced into insignificance the dwellings of the living; and the most characteristic features of his mythology were representations of the death and resurrection of nature in winter and summer, as types symbolizing the death and resurrection of man.

Again, in its attitude towards nature, religion has passed through every phase which it is possible to conceive. At one extreme we have the mythology of the Vedic hymns, in which the bright ones," the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon, with the various elemental powers of storm and wind, are the only distinctly recognized divinities. At some distance from this stands the Jewish religion, which abhors any mingling of the creature with the Creator, and treats nature not as the manifestation of God, but rather as a weapon in His hand, which He has made, and which He breaks in pieces when He has done with it. Lastly, at the opposite extreme, we find the Buddhist religion, treating the whole objective world as an illusion from which it is the highest aim of the devotee to free himself.

Again, the religious view of man himself and his relation to the Divine Being passes through a similar series of kaleidoscopic changes. Sometimes, as in Greece, man is the one finite being, whose form is transferable to the divine, and the gods are, above all, regarded as the powers that preside over the life of the family or the state. Sometimes, on the other hand, man seems to seek his gods at the farthest possible point from himself, and to find divinity in plants, in animals, in almost anything and everything rather than in humanity. And anthropologists have found good evidence of a state of civilization, in which men could think of kinship as a sacred bond only when they regarded it as a participation in the blood of a zoomorphic or phytomorphic god or totem.

To take one other illustration: it might seem that, if anything is essential to religion, it is a belief in the objective reality of God as apart from the religious sentiment of His worshippers; and in some forms of religion we even find Him treated as a purely external power, with whom no inward relation is possible. Yet we find at least one great religion, that of Buddha, which begins with the negation of all the objective gods of earlier Hinduism, or the reduction of them to parts in the great illusion of outward existence, and which at last finds the divine, if anywhere, only in the self-negating process of the finite mind, and the Nirvana which is supposed to be its result. Finally, even within the compass of the one religion, we find something analogous to all these forms. For Christianity, in the course of its history, passes through phases which recall the opposite forms of polytheism and monotheism, of pantheism and dualism. We find it at one time united with the ascetic morality of the cloister, which carries the negation of nature to the verge of self-annihilation, and at another time associated with an ethics which idealizes the natural desires and affections, and a poetry which finds God in nature.

These variations are so great that it cannot seem wonderful if some are inclined to deny that there is any unity beneath them; or that the succession of religions is anything but the play of the wayward fancy of man, in a region which is outside of the sphere of reason and experience. Yet even so, the problem of the changes of religion would form part of the general problem of human history. Even if religion were a madness of humanity, an illusory form of consciousness destined ultimately to disappear, there must be a method in it which we are interested to discover. We cannot suppose any great province of the life of rational beings to lie outside of the general development of reason. Even atheism or agnosticism involves a definite attitude towards the ultimate problem of human life; and if it is the highest attitude possible to man, it must show itself to be the last term, or one of the elements in the last term, in which the whole process of development is summed up. For the modern ideas of the organic unity and the organic evolution of man, which are the presuppositions underlying all our investigation into the history of humanity, inevitably compel us to seek for the one principle of life which masks itself in all these various forms, and which through them all is striving towards the complete realization of itself.

Three Types of Consciousness: The World, Self-Consciousness, and the Divine Synthesis (Lecture 3)

The Awkward Awakening of the Inner Self

What I have said may be thus summed up Man, by the very constitution of his mind, has three ways of thinking open to him. He can look outwards, upon the world around him; he can look inwards, upon the self within him; and he can look upwards, to the God above him, to the Being who unites the outward and the inward worlds and who manifests Himself in both. None of these possibilities can remain entirely unrealized. Even in the earliest stages of his existence he cannot but be conscious of the outward world: it is the first and most natural effort of his mind to throw itself into the external objects which exercise all his senses, and offer immediate satisfaction to his appetites. By a natural necessity he thus, as it were, lives out of doors and becomes a citizen of the world, long before he learns to dwell at home with himself and to know himself as having an inner life of his own. Yet, though this is true, it is certain that the most unreflecting man has an inner, as well as an outer, side to his mental existence. He is essentially self-conscious; and this self-consciousness, however little he may reflect on it, inevitably separates him from the things and beings he knows, even while he knows them. The pains and pleasures of his sensuous existence, not to mention anything higher, must inevitably send him back upon himself, and make him partly conscious of his isolation from other objects and beings.

And with this growth of self-consciousness comes, on the one hand, a painful sense of dependence on what is not himself, and, on the other hand, a desire to aggrandize himself, and make the outer world subservient to his satisfaction, a desire not merely to appropriate this or that object, but even to appropriate the whole universe to himself. Every self, once awakened, is naturally a despot, and "bears, like the Turk, no brother near the throne." The inner world is as great as the outer, and everyone, as even Hobbes in spite of his Sensationalism recognized, has an 'infinite desire for gain or glory'; has, in other words, a desire that grows with what it feeds on, till it can be satisfied with nothing less than a whole universe for itself. The humorous and eloquent words in which Carlyle expressed this idea are very well known, but perhaps I may be allowed to quote them once more:

"Will the whole finance-ministers and upholsterers and confectioners of modern Europe undertake, in jointstock company, to make one shoeblack happy? They cannot accomplish it above an hour or two; for the shoeblack also has a soul, quite other than his stomach, and would require, if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no less: God's infinite universe altogether to himself, therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast as it rose. . . . Try him with half a universe, half of an omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself the most maltreated of men. Always there is a black spot in our sunshine; it is even, as I said, the shadow of ourselves." (1 Sartor Resartus, Book II. Ch. ix.)

The Elevating Power of the Divine Principle

But is this all? Are we thus shut in between an outward world which limits us on every side, and a self that we can never satisfy, and which forces us into an internecine struggle with all other beings for existence and for satisfaction. To this we can only answer by referring to the third element of our consciousness "Unless above himself he can Exalt himself, how mean a thing is man."

There is necessarily present in us, in virtue of the very fact that our inner and our outer lives stand in constant relation to each other, the consciousness of a Being or Principle which is above both, and revealed in both. And the idea of this Principle or Being, just so far as we can realize it, or, in other words, make real to ourselves the thought of it, lifts us at once above the mere feeling of dependence upon that which is without us, and equally above the feeling of lawless independence, and the limitless greed of appetite, which would make us claim everything for ourselves. A human consciousness cannot exist without some dawning of reverence of an awe and aspiration which is as different from fear as it is from presumption, from slavish submission as it is from tyrannical self-assertion. And it is this reverence, this sense of a subjection which elevates us, of an obedience that makes us free, this consciousness of a Power which curbs and humiliates us, but at the same time draws us up to itself, which is the essence of religion, and the source of all man's higher life.

Now, as I have already said, it is not always easy to detect the germs or imperfect forms of such a consciousness in all the forms of religion which have appeared in different ages and nations. Nor, indeed, would it be possible in many cases for us to detect them at all, if it were not for the light thrown back upon them by the later development of religion which has come out of them. Amid the sensualities of nature-worship, the horrible sacrifices offered to gods who seem to us the very embodiments of cruelty, revenge, and injustice, and the indescribable follies of spirit-scaring and witchcraft which we find even in many nations not altogether uncivilized, where, it may be asked, can we find the traces of that reverent awe and aspiration which we have been describing, and which are the natural feelings of man towards God, if God be really the Being, the consciousness of whom is to give unity to our divided and finite existence, and to lift us above its division and finitude ?

Religion as the Source of Life's Unification

A full answer to this objection it is impossible here to give. I can only refer by anticipation to one point which may be verified by the most superficial knowledge of the history of religion. Religions may differ very widely, they may be comparatively elevated or they may be what we would call degraded; but they have this as their common characteristic (at least when they rise above the vaguest superstition), that they give a kind of unity to life. And they do this mainly by at once allying man with nature, and joining him with his fellows in some more or less comprehensive society. They round off the world, so far as it affects him, into a whole which is referred to one principle, a principle which is manifested at once within the man and without him, and which binds him in some way both to nature and to his fellowmen. Hence I said in the first lecture that a man's religion, if it is sincere, is that consciousness in which he takes up a definite attitude to the world, and gathers to a focus all the meaning of his life. Of course, the man's world may be, and in earlier times is, a comparatively narrow one. He is unable to look beyond the nation, the clan, or, it may be, the family to which he belongs; nor can he at this stage form any conception of nature in general, but only of special powers of nature, which he regards as in some way friendly to him. And so long as this is so, the unity given to his life by religion can only be partial and superficial. His heaven may still admit a multiplicity of gods, who are only imperfectly harmonized or united with each other. Yet so far as it goes, his religion gives him a sense of alliance with nature and man under the protection of a divine power who is above both, and in both.

Now this is just what we should expect, if religion be always the more or less developed consciousness of that infinite unity, which is beyond all the divisions of the finite, particularly the division of subject and object. We may add, finally, that so far as religion does this, it is, in spite of much error and even immorality, a step towards that consciousness of rest beyond the agitations of finite care, of unity beyond the differences of finite life, of eternal reality beyond the show of a passing world, which Hegel expresses so vividly in the introduction to his philosophy of religion.

"All nations know that it is the religious consciousness in which they possess the truth; and they have therefore regarded their religion as that which gives dignity and peace to their lives. All that awakes doubt and perplexity, all sorrow and care, all limited interests of finitude, we leave behind us on the 'bank and shoal of time.' And, as on the summit of a mountain, removed from all hard distinctness of detail, we calmly overlook the limitations of the landscape and the world, so by religion we are lifted above all the obstructions of finitude. In religion, therefore, man beholds his own existence in a transfigured reflection, in which all the divisions, all the crude lights and shadows of the world, are softened into eternal peace under the beams of a spiritual sun. It is in this native land of the spirit that the waters of oblivion flow, from which it is given to Psyche to drink and forget all her sorrows; for here the darkness of life becomes a transparent dream-image, through which the light of eternity shines in upon us."

How the Finite Mind finds itself in the Absolute Unity (Lecture 4)

Religion aims to Rise us above both Ourselves and the Word

In the last lecture I attempted to give a general idea of religion, and at the same time to meet one or two obvious objections which naturally present themselves, when we attempt to verify such an idea by the actual history of religion. I maintained that the consciousness of God, or at least the principle out of which the consciousness of God arises, is as truly one of the primary elements of our intelligence as the consciousness of the object or the consciousness of the self. Thus all our knowledge of the objective world and all our knowledge of ourselves, presupposes the idea of God; though it is equally true that, just because it is the presupposition of all other knowledge, it is the last thing on which we reflect, or which we try to explain to ourselves. This becomes manifest if we consider that our whole life, theoretical and practical, turns on the opposition and relation between objects without and the self within us. To reproduce in our minds the order and system of the objective world, and to realize in the objective world the ends determined for us by our nature as self-conscious beings, is the sum and substance of our earthly existence. But both these movements presuppose an ultimate unity, which reveals itself both in the self and the not-self, and in all the intercourse that goes on between them. Thus, beneath and beyond what we may call our secular consciousness in all its forms, beneath and beyond all our consciousness of finite objects and of the subjective interests and desires that bind us to them, there is always a religious consciousness, the consciousness of an infinite or Divine Being who is the source of all existence and of all knowledge, and in whom we and all things "live and move and have our being."

Religion, on this view of it, arises in man because his consciousness of himself in distinction from, and relation to the world without him always implies that he transcends both [the word and ourselves], and that he looks down upon both-upon himself as well as upon that which is not himself from the point of view of an all-embracing unity. Thus we are not confined to any object of perception that is before us, but are able to raise our thoughts above it, and to put it in its proper relation to other objects that are not immediately present to us. Nay, to a certain extent we are obliged, as rational beings, to do this. We cannot gaze like a dumb animal at the object of sense, as if there were nothing in the world beyond it.

The Universal Capacity to Transcend the Individual Self

Inevitably, in a moment, our imagination or our reason carries us beyond it, and almost without our being aware of any movement of our thought, we have formed some conception of it, which binds it to other things and makes it link in the general connection of experience. And it is the same with our own inner life. The feeling of the moment can be nothing to us apart from its relation to the past and the future: we cannot be conscious of it without being carried beyond it, and regarding it as a stage in a continuous life. Nay, we are obliged to view our own lives as parts of a wider and more comprehensive life. We cannot fix our minds upon ourselves as individuals without regarding ourselves as constituents of a greater whole-as members in a society and parts of the system of the world. In apprehending ourselves, we can, nay, to a certain extent we must, rise above ourselves, and treat our own individual existence as if it were no more to us than that of any other being to whom we are brought into relation. To do this thoroughly and systematically, indeed, in knowledge, to get rid of subjective views and to look at all particular objects from the point of view of the whole, and in practice, to devote ourselves to the good of that whole, to make ourselves the instruments of the great organism of which we are members would be to attain the highest intellectual and moral ideal we can conceive. But the capacity for such universal life is the birth-right of every rational being; and every one who has shown himself a rational being has begun to realize it. It is the strange paradox of the spiritual life, that to be a self is at once to be one finite individual among other finite individuals and things, and to reach beyond the individuality not only of all other things and beings but even of ourselves; for we can neither know nor act without thus transcending ourselves. But thus to go beyond our own individuality and all mere individuality is already to apprehend in some way that which is universal and divine. Hence, in all his secular consciousness of other objects and of himself, man is necessarily haunted by the idea of something which is beyond them, yet in them-something in opposition to which they are as nothing, in unity with which they are more than they immediately seem to be.

Tracing the Divine Unity Through Religious Development

Now the main difficulty in realizing the truth of this view is the same which meets us in all applications of the idea of development. It is hard to trace in the earlier forms of religion anything that corresponds to the idea which we maintain to be the spring of that development, the idea of an all-embracing power which is at once beyond all objects and all subjects, which through all divisions of the finite world "spreads undivided, operates unspent," which remains as the permanent basis of man's life, unchanged through all his conflict with nature, with his fellowmen, and with himself, and which is ever bringing the struggle and tumult of his finite existence back into peace again. And it will be no small part of our work in the sequel to trace out the various forms in which this idea disguises itself from us in different religions. Here, I can only refer by anticipation to the fact that religion, wherever it shows itself in any definite form, gives harmony and direction to man's life in two ways (1) it delivers him from himself and the difficulties of his immediate life by reverence for that which is above him; and (2) it teaches him to regard that power which he thus reverences as manifested both in nature and in the society to which he as an individual belongs. Wherever we find these two things in a religion, we may safely assert that, in spite of the dark superstitions and immoral practices with which it may be united, it brings unity to the life of man.

And we are prepared to recognize it as a step towards that consciousness of a divine unity beneath all the divisions of finitude of which we have been speaking, or, in other words, as a step in the development of that religious consciousness of which even the highest religion is an imperfect expression.

Source: Edward Caird, "Philosophy" in The Progress of the Century (1901); The Evolution of Religion (1893), adapted.

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SAMUEL ALEXANDER:

GOD AS SPACETIME IN TRANSITION

Samuel Alexander (1859–1938) was born in Sydney, Australia to a Jewish family of modest means. His father, a saddler, died shortly before his birth. He was raised by his mother in Melbourne, where his academic talent showed early, earning him a scholarship to the University of Melbourne. In 1877, he traveled to England to study at Balliol College, Oxford. He excelled in mathematics and philosophy, eventually becoming a fellow at Lincoln College. This achievement made him the first Jewish fellow at an Oxford college, breaking longstanding social barriers within British academia. Alexander later moved to the University of Manchester, where he served as a professor of philosophy for over thirty years. He became a beloved figure on campus and in the city, recognizable by his long beard, his habit of riding his bicycle through the streets, and his gentle personality. Though a bachelor who lived a quiet life, his home was a frequent gathering place for students, colleagues, and artists. During the First World War and its aftermath, Alexander dedicated significant effort to supporting Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe. When he retired, the University of Manchester honored him by commissioning a bronze bust sculpted by Jacob Epstein, which remains on display at the university.

The selections below are from Alexander's book Space, Time, and Deity (1920). His position is that God is not a static creator standing outside the cosmos, but the infinite universe of Space-Time straining to reach its next higher state (which he calls "deity"). A musical analogy might help illustrate his view. Imagine an infinitely long song that never loops or repeats. Every note creates a sense of tension that naturally pulls the music into the next note, driving the song endlessly forward without ever coming to a final rest. Space-Time is like the endless timeline and physical airwaves that allow the music to play. God is like the entire living song itself, defined by its infinite length and relentless forward momentum. What he calls "Deity" is like the next expected note or resolution that the current sound is reaching toward. That is, the Deity is a target that is never actually reached, but constantly shifts forward the moment that the music lands on it. Think also of an infinitely long, unscripted drama that moves forward solely through the tension of continuous plot twists. Alexander's point will resonate with anyone who watches the unfolding drama of the world around us and feels the persistent pull to know what comes next. The grander that ongoing drama feels to us, the more it speaks to us religiously.

In the opening section, Alexander argues that religious emotion lets us feel the universe straining toward a higher stage of existence, one it's slowly trying to bring about. This higher stage is not some separate being watching over the universe. It is the universe itself, slowly developing a new quality, something beyond mind, that will one day count as what he calls "Deity." The next section explains why we cannot simply identify God with space-time itself. Bare space-time is not something worth worshiping. When we focus on it alone, we get only an intellectual intuition, not religious worship. Reducing the cosmos to space-time also ignores the important fact that the universe keeps developing increasingly perfect layers of reality, such as matter, then life, then mind. So the ideal conception of God has to include this entire physical structure, understood as an eternal body carrying the infinite quality of deity. That quality does not exist yet as a finished reality.

The next section argues that actual deity is never a finished state. It is an infinite straining toward some future level of evolution. If a single infinite being ever fully achieved this divine quality, rather, it would not stay one unified being. It would instantly break apart into many finite gods. For, when consciousness first evolved, it did not produce one giant intellect. It produced millions of distinct, finite human minds. Deity would unfold the same way. Its emergence would spread that quality across a crowd of limited, finite individuals, rather than preserving one infinite being. Alexander contrasts this with mathematical infinites, like infinite lines or numbers. These are actual realities, even though no one can experience them as completed wholes. The next section explains why mathematical infinites work this way. They are real precisely because they carry no qualities at all. An infinite being with qualities, like God, works differently. Since real qualities can only belong to limited, finite things, such a being is not actual. It's only ideal. Alexander describes the infinite universe as perpetually pregnant with deity. The divine quality always starts out as a mere promise, before it eventually becomes actual and animates a higher race of creatures. Because of this evolutionary law, God, as an actual existent, is always becoming deity but never fully arrives. God remains an ideal, still in embryo, while an even higher quality waits beyond him.

The final section sets Alexander apart from absolute idealism, the view held by Hegel and later British idealists like Caird. Absolute idealism holds that individual, finite things eventually get swallowed up inside one supreme, all-inclusive divine spirit, losing their independent existence entirely. Alexander disagrees. He insists that lower levels of existence do serve and give rise to higher ones over time, but individual things are never destroyed or dissolved along the way. He also rejects the idea that the ultimate universe is a spirit at all. For Alexander, spirit is just a temporary step on the evolutionary ladder, and the cosmos as a whole must still obey the real, physical laws of Space and Time.

GOD AS THE UNIVERSE STRAINING TOWARD DEITY (from Space, Time, and Deity, 1920, 2.4.1 "Deity and God")

Religious Emotion Experiences the Universe's Higher Straining

In the religious emotion we have the direct experience of something higher than ourselves which we call God, which is not presented through the ways of sense but through this emotion. The emotion is our going out or endeavour or striving towards this object. Speculation enables us to say wherein the divine quality consists, and that it is an empirical quality the next in the series which the very nature of Time compels us to postulate, though we cannot tell what it is like. But besides assuring us of the place of the divine quality in the world, speculation has also to ask wherein this quality resides. What is the being which possesses deity? Our answer is to be a philosophical one; we are not concerned with the various forms which the conception of God has assumed in earlier or later religions. Ours is the modester (and let me add far less arduous) inquiry what conception of God is required if we think of the universe as Space- Time engendering within itself in the course of time the series of empirical qualities of which deity is the one next ahead of mind. God is the whole world as possessing the quality of deity. Of such a being the whole world is the "body" and deity is the "mind". But this possessor of deity is not actual but ideal. As an actual existent, God is the infinite world with its nisus towards deity, or, to a phrase of Leibniz, as big or in travail with deity.

Bare Space-Time Evokes Intellectual Intuition Rather Than Religious Worship

Since Space-Time is already a whole and one, why, it may be urged, should we seek to go beyond it? Why not identify God with Space-Time? Now, no one could worship Space-Time. It may excite speculative or mathematical enthusiasm and fill our minds with intellectual admiration, but it lights no spark of religious emotion. Worship is not the response which Space-Time evokes in us, but intuition. Even Kant's starry heavens are material systems, and he added the moral law to them in describing the sources of our reverence. In one way this consideration is irrelevant; for if philosophy were forced to this conclusion that God is nothing but Space-Time, we should needs be content. But a philosophy which left one portion of human experience suspended without attachment to the world of truth is gravely open to suspicion; and its failure to make the religious emotion speculatively intelligible betrays a speculative weakness. For the religious emotion is one part of experience, and an empirical philosophy must include in one form or another the whole of experience. The speculative failure of the answer is patent. It neglects the development within Space-Time of the series of empirical qualities in their increasing grades of perfection. The universe, though it can be expressed without remainder in terms of Space and Time, is not merely spatio-temporal. It exhibits materiality and life and mind. It compels us to forecast the next empirical quality or deity. On the one hand we have the totality of the world, which in the end is spatio-temporal; on the other the quality of deity engendered, or rather being engendered, within that whole. These two features are united in the conception of the whole world as expressing itself in the character of deity, and it is this and not bare Space-Time which for speculation is the ideal conception of God. . . .

The infinitude of God's deity marks the difference between him and all other empirical beings. Deity is an empirical quality, but though it is located in a portion only of the universe, which universe of Space-Time with all its finites of lower order is God's body, yet that portion is itself infinite in extent and duration. Not only is God infinite in extent and duration, but his deity is also infinite in both respects. God's body being the whole of Space-Time is omnipresent and eternal; but his deity, though not everywhere, is yet infinite in its extension, and though his time is a portion only of infinite Time his deity is, in virtue of what corresponds in deity to memory and expectation in ourselves, infinite in both directions. Thus empirical as deity is, the infinity of his distinctive character separates him from all finites. It is his deity which makes him continuous with the series of empirical characters of finites, but neither is his "body" nor his "mind" finite. . . .

Actual Deity Exists Exclusively as an Infinite Straining

The picture which has been drawn of the infinite God is a concession to our figurative or mythological tendency and to the habit of the religious consciousness to embody its conception of God in an individual shape. Its sole value lies in its indication of the relation that must be understood upon the lines traced by experience to subsist between deity and mind. This is adequate for finite gods, supposing the stage of deity to have been reached. But the infinite God is purely ideal or conceptual. The individual so sketched is not asserted to exist; the sketch merely gives body and shape, by a sort of anticipation, to the actual infinite God whom, on the basis of experience, speculation declares to exist. As actual, God does not possess the quality of deity but is the universe as tending to that quality. This nisus in the universe, though not present to sense, is yet present to reflection upon experience. Only in this sense of straining towards deity can there be an infinite actual God. For, again following the lines of experience, we can see that if the quality of deity were actually attained in the empirical development of the world in Time, we should have not one infinite being possessing deity but many (at least potentially many) finite ones. Beyond these finite gods or angels there would be in turn a new empirical quality looming into view, which for them would be deity-that is, would be for them what deity is for us. Just as when mind emerges it is the distinctive quality of many finite individuals with minds, so when deity actually emerges it would be the distinctive quality of many finite individuals. If the possessor of deity were an existent individual he must be finite and not infinite. Thus there is no actual infinite being with the quality of deity; but there is an actual infinite, the whole universe, with a nisus to deity; and this is the God of the religious consciousness, though that consciousness habitually forecasts the divinity of its object as actually realized in an individual form.

INFINITE DEITY CONTRASTED WITH MATHEMATICAL INFINITES

Why an Infinite God Remains an Idea, Not an Actual Thing

The reason why the universe as possessing deity is purely ideal is found in the contrast between God so described and other empirical infinites. God is not the only infinite. We have, in the first place, the infinite Space-Time itself which is a priori, and besides this we have infinites which are generated within Space-Time and are empirical. Instances are infinite lines in Space and infinite numbers. These are empirical determinations of categorial characters and belong to the class of existents with purely primary qualities. Hitherto in the preceding chapters we have confined ourselves to finites, but it now remains briefly to discuss these empirical infinites, which are always less than the a priori infinity of Space- Time itself. God is no exception to this statement, for though his body is the whole universe, his deity (and deity is what distinguishes him) is lodged in an infinite portion only of this whole infinitude. Empirical infinites with primary qualities were touched upon in a preceding chapter, and in view of this very question how far they were ideal and how far real. Along with the empirical infinites go the beings which are infinitely small.

In both cases there is an ideal or conceptual element involved as well as a sensible or, to speak more properly, an intuited one. Neither the infinitely great nor the infinitely small is presented to intuition without the help of reflective concepts. But since concepts are as real as percepts their presence does not destroy the actual reality of the thing into which they enter. I do not propose to discuss the status of the various kinds of infinite numbers and to consider how far, if at all, any of them are to be treated as on a level with the conceptual creations of mathematics such as imaginaries or n-dimensional "Spaces". I am speaking of such empirical infinites as infinite lines or the number of, say, the infinite system of integers. It might be thought that such infinites cannot be more than ideal because it is impossible to possess them completed. There seems, however, no reason to doubt the actuality of infinite lines, nor of the number of the integers, whether number is defined extensionally or, as we have preferred, intensionally. For infinite number is the number be- longing to classes containing infinite members. The fact that an infinite system cannot be completed is irrelevant to its actuality. For infinity means only that the infinite system can be represented in the mathematical sense by a part of itself, and it is indifferent that we cannot in intuition complete an infinite line. To suppose that the infinitely great must be completed is to eliminate Time from its nature; just as to suppose that the infinitely small is an indivisible self-subsistent entity or infinitesimal is to eliminate Time from its nature. Infinites, whether of division or of composition, are actual, just because of the element in them which makes them conceptual for us. Points and instants are not fixed minima but the elements of things, and their characteristic is that we can never come to a stop with them. Hence it was said before that points and instants, or more properly point-instants, are real and actual just because they are ideal. If we could take them in at once they would not be continuous with one another. The same thing holds of empirical infinites. Lines are actual and infinite and can be selected from Space, and infinite numbers, or at least some of them, from actual Space-Time.

Actualized Deity Forfeits Infinity and Shatters into Multiplicities of Finites

Now these [mathematical] infinites are without quality. God as the possessor of deity, on the other hand, is a qualitied infinite, and we learn from experience that quality is borne by finite complexes of space-time. There may be actual infinites with none but primary qualities, for these are not qualities at all, and the entities in question are infinite portions of the infinite Space or Time. But the qualitied infinite is not merely ideal as implying, like all infinites, a conceptual element, but it is ideal because it is not actual. At any level of existence there is a claimant to be a qualitied infinite, and that claimant is not actual. It is a projected picture of an actual infinite, in which that quality is being engendered but has not actually come to birth . . . .

Does infinite deity exist? The answer is that the world in its infinity tends towards infinite deity, or is pregnant with it, but that infinite deity does not exist; and we may now add that if it did, God -- the actual world possessing infinite deity -- would cease to be infinite God and break up into a multiplicity of finite gods, which would be merely a higher race of creatures than ourselves with a God beyond.

Infinite deity then embodies the conception of the infinite world in its straining after deity. But the attainment of deity makes deity finite. Deity is an empirical quality like mind or life. Before there was mind the universe was straining towards infinite mind. But there is no existent infinite mind, but only many finite minds. Deity is subject to the same law as other empirical qualities, and is but the next member of the series. At first a presage, in the lapse of time the quality comes to actual existence, animates a new race of creatures, and is succeeded by a still higher quality. God as an actual existent is always becoming deity but never attains it. He is the ideal God in embryo. The ideal when fulfilled ceases to be God, and yet it gives shape and character to our conception of the actual God, and always tends to usurp its place in our fancy. . . .

Hegel's Absolute Idealism Mistakenly Submerges Finites into an All-Inclusive Spirit

Thus it is true, as absolute idealism contends, that God is (at least in respect of his deity) on the same footing as finites and if they are appearances so is he, though an infinite appearance. But both God and finites are appearances only in the proper interpretation of that term, as parts of the thing to which they belong, and in which they are not submerged but retained. It still remains that neither is God a spirit, nor far less is the whole or Absolute which includes spirit itself spirit; nor is it deity but includes deity. Yet the fact that finites of a lower quality subserve a higher quality gives an intelligible meaning in accordance with experienced fact to the notion of transformation of finites which, as I think, absolute idealism maintains in the perverted sense of forfeiture or alteration. The well-attested fact that the lower life subserves in the course of time the higher is perverted into the erroneous doctrine that there is a higher something or Absolute in which all lower life is submerged and transformed, and this Absolute is spirit, which is not even the highest empirical quality. Dowered with this empirical quality the Absolute claims to be above the empirical, but would be itself empirical. This result is to my mind the inevitable outcome of the procedure, which I need not again criticize, of taking the measure of consistency and contradiction from our thoughts instead of from things themselves, of pronouncing Space and Time to be contradictory; whereas it is only obedience to the nature of the one "mother" and "nurse of all becoming" which determines consistency and freedom from contradiction.

Source: Samuel Alexander, Space, Time, and Deity (1920), adapted.

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ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD:

GOD AS THE WORLD'S CREATIVE HARMONY

Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) was born in Ramsgate, England. His father was an Anglican clergyman and schoolmaster, which gave Whitehead an early grounding in both theology and classical education. As a student and later a fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge, he focused on mathematics and mathematical physics. During his thirty years at Cambridge, he mentored several outstanding students, most notably Bertrand Russell. Together, Whitehead and Russell spent nearly a decade writing Principia Mathematica, a massive three-volume work that attempted to ground all mathematics in formal logic. The project was so intellectually exhausting that Whitehead later recalled his mind was almost completely drained by the time it was finished. In 1910, Whitehead left Cambridge for London, where he turned his attention to the philosophy of science and educational reform. He was concerned with practical learning, arguing that traditional education suffered from teaching "inert ideas" that lacked real-world application. In 1924, at the age of sixty-three, Whitehead received an unexpected invitation to join the faculty at Harvard University. Despite having no formal training in philosophy, he accepted the position and moved to the United States. This late-life career change inaugurated his most productive period as a philosopher. He retired from Harvard in 1937 and spent his remaining years in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he died in 1947 at the age of 86.

Whitehead's view of God is commonly classified as "panentheism," that is, the view that all of nature is included in God, but there is more to God than just this. In Whitehead's case, the part of God that goes beyond nature is what he calls God's "primordial nature". It is the infinite, eternal realm of pure possibility and potentiality that exists independently of any particular physical creation. His position is also called "process theology", that is, God is not unchanging as traditional theology holds, but instead is always in the process of changing, evolving, and becoming something new as the world itself develops. In Whitehead's terminology, God is "dipolar" in that he possesses two distinct yet interconnected sides to his nature. They are (1) his primordial nature, which envisions all the endless possibilities of what the universe could be; this creates an inner lure within us toward future possibilities, and (2), his "consequent nature", which experiences what in fact has taken place; this includes our actual joys and pains, which he weaves into a unified life of the divine cosmos. The selections below are from Process and Reality (1929).

In the first section Whitehead argues that traditional theology erred by abandoning the gentle, love-centered message of early Christianity to the notion of God created in the image of imperial rulers. The latter occurred because Roman legalism and political power co-opted Christianity, effectively superimposing the absolute, coercive attributes of Caesar directly onto the divine nature. To correct this, Whitehead emphasizes a forgotten "Galilean vision" of religion that rejects authoritarian rule and fixed philosophical principles. It focuses instead on the tender, peaceful elements of the world that operate purely through love in the immediate present. In the second section Whitehead argues that God must be understood as a "dipolar" being who possesses both a primordial and a consequent nature. While his primordial nature is an eternal, unconscious blueprint of pure possibilities, his consequent nature is fully conscious and receptive to the changing physical world. This means that as the temporal universe evolves, God actively absorbs every new creature's experiences into his own life, weaving the physical feelings of the world onto his unchanging conceptual vision.

In the third section Whitehead argues that God's consequent nature acts as a living judgment on the world by gently absorbing and preserving the entire unfolding universe so that nothing of value is ever lost. Within the divine life, the individual joys, triumphs, and even the tragic wreckage of temporal history are woven into an everlasting harmony that strips evil of its power while rescuing whatever good it achieved. As such, God does not rule through coercive force or political power, but functions instead as the patient poet of the world, gently saving the creation by leading it toward truth, beauty, and goodness. In the fourth section Whitehead argues that traditional philosophy stumbled into a false dichotomy by separating permanent stability from fluent change. This resulted in a caricature of a static God ruling over a fleeting world. To resolve this, he introduces his famous cosmological antitheses to demonstrate that God and the universe exist in a state of absolute, reciprocal requirement where each serves as the necessary completion for the other. On the one hand, the changing temporal world achieves "objective immortality" by being received and preserved everlastingly within the divine life. On the other hand, God's eternal conceptual vision requires the concrete experiences of the physical world to achieve full, conscious reality. Thus, neither God nor the universe reaches a static, final endpoint. For, both are bound together in an open-ended, creative advance where the world transforms into a unified divine harmony and God absorbs the vast multiplicity of creation.

In the fifth section Whitehead argues that the final end of creation is achieved within God's expanding consequent nature, where the world's conflicting actualities are woven into a perfect, unified adjustment. Within this divine phase, an individual creature's passage into novelty is not its death, because its immediate experiences are preserved everlastingly as both a means and an end. Ultimately, this integration allows the immediacy of suffering to be redeemed and transformed into an essential element of cosmic triumph, generalizing the same aesthetic value that discords provide in a work of art. In the sixth section Whitehead argues that the universe accomplishes its concrete reality through four distinct creative phases that culminate in a cyclical movement of divine love. Initially, the abstract conceptual blueprint passes into the physical world and is gathered back into God's perfected, everlasting nature. Then this transformed reality flows back into the temporal world to guide particular occasions. By qualifying each immediate experience with this heavenly presence, God operates as a great companion and fellow-sufferer who understands us. This immerses our temporary actions with eternal importance.

THE DIPOLAR NATURE OF GOD (from Process and Reality, 1929, Chapter 2, "God and the World")

Love-Centered vs. Imperial Ruler View of God (from Section 1)

So long as the temporal world is conceived as a self-sufficient completion of the creative act, explicable by its derivation from an ultimate principle which is at once eminently real and the unmoved mover, from this conclusion there is no escape: the best that we can say of the turmoil is, 'For so he giveth his beloved-sleep.' This is the message of religions of the Buddhistic type, and in some sense it is true. In this final discussion we have to ask, whether metaphysical principles impose the belief that it is the whole truth. The complexity of the world must be reflected in the answer. It is childish to enter upon thought with the simple-minded question, What is the world made of? The task of reason is to fathom the deeper depths of the many-sidedness of things. We must not expect simple answers to far-reaching questions. However far our gaze penetrates, there are always heights beyond which block our vision.

The notion of God as the 'unmoved mover' is derived from Aristotle, at least so far as Western thought is concerned. The notion of God as 'eminently real' is a favourite doctrine of Christian theology. The combination of the two into the doctrine of an aboriginal, eminently real, transcendent creator, at whose fiat the world came into being, and whose imposed will it obeys, is the fallacy which has infused tragedy into the histories of Christianity and of Mahometanism.

When the Western world accepted Christianity, Caesar conquered; and the received text of Western theology was edited by his lawyers. The code of Justinian and the theology of Justinian are two volumes expressing one movement of the human spirit. The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly [i.e., Jesus' gentle message of love]. In the official formulation of the religion it has assumed the trivial form of the mere attribution to the Jews that they cherished a misconception about their Messiah. But the deeper idolatry, of the fashioning of God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers, was retained. The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar.

In the great formative period of theistic philosophy, which ended with the rise of Mahometanism, after a continuance coeval with civilization, three strains of thought emerge which, amid many variations in detail, respectively fashion God in the image of an imperial ruler, God in the image of a personification of moral energy, God in the image of an ultimate philosophical principle. Hume's Dialogues criticize unanswerably these modes of explaining the system of the world.

The three schools of thought can be associated respectively with the divine Caesars, the Hebrew prophets, and Aristotle. But Aristotle was antedated by Indian, and Buddhistic, thought; the Hebrew prophets can be paralleled in traces of earlier thought; Mahometanism and the divine Caesars merely represent the most natural, obvious, theistic idolatrous symbolism, at all epochs and places.

The history of theistic philosophy exhibits various stages of combination of these three 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 moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present.

The Primordial Nature of God as the Ultimate Lure for Feeling (from Section 2)

Apart from any reference to existing religions as they are, or as they ought to be, we must investigate dispassionately what the metaphysical principles, here developed, require on these points, as to the nature of God. There is nothing here in the nature of proof. There is merely the confrontation of the theoretic system with a certain rendering of the facts. But the unsystematized report upon the facts is itself highly controversial, and the system is confessedly inadequate. The deductions from it in this particular sphere of thought cannot be looked upon as more than suggestions as to how the problem is transformed in the light of that system. What follows is merely an attempt to add another speaker to that masterpiece, Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Any cogency of argument entirely depends upon elucidation of somewhat exceptional elements in our conscious experience those elements which may roughly be classed together as religious and moral intuitions.

In the first place, God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification.

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. But, as primordial, so far is he from 'eminent reality,' that in this abstraction he is 'deficiently actual' -and this in two ways. His feelings are only conceptual and so lack the fulness of actuality. Secondly, conceptual feelings, apart from complex integration with physical feelings, are devoid of consciousness in their subjective forms.

Thus, when we make a distinction of reason, and consider God in the abstraction of a primordial actuality, we must ascribe to him neither fulness of feeling, nor consciousness. He is the unconditioned actuality of conceptual feeling at the base of things; so that, by reason of this primordial actuality, there is an order in the relevance of eternal objects to the process of creation. His unity of conceptual operations is a free creative act, untrammelled by reference to any particular course of things. It is deflected neither by love, nor by hatred, for what in fact comes to pass. The particularities of the actual world presuppose it; while it merely presupposes the general metaphysical character of creative advance, of which it is the primordial exemplification. The primordial nature of God is the acquirement by creativity of a primordial character.

His conceptual actuality at once exemplifies and establishes the categoreal conditions. The conceptual feelings, which compose his primordial nature, exemplify in their subjective forms their mutual sensitivity and their subjective unity of subjective aim. These subjective forms are valuations determining the relative relevance of eternal objects for each occasion of actuality.

He is the lure for feeling, the eternal urge of desire. His particular relevance to each creative act as it arises from its own conditioned standpoint in the world, constitutes him the initial 'object of desire' establishing the initial phase of each subjective aim. A quotation from Aristotle's Metaphysics expresses some analogies to, and some differences from, this line of thought: "And since that which is moved and mover is intermediate, there is a mover which moves without being moved, being eternal, substance, and actuality. And the object of desire and the object of thought are the same. For the apparent good is the object of appetite, and the real good is the primary object of rational desire. But desire is consequent on opinion rather than opinion on desire; for the thinking is the starting point. And thought is moved by the object of thought, and one side of the list of opposites is in itself the object of thought; ..." Aristotle had not made the distinction between conceptual feelings and the intellectual feelings which alone involve consciousness. But if 'conceptual feeling,' with its subjective form of valuation, be substituted for 'thought,' 'thinking,' and 'opinion,' in the above quotation, the agreement is exact.

God as a Dipolar Being: Primordial and Consequent Natures (from Section 3)

There is another side to the nature of God which cannot be omitted. Throughout this exposition of the philosophy of organism we have been considering the primary action of God on the world. From this point of view, he is the principle of concretion -- the principle whereby there is initiated a definite outcome from a situation otherwise riddled with ambiguity. Thus, so far, the primordial side of the nature of God has alone been relevant.

But God, as well as being primordial, is also consequent. He is the beginning and the end. He is not the beginning in the sense of being in the past of all members. He is the presupposed actuality of conceptual operation, in unison of becoming with every other creative act. Thus by reason of the relativity of all things, there is a reaction of the world on God. The completion of God's nature into a fulness of physical feeling is derived from the objectification of the world in God. He shares with every new creation its actual world; and the concrescent creature is objectified in God as a novel element in God's objectification of that actual world. This prehension into God of each creature is directed with the subjective aim, and clothed with the subjective form, wholly derivative from his all-inclusive primordial valuation. God's conceptual nature is unchanged, by reason of its final completeness. But his derivative nature is consequent upon the creative advance of the world.

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.

One side of God's nature is constituted by his conceptual experience. This experience is the primordial fact in the world, limited by no actuality which it presupposes. It is therefore infinite, devoid of all negative prehensions. This side of his nature is free, complete, primordial, eternal, actually deficient, and unconscious. The other side originates with physical experience derived from the temporal world, and then acquires integration with the primordial side. It is determined, incomplete, consequent, 'everlasting,' fully actual, and conscious. His necessary goodness expresses the determination of his consequent nature.

Conceptual experience can be infinite, but it belongs to the nature of physical experience that it is finite. An actual entity in the temporal world is to be conceived as originated by physical experience with its process of completion motivated by consequent, conceptual experience initially derived from God. God is to be conceived as originated by conceptual experience with his process of completion motivated by consequent, physical experience, initially derived from the temporal world.

The Divine Judgment of Infinite Tenderness and Patience (from Section 4)

The perfection of God's subjective aim, derived from the completeness of his primordial nature, issues into the character of his consequent nature. In it there is no loss, no obstruction. The world is felt in a unison of immediacy. The property of combining creative advance with the retention of mutual immediacy is what in the previous section is meant by the term 'everlasting.'

The wisdom of subjective aim prehends every actuality for what it can be in such a perfected system -- its sufferings, its sorrows, its failures, its triumphs, its immediacies of joy-woven by rightness of feeling into the harmony of the universal feeling, which is always immediate, always many, always one, always with novel advance, moving onward and never perishing. The revolts of destructive evil, purely self-regarding, are dismissed into their triviality of merely individual facts; and yet the good they did achieve in individual joy, in individual sorrow, in the introduction of needed contrast, is yet saved by its relation to the completed whole. The image -- and it is but an image the image under which this operative growth of God's nature is best conceived, is that of a tender care that nothing be lost.

The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the world. He saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage.

Another image which is also required to understand his consequent nature, is that of his infinite patience. The universe includes a threefold creative act composed of (i) the one infinite conceptual realization, (ii) the multiple solidarity of free physical realizations in the temporal world, (iii) the ultimate unity of the multiplicity of actual fact with the primordial conceptual fact. If we conceive the first term and the last term in their unity over against the intermediate multiple freedom of physical realizations in the temporal world, we conceive of the patience of God, tenderly saving the turmoil of the intermediate world by the completion of his own nature. The sheer force of things lies in the intermediate physical process: this is the energy of physical production. God's role is not the combat of productive force with productive force, of destructive force with destructive force; it lies in the patient operation of the overpowering rationality of his conceptual harmonization. He does not create the world, he saves it: or, more accurately, he is the poet of the world, with tender patience leading it by his vision of truth, beauty, and goodness.

THE RECIPROCAL INTERPLAY OF GOD AND THE WORLD

The Failure of Static Views of God and the World (from Section 5)

The vicious separation of the flux from the permanence leads to the concept of an entirely static God, with eminent reality, in relation to an entirely fluent world, with deficient reality. But if the opposites, static and fluent, have once been so explained as separately to characterize diverse actualities, the interplay between the thing which is static and the things which are fluent involves contradiction at every step in its explanation. Such philosophies must include the notion of "illusion' as a fundamental principle the notion of "mere appearance." This is the final platonic problem.

Undoubtedly, the intuitions of Greek, Hebrew, and Christian thought have alike embodied the notions of a static God condescending to the world, and of a world either thoroughly fluent, or accidentally static, but finally fluent 'heaven and earth shall pass away.' In some schools of thought, the fluency of the world is mitigated by the assumption that selected components in the world are exempt from this final fluency, and achieve a static survival. Such components are not separated by any decisive line from analogous components for which the assumption is not made. Further, the survival is construed in terms of a final pair of opposites, happiness for some, torture for others.

Such systems have the common character of starting with a fundamental intuition which we do mean to express, and of entangling themselves in verbal expressions, which carry consequences at variance with the initial intuition of permanence in fluency and of fluency in permanence.

How God and the World Complete Each Other

But civilized intuition has always, although obscurely, grasped the problem as double and not as single. There is not the mere problem of fluency and permanence. There is the double problem: actuality with permanence, requiring fluency as its completion; and actuality with fluency, requiring permanence as its completion. The first half of the problem concerns the completion of God's primordial nature by the derivation of his consequent nature from the temporal world. The second half of the problem concerns the completion of each fluent actual occasion by its function of objective immortality, devoid of 'perpetual perishing,' that is to say, 'everlasting.'

This double problem cannot be separated into two distinct problems. Either side can only be explained in terms of the other. The consequent nature of God is the fluent world become 'everlasting' by its objective immortality in God. Also the objective immortality of actual occasions requires the primordial permanence of God, whereby the creative advance ever re-establishes itself endowed with initial subjective aim derived from the relevance of God to the evolving world.

But objective immortality within the temporal world does not solve the problem set by the penetration of the finer religious intuition. 'Everlastingness' has been lost; and 'everlastingness' is the content of that vision upon which the finer religions are built the 'many' absorbed everlastingly in the final unity. The problems of the fluency of God and of the everlastingness of passing experience are solved by the same factor in the universe. This factor is the temporal world perfected by its reception and its reformation, as a fulfilment of the primordial appetition which is the basis of all order. In this way God is completed by the individual, fluent satisfactions of finite fact, and the temporal occasions are completed by their everlasting union with their transformed selves, purged into conformation with the eternal order which is the final absolute 'wisdom.' The final summary can only be expressed in terms of a group of antitheses, whose apparent self-contradiction depend on neglect of the diverse categories of existence. In each antithesis there is a shift of meaning which converts the opposition into a contrast.

The Two-Sided Nature of Reality

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 that the World creates God.

God and the World are the contrasted opposites in terms of which Creativity achieves its supreme task of transforming disjoined multiplicity, with its diversities in opposition, into concrescent unity, with its diversities in contrast. In each actuality these are two concrescent poles of realization-'enjoyment' and 'appetition,' that is, the 'physical' and the 'conceptual.' For God the conceptual is prior to the physical, for the World the physical poles are prior to the conceptual poles.

A physical pole is in its own nature exclusive, bounded by contradiction: a conceptual pole is in its own nature all-embracing, unbounded by contradiction. The former derives its share of infinity from the infinity of appetition; the latter derives its share of limitation from the exclusiveness of enjoyment. Thus, by reason of his priority of appetition, there can be but one primordial nature for God; and, by reason of their priority of enjoyment, there must be one history of many actualities in the physical world.

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 no 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 a 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.

Opposed elements stand to each other in mutual requirement. In their unity, they inhibit or contrast. God and the World stand to each other in this opposed requirement. 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 perfected unity. Neither God, nor the World, reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty. Either of them, God and the World, is the instrument of novelty for the other.

In every respect God and the World move conversely to each other in respect to their process. God 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. The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort.

The Transformation of Sorrow into Triumph (from Section 6)

The consequent nature of God is the fulfilment of his experience by his reception of the multiple freedom of actuality into the harmony of his own actualization. It is God as really actual, completing the deficiency of his mere conceptual actuality.

Every categoreal type of existence in the world presupposes the other types in terms of which it is explained. Thus the many eternal objects conceived in their bare isolated multiplicity lack any existent character. They require the transition to the conception of them as efficaciously existent by reason of God's conceptual realization of them.

But God's conceptual realization is nonsense if thought of under the guise of a barren, eternal hypothesis. It is God's conceptual realization performing an efficacious role in multiple unifications of the universe, which are free creations of actualities arising out of decided situations. Again this discordant multiplicity of actual things, requiring each other and neglecting each other, utilizing and discarding, perishing and yet claiming life as obstinate matter of fact, requires an enlargement of the understanding to the comprehension of another phase in the nature of things. In this later phase, the many actualities are one actuality, and the one actuality is many actualities. Each actuality has its present life and its immediate passage into novelty; but its passage is not its death. This final phase of passage in God's nature is ever enlarging itself. In it the complete adjustment of the immediacy of joy and suffering reaches the final end of creation. This end is existence in the perfect unity of adjustment as means, and in the perfect multiplicity of the attainment of individual types of self-existence. The function of being a means is not disjoined from the function of being an end. The sense of worth beyond itself is immediately enjoyed as an overpowering element in the individual self-attainment. It is in this way that the immediacy of sorrow and pain is transformed into an element of triumph. This is the notion of redemption through suffering, which haunts the world. It is the generalization of its very minor exemplification as the aesthetic value of discords in art.

Thus the universe is to be conceived as attaining the active self-expression of its own variety of opposites, of its own freedom and its own necessity, of its own multiplicity and its own unity, of its own imperfection and its own perfection. All the 'opposites' are elements in the nature of things, and are incorrigibly there. The concept of 'God' is the way in which we understand this incredible fact that what cannot be, yet is.

God as the Great Companion (from Section 7)

Thus the consequent nature of God is composed of a multiplicity of elements with individual self-realization. It is just as much a multiplicity as it is a unity; it is just as much one immediate fact as it is an unresting advance beyond itself. Thus the actuality of God must also be understood as a multiplicity of actual components in process of creation. This is God in his function of the kingdom of heaven.

Each actuality in the temporal world has its reception into God's nature. The corresponding element in God's nature is not temporal actuality, but is the transmutation of that temporal actuality into a living, ever-present fact. An enduring personality in the temporal world is a route of occasions in which the successors with some peculiar completeness sum up their predecessors. The correlate fact in God's nature is an even more complete unity of life in a chain of elements for which succession does not mean loss of immediate unison. This element in God's nature inherits from the temporal counterpart according to the same principle as in the temporal world the future inherits from the past. Thus in the sense in which the present occasion is the person now, and yet, with his own past, so the counterpart in God is that person in God.

But the principle of universal relativity is not to be stopped at the consequent nature of God. This nature itself passes into the temporal world according to its gradation of relevance to the various concrescent occasions. There are thus four creative phases in which the universe accomplishes its actuality. There is first the phase of conceptual origination, deficient in actuality, but infinite in its adjustment of valuation. Secondly, there is the temporal phase of physical origination, with its multiplicity of actualities. In this phase full actuality is attained; but there is deficiency in the solidarity of individuals with each other. This phase derives its determinate conditions from the first phase. Thirdly, there is the phase of perfected actuality, in which the many are one everlastingly, without the qualification of any loss either of individual identity or of completeness of unity. In everlastingness, immediacy is reconciled with objective immortality. This phase derives the conditions of its being from the two antecedent phases. In the fourth phase, the creative action completes itself. For the perfected actuality passes back into the temporal world, and qualifies this world so that each temporal actuality includes it as an immediate fact of relevant experience. For the kingdom of heaven is with us today. The action of the fourth phase is the love of God for the world. It is the particular providence for particular occasions. What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world. In this sense, God is the great companion-the fellow-sufferer who understands.

We find here the final application of the doctrine of objective immortality. Throughout the perishing occasions in the life of each temporal Creature, the inward source of distaste or of refreshment, the judge arising out of the very nature of things, redeemer or goddess of mischief, is the transformation of Itself, everlasting in the Being of God. In this way, the insistent craving is justified-the insistent craving that zest for existence be refreshed by the ever-present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live forevermore.

Source: Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929), adapted.

STUDY QUESTIONS

Please answer all of the following questions.

1. According to Caird in "Philosophy," how does Hegel's philosophy of reconciliation resolve opposing theories, and why must the organic universe be spiritual rather than merely natural?

2. According to Caird in Evolution of Religion, why does the vast historical variation among human religions make it difficult to identify a single essential characteristic of religion?

3. According to Caird in Evolution of Religion, how do the three aspects of human consciousness (world, self, and God) interact to overcome the conflict between limiting nature and subjective desire?

4. According to Caird in Evolution of Religion, how does the rational mind's ability to transcend its own individuality allow it to apprehend the universal and divine?

5. According to Alexander in Space, Time, and Deity, what is the relationship between the whole physical universe and the empirical quality of deity?

6. According to Alexander in Space, Time, and Deity, why is bare Space-Time incapable of evoking religious worship, requiring instead the conception of a universe straining toward deity?

7. According to Alexander in Space, Time, and Deity, why would the actual historical emergence of deity result in a multiplicity of finite gods rather than one actualized infinite God?

8. According to Alexander in Space, Time, and Deity, why can mathematical infinites be actual realities while a qualitied infinite like God remains purely ideal?

9. According to Alexander in Space, Time, and Deity, how does his evolutionary metaphysics differ from Caird and Hegel's absolute idealism regarding the survival of finite individual existences?

10. According to Whitehead in Process and Reality, how did Western Christian theology distort the original "Galilean vision" by fashioning God after imperial Roman rulers?

11. According to Whitehead in Process and Reality, what are the primary characteristics of God's "primordial nature," and why is it considered "deficiently actual"?

12. According to Whitehead in Process and Reality, how does God's "consequent nature" develop through its interaction with the temporal physical world?

13. According to Whitehead in Process and Reality, how does God's consequent nature act as a living judgment that redeems evil and preserves temporal experiences?

14. According to Whitehead in Process and Reality, how do his cosmological antitheses resolve the traditional philosophical dichotomy between static permanence and fluent change?

15. According to Whitehead in Process and Reality, how is the immediacy of sorrow and pain transformed into an aesthetic element of cosmic triumph within God's nature?

16. According to Whitehead in Process and Reality, what are the four creative phases through which the universe accomplishes its concrete actuality?

17. According to Caird and Alexander, how do their respective accounts of evolutionary progress differ regarding the ultimate status of human spirit and mind?

18. According to Alexander and Whitehead, how do their views on the actuality versus ideality of God's divine nature compare?

19. According to Caird and Whitehead, how do their critiques of traditional static concepts of God lead to their respective models of divine reconciliation with the world?

20. According to Caird, Alexander, and Whitehead, how do their metaphysical systems redefine the relationship between divine transcendence and divine immanence in light of modern science?

21. Short Essay Options: Please select one of the following and answer it in a minimum of 100 words.

(a) Critics argue that Caird’s idealist philosophy of religion dissolves concrete historical faiths into an abstract logical process. By treating all traditions as mere stepping stones toward an overarching spiritual unity, it ignores the unique claims and personal commitments of specific religious communities. How might Caird respond?

(b) Critics argue that Caird’s reliance on Hegelian dialectic assumes an optimistic, inevitable progress toward harmony. This view turns a blind eye to genuine moral corruption, tragic waste, and irreversible evil in human history. How might Caird respond?

(c) Critics argue that Alexander’s concept of a "God in embryo" is religiously useless. Worshipping an unachieved, potential quality that does not yet exist offers no current comfort, providence, or moral authority to existing human beings. How might Alexander respond?

(d) Critics argue that Alexander’s physicalist reduction of Space-Time makes the emergence of higher qualities like mind and deity arbitrary. Unconscious, mindless extension cannot plausibly generate genuinely novel, conscious spiritual values. How might Alexander respond?

(e) Critics argue that Whitehead’s dipolar God lacks the coercive power necessary to defeat moral evil. A God who operates purely through gentle persuasion and aesthetic lure cannot guarantee the ultimate triumph of justice in a broken world. How might Whitehead respond?

(f) Critics argue that Whitehead’s process cosmology blurs the distinction between Creator and creation. Reducing God to a relational partner who depends on the temporal world strips the divine nature of self-sufficiency and ultimate sovereignty. How might Whitehead respond?

(g) Critics argue that late modern metaphysical systems construct complex intellectual speculative theories that have no connection to empirical scientific verification or lived religious experience. How might any one of these thinkers respond?

(h) Critics argue that treating God as an evolving, emergent, or process-driven reality destroys the absolute basis of morality, reducing moral duties to shifting historical preferences. How might either Caird, Alexander, or Whitehead respond?

(i) Critics argue that process and idealist approaches to evil fail to comfort suffering individuals, since preserving tragedy as an "aesthetic contrast" in the divine memory does not erase real human pain. How might Whitehead respond?

(j) Critics argue that the speculative metaphysics of Caird, Alexander, and Whitehead represents an outmoded nineteenth-century attempt to synthesize science and theology, one that inevitably fails under the scrutiny of modern analytic logic. How might any one of these thinkers respond?