Catching Up with Charles Hartshorne
By Donald Wayne Viney
What your theology commits you to is not the same as what commits you to your theology. Hartshorne can help.
I welcome the invitation to write a brief note on Thomas Jay Oord’s The Death of Omnipotence and the Birth of Amipotence (henceforth, DOBA). As I am a philosopher, it’s almost embarrassing that any objection I’d have to Tom’s wonderful little book would be picayune. “Amipotence,” Tom’s word for the priority of love over power in God, takes some getting used to, but it is a welcome replacement for “omnipotence.” In any event, I’ve already written a review.[1] What I offer here is a slice of philosophical autobiography occasioned by one sentence in the book: “An omnipotent God does not exist; we have reasons to think an uncontrolling God does” (DOBA 115).
My first book was on the question of God’s existence.[2] I might have been persuaded by some form of atheism had it not been for Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) who pointed to more fruitful ways of thinking about the back-and-forth of theistic and anti-theistic arguments than I had encountered in most philosophical literature. More interesting still were his several attempts at mapping the logically possible concepts of God.[3] Most compelling of all was his dipolar theism, modeled on the difference between the relative stability of a person’s character and the actual experiences in which that character is manifested. One “pole” is abstract, the unchanging existence and essence of God, while the other “pole” is concrete, God’s actual experiences, in continual interaction with the creatures, appropriately customized to each situation. Tom calls this the “essence-experience binate” (DOBA 100, 126), and it is a mainstay of openness theology.
This distinction, which David Tracy rightly christened “Hartshorne’s Discovery,” is revolutionary.[4] It allows a principled answer to the dominant tradition in theology up to Hartshorne’s time, a tradition that took changelessness in all respects to be the essence of divine perfection. I hold that Hartshorne’s life-work was the single greatest factor in dissolving the near consensus among philosophers and theologians that an entirely absolute, non-relational, and immutable deity should be considered normative for theology. In the superbly succinct expression of Julia Enxing, stressing the positive, Hartshorne demonstrated how “perfect changes” are possible.[5] No wonder Hartshorne wished to be remembered for the distinction.[6]
Before I met Hartshorne, I was already predisposed to his way of thinking. By my junior year in college, I was enlightened by Grier Jefferis, a close friend, to consider “God is love” (I Jn 4:8) as the foundation of any theism worth defending. I later learned that Hartshorne called this his “guiding intuition in philosophy.” Dipolar theism was his attempt to make sense of God-as-love. Here was a robust metaphysic in which it was possible to speak of God and the creatures as co-creators. What a refreshing change from the abusive absolutisms, dreary determinisms, and monochromatic monisms of old (some still lurking about)! I resonated with what Hartshorne called The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (1948), the title of his fourth book. I embraced it as if in answer to a (philosophical) prayer.
In graduate school, it was another perceptive friend, Peter Hutcheson (later of Texas State University), who pressed me on the question of atheism. It’s all well and good to have an attractive concept of God, but what made me think that anything in reality answered to the description of such a being? I had long since abandoned any notion of biblical infallibility or appeals to blind faith. As for classical theistic arguments, they seemed to be fatally flawed by the very conclusions they sought to establish! I couldn’t see the bridge from an “unmoved mover” or a cosmic designer to a loving God. As for the ontological argument, I was still under the spell of textbook refutations, having yet to consider modal versions. A detour into the literature of “scientific creationists” showed me the folly of their approach. Even the science-based arguments of more careful thinkers smacked of god-of-the-gaps thinking. Finally, the testimony of mystics was interesting but confusing in its mixture of ineffable (ontological?) oneness and relational love. So, how was I to answer Peter’s question?
Hartshorne’s Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (1984)—which anticipates much of Tom’s DOBA—provides resources aplenty for countering the various versions of the problem of evil. As Hartshorne concludes, the traditional concept of omnipotence is “not even coherent enough to be false.”[7] If true, then it cannot serve as a premise in an anti-theistic argument. Tom notes the pervasive role that the problem(s) of evil play in leading thoughtful people to atheism (DOBA 81-82). As Tom so clearly sees, having replaced omnipotence with amipotence, where’s the force in the objection as stated by the likes of Epicurus, Cicero, Hume, or even Habakkuk (1:1-3)? To be sure, the reality of dealing with pain, suffering, injustice, and loss remains. I cannot speak for others, but I can testify to the healing power of a theology like Hartshorne’s or Tom’s when confronted by the outrage of the murder of two friends, and the feelings of helplessness as others faced premature death from debilitating and cruel diseases. There is no need to blame God. Better to model the power of divine love: suffer with those who suffer, offer the comfort of fellowship, remember how those we’ve lost enriched our lives, and learn from their examples how to better ourselves and contribute positively to the world.
Of course, all of these ways of dealing with grief are open to the non-theist. And that is as it should be. But there should still be a metaphysical reckoning. One might argue as follows: every reasonable person agrees that the universe exists, but theists claim there is something in addition to the universe, a very big something, and therefore, the burden of proof lies with them. I agree that the lack of any reasonable argument for a substantive metaphysic is a fatal mark against it, but a life-philosophy is more than honoring a procedural rule. There may be as many unbelievable and fantastic forms of atheistic philosophies as there are of theism. Be that as it may, the prior question is, “What is meant by ‘God’?” Is it even right to characterize God as something in addition to the universe? That’s a dubious characterization of Aristotle’s God, but also of the God of Aquinas. Nor does it describe Spinoza’s pantheism. It certainly does no justice to Hartshorne’s panentheism, and I guess the same of Tom’s amipotent God.
What does dipolar theism have to say for itself? Tom gestures at an argument when he speaks of reasons to believe that the universe is “animated, spirited, alive, organismic, or enchanted” (DOBA 146). This sounds like panpsychism or what Hartshorne called psychicalism. Tom’s expression is “material-mental monism,” a type of non-dualistic pluralism (DOBA 132). Tom also speaks of God as universally influential. No merely localized being enjoys that prerogative (DOBA 138-139). These are two of the premises for one strand of Hartshorne’s case for a dipolar God. According to his argument, the many localized “dynamic singulars” of which the universe is composed (the thesis of psychicalism) could not, by their mutual adjustment, bring about order on a cosmic scale, such as universal laws of nature. On the contrary, the mutual adjustment of merely localized beings presupposes a larger order of which they are a part. This larger cosmic order can only be guaranteed by one whose influence is universe-wide. In brief, God’s unique role is to provide the cosmic order that makes localized forms of order possible.
Hartshorne was quick to remind us that the dipolar God is not, and cannot be, an all-determining power, for creaturely decisions belong to the creatures, not to God. Thus, managing the universe does not mean imposing an absolute order. A nontheistic former professor of mine (Don Crosby) wisely holds novelty to be as metaphysically basic as order.[8] The countless localized forms of order are, at least in part, the results of the mutual adjustments among the creatures—in the human case, there are families, tribes, nations, governments, etc. We meet again Hartshorne’s insistence on the social nature of existence.
This is not the usual design argument. It does not begin with a curious fact about the universe that might not have obtained. Anything that counts as a universe would exhibit some form of order. The argument is not scientific, for science presupposes an ordered world. It is picturesque to imagine a chaotic collision of atoms or subatomic particles, but the “chaos” is not absolute since one is still imagining enough order to allow for the atoms and their constituent elements. Hartshorne denies that “nonbeing” describes a conceivable state of affairs.[9] No, Hartshorne’s argument is pure metaphysics. I alluded to the argument from order as being “one strand” in Hartshorne’s case for dipolar theism. There are five other “strands”—like so many fibers in a cable—meant to be mutually reinforcing; they are his versions of ontological, cosmological, epistemic, moral, and aesthetic arguments. Hartshorne calls it a global argument; an example of what Basil Mitchell called a cumulative case.
An innovative feature of the mature version of Hartshorne’s global argument is that it is not presented as a proof. He observes that the conclusion of a valid argument can be denied, provided one rejects at least one of the premises. Each strand of the global argument is what Hartshorne calls “a position matrix,” a logically exhaustive list of alternatives. If dipolar theism is false, one of the other options must be true. In this way, Hartshorne attempts to highlight the “cost” of denying his preferred alternative. He concedes weaknesses, and some head-scratching questions, in his own version of theism. However, using a principle of “least paradox,” he argues that the other alternatives have greater problems. An element of personal judgment—or “intuition” if you will—is unavoidable. In this way, Hartshorne leaves room for honest disagreement, despite his energetic, and sometimes combative, reasoning for his own views.
When it comes to Hartshorne, my fondness for the man I knew and for the philosopher I most admire reveal my biases. He acknowledged debts to many others—especially Plato, Peirce, and Whitehead—but so often, it seems to me that the rest of philosophy is traveling paths he pioneered. In more ways than I can name here, I too have found myself catching up with him. He offered me insights not only into what a theology of love commits me to but also what commits me to a theology of love by way of a defensible metaphysic.
Bio: Don Viney is Emeritus University Professor of Philosophy, Pittsburg State University (Kansas). With philosophy degrees from Colorado State University (B.A. 1977) and the University of Oklahoma (M.A. 1979, Ph.D. 1982), his teaching career spanned 44 years, 38 at PSU. Focusing primarily on process thought, he has also translated works of Jules Lequyer.
OORD’S DRABBLE RESPONSE*
Don Viney offers an appreciative yet thoughtful critique of Amipotence, weaving in autobiographical reflections that are both engaging and insightful. He rightly identifies connections between my view and those of earlier thinkers, especially within the traditions of process theology and philosophy. Don also notes that some of my phrasing and ideas echo the work of Charles Hartshorne, even if expressed in different language. His reminder of Hartshorne’s enduring contributions is both gracious and grounding. I am grateful for Don’s careful attention, his generous spirit, and his ability to situate my work within a broader theological and philosophical lineage.
For more on Oord’s view of ways to embracing open and relational theology, see this article.
* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.
[1]. “Theology Tied Up in ‘Nots’,”: https://c4ort.com/theology-tied-up-in-nots/.
[2]. Charles Hartshorne and the Existence of God (Albany: SUNY Press, 1985).
[3]. See my article, “Relativizing the Classical Tradition: Hartshorne’s History of God,” Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities, Jeanine Diller and Asa Kasher, eds. (Dordrecht: Springer 2013): 63-79.
[4]. David Tracy, “Analogy, Metaphor and God Language: Charles Hartshorne,” The Modern Schoolman, 62/4 (May 1985): 259.
[5]. Julia Enxing and Klaus Müller (eds.), Perfect Changes: Die Religionsphilosophie Charles Hartshornes (Regensberg, Germany: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 2012).
[6]. John B. Cobb, Jr. and Franklin I. Gamwell (eds.), Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1984): 75. The distinction differs from Whitehead’s Primordial and Consequent Natures of God by the important clarification that “God somehow affected by the world” (the Consequent Nature itself) is abstract and necessary, whereas, in any particular case, “God affected by and responding to this situation” is concrete and contingent.
[7]. Charles Hartshorne, “A Philosophy of Death,” in Florence M. Hetzler and A. H. Kutscher (eds.), Philosophical Aspects of Thanatology, v. II (NY: MSS Information Corporation, 1978): 86.
[8]. Donald A. Crosby, Novelty (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2005).
[9]. Donald Viney and George Shields, The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination (Anoka, MN: Process Century Press, 2020): 54-57.