Panentheism is the view that God=92s being includes and penetrates the
whole universe, so that every part of it exists in Him, but (as
against pantheism) that His being is more than and not exhausted by
the universe. If pantheism is the belief that =93God is all, and all is
God,=94 then panentheism is the belief that =93God is in all, and all is
in God.=94 Thus panentheism presents itself as a balanced synthesis
between the extreme immanence of pantheism and the supposed extreme
transcendence of classical theism (roughly equated with deism by
Hartshorne).[Although Henry Nelson Wieman might be thought of as the
=93godfather=94 of process theology, it was Charles Hartshorne, once
professor of philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, who
became the midtwentieth-century interpreter of Whitehead and thus
deserves to be designated the =93father of process theology.=94 ]
At the heart of Hartshorne=92s panentheism is the concept of cosmic
organism. The universe is not an organization of various substances
and living beings, but is one cosmic organism. This organismic
universe is characterized not only by mutual interactions of entities
of the tem****al world, but also by mutual interactions between God and
the world. In one of his numerous comparisons between the universal
organism and the human body, Hartshorne affirms:
Quote: God=92s volition is related to the world as though every object
in it were to him a nerve-muscle, and his omniscience is related to it
as though every object were a muscle-nerve. A brain cell is for us, as
it were, a nerve-muscle and a muscle-nerve, in that its internal
motions respond to our thoughts, and our thoughts to its motions. If
there is a theological analogy, here is its locus. God has no separate
sense organs or muscles, because all parts of the world body directly
perform both functions for him. in this sense the world is God=92s body.
End Quote.
[Hartshorne, A Natural Theology for Our Time, p. 28]
That nothing or nobody exists outside of God is sup****ted, in the
thinking of process theologians, by the biblical injunction to love
God totally and one=92s neighbor also. It is thought that loving God and
one=92s neighbor with all of one=92s interest is a downright contradiction
except on the assumption that there is nothing outside of or in
addition to God. In the context of cosmic organism, then, it is
understandable that Hartshorne speaks of God as =93cosmic wholeness,=94
=93universal love,=94 =93the unsurpassable one,=94 and =93the modally all-
inclusive or nonfragmentary being, surpassable only by Himself.=94
The concepts of panentheism and cosmic organism raise a number of
questions, including their relation to the personality of God and the
transcendence of God. However, process theologians press their view of
God as personal. For example, Griffin says that
Quote: some of the traditional perfections that classical theism
affirmed of God only in an equivocal way process theology can
attribute to God in a straight-forward way. One of these is the idea
of God as personal. In the ordinary understanding of this term, to be
personal is to be a conscious being. It is to respond to others with
feeling. It is to have a certain character or personality which is
reflected in different actions. It is to have a certain underlying
purpose in life in terms of which one actualizes himself in different
situations, responding now to this event, and now to that. And it is
to have freedom to choose how to carry out this underlying purpose.
Process theism can affirm all of these things whereas classical theism
could not, due to its ideas about God=92s impassibility, simplicity, and
immutability. End Quote
[Griffin, A Process Theology, p. 189]
Similarly, Griffin defends the process view of divine transcendence:
Quote: In the first place, God transcends the world in that he is not
merely the sum of its parts, nor merely an aspect=85of its parts, but is
a unique individual who experiences the world. In the second place,
God transcends the world in that he is an agent=85. In the third place,
God transcends the finite world in that he is not dependent upon it
for his existence=85. [although] he is dependent upon the world for part
of his actuality, the concrete experiences that he is having=85. [Thus
God has] a type of transcendence not shared by any other actuality.
End Quote
[p. 186]
On an added note, one must compare surrelativism to classical absolute
theism
Hartshorne speaks of the relativity of the all-surpassing God. In
fact, he asserts that =93God himself is a supreme relativist, his
absoluteness consisting in the ideally exhaustive way in which he
relativizes his evaluations to all factors in the concrete actual
world.=94 Since God includes the whole world in Himself, then He is more
complete than any individual who is less than the whole of the
process. God is unsurpassable by others, but since He is not infinite,
He is surpassable by Himself (this is the meaning of surrelativism).
God thus becomes merely infinite in what He could be. It is worth
noting that Hartshorne dedicated his book, A Natural Theology for Our
Time, to Fausto Sozzini et al., who =93envisaged the God finite and
infinite, each in suitable and clearly distinguishable respects.=94
It is clear, then, that in process theology the reality of God is
viewed not as the supreme Being but as the eminent form of becoming:
=93We may say something like this: God is a being whose versatility of
becoming is unlimited, whose potentialities of content embrace all
possibilities, whose sensitive responsiveness surp***** that of all
other individuals, actual or possible.=94
This was wonderfully told mythologically in Isaac Asimov's Foundation
sci-fi series in the title "Foundation's Edge" in his Gaia planet.
But none of this is the God of the Bible. In truth, panentheism is a
mysticism which leans on the Christian idea of God, but only
synthetically. It does not allow the Christian Scriptures to declare
God, but rather, like many subtle heresies, it mingles truth with
humanistic relativism and publishes it as not being new, but rather
being the true "kernel" of truth finally revealed. The best lies are
always those which holds up an external truth but internally disguises
the lie.
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