Whitehead's "eternal objects" -- and his God

This is my fifth recent post on the meaning of Whitehead's masterpiece, PROCESS AND REALITY.

On the big issue of Time versus Timelessness, Whitehead generally seems more on the side of Heraclitus than on that of Zeno. He believes that time, change, motion are all real. Indeed, at points in this book he seems to be struggling to invent a new vocabulary to allow precise statements about the realities of THOSE realities.

But every once in a while he can pull us up short with a mention of "eternal objects." What the heck are THEY?

An eternal object is an abstraction. Whitehead uses "eternal" in this sense to mean precisely outside of time. And he uses "object" to denote something objective, neither a social construction nor a subjective whim. So Whitehead, it is fair to say, is not a nominalist about abstractions.

Eternal objects are the sorts of things that can recur. That is, Christopher Faille as a living breathing person does not recur. The person I was an decade ago will never exist again. We can say the same of the person I was an hour ago. These are the Christopher Failles of distinct beats of temporal reality, distinct occasions -- with a complicated relationship with each other.

But a very specific shade of green? This is an abstraction, i.e. an eternal object. And that is perhaps paradoxically why it not only occurs but recurs within the temporal flow. This leaf in front of me may never be exactly the shade of XYZ Green than it was an hour ago. But that won't stop some other leaf from occupying exactly the same spot in the logical space of green.

Beyond this we get to morality. Because among the abstractions/eternal objects there are those that act as "lures." These represent ways I might act and lives I might live whenever I come to a forking of possibilities. I am being lured one way and another by eternal objects, and I must choose wisely among them.

Now ... who or what is Whitehead's God? I can't really claim to understand Whitehead adequately here, but I will press on. God seems to play a part in Whitehead's system as the bestower of order upon the indefinite multiplicity of eternal objects. There exists an objectively best way for me to go in any case of choice. When I puzzle to figure out what the best way is, I am struggling (though I may not acknowledge this) to discern the mind of God. The lures have been both laid out and ranked in a primordial way.

Note that this, with all of Whitehead's talk of "lures," seems very different from the traditional views of God within the three big Monotheisms and the books they share. Whitehead's God does not command. He does not send down commandments and threaten hellfire. He lures. The process theologians like Hartshorne have tried to reconcile Whitehead's God with those old texts, but with let us say imperfect success.

The problem with that reconciliation is that God as Whitehead understands Him (and I'm skipping ahead to near the end of the book to find this) is the "principle of concretion -- the principle whereby there is initiated a definite outcome from a situation otherwise riddled with ambiguity."

Sorry, but that doesn't sound very scriptural.

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