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A final quote from Whitehead





I today finish my laborious piece-by-piece road through PROCESS AND REALITY with you, dear reader, by my side. Near the end of PROCESS AND REALITY, our author gets systematic about presenting his conception of God. 

The underlying idea here is of the physical cosmos and God as partners, not Master and Slave, not Creator and Created, but partners on the dance floor of existence together. That is my way of putting it. Not his, 

This is his way of putting it.


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 is many.

It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as it is to say 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.  

At least one scholar in religious studies has said that in this passage Whitehead is echoing "the classic dialectical language of Christianity." 

I know what THAT observation means. It means that we might imagine a similar sentence structure employed by any one of the great Councils of the early Church. It is as true to say that Jesus was man as it is to say that he is God.  It is as true to say that God is three as it is to say that He is one. It is as true to say that the New Testament completes the Old as it is to say that the New Testament overthrows the Old. Some of you could likely come up with other examples. 

Yes, Whitehead was to a certain extent re-purposing that sort of language.

But his repeated use of that sentence structure puts me in mind of the phrase "zero equals zero." Or, by way of a ridiculous example in tune with spring 2024 headlines in the USA: "It is as true to say that a dragon eats the sun during an eclipse as it is to say that the dragon disgorges the sun in the latter stages of the eclipse." 

It is as true to say that I intended the flippancy of the above example as it is true to say that the flippancy intended me.   

Okay, I'll stop there. Whitehead was a genius wrestling with big themes, and I am just one of a zillion bloggers making hay from such wrestling matches. I may in the near  future try to put together these various fragmentary blog posts I have offered in recent weeks, creating something a bit more comprehensive.   

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