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Turtles All the Way Down and the Prophetic Quandary: The Use of Messianic Prophecies by New Testament Writers

May 14, 2021 / / Comments Off on Turtles All the Way Down and the Prophetic Quandary: The Use of Messianic Prophecies by New Testament Writers

 

Larry Harrt

Abstract
This paper is a reflection on the New Testament use of messianic prophecy. Frequently, the New Testament appears to interpret and apply prophetic passages in a way that seems more than a little strange to readers immersed in modern critical thinking. It is posited here that when the hermeneutical methods employed in the New Testament are seen with an appreciation for their discipline and rigor of practice, we may not only come to understand them better, but also begin to recover that sense of the prophetic consciousness which saturated the ancient world of Israel. It is further concluded that in a reflection on messianic prophecy it is possible to discern Paul Ricoeur’s vision of a hermeneutic which possesses both intellectual integrity and spiritual depth. This, Ricoeur thought, involved three stages of faith development: pre-critical, critical, and post-critical leading ultimately to what he described as a second naïveté. It is hoped that this paper might make some contribution to a biblical interpretation and theology that is, to use another of Ricoeur’s favorite terms, ‘restorative.’

Key Words
prophecy, prophetic, messianic, fulfillment, Old Testament, New Testament, interpretation, consciousness, salvation-history, hermeneutic, second naïveté

Turtles All the Way Down
In his novel Turtles All the Way Down, John Green’s main character is an older teenage girl, Aza Holmes, who is trying to live a normal teenage life while suffering the sometimes-debilitating effects of an Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. At one point Aza’s best friend Daisey, trying to understand says, ‘I wish I understood it. . . . You just, like, hate yourself. You hate being yourself?’ Aza, who is obsessed with the thought that she is not real, replies that when she looks into herself that it’s more like there is no self to hate. ‘It’s like,’ she says, ‘when I look into myself there is no actual me.’ She feels like a Russian nesting doll which can be opened to reveal a hollow place inside where there is another doll and another and another until you get to one that cannot be opened and is solid through and through. But Aza can never get to her ‘smallest,’ most real and solid self. This reminds Daisey of a ‘wisdom’ story she has heard from her mother. It is a story that can act here in this little essay as a kind of parable––although it may not make complete sense as such until we have progressed a ways. It goes like this:

A scientist is giving a lecture to a huge audience on the history of the earth. He explains how the earth formed billions of years ago from a cloud of cosmic dust. He tells how at first the earth was very hot but over an unimaginable expanse of time cooled and oceans formed. He tells how single-celled life emerged in the oceans, how over billions of years life became more prolific and complex until 250,000 or more years ago humans evolved and started using more sophisticated tools until eventually they could build spaceships and cell phones and everything.

As he approaches the end of his lecture the scientist asks if there are any questions. An old woman in the back raises her hand. ‘This is all very interesting,’ she says when acknowledged, ‘but the truth is the earth is a flat plane resting on the back of a giant turtle.’
Amused, the scientist asks, ‘Well, if that is so what is the giant turtle standing on?’
And the woman replies, ‘It’s standing on the shell of another giant turtle.’
At this point the scientist, who is beginning to become a little annoyed, says, ‘And then what is that turtle standing on?’ And the old woman patiently replies, ‘Sir, you don’t understand. It’s turtles all the way down.’

The conclusion toward which I will be moving in pondering the quandary involved in how the New Testament writers use Old Testament messianic prophecy is, that it’s turtles all the way down.

Prophecy as Heilsgeschichte
Johannes Christian Konrad von Hofmann, the 19th century Biblical historian and theologian at Erlangen, is recognized as the person most responsible for the rise of the salvation-history (heilsgeschichte) school of thought as a formal approach to biblical interpretation. As a principle of interpretation, salvation-history simply asserts that God has made a progressive revelation of the divine nature and will in Scripture. Heilsgeschichte posits among other principles: (1) God’s salvific work begins as God acts in time, and is seen through actual happenings and in human events. (2) God’s salvific act which began in time is brought to completion within the historic processes of human activity. (3) The saving work of God has past, present, and future implications.

I am not at all sure why academia so often finds it necessary to state the obvious in rather elaborate fashion, but whether we adopt the formal history of religion schema as an important way of understanding the use of Old Testament prophecy by New Testament writers, or simply as a bit of helpful common sense, the historical context of messianic prophecy is of enormous significance. As noted in the basic outline above the implications are not only past, but also possess, for those seeking a faith that has intellectual integrity, ramifications that are present and future as well. What I am suggesting, is that understanding the use of messianic prophecy in the New Testament requires that we examine such usage holistically, and from the perspective of salvation-history.

The Prophetic Quandary
The difficulty encountered as we read of the uses which the New Testament makes of Old Testament messianic prophecy is this ––– There frequently appears to be a discrepancy between what is clearly the intended meaning of an Old Testament author and the interpretation given by a New Testament author. Having grown up with the frequent assurance that numerous and precise messianic prophecies have found clear fulfillment in the life and work of Jesus, young evangelical students have often had their faith severely shaken by the discovery that numerous Old Testament predictions seem to have found fulfillment in events closer to the time and setting in which they were originally made. In fact, some prophecies, in their original setting, do not look like predictions at all. Furthermore, upon a closer reading the interpretation of a New Testament writer may seem inconsistent with what the writer of an Old Testament text intended.

Perhaps one of the best-known examples is Matthew’s use of Isaiah 7:14 -16 as prophetic evidence that Jesus is the Messiah (Matt.1:21-23). In Isaiah, the Kingdom of Judah is about to be invaded by the combined forces of Israel and Syria. The Prophet tells King Ahaz of Judah there is nothing to fear and to remain calm, focused and firm. Ahaz will know this prediction that all will be well is a true prophecy by this sign Isaiah the Prophet gives him. In the time it takes for a virgin (a young unmarried woman) to marry, conceive, bear a child, and for that child to begin eating ‘cheese curds and honey,’ Ephraim (Israel) and Syria will themselves be devastated. This prophecy of Isaiah was not only fulfilled some seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, but seems to make no messianic reference at all. The closest connection is that in both passages the child is named ‘Immanuel’ (Isa. 7:14) or ‘Jesus’ (Matt. 1:21) which means ‘for God is with or saves his people.’ Indeed, this may be the singularity for Matthew.

Any number of other passages might serve as examples. When Matthew references the return of the Holy Family from their exile in Egypt as a fulfillment of Hosea 11:1, which says ‘And out of Egypt I called my son,’ it is more likely to appear to the postmodern mind as a ‘squeezing’ of the text rather than as prophetic fulfillment. G. K. Beale provides a chart of examples of alleged misinterpretations in the New Testament writers’ use of the Old Testament.
1.) Ad hominem argumentation. The role of angels in revealing the law in Gal. 3:19; the exodus ‘veil’ theme in 2 Cor. 3:13-18; and the ‘seed’ of Gen. 12:7 (KJV) and 22:17-18 in Gal. 3:16
2:) Noncontextual midrashic treatments. The understanding of baptism and the ‘following rock’ in 1 Cor. 10:1-4; Deut. 30:12-14 in Rom. 10:6-8; Gen. 12:7 (KJV) and 22:17-18 in Gal. 3:16; Ps. 68:18 in Eph. 4:8; Hosea 11:1 in Matt. 2:15.
3.) Allegorical interpretations. Deut. 25:4 in 1 Cor.9:9; the use of the OT in Gal. 4:24; and Gen. 14 in Heb. 7 .
4.) Atomistic interpretations, uncontrolled by any kind of interpretative rules. Isa. 40:6-8; 1 Peter 1:24-25.

Beale goes on to note, ‘Thus many would conclude that an inductive study reveals an oft-occurring disconnection of meaning between NT writers’ interpretations of the OT and the original meaning of that OT text.’

Interpretive Methodologies of the Rabbis
In wrestling with this problem, the question is sometime raised as to whether we should follow the same interpretive methods of the Old Testament as those used by Matthew, John, Paul and other writers of the New Testament. The reality is that our way of thinking is so different that it would be impossible to ever fully replicate their manner of exegesis. However, this does not mean that some understanding of how they went about the hermeneutical task may not be helpful. With this in mind it should be noted that their exegetical work was characterized by four basic methods:

Literal: Particularly in regard to the interpretation of Old Testament law, Judaism frequently followed a rather literal hermeneutical methodology. Longenecker notes that even while Philo believed circumcision should be understood allegorically he also thought it should be practiced literally. Stranger still, is that it was seriously argued by some Rabbis, on the basis of a literal reading of Deuteronomy 6:7, that in the morning the schema should be recited standing up but in the evening while lying down. The intent of the early Rabbis, even when using literal methodology, was to make plain the essential meaning of the biblical text. Consequently, it is helpful to keep in mind that to this end they were comfortable in applying a variety of interpretative methodologies––both literal and nonliteral.
Allegorical: Allegorical interpretation looks for a deeper symbolic meaning to the text. It assumes that a more sophisticated interpretation is to be found beneath the obvious meaning. Galatians 4:21-31 is probably the most obvious use of allegory in the New Testament. There Paul uses the figure of Hagar from the Genesis story to symbolize Mount Sinai and the earthly city, and therefore enslavement to the Law of Moses, while Sarah represents the heavenly city of the New Jerusalem and the people of promise.
Typological: Typological interpretation is more of a way of viewing history than it is an exegetical method. An earlier event, person, or institution is seen as somehow foreshadowing a later event, person or institution – the antitype. Typology assumes that God is at work in history, that there are reoccurring patterns that reveal the nature of God, and both predict and fulfill later reoccurrences of the pattern in deeper and larger ways. From the typological perspective history itself is seen as prophetic of God’s ultimate purpose. If we think of Carl Jung’s concept of archetypes, the notion of typology may seem a little more comprehensible in a contemporary context. The Greek arche means ‘first’ and type ‘imprint,’ ‘impress,’ or ‘pattern.’ For Jung an archetype is therefore a basic, primordial, preexisting pattern. Jung believed there were patterns of circumstances, symbols, and thought that reoccur consistently enough to be considered as universal concepts or events. These archetypes represent unseen psychological (psychic) energy at work––the person of traditional faith would say it is the manifestation of spiritual forces. Until the Enlightenment it was thought that human beings had the capacity to receive meaning from the realm of the spiritual and form it into inner images that can then become the object of reflection and reason. The well-known Jungian analyst Robert Johnson makes this significant observation:

The disaster that has overtaken the modern world is the complete splitting of the conscious mind from its roots in the unconscious. All forms of interaction with the unconscious that nourished our ancestors––dreams, vision, ritual, religion experience––are largely lost to us, dismissed by the modern mind as primitive or superstitious.

The point is simply that we should not too quickly dismiss typology as a reading into historical events of something that is not there; and, even more importantly, recognize how biblical typology points us to the reality of the prophetic messianic consciousness and its trajectory.
Pesher: Here a text is interpreted within the framework of an event. which is a mystery. The attempt to discover the solution to the mystery of the event, or of a person, in Scripture is ‘pesher.’ For example, in the New Testament, the solution to the strange and puzzling events on the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17) is found in Joel 2:28-29.
Midrash: The text rather than the event is the starting point for midrash, which means to seek. Midrash seeks to provide practical instruction in living God’s Word, and shows the relevance of Scripture to daily life. Seven rules, which follow here, helped to make early rabbinical interpretation reasonably straightforward.
Qal wahomer says that what applies in a less important case also applies in a more important case, and what applies in a more important case applies in a less important case.
Gezerah shawa says that where the same words are applied in two separate cases the same considerations apply.
Binyan ab mikathub ‘ehad involves constructing a family of texts from one passage. It states that where texts ae similar, a principle found in one applies to the others as well.
Binyan ab mishene kethubim has to do with constructing a family of texts from two passages, so that a similar principle derived from two texts can be applied to the others.
Kaalal uferat is the principle that a general rule many be applied to a particular situation.
Kayotse bo bemaqom ‘aher establishes that a text may be interpreted by comparison with another text.
Debar halamed m ‘inyano is an explanation established from the context.

Klyne Snodgrass notes that these midrashic techniques are observable in the New Testament. ‘

When Jesus argued that if God cared for the birds, surely he cared much more for humans (Matt. 6:26), he was arguing in good rabbinic fashion from the less important to the more important. Similarly, when Jesus justified his disciples eating grain on the Sabbath by pointing to the eating off the showbread by David and his men, he was arguing on the basis of an equivalent regulation. . . ‘ It may very well be that when Matthew quoted Isaiah 7:14 in reference to the birth and naming of Jesus he too was interpreting the text on the basis of the lesser to the greater principle. That is, Matthew’s interpretation was not nearly as arbitrary as it first sounds two thousand years later. In short, Matthew is reasoning: ‘If this was true then, how much more it is true now.

Testimonial: At times we find the New Testament writers using what appear to be collections of Old Testament texts for evidentiary purposes. Indeed, they sometimes not only use the same combination of Old Testament texts, but even agree in wording that is different from the Septuagint. For instance, the agreement might be noted between 1 Peter 2:6-10, which uses Isaiah 28:16; Psalm 118:22; Isaiah 8:14; parts of several other texts and a fusion of Isaiah 28:16 and 8:14; and, Romans 9:25, 33 which uses Hosea 2:23, other texts from Isaiah and a combining of Isaiah 28:16 and 8:14 in the same non-Septuagint form as 1 Peter 2. This most likely does not represent one writer copying from another as has sometimes been concluded, but more likely is an example of collections of Old Testament passages being used apologetically as testimony. It now appears that authors in the Apostolic Age felt a greater freedom to use various translations, or to offer their own, than what was once thought. Whatever one may make of their use of the texts they quote what remains clear is they possessed a common sense of messianic prophecy and its fulfillment.

What Manner of Person
The great Jewish Biblical scholar and mystic, Abraham Joshua Heschel, in what is certainly one of the best books ever written on the prophets, insisted that it is of crucial importance to ask the question, ‘What manner of person was the prophet?’ Both the question and the answer Heschel provided contain enormous implications for anyone exploring the correspondence between Old Testament prophecy and claims of their fulfillment in the New Testament.

As Heschel noted the Hebrew prophets were not only prophets, but poets, preachers, patriots, statesmen, social critics, and moralists as well. He wrote, ‘The significance of Israel’s prophets lies not only in what they said, but also in what they were. . . The moments that passed in their lives are not now available and cannot become the object of scientific analysis. All we have is the consciousness of those moments as preserved in words.’ The essential task of the prophet was to declare the word of God to the here and now. The prophetic aim was exhortation and not merely prediction. ‘It was to illuminate what is involved in the present; that is, to declare ‘truth as reflected in the mind of God.’
The literalist stressing supernatural revelation denies the role of the prophet’s own self in his utterances, while an emphasis on prophecy as a psychological, or entirely inward, experience ‘disregards the prophet’s awareness of his confrontation with facts not derived from his own mind.’ When Heschel speaks of ‘facts not derived from the prophet’s own mind,’ he means much more than the raw factuality of the literalist, he means the ‘consciousness’ of the prophet. Consequently while the prophet addresses a contemporary situation he ‘is not intoxicated with the here and now,’ but speaks with a vision, or consciousness, of an end.

Aryeh Kaplan, another Jewish scholar and mystic, says in regard to the person of the prophet: Those who sought to prepare themselves for prophetic ministry were known as ‘the sons of the prophets,’ and normally spent years in intense training and rigorous discipline learning to open their consciousness to the mind of God. The difference between the Old Testament prophets and other mystics is that the prophets were more specific and clearer in their messages. ‘The true prophet,’ says Kaplan, ‘is able to channel this spiritual power, focusing it clearly enough to obtain an unambiguous message.’

Jesus’s Use of Old Testament Predictions
The writers of the four Gospels portray Jesus as acutely aware of his words, his actions, and his presence as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. He is critical of the two despondent travelers on the road to Emmaus for their inability to grasp the meaning of his life among them in light of the Old Testament. ‘Beginning with Moses and with all the prophets he explained the things concerning himself in all the Scriptures’ (Luke 24:27). Jesus’s consciousness of who he was, as N.T. Wright points out, arose out of his sense of vocation; that is, his belief that he was called to accomplish only what God can undertake and complete. His predictions primarily looked forward to the day of Yahweh that had been prophesied in the Old Testament, the decisive act of God in which the present age would be brought to an end and a new order of peace, justice, and well-being initiated. Jesus uses Psalm 110:1 twice to accept the prophetic designation of messiah; however, in doing so he reinterprets what that means. With Jesus messianism has nothing to do with earthly dominance, worldly status, or military conquest, but with humility, with sacrificial suffering and with priestly and spiritual power conferred by God rather than gained through political manipulation. What this points to once again is the existence of a profound prophetic consciousness among the people of Israel in the Second Temple era.

The Prophetic Consciousness
Ultimately what Kaplan and Heschel are talking about is a way of thinking, a way of life, a way of being––the prophetic consciousness. ‘The prophet,’ said Heschel, ‘is human, yet employs notes one octave too high for our ears.’ What I am suggesting is that in order to understand messianic prophecy we must be capable of not only engaging in literary and historical analysis, but of going beyond such analysis so as to experience, as best we can, the prophetic consciousness ourselves. We know that this spiritual consciousness, this messianic hope, this attunement to what Saint Paul called ‘the mystery of the ages which is the hope of Christ in you’ (Colossians 1:26), was acute among the heirs of the Hebrew prophets early in first century Palestine. Among the saying of the prophets that made messianic expectations burn in them we may count this short list:

• The whole world will worship the One God of Israel (Isaiah 2:11-17).
• He will be descended from King David (Isaiah 11:1) via Solomon (1Chronicles 22:8-10, 2 Chronicles 7:18).
• The spirit of the Lord will be upon him (Isaiah 11:2).
• Evil and tyranny will not be able to stand before his leadership (Isaiah 11:4).
• Knowledge of God will fill the world (Isaiah 11:0).
• He will include and attract people from all cultures and nations (Isaiah 11:10).
• Death will be swallowed up forever (Isaiah 25:8).
• There will be no more hunger or illness, and death will cease (Isaiah 25:8).
• All of the dead will rise again (Isaiah 26:19).
• The people of God will experience eternal joy and gladness (Isaiah 51:11).
• He will be a messenger of peace for the whole world (Isaiah 52:7).
• Weapons of war will be destroyed (Ezekiel 39:9).
• The people of Israel will have direct access to the Torah through their minds and Torah study will become the study of the wisdom of the heart (Jeremiah 31:33).

How ancient Hebrew scholars may have interpreted any particular prophetic passage, or even how much they agreed as to the definitive list of messianic prophecies, is not the issue here. The point here is that among the Jewish people of first century Palestine, an intense messianic consciousness, derived from the Hebrew prophets of old, was not only manifest, but had reached that kairotic moment of which the Apostle Paul speaks in Galatians 4:4-7.

This prophetic consciousness is expressed in ancient Israel’s eschatology. R. T. France, Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford therefore writes:

From Amos to the Exile, and beyond, we find frequent explicit predictions of ‘the day of Yahweh.’ Expressions such as ‘in the day’ and ‘the days are coming’ give further evidence of a continuing expectation of the day of Yahweh, a decisive time of judgment (on the nations, and on Israel herself) and restoration. While similar phrases sometimes refer to definite acts of judgment in the near future, this cannot be said of expressions like ‘in the end of days,’ nor of the pictures of the coming golden age such as occur in Isaiah 11:1-9 or Zephaniah 3:11-20; the universal character of the work of God so described demands an eschatological future frame of reference. It may not be easy, or even desirable to separate the historical from the eschatological; the immediate and distant future are generally tantalizingly telescoped in a single perspective.

France argues that there can, therefore, be no doubt of a Jewish eschatology which saw a future decisive act of God resulting in a final end to the present order and a new beginning. Although he sees messianic expectations, in terms of references to a specific agent, as forming only a small part of this eschatological hope, it is, nevertheless, entirely reasonable to understand this eschatology as yet another angle from which to view what is here referred to as the prophetic consciousness of the people of Second Temple Israel. To anyone who thinks consciousness unreal it might be pointed out that many quantum physicists believe consciousness is the only real reality.

Conclusion
Michael Langford in his Unblind Faith: A New Approach for the Twenty-First Century, writes simply of the complex process of coming to an intelligent Christian faith:

I have argued that the reflective Christian comes to the New Testament stories in several stages; first, an awareness of the extraordinary nature of Jesus of Nazareth– relying on perfectly plausible accounts of his life and character and teaching; second, a reasonably grounded belief in a personal God who genuinely conveyed a message through the prophets; third, a decision that this Jesus is the Messiah to whom the prophetic tradition looked forward; and then, fourth, a rereading of the gospel stories in the light of these steps that have been taken. In this context, without any gullibility a reflective person may be unwilling to dismiss outright the historical reality of some actual events of an extraordinary and, perhaps unique nature, even though they remain extremely puzzled about exactly what happened.

This paper has been written with Langford’s four-stage process of becoming Christian in sight, in particular, and with some single mindedness, it has been an exploration of that stage which involves the belief that God genuinely conveyed through the prophets the message of the coming Messiah. However, it has attempted to do so in a dynamic rather than wooden fashion.

Those familiar with Paul Ricoeur’s notion of a hermeneutic that travels from a pre-critcal naïveté in its understanding, through the desert of the critical stage, and finally arrives at the springs of the post-critical, will recognize this as the journey taken here. The person of Christian faith may at first read the messianic prophecies utilized by the New Testament writers as Nostradamus like predictions; or what they imagine Nostradamus’ predictions to be like. This Ricoeur referred to as the first naiveté. However, once problems are recognized in a text, for example the intent of the original author seems different than the way an author uses it in the New Testament, or multiple texts appear to have been combined in order to produce one prophecy, or the Hebrew text does not look like a prophecy at all, then one may become lost and wander aimlessly in a wilderness of hyper criticism. They may become expert at debunking the biblical narrative, and far too sophisticated to discover that reality inherent and discernable only in a condition of complete simplicity. But, if they are able to appreciate not only the exegetical methodology employed and its rigor, but also the magnitude and actual existence of what has been referred to here as the prophetic consciousness, there is the possibility they may enter that third stage––the post critical phase in which they recognize the sorts of problems sons and daughters of the Age of Reason cannot ignore; Simultaneously, they may see in them a reality that is transcendent and beautiful, and a truth that is more than merely emblematic.
So what might be our final reply to those whose laborious analysis dismisses the possibility of Old Testament prophecy as a part of that maturing of history and spiritual consciousness which leads to that kairotic moment, to that ‘fullness of time,’ into which the Messiah is sent (Gal. 4:4)? Perhaps we should simply reiterate: ‘You don’t understand. It’s turtles, the mystery of prophetic messianic consciousness, all the way down.’

Bibliography
Beale, G .K. Handbook on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2012).
France, R.T. Jesus and the Old Testament: His Application of Old Testament Passages to Himself and His Mission (Vancouver, British Columbia: Regent College Publishing, 1998)
Green, John. Turtles All the Way Down (New York: Dutton Books, 2017).
Heschel, Abraham Joshua. The Prophets: An Introduction (New York: Harper and Row, 1962).
Johnson, Robert A. Inner Work: Using Dreams as Active Imagination for Personal Growth (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1986).
Kaiser, Darrell L. Bock, Peter Enns, Contributors (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008).
Kaplan, Aryeh. Meditation and the Bible (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Wesiner, 1978).
Langford, Michael J. Unblind Faith: A New Approach for the Twenty-First Century (London: SCM Press 1982).
Longenecker, Richard N. Biblical Exegesis in the Apostolic Period (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1999).
Lounde, Johnathan. Three Views of the New Testament Use of the Old Testament. Walter C,
Robinson, G.D. “Paul Ricoeur and the Hermeneutics of Suspicion: A Brief Overview and Critique” Premise Journal / Volume II / November 8 / September 27, 1995).
Snodgrass, Klyne in The Right Doctrine From the Wrong Texts? Essays on the Use of the Old Testament in the New. Edited by G.K. Beale (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1994).
Wright, N.T. Jesus and the Victory of God: Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume Two (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).

Misreporting Jesus: Rationalizations of the Religious Right

April 25, 2021 / / Comments Off on Misreporting Jesus: Rationalizations of the Religious Right

Larry Hart

Weighing Principles
The Rev. Robert Jeffress, Dallas Baptist pastor and Fox News Consultant, has received a good deal of media attention for his vigorous support of Donald Trump. Jeffress rather disingenuously claims that he does not identify as a Republican; but, nevertheless, votes Republican because, unlike Democrats, Republicans take the “right” moral stance on issues like abortion and religious freedom that rise, in his estimation, to the level of Biblical “first principles;” and which cannot, therefore, be compromised. Issues such as immigration policy, environmental regulation, tax rates and health care are, he argues, matters of opinion and compromise on these issues is entirely permissible. Jeffress’s ignorance of the sacred page and of moral theology is astounding. He, along with his friends Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr., ought to be ashamed of their “mishandling” of Scripture (2 Timothy 2:15 KJV).

Conservative Christians, the argument goes, do not view all governmental policies as equal. Some policies are either entirely or largely pragmatic questions and place no serious moral obligation on professed Christians, and can be discussed, debated, and supported or denied without spiritual consequence. However, issues like abortion, marriage and religious freedom, it is argued, rise to the level of “first moral principles,” (serious Biblical imperatives) that may not be ignored, compromised, or dismissed as irrelevant by the man or woman of Christian faith.

Perhaps the first thing to note here is that the primary premise is correct in part, but not in whole: It is correct in observing that not all policies are equal since all policies are not based on or derived from first principles––secular or religious. All truth is true, but not all truth is of equal significance. This is in no way novel to conservative Christians, but rather is obvious to, not only pastors, priests, and theologians and teachers of moral philosophy, but to ordinary, even casual, Bible readers. For instance, Jesus tells the hyper critical and legalistic Pharisees (the conservatives), that they nitpick every coma and semicolon and make sure they tithe even the little herbs of their garden, “but have neglected the weightier matters of the Mosaic Law––justice and mercy and faith. These they ought to have done,” Jesus says, “without leaving the others undone.”

The conservative establishment denounced Jesus and his disciples because one Sabbath day when they were hungry the disciples pulled off heads of grain (technically harvested) as they walked through a farm field, rubbed the ears of grain in their hands (threshed it), and ate it; that is, they had worked on the Sabbath by harvesting and threshing. Jesus’s response is not to deny this is an infraction of the law, but rather to remind them that when David and his band were being pursued by King Saul’s soldiers, tired ,and hungry, and harried they stopped at the Holy Tabernacle where they ate the Bread of the Presence––the twelve displayed loaves of bread representing the twelve tribes of Israel before God. Each week new loaves were set out, and the bread from the past week was eaten; but, it could only, Jesus acknowledges in repeating the story, be “legally” eaten by the priests. If the Pharisees understood what this meant, “I desire mercy and not sacrifice,” Jesus says quoting Hosea 6:6, “they would not have condemned the guiltless.” David and his band ate the sacred loaves of bread which was not permissible and no blame was attached, showing, that human need takes precedence over rituals, and customs, and even clear Biblical imperatives.

Too Full of What’s Right to Know What’s Good
Notice, however, that identifying a first principle and determining its correct application, as Jesus’s conflict with the Pharisees shows, is not always an easy matter. It requires a great deal of humility and wisdom and lived experience to become a person who is moral without moralizing, and who is not so full of what is “right” that he or she no longer knows what is good. What we are talking about is that quality of character known in the Greek New Testament as “epieikeia”–– one of those words that is especially difficult to translate. The ARSV translates it most often as “gentleness.” Aristotle said epieikeia is that which corrects the law when the law is deficient because it is too general. “It is,” he said, “that which is just and sometimes better than justice.” In the First Epistle to Timothy it is listed as one of the criteria for measuring pastoral care and leadership. The person who is gentle is one who does not rigidly insist on following a set of rules, or exercising his or her rights if doing so harms or diminishes another person. The first question the genuinely Christian man or woman faces in making any decision is not one of philosophical logic or legal technicality, but what kind of person he or she is and wants to be. What research has shown conclusively, is that very, very few of us, regardless of our profession of faith, familiarity with the Biblical text, or degree of theological education have come anywhere near the upper levels of moral reasoning.

That Which Proves Too Much
During the presidential campaign The Rev. Robert E. Morey, priest at Saint Anthony Catholic Church in Florence, South Carolina, denied Joe Biden communion saying that Biden’s stance on abortion placed himself outside the moral teaching of the church––a position taken by numerous other conservative bishops, priests, and lay people. In explaining why he, as an evangelical, votes Republican, and why he has been and continues to be supportive of Donald Trump, Robert Jeffress says, “For evangelical Christians who submit to the authority of the Bible, there are few political issues that clearly rise to the level of first principles. Abortion is that kind of issue. It involves the death of an innocent human life.” Who would ever have thought Protestant fundamentalists and Catholic conservatives could sound so much alike?

The statement that abortion involves the taking of innocent human life, begs the question; that is, it states as a fact the very thing that must be proved. So, those who believe in the doctrine of original sin as sharing in the actual guilt of Adam and Eve, which I do not, will need to find a new way to define innocence. And fundamentalists will need to prove that human life, innocent or otherwise, begins at conception. However, the clearest Biblical indication we have as to when a fetus is recognized as a human being is that it is the moment it exits the mother’s vaginal canal into the world. I certainly do not think that an undifferentiated mass of tissue, in spite of already being named and loved, is a human soul; or, that preventing pregnancy is tantamount to killing; or that a girl or woman who has been impregnated by her own father, or by rape, has committed a heinous crime in getting an abortion; nor, will I tell a woman who learns late term that the child she is carrying, with unutterable joy, will be born with massive parts of its brain missing, that she is a monster if in her agony she aborts. Indeed, I believe that would make me the monster. No, the God I believe in, the invisible God of Holy Scripture, of whom Jesus Christ is the visible expression, would judge me sorely if I did not weep for such sorrow and hurt––did not mourn the human condition. In moving on I will simply say, that for the Christian the issue of abortion should be reflected on in light of first principles, but it is not itself a first principle.

Actually it is difficult to put this conservative proposition as stated by Jeffress into proper or logical syllogistic form so as to make complete sense of it. It is an obvious and rather convoluted attempt to identify respect for life as a first principle applying narrowly to abortion while, for example, avoiding its implications for war and the death penalty. Jesus, of course, did not narrow but radically deepened and broadened nonviolence, or “reverence for life” (Schweitzer), as a first principle for his followers. As the philosophers say: “quod nimis probat, nihil probat,” “What proves too much proves nothing.”

Marriage and Religious Freedom
I am not sure how or what first principle marriage and religious freedom are being derived from by fundamentalists such as Jeffress, Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell, Jr., or Steve Bannon. I am guessing, although I could be entirely wrong, that what this means is that those subjects are addressed in the Scriptures; and, their interpretation of what the Bible says must be followed without question or compromise. In that case it is actually their interpretation that becomes a “first principle,” and not necessarily what Scripture actually teaches. It is my further suspicion that “marriage” is a code word for gay marriage as opposed to that of a heterosexual couple.

What was it Jesus said to the powerful conservatives of his day? “And in vain they worship Me, teaching as doctrines (first principles) the commandments of men.” What I am confident of as one who has read the Bible through from beginning to end more than once and is unequivocally committed to the Jesus Way, is that religious freedom is not a political permission granted by the government, but a spirituality to be lived. To serve God and his loving purpose for others is itself freedom.

Perfect Freedom
However, most Americans are afflicted by the false notion that freedom means being able to do what they want. If in the midst of a deadly pandemic the government urges the wearing of masks, social distancing, or the temporary suspension of large gatherings, people become enraged that their “freedom” is being impinged upon––and are even willing to kill (take an innocent human life) to prove they are indeed free. Mega churches and whole Roman Catholic parishes defy limiting large super spreader “worship” events because it violates their “religious rights.” What one really suspects, of course, is that wealthy and influential pastors, being shrewd business men and women or even actual thieves, (Jerry Falwell, Jr., $30,000,000; Franklin Graham, $10,000,000, Paula White $5,000,000; Robert Jeffress $17,000,000; Rick Warren $25,000 000) and Archbishop Viganò ($30,000,000) are really more worried about losing the loyal “customers” who have made them rich with their contributions, or with losing power more than they are about religious freedom. Conservative Roman Catholics whine that their rights are taken away when they are required to offer health plans that pay for birth control. Yet, these Catholic institutions receive a mindboggling influx of government cash in grants, student aid, Medicare payments, and research funds. They employ professors, medical doctors, technicians, computer programmers, nurses, aids, custodians, cooks, clerical personnel, and a multitude of other workers who include, beside Roman Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Lutherans, Baptists, Episcopalians, Methodists, Pentecostals, Humanists, Hindus, Buddhist, Agonistics, Atheists and maybe a Klingon or two.

So here is what I suggest to all religiously affiliated institutions such as hospitals and universities if they want to be completely free to follow their convictions. Stop taking the tax dollars of citizens who either disagree with your beliefs or could care less (that is, unfortunately, more than half the U.S. population). And, hire employees and admit students and patients only of your faith. For only then will you have the moral right to follow your convictions without interference. The same thing goes for local churches and pastors. Stop taking tax exemptions for contributions, property tax exemptions on your worship space (for which you receive fire and police protection as well as other major services for that site), and housing allowances for clergy. It’s really very simple, if we take someone’s money we are under certain obligations to that person. The only way to be completely free of that person’s wishes is not to take their money in the first place (Proverbs 23:3).

The more people, whether Christians, fundamentalists, Shinto, or atheists, or whatever, are able to regulate themselves for the sake of the common good, the greater freedom everyone will enjoy. Ultimately, the inability to self-regulate, and falling prey to compulsive and reactive feelings of personal grievance and defiance will only lead to greater and greater loss of both individual and collective freedom as supposed Christians insist on acting as if only their beliefs matter. Historically, those who cannot control themselves for the sake of the common good end up either the victims of authoritarian governments or of an imploding society. “The law code does not exist for the responsible, but for the irresponsible” (1 Timothy 1:9).

Whether we like it or not we now live in a pluralistic society. In every major American city, and in most major cities of the world, you will find people of different faiths, philosophies, cultures, nationalities, ethnicities, races, and social backgrounds working, eating, worshipping, playing, romancing, voting, going to school and doing all sorts of others things together. Nonwhites and Hispanics constituted a majority of people under age sixteen in 2019. Forty percent of the total U.S. population is now either nonwhite or Hispanic. By 2050, in about thirty years, less than half of the total U.S. population will be white non-Hispanic. It becomes more and more important every day for the well-being of everyone, for the nation and the whole world, to find a harmonious balance of all these different life-styles, interests, religions, races, and cultures. Christians, real Christians, with a faith informed by gratitude, appreciation, mutual respect, and its understanding of humanity as a brotherhood and a sisterhood will lead in this regard; but, Christians, real Christians, will not attempt to bully anyone into thinking or behaving as they do. Instead, they will be a luminous and inviting witness of this simple Way of Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot change other people against their will, neither should we even desire to do so. All we can do is live this life as deeply as we possibly can in hope that others may choose to join us on this journey. However, fundamentalist of every kind will most likely continue to be obscurantists as they fight a rear guard action against the inevitable end of the dominance of white Christendom––not of Christianity, but of Christendom. Freedom is most certainly an important principle when understood and lived in its radical and paradoxical significance––”perfect freedom is to serve God and others.”
Morals, Life, and Everything in Two Precepts
Religion scholars, philosophers, pastors, priests, saints, sinners mystics, ordinary Bible readers, and even psychologists have debated and continue to debate, and to reflect on questions of morality and ethics: “How should I live?” “What is virtuous?” “How can I tell the difference between good and evil?” “What light is there, if any, to guide me in my life with others?” Christians for whom faith is an embraced and owned inner reality, and not a mere mechanical recitation, all moral theology and guidance is summed up in two precepts that are breathtaking in their utter simplicity and profundity.

“First”‘ Jesus said, “Love the Lord your God with all the passions that expand your heart, love God with every bit of your intelligence, and love the Lord your God with all the prayerful trust, commitment and will power in you.” This, he emphasized, is the first and greatest of all precepts, principles and commands .”But there is a second to set alongside it––in reality, as you will discover, the two are one. It is: Love others as well as you love yourself, seeking what is in the legitimate best interest of those around you as much as you seek what is best for you. These two precepts sum up everything of God’s will, and everything in the Law and the Prophets is derived from them.”(Matt 22:37-40, my English paraphrase of the original Greek)

The Apostle Paul, who knew pretty well what it is to not only follow Christ, but to be in Christ and for Christ to be in him said: “Love is the fulfillment of the law.” And the great poet William Blake expressed the core of Christian moral principle well in these two famous lines:

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love.

Love, according to the whole Christian tradition, is what we were created for. To receive love, to give love, to know love, to be love is the meaning and purpose of our existence.
Love for God and others is not a first principle. It is the first principle, and it leaves out nothing that is true, or, good, or beautiful. We must, therefore, be very careful not to whimsically set aside important ethical and moral matters as mere opinion because that is the way we would like for it to be. Immigration decisions based on a purely pragmatic and objective analysis of population growth and economic issues might very well be nothing more than a matter of making determinations based on informed opinion. But immigration questions decided on the basis of race or ethnicity involve serious moral questions. And the cruel, inhuman, and torturous treatment of immigrants at the southern border by Trump and Republicans was a heinous offense, not just against humanity, but against God. Indeed, I can easily make a stronger case against the mistreatment of “the stranger” (immigrants) from Scripture alone than fundamentalists can make against abortion. And, to claim that tax rates are matters of moral indifference is absolutely asinine. No one who has ever read the Pentateuch, the Prophets, the words of Jesus, the Apostles or the Patristics can have any doubt that taxes and budgets (what individuals and governments and churches do with their money) are moral issues, and are of great concern to God––of far greater concern to God than the use of contraception or teenage sex. Can anyone who has attended Sunday school as a child, or occasionally read the Bible; or, can anyone who has ever attended seminary not know of God’s intense concern for the poor and vulnerable? For the Christian who takes seriously the two great precepts of Jesus, and that is the only kind of real Christian there is, everything they think, everything they say, everything they do, and, most significant of all, everything they are is evaluated in the Light of Love. How to live love in any given situation cannot be reduced to a list of rules. It requires a good deal of living, knowledge, and wisdom.

About Patterns
One of the most important lessons I learned many year ago first as a psychotherapist, especially in treating addiction, and then in my own prayer practice, is to focus on patterns and systems. In the treatment of alcoholism it is the difference between a “slip” and a relapse in which active drinking is resumed. M. Scott Peck, in his book People of the Lie: Toward a Psychology of Evil, described a whole pattern of life by which the pathology of evil could be diagnosed. That pattern is found in very few people, most of us are just rather garden-variety sinners, but the truly evil, who are usually hiding in political office or church leadership, can be recognized by the tessellation of their lives. Trump was not diagnosed by the psychiatric profession as clinically narcissistic and psychopathic because of something he said or did here and there, but because his words and behavior fit a specific pattern. Progressive Catholics, moderate evangelicals and mainline clergy did not vote and speak out against him merely because they disagreed with one or two “pragmatic” decisions or policies, but because they found the whole of his policies and life to be corrupt and evil. I am a Christian pacifist––a first principle, great command, issue for me. I believe that the teachings of Christ are explicitly nonviolent. And I believe that President Barack Obama’s drone strikes against innocent civilians constituted crimes against humanity; but, I voted for him twice based on his overall pattern of competency, intelligence, common sense, mental health, integrity, basic decency, temperament, family life, moral standards derived from his Christian faith, compassionate policies in the areas of health care, the environment, immigration, and regulation of vulture capitalism; and, because, unlike Jeffress, Graham, Falwell and their ilkI believe character matters.

Moral Theology Is a Person
Ultimately, Christian moral theology is not a body of teaching nor is it a doctrine–– it is a person. The first time I ever visited London friends took me to the National Gallery. They told me there was not enough time to explore the whole gallery even if we had all day––which we didn’t. So, I was to pick just one room––one artist. Without really thinking about it I said, “Rembrandt.” With me trailing behind, trying to quickly take in everything I saw on the way, we walked rapidly to the Rembrandt exhibit. As I approached the door to the Rembrandt exhibit I saw, just to my left, a large painting by one of the great seventeenth century Dutch masters, Gerrit van Honthorst’s Christ Before the High Priest. I was transfixed. I eventually, because of the urging of my friends, made it to the Rembrandt exhibit, but only for a short time before returning to Honthorst’s painting.

It’s main stylistic feature is an amazing contrast between light and darkness. The candle on the table is placed closer to the High Priest than it is to Christ; yet, the light actually seems to emanate from Christ rather than the candle, and the further you move from Christ the darker it becomes. The two figures furthest away from Christ are in the deepest darkness, and the two well-dressed, shadowy men behind the high priest are arrogant and defensive in their expressions and posture. The High Priest is proud, moralizing, accusatory. Smugly certain he knows it all, he holds up a single finger, lecturing Christ. Two books, one representing the law given by Moses and the other the prophetic writings lay on the table before the High Priest––Caiaphas. One is closed and the other unreadable in the dim light, suggesting his spiritual blindness and intellectual ignorance as he pompously explains to Jesus what’s right. In contrast everything about Jesus communicates humility, strength, confidence, patience and sanity. Jesus’s eyes, hands, and peaceful silence, his whole bearing, express knowledge, wisdom, and genuine goodness. The painting itself is large (9X6), reminding its viewers of the immensity of Christ. My puzzled friends bought me a print. It hangs in our condo where I cannot help but gaze directly at it several times a day; and, as I do, remember the unfathomable generosity, beauty, and divine wisdom that I find so irresistibly alluring. Evelyn Underhill was right, “Those who have seen the perfect want to be perfect.” Whatever it is that Donald Trump, the Republican Party, and fundamentalists leaders of every stripe have, whatever it is that actually guides them, I do not want. The anger, the cruelty, the violence, the narcissism, the arrogance, the sheer hypocrisy, the pontificating, the mendacity, and the twisting of the teachings of Jesus repulse me. It is, I believe, an egregious misreporting of Jesus to win votes for Republicans and so conserve the wealth and power of themselves and their friends.

Process Thought and the Eclipse of God

April 25, 2021 / / Comments Off on Process Thought and the Eclipse of God

Philotheos: International Journal of Philosophy & Theology 19.2 (2019) 218–226

Larry Hart:
The Saint Cyprian School of Theology, Orange, California

 

Abstract: Martin Buber in his famous critique of modern philosophy and psychology, described the philosophical hour through which the world is now passing as a spiritual eclipse—a historical obscuring of “the light of heaven.”1 This essay explores process thought as first formulated by the mathematician/philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, and then expounded by Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, and other theologians as paradigmatic of Buber’s concern. Accordingly, it proposes, that when consciousness shifts in such a way that God becomes recognizable as immediately present, as the aura in which the person of faith lives, the eclipse is over.

Keywords: eclipse, God, philosophy, process, theodicy, theology, spirituality, impassibility.

Process Thought

Whitehead’s thought and writing is so complex and so dense, that one is hard put to think of anyone who has been able to convey the gist of it in only a paragraph or two; as, for example, might be done by nearly any university student with the existentialism of Jean Paul Sarte or Albert Camus. Nevertheless, here is an attempt, definitely foolhardy, to do just that for those unacquainted with Whitehead’s thought.

For Whitehead everything is in motion, everything is evolving, everything is changing, everything, including God, is in process. Molecules, algae and whales, dogs and fleas, human beings and whatever you consider as ultimate is in process. Nothing is in a static state. God is still becoming. In so far as process theology can be said to be theistic it is a naturalistic theism, not in the sense of identifying God with nature, but rather in denying the concept of a divine being who can intervene and alter the normal causal principles of the universe. God is enmeshed in time, and is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. God knows only the present with its potentialities. There is a sense in which God can inspire and persuade, but God cannot make things happen. Neither can God prevent anything from happening. Everything that exists has its own level of creativity; and, therefore, possesses the power of freedom, of self-determination and of causal influence. God, it can be said, is as affected by the world as much as the world is affected by God.

This resolves the philosophical problem of evil and suffering by arguing that while God is good, God does not intervene to end the misery of the world because God, enmeshed in

1 Martin Buber, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy (Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 1996), 23.

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temporality, is unable to do so. Indeed, it is debated whether  God is a superfluous notion in process thought. “Actual entity” is the term Whitehead coined to refer to entities that actually exist, and that relate to other actual entities. The question that then arises is whether God is an actual entity. Whitehead’s method of metaphysical discovery begins with the careful observation of immediate experience, then moves to the free play of imagination, and finally engages in rational analysis. He believed that by employing this methodology he could encompass all of metaphysics in one philosophical system. This is obviously an over simplification of process thought, but hopefully will be sufficient to unfold it as illustrative of Buber’s criticism.

The Eclipse of God

What the Jewish scholar and mystic Martin Buber called the “eclipse of God” speaks to the way in which modern philosophy, theology, and psychology work to destroy the possibility for intimacy with an eternal, ever-present, Mystery, Thou, or God. This essay sees process philosophy as formulated by the mathematician/philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, and expounded by Charles Hartshorne, John Cobb, and other theologians as paradigmatic of Buber’s concern. Technically there is a distinction between process philosophy and process theology; however, the two are formally joined under the rubric of process thought. Understanding, much less critiquing, process thought is a rather daunting task. To begin with, in spite of its efforts to be coherent, it is not a highly linear or systematic philosophy or theology. It is rather a complex and inventive metaphysical “system” employing a number of interlocking arcane concepts. This paper, then, explores how the general orientation and core concepts of process thought are a template of the sort of philosophy Buber felt constituted an “eclipse of the light of heaven, an eclipse of the light of God.”2

Direction Determines Destination

Process philosophy has its origins in the mathematical mind; and, in this rationalistic orientation has remained constant. Alfred North Whitehead worked most of his life teaching mathematics, first as a professor at Trinity College, Cambridge (1884 to 1910), and then at The Imperial College of Science and Technology. In 1898 his A Treatise on Universal Algebra was published. In spite of the title, this book was more about the foundations of geometry than algebra. It attempted to draw together the divergent ideas of research mathematicians in a systematic form. Although this effort established Whitehead’s reputation as a scholar, it had little impact on mathematical research. Whitehead’s early work included two other books, Axioms of Projective Geometry (1906) and Axioms of Descriptive Geometry (1907).

Before the completion of these two Axioms books, Whitehead was at work on Principia Mathematica—a ten-year collaborative project with Bertrand Russell. The intention of Principia Mathematica was to work out a set of axioms and inference rules from which all mathematical truths could be proven. However, in 1931, Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem proved for any set of axioms and inference rules proposed to encapsulate mathematics, either the system must be inconsistent, or there must in fact be some truths of mathematics which could not be deduced from them.3 

2 Ibid.

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Understandably, during the carnage of WW I Whitehead’s writing began to take a more philosophical turn—his papers on relational space, while anchored in geometric thought, are explicitly philosophical. In 1919 his Enquiry into the Principles of Natural Knowledge appeared, then in 1920 his The Concept of Nature. In 1925, facing mandatory retirement at The Imperial College of Science and Technology, Whitehead accepted a position teaching philosophy at Harvard University. A year after arriving at Harvard, he delivered the prestigious Lowell Lectures. These lectures formed the basis for his book Science and the Modern World (1925). Following the Lowell Lectures, he presented the 1927/28 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh resulting in his Process and Reality (1929).4 Later, Hartshorne, Cobb, and Griffin sought to “theologize” Process and Reality; however, Whitehead’s metaphysical system is determinative for the legitimacy of all process thought. It began and it ends, as a highly academic and esoteric enterprise. Decoding the terminology of Whitehead’s metaphysics is a major challenge. Whitehead not only used common and philosophical language in idiosyncratic ways, but also invented a series of neologisms, including: appetition, concresence, conformal, formaliter, ingression,  prehension, regnant society, and superject. While Whitehead aspired to a literal general description of reality, his obtuse style has proven frustrating for both trained philosophers, and inexperienced graduate students; and, is seen as somewhat useless by more literally minded scientists.5

And so, we are left with Pascal’s passionate declaration: “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob—not of the philosophers and scholars.” This saying, as Buber notes, represents Pascal’s, metanoia, his repentance, the turning of his consciousness from the God of the philosophers to the God Abraham and Sarah know and trust—to that sort of intimacy with which a couple may know one another when their making love is truly love making.6

Process philosophy was spawned in the sea of mathematical reason and nurtured to adulthood in the swirling speculations of academic philosophy. Indeed, the nineteenth century’s misplaced confidence in the power of science and reason was the very matrix for process philosophy. And whatever its original “spiritual intentions,” process thought has continued to follow the highly rationalistic and naturalistic trajectory plotted at its beginning. However, it is not the intention, but the direction in which one proceeds that determines final destination. If the goal, the intention, is to explore the North Pole, then traveling east along the Prime Meridian will not lead to the desired destination. If one’s desire is to experience the beatific vision, the path of esoteric intellectual concepts, will, in the end, either stop short of that destination, or miss it entirely.

3 Whitehead proposed his own theory of general relativity. Although later corrected it continued to generate problems in application.

4 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, ed. by David Ray Griffith and Donald Sherburne, Corrected edition (New York: Free press, 1978).

5 William Grassie, “Resources and Problems in Whitehead’s Metaphysics,” April 9, 2011. Metnexus.net/essay/resources-and-problems-whiteheads-metaphysics (accessed April 17, 2019).

6 Buber, Eclipse, 49. 

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Knowledge of the Second Kind

C. Robert Mesle in Process Theology and John B. Cobb, Jr. in Jesus’ Abba, both attempt to present a more unobscured and Christian friendly version of process thought. Yet, such portrayals by process theologians are, more than anything else, like ghostly images of Christianity— they are like wispy resemblances of someone who was once greatly loved but is now only vaguely recalled.7 Mesle asserts: “Even if the God of process theism should turn out not to exist, or even if there is no divine being at all, even if we find it more helpful to think of the entire venture as the creation of myths and models, I am convinced that process theology deserves our most serious attention. The ethical model that process thought shows us can transform our whole way of thinking about religion, life and values.8

A problem with Mesle’s argument, is that the ethical and moral values he endorses are derived from Judeo-Christian Scripture. More than that, historic and ecumenical Christianity believes that these values grow, so to speak, organically out of, and express the very nature, of Divine Reality. The question then becomes: If severed from their roots can these values of love, compassion and justice continue to flourish, or will they wilt and wither like cut flowers in a vase? Mesle strangely asserts that even if there is no God, or if what we thought were eternal verities and universal spiritual principles turn out merely to be helpful “models,” process thought still has the power to transform our thinking, life and values. In the end this is akin to a baker of apple pies saying: “Even if all the recipe books are wrong, or it turns out there are no apples or apple trees, my apple pie will still be delicious.”

As the Jesuit, priest, scholar and mystic, William Johnston noted, there are two kinds of knowledge. The first is the sort of discursive reasoning common to the academic enterprise. We cannot, of course, entirely escape using this sort of conceptual thinking, however, there is a supra conceptual, mystical, knowledge, a knowledge “of ” rather than “about” God, which fills one who is emptied of images and concepts—a loving light that penetrates the shadow of the eclipse.9 It is this knowledge of the second kind that process theology tends to obscure.

Equation of Suffering

The horrors of World War I were for Whitehead and his wife Evelyn immediate and personal. Their youngest son, Eric Alfred, was killed in action with the Royal Flying Corps in 1918. Whitehead was driven by his personal pain to seek a

7 C. Robert Mesle, Process Theology: A Basic Introduction (St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice, 1993); John Cobb, Jr. Jesus’ Abba: The God Who Has Not Failed (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1963).

8 Mesle, Process Theology, 8.

9 William Johnston, The Mysticism of the Cloud of Unknowing (Wheathampstead, Hertfordshire and Trabuco Canyonf, California: Source Books, 1992) 89-93.

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resolution of the equation of human suffering and evil. His answer,  more intellectual than spiritual, was that suffering exists because God is powerless to prevent it. This has continued as a foundational axiom for process theologians who are fond of the old cliche like syllogism:

  1. A god that is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-loving would prevent evil and suffering.
  2. Evil and suffering happen.
  3. Since evil and suffering happen, an all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving god cannot exist.

Process thought seeks to resolve the dilemma by accepting that God is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. It is not, however, willing to relinquish the notion that God is good. The syllogism is, within itself, a somewhat obscurantist statement. That is to say, the premise obscures in that it asserts more than is or can be known.

One Who Proves Too Much

It is curious that Whitehead failed to grasp the implications of Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem for his own metaphysical work, for just as surely as it ended the quest of Principia Mathematica, so it spells the impossibility of encapsulating all of metaphysics into one philosophical system.10 Qui nimium probat nihil probat.

What if process thought has it wrong? What if God is all-powerful and all-knowing, but indifferent? What if Stephen Crane’s poem is true?

A man said to the universe:

“Sir, I exist!”

“However,” replied the universe,

“The fact has not created in me

A sense of obligation.”

Or, perhaps God is pitiless. It is not unusual for psychotherapists to encounter people who believe that an all-powerful and all-knowing God exists, but that God, far from being good and kind, is heartless. They are no more likely to worship an impotent God of process theology than a loveless one.

All the great Christian philosophers, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Anselm, and St. Thomas Aquinas, to name three of the classicists, have wrestled with the philosophical problem of God’s impassibility—the logical dilemma of how to make sense of God as both compassionate and unchanging. Hartshorne resolved the problem by arguing, in agreement with Whitehead, that God is not “impassable.” While the world is affected by God, God is also affected by the world. As William Wainwright therefore correctly notes, “The controversy of God’s impassibility is, rooted in a clash of value intuitions, a deep disagreement over what properties God must have to be unqualifiedly admirable and worthy of worship.”11 For the Christian contemplative such questions are fascinating brain

10 Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem cannot be used to prove the existence of God, but does demonstrate any system of logic or numbers always rests on unprovable assumptions; and can never establish a “unifying theory” of metaphysics.

11 William Wainwright, “Concepts of God,” Dec 21, 2006; revised Dec 19, 2012. Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. plato.standford.edu. (accessed April 16, 2019).

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teasers, but in the end, to paraphrase Thomas a Kempis, onemust choose whether it is best to discuss theories of impassibility learnedly, or to experience the faithfulness of God. Process thought seeks to explain everything, but changes nothing; whereas, biblical and spiritual theology explains little, but changes everything.

There are, of course, multiple philosophical possibilities in accounting for the problem of suffering: (1) there is no God, (2) God is ineffectual, (3) God is cruel, (4) or the solution is less philosophical, and more spiritual. C. S. Lewis, echoing both Psalms 73 and The Book of Job, wrote in Till We Have Faces, “I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer. You are yourself the answer. Before your face the questions die away. What other answer would suffice?”12 However, with its highly academic orientation, it is precisely this last answer that is no longer visible in process thought.

Freedom

Coupled with the primacy of suffering in process thought is the theme of freedom. God is not all powerful, and knows only what is, including the potentialities of the present, and not what will be; consequently, God, who is enmeshed in temporality,13 can actualize potentiality but has no “coercive” power.14 God can invite, persuade, and entice but cannot make things happen.15 “God,” says Mesle, “is the unique Subject, whose love is the foundation of all reality.”16 But Mesle leaves process theology open to the same problems he posits in his caricatures of Judeo-Christian tradition.17 To say to someone: “God feels really terrible that you have been brutally raped, that your three-year-old has been run over by a drunken driver, that you have terminal cancer, that there is yet another famine, lethal epidemic, or genocide in the world, but unfortunately, while God feels your pain, God is impotent and cannot help,” is not particularly consoling. Process thought seems especially vulnerable to Nietzsche’s harsh accusation: “Only a God who is imperfect, or something of a sadist could delight in (actualize) a world of such immense misery, violence, pain and suffering.”18 Process philosophy, as we have seen, agrees with Nietzsche. God is imperfect in that God’s knowledge and power are both limited.

The question, however, is not even whether God is all-powerful, but does God’s power make any difference at all? Couldn’t God use a little more influence in raising up wise, competent, and compassionate world leaders rather than so many malevolent

12 C. S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces (San Diego: Harcourt, Inc., 1984), 308.

13 What is time? Scientifically is it “imaginary;” or an illusion? Is it, as with Tillich, the power of embracing all time periods? Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume I: Reason and Revelation, Being and God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951), 274.

14 Langdon Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1959), 97.

15 The word “coerce” is a curious framing. To be warned that certain behaviors are self-destructive is hardly synonymous with being forced to do something against one’s will. Apparently, “We are free to choose, but we are not free to choose the result of our choosing.” See: E. Stanley Jones, The Way (Nashville: Abingdon, 1946), 3.

16 Mesle, Process Theology, 8.

17 Mesle, for example, uses “tradition” in multiple and confusing ways which frequently result in a caricature of Christian faith.

18 Frederick Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883), trans. R.J. Hollingdale (New York: Penguin Books, 1969), 58.

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sociopaths? Couldn’t a god who actualized quantum physics, do more persuading  or revealing, or whatever, to produce some exponential breakthroughs in fighting cancer, hunger, or birth defects? Process theology not only answers “no,” but explicitly states there is no certainty that good will ultimately overcome evil.

It is not that process philosophy blocks out all light, any more than a solar eclipse blots out the entire sun. The movie O’ God, starring George Burns, is perhaps as simple and as appealing a presentation of process theology that a lay person can find—an entirely affable, but ineffectual god who wants us to do better than we are doing when it comes to treating each other with greater kindness and showing more concern for the environment. Indeed, process thought appears to be a product of modern Western culture in that it seeks a way of finding solace in a world mad with fear and suffering, but in a way that guarantees individual autonomy without accountability or personal spiritual transformation, the sort of willingness that is the essence of all spiritual progress. This then is the eclipse of which Buber wrote—the sheer “willfulness” of philosophy and theology.

Cognitive Cloud

Whitehead himself was an agnostic and it is not easy to grasp what he meant by “God.”19 Many, perhaps most, process philosophers speculate that God is an actual entity, although there is disagreement as to whether God is a series of momentary actual occasions, or a single everlasting and constantly developing actual entity. God is a kind of storehouse of both “envisaged potentialities” and of every “puff ” of experience at every level. God as a kind of storage mechanism for knowledge, might remind one of that illustration from quantum physics which says in explaining black holes, that if one’s wallet fell into a black hole the wallet would be lost, but the wallet and all it contained would remain as a kind of smear of mathematical information on the edge of the black hole. On the other hand, more than a few process philosophers maintain God is not a necessary element of the process metaphysical system, and may be deleted without diminishment to the model.

Donald Sherburne maintained in his 1971 article, “Whitehead without God,” that a non-theistic or “naturalistic” version of process philosophy is more useful and coherent. Whitehead believed, noted Sherburne, that God is metaphysically necessary because God (a) preserves the past; (b) is the ontological ground, or “somewhere” of the eternal objects; and (c) is the source of order, novelty, and limitation in worldly occasions. But, said Sherburne, these roles for God are inconsistent with the metaphysical principles of Whitehead’s system and are superfluous.20  

19 As a metaphysical system process thought “denies that ultimately only one individual (God or the Absolute) exists.” Delwin Brown, Ralph E. James, Jr., and Gene Reeves, Process Philosophy and Christian Thought (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1971), 3.

20 Donald Sherburne, “Whitehead Without God.” Revised from The Christian Scholar, L, 3. (Fall 1967). anthonyflood. com/sherburnewhiteheadwithoutgod.htm (accessed April 16, 2019).

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Whitehead argued that ultimate reality is best described in terms of the principle of creativity. Creativity is the universal of universals, and is sometimes compared to Aristotle’s “being qua being,” or Heidegger’s “Being itself”—that is “Becoming itself.” All actual entities, even God, are in a sense “creatures” of creativity. Zeus was subject to the principle of destiny—the thread measured and cut by the three Fates, so one may ask: “Is God subject to Creativity?” And, this raises the next obvious question: “Is God, God?” Or, “Is the principle of Creativity God?” Or, “Is the Process itself God?”21

As noted, process thought uses a good deal of ink in denying God is omnipotent. Both John A. T. Robinson and Paul Tillich disliked all talk of God’s omnipotence. They thought such talk tended to make an object of God. So, whether omnipotence is affirmed or denied God is objectified either way. And, quite soon it is no longer God being discussed. Once a symbol, or a concept, is taken for the thing itself objectification has taken place—God as God has been eclipsed.22

Nearly all academic philosophy and theology done in the mode of modern scientism and materialism becomes stuck in the ditch of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness— Whitehead’s term for treating an abstraction as a concrete reality. The organization of knowledge, as Herman Daly and John Cobb note, requires a high degree of abstraction;23 consequently, the more successful and established an academic discipline in its development, and the more its practitioners are socialized to think in these abstractions, the more elaborate the abstractions themselves become. In time conclusions are confidently applied to the real world without realizing the degree of abstraction involved. This treatment of abstractions as if they were concrete and possessed functions they cannot have leads to both scientific and metaphysical confusion.24 As soon as we speak philosophically of the omniscience, omnipresence, or omnipotence of God, or employ and proceed to elaborate upon any of the concepts of process thought, we have smudged the lens through which we hope to glimpse the divine mystery.25

Conclusion

What has been posited in this paper is not that one may not be both a process theologian and Christian, but that process philosophy easily leads to that objectification and fallacy of misplaced concreteness Buber believed constituted an eclipse

21 If God’s acts are conditioned by some principle, such as creativity, God is inescapably governed by the structure of being of which God is then a part and an illustration—like Whitehead’s God “in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground.” God is then not free. See: Gilkey, Maker of Heaven and Earth, 97.

22 Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Vol. 1, 273.

23 Herman Dally and John Cobb, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 25, 122.

24 Larry Hart, The Annunciation: A New Evangelization and Apologetic for Mainline Protestants and Progressive Catholics in Postmodern North America (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2017), 188-189.

25 Similarly, process theology speaks of models of ultimate realities, which not only reduces God to a concept (model), but leaves one wondering how many realities can be ultimate before none are ultimate; that is, before one is no longer speaking of “Ultimate Reality” at all. For example, see: Jeannie Diller and Asa Kasher, ed. Introduction to Models of God and Alternative Realities (New Springer Press, 2013).

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of God. The Quaker philosopher Elton Trueblood wrote, “Once large sections of the clergy were the standard examples of obscurantism, but today their places have been taken by the academic philosophers.”26 Charles Chestnut furnishes an appropriate conclusion:

Moses asked God what his name was, because he wanted a logical and rational theory about God. What God told him instead was simply, ‘I am what I am.’ What will save us is not a theory about God, but meeting God and recognizing that he-whom, we-confront “right in front of us” (so to speak) is the one we call God. Or, in other words, learning what the word God means, refers to learning how to recognize those events and circumstances where we can see and feel and hear God immediately present and acting in our lives.27

When we grasp, with both heart and mind, what Chestnut is saying, the eclipse is over, and philosophy no longer blots out the beatific vision.

26 Elton Trueblood, A Place to Stand (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), 31.

27 Glenn F. Chestnut, God and Spirituality: Philosophical Essays (New York: iUniverse, 2010), 313.

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Bibliography

Brown, Delwin, Ralph E. James Jr., and Gene Reeves. Process Philosophy and Christian thought Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1971.

Buber, Martin. Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 1996.

Chestnut, Glenn F. God and Spirituality: Philosophical Essays. New York and Bloomington: iUniverse, 2010.

Dally, Herman and John Cobb. For the Common God: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment and a Sustainable Future, 2nd ed. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994.

Diller, Jeannie and Ada Kasher, eds. Models of God and Alternative Realities. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, New York, London: Springer Press, 2013.

Gilkey, Langdon. Maker of Heaven and Earth. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1959.

Grassie, William. “Resources and Problems in Whitehead’s Metaphysics.” April 9, 2011. Metanexus. net/essay/resources and problems-whitehead’s-metaphysics (accessed April 16, 2019).

Hart, Larry. The Annunciation: A New Evangelization and Apologetic for Mainline Protestants and Progressive Catholics in Postmodern North America. Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2017.

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Jones, E. Stanley. The Way. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1946.

Lewis, C. S. Till We Have Faces. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt, Inc., 1984.

Mesle, C. Robert. Process Theology: A Basic Introduction. St. Louis, Missouri: Chalice Press, 1993.

Nietzsche, Frederick. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883). Translated by R. J. Hollingdale. New York: Penguin Books, 1969.

Sherburne, Donald W. “Whitehead Without God.” Revised from The Christian Scholar, L, 3 (Fall 1967). anthonyflood.com/sherburnewhiteheadwithoutgod.htm (accessed April 16, 2019).

Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology, Volume I: Reason and Revelation, Being and God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951.

Trueblood, D. Elton. A Place to Stand. New York: Harper & Row, 1969.

Wainwright, William. “Concepts of God.” December 21, 2006. Revised December 19, 2012. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. plato.standford.edu. (accessed April 16, 2019).

Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology. Edited by David Ray Griffith and Donald W. Sherburne, New York: Free Press, Corrected ed,1978.

 

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