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Panentheism in Hartshorne and Tillich Panentheism in Hartshorne and Tillich by David H. Nikkel [Dr. Nikkel’s book, which began as his dissertation, was later published, with some modifications, by Peter Lang Publishing in 1995, ISBN 0- 8204-1678-9.] ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I greatly appreciate the many hours of work by the secretarial staff of the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Youngstown State University, especially Anna Ficocelli. Quotations from the following works are reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago: Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vols. I & III, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951 & 1963. All rights reserved. PREFACE This work began as my 1981 Ph.D. dissertation at Duke University. I have made modifications to reflect changes in my thinking over the years, to improve felicity of wording, and to be gender neutral in language for God. The general climate in theology and religious studies is more skeptical regarding claims about ultimate reality than when I first wrote this thesis. Nevertheless, my developing a concept of panentheism is based on the convictions that belief in an ultimate reality that is the source of the universe is reasonable and that, given that basic belief, understandings of the nature of ultimate reality can be more or less plausible, more or less coherent. My hope is that I have offered a plausible and coherent vision of the nature of God. David H. Nikkel Youngstown, Ohio June, 1992 TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS....................................i PREFACE............................................ii Chapter I. INTRODUCTION..................................1 Panentheism Defined The Nature of Theological Language According to Hartshorne and Tillich II. TILLICH AS PANENTHEIST.......................41 "God Is Not a Being" Other Panentheistic Formulations III. HARTSHORNE AS PANENTHEIST...................115 IV.CRITICISM OF HARTSHORNE ON THE ACTIVE ASPECT......................................157 Undermining God as All Power Undermining the Divine Governance Other Undermining of the Divine Majesty V.CRITICISM OF TILLICH ON THE PASSIVE ASPECT......................................201 Divine Temporality?: Open or Closed? Divine Impassibility and Creaturely Freedom and Suffering VI. CONCLUSION..................................277 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY.............................305 INDEX.............................................313 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION As my title suggests, I believe both Charles Hartshorne and Paul Tillich can, on the whole, rightly be labelled panentheists. As far as Hartshorne is concerned, the above statement is not surprising or controversial. He has used the term "panentheism" (as well as "surrelativism," "superrelativism," and "neo- classical theism") to describe his doctrine of God. And to my knowledge, no one has disputed the appropriateness of the term in that connection. Tillich on the other hand has rarely used the term and only once directly in connection with his own thinking.i Though he then favorably applied the term to his understanding of God, hardly anyone has explicitly acknowledged the strong panentheistic flavor of Tillich's theology, except James F. Anderson and Jacob Faubes,ii and to some extent Hartshorne himself in noting aspects of Tillich's thought akin to his own.iii And even less so has anyone argued for or developed the idea of Tillich as panentheist--by taking central concepts, phrases, and formulations such as "being-itself," "the ground of being," transcending "the subject-object cleavage," God as knowing God's self through the finite individuals, God as being nearer to the creatures than they are to themselves, and that God is not a being and by showing that Tillich has meant these panentheistically and that they are interrelated. Therefore, this aspect of my project is, I believe, original and significant for fully under- 4 Panentheism in Hartshorne and Tillich standing Tillich, as it will take an idea or ideas that are at the heart of his doctrine of God and unpack, clarify, and connect them. Panentheism Defined At this point it would be good to describe the concept of panentheism. I will be guided by the use of this term by previous thinkers, as well as by my own sense of the basic thrust of the concept. "Panentheism" literally means "all in God." (The word was coined by the early nineteenth-century German philosopher, Karl Christian Friedrich Krause.) It holds that the non-divine individuals are included in God, are fully within the divine life. God knows all that exists without externality, mediation, or loss (though God's knowledge and valuation are more than the creaturely experiences that are wholly included in the divine experience). God empowers all that exists without externality, mediation, or loss (though there is genuine indeterminacy and freedom of choice and action which God empowers in the creaturely realm). This is in contrast to traditional theism, which has tended to regard God as utterly distinct from the creation and the creatures. Deism is an extreme of this tendency. On the other hand, panentheism also distinguishes itself from pantheism (literally "all [is] God"). It holds that God is not reducible to the nondivine individuals, to the universe as a whole, or to the structure of the universe; but rather God Introduction 3 transcends them, having a reality--an awareness and a power--that includes but is not exhausted by the reality of the creation and the experiences and actions of the creatures. A distinction between a "passive" and an "active" aspect of God as panentheistically understood figures crucially in the structure and purposes of this work. As presaged in the preceding paragraph, the passive aspect refers to divine knowledge, while the active aspect refers to divine power. By using the term "passive," I am implying that by knowing what occurs, God is in some sense qualified or affected by it. The extent to which God is active and controls what happens in the universe is not prejudiced by this formal definition per se. Even for the traditional theist who believes that God totally controls our actions, that divine knowing and acting are utterly one, we could say that God's decisions affect or qualify the divine self and that the "passive" and the "active" aspects merge. However, in that case, practically speaking, the distinction would not be useful. Thus, only when, as in panentheism, it is accepted that the creatures have some indeterminacy with respect to action and that God is aware of their actions is the distinction likely to be significant.iv Hartshorne has written extensively about the cognitive aspect of the divine inclusion of creation, my "passive" aspect. Indeed, he often equates divine inclusion with God's direct and complete knowing or 4 Panentheism in Hartshorne and Tillich perceiving. In contrast to the creatures, who exclude much of the fullness of the experiences of others, for whom these are, relatively speaking, indirect and external, God experiences or feels precisely what we experience and feel as we experience or feel (though as above God will also have knowledge, feelings, and valuations in relation to a situation in addition to those of the individuals perfectly included). So unqualifiedly to say that God and the creatures are distinct beings is misleading, since our experiences are at the same time (without mediation though with addition) experiences of God. As panentheistically active, God coinheringly empowers all that exists--without externality, mediation or loss. The active aspect then refers to God's being the very power of being in all that is, the very power of acting in every action--but in the radical sense that whatever power we have is God's power and whatever action we take is in a (qualified) sense God's act, in that in panentheism there is no power that can be unequivocally distinguished from or contrasted to God's power, no power (just as no knowing or feeling) that is external to God as the ultimate power (and knower). There is no separation or mediation with regard to God's power as well as with regard to God's knowledge. Here again it should be remembered that God transcends as well as includes, so that divine power is more than God's power in the form of or in the manifestations that are the creaturely lives per se. Introduction 5 The preceding formal definition of the active aspect is not meant to preclude God's granting to those whom God immediately empowers the power to freely determine the divine experience to some extent. Indeed, that is the sense in which every action's being an action of God must be qualified. For, as has been said before, panentheism upholds the mutual transcendence of God and the creatures with respect to freedom. God does not make our decisions for us, so far as those are indeterminate. That panentheistic empowerment is compatible with some indeterminate creaturely freedom will be argued in chapter 6. One could say that, insofar as there is indeterminacy in creaturely actions, the creatures are in that sense "external" to God. One could also speak of a further "separation" to the extent they willfully act contrary to the divine will. This latter separation is akin to more or less involuntary unawareness of God, in that these both are estrangements from the side of the creatures and do not involve separation by God as ultimate power and knower beyond the independence involved in creaturely freedom per se. But such freedom need not I believe controvert that the creatures are not "external" to or "separated" from God in the sense that I have intended and will intend when I speak thusly: namely, that God encompasses them, knowing perfectly and fully empowering whatever actions the creatures may take in their freedom. In passing I will note that when I say "being," 6 Panentheism in Hartshorne and Tillich as in "God is the very power of being in all that has being," I am not using it in contrast to "becoming." I have no objection to "God is the very power of becoming in all that becomes." For I endorse temporality with regard to both the world and God.
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