Seeking a Deeper Ground
God and the Godhead in Whitehead's Philosophy
Abstract: In lived religious experience two dimensions of the universe—Creativity as groundless ground and God as beckoning Love—are often intertwined, like two faces of a single mystery: one silent and without character yet generative; the other tender, invitational, and morally animating. Whether this dual vision ultimately satisfies the longing for a deeper ground will differ from person to person. But Whitehead's philosophy offers a way of honoring both sides of the intuition: the sheer, unformed generativity at the base of all becoming, which Whitehead calls Creativity, and the felt presence of a guiding, empathic Love that moves through the world and through us. With Whitehead's help we can affirm both sides of life: the Godhead understood as a groundless ground which is beyond good and evil, and the personal God who loves the world with a tender are that nothing be lost.
Seekers of a Deeper Ground
Some who are drawn to Whitehead’s process philosophy nevertheless sense a missing piece. They appreciate its celebration of relationality, its emphasis on becoming, its recognition of the intrinsic value of all life, and its hope for a more humane society. All of this is refreshing and affirmable. Still, for the people of whom I am speaking, Whitehead’s philosophy feels incomplete. I am going to call them “the seekers of a deeper ground.”
What seems absent for these seekers is sensitivity to a generative origin—a pure consciousness or pure energy—from which all things arise and of which all things are expressions: a kind of spiritual “prime matter.”
When they voice this concern to others in the “Whiteheadian” community, the counter-arguments fall into two camps. The theistically inclined say that Whitehead does provide a ground—God, the source of initial aims, without whose activity nothing could come into existence. Others respond that Whitehead explicitly denies any metaphysical ground, at least if understood as a “substance,” and that this denial is precisely what makes his philosophy distinctive and even somewhat Buddhist in spirit. The first group sees God as the ground; the second sees the absence of a ground as a virtue.
For the seekers of a deeper ground, neither position resolves the issue. What they long for is a sense of an deeper source—not God as an agent or person, and not simply the groundless web of interconnected actualities. They seek something prior even to the becoming of actual entities: a depth from which becoming itself unfolds.
To articulate what they mean, they appeal to intuitions that appear across cultures and eras and that carry intimations of this emanative depth:
In comparison with these traditions, Whitehead’s philosophy seems to begin too late. It starts with actual entities (momentary drops of energy and experience) but lacks the felt sense of an origin deeper even than becoming—a creative abyss, a non-numerical One, an Urgrund, from which becoming itself arises.
And yet this not really the whole story, at least for Whitehead. In truth, Whitehead does offer an idea which, as interpreted below, may speak to the deeper need. It is his idea of creativity as the metaphysical ultimate: a groundless ground of pure activity, of which all events and entities are expressions, itself a formless prime matter which, while not an agent with preferences. is at the base of all actuality, including even the divine actuality. This urgrund - primal ground - is not an entity among entities, but instead actualized through the self-creativity of each and every actual entities, whatever decision it makes, and through the transition from present entities to successor entities, and from past entities to present entities. It is the deep within the deep.
Creativity as the Metaphysical Ultimate
There are three passage in Process and Reality that speak to this groundless ground.
Some who are drawn to Whitehead’s process philosophy nevertheless sense a missing piece. They appreciate its celebration of relationality, its emphasis on becoming, its recognition of the intrinsic value of all life, and its hope for a more humane society. All of this is refreshing and affirmable. Still, for the people of whom I am speaking, Whitehead’s philosophy feels incomplete. I am going to call them “the seekers of a deeper ground.”
What seems absent for these seekers is sensitivity to a generative origin—a pure consciousness or pure energy—from which all things arise and of which all things are expressions: a kind of spiritual “prime matter.”
When they voice this concern to others in the “Whiteheadian” community, the counter-arguments fall into two camps. The theistically inclined say that Whitehead does provide a ground—God, the source of initial aims, without whose activity nothing could come into existence. Others respond that Whitehead explicitly denies any metaphysical ground, at least if understood as a “substance,” and that this denial is precisely what makes his philosophy distinctive and even somewhat Buddhist in spirit. The first group sees God as the ground; the second sees the absence of a ground as a virtue.
For the seekers of a deeper ground, neither position resolves the issue. What they long for is a sense of an deeper source—not God as an agent or person, and not simply the groundless web of interconnected actualities. They seek something prior even to the becoming of actual entities: a depth from which becoming itself unfolds.
To articulate what they mean, they appeal to intuitions that appear across cultures and eras and that carry intimations of this emanative depth:
- Advaita Vedānta: Brahman without qualities
- Daoism: the Nameless giving rise to the ten thousand things
- Neoplatonism: the overflowing One
- Spinoza: the single substance of which modes are expressions
- Sufi thought: the Ocean of Being manifesting as waves
- Mystical Christianity: the Ground of Being (Eckhart, Tillich)
In comparison with these traditions, Whitehead’s philosophy seems to begin too late. It starts with actual entities (momentary drops of energy and experience) but lacks the felt sense of an origin deeper even than becoming—a creative abyss, a non-numerical One, an Urgrund, from which becoming itself arises.
And yet this not really the whole story, at least for Whitehead. In truth, Whitehead does offer an idea which, as interpreted below, may speak to the deeper need. It is his idea of creativity as the metaphysical ultimate: a groundless ground of pure activity, of which all events and entities are expressions, itself a formless prime matter which, while not an agent with preferences. is at the base of all actuality, including even the divine actuality. This urgrund - primal ground - is not an entity among entities, but instead actualized through the self-creativity of each and every actual entities, whatever decision it makes, and through the transition from present entities to successor entities, and from past entities to present entities. It is the deep within the deep.
Creativity as the Metaphysical Ultimate
There are three passage in Process and Reality that speak to this groundless ground.
"In all philosophic theory there is an ultimate which is actual in virtue of its accidents. It is only then capable of characterization through its accidental embodiments, and apart from these accidents is devoid of actuality. In the philosophy of organism this ultimate is termed ‘creativity’, and God is its primordial, non-temporal accident.* In monistic philosophies, Spinoza’s or absolute idealism, this ultimate is God, who is also equivalently termed ‘The Absolute.’ In such monistic schemes, the ultimate is illegitimately allowed a final, ‘eminent’ reality, beyond that ascribed to any of its accidents. In this general position the philosophy of organism seems to approximate more to some strains of Indian, or Chinese, thought, than to western Asiatic, or European, thought. One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate." (Process and Reality, p. 7)
Creativity as Prime Matter and Pure Activity
The second is where Whitehead compares creativity to prime matter.
‘Creativity’ is another rendering of the Aristotelian ‘matter,’ and of the modern ‘neutral stuff.’ But it is divested of the notion of passive receptivity, either of ‘form,’ or of external relations; it is the pure notion of the activity conditioned by the objective immortality of the actual world— a world which is never the same twice, though always with the stable element of divine ordering. Creativity is without a character of its own in exactly the same sense in which the Aristotelian ‘matter’ is without a character of its own. It is that ultimate notion of the highest generality at* the base of actuality. It cannot be characterized, because all characters are more special than itself. (Process and Reality, p. 31)
Creativity as Ground of God and the World
And a third is where Whitehead speaks of God and the World as being in the grip of Creativity.
God and the World stand to each other in this opposed requirement. God is the infinite ground of all mentality, the unity of vision seeking physical multiplicity. The World is the multiplicity of finites, actualities seeking a perfected unity. Neither God, nor the World, reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty. Either of them, God and the World, is the instrument of novelty for the other. (Process and Reality, p. 349)
My suggestion, then, is that these three passages do encourage readers to imagine a primal ground beneath both God and the world—a ground in whose grip, as Whitehead says, both stand, even as they function as instruments for one another.
God and Creativity
This metaphysical ground is not God. God is, rather, its “primordial accident,” meaning that God is the original form or embodiment that creativity takes, even as creativity itself lies beyond all form or character. “Creativity is without a character of its own in exactly the same sense in which the Aristotelian ‘matter’ is without a character of its own.” As pure activity, creativity is not “this” or “that,” not “good” or “evil.” It is not a creator; it has no preferences; it makes no decisions. Whitehead insists that creativity is not a substance of any sort. It is an ultimate that is actual only through its accidents or expressions. It is always embodied, always enacted. He adds that monistic philosophies “illegitimately” ascribe to creativity an eminent, self-grounding reality—naming it the Absolute. For Whitehead, this is a metaphysical error, a reversion to the substance metaphysics he seeks to overcome.
At the same time, Whitehead suggests that God functions as a ground as well—“the infinite ground of all mentality…seeking physical multiplicity.” God’s lure within creation is this seeking on God’s part, and God’s tender receptivity to the world is God’s way of finding and enjoying “physical multiplicity.” Thus, the norms we feel in the depths of our lives—the call to goodness, truth, and beauty; the impulse to seek fulfillment for ourselves and others; the desire to share in the destinies of our companions in existence—derive from God, not from Creativity. Creativity is the metaphysical ground of reality, and God is the axiological ground.
This metaphysical ground is more than a potential. Some might be tempted to describe Creativity as a kind of field of potentiality, analogous to Whitehead’s realm of eternal objects. But this interpretation misses Whitehead’s central intuition. Creativity is not a potentiality among potentialities. It is, rather, the pure activity by which potentialities become actual. In its expression as the self-creativity of each actuality, Creativity is the act of actualizing potentialities. Potentialities do not actualize themselves; they must be actualized. Creativity is the ultimate at the base of this act of actualization—never a reservoir of potentials, but the sheer energizing of becoming itself.
Recall the earlier-mentioned traditions—Advaita Vedānta with its Brahman without qualities; Daoism with its Nameless that gives rise to the ten thousand things; Neoplatonism with its overflowing One; Spinoza with his single substance of which all modes are expressions; Sufi mysticism with its Ocean of Being manifesting as waves; and Christian mysticism in thinkers like Eckhart and Tillich with their Ground of Being. Advocates of these traditions often speak in ways that combine the generativity of the ground with goodness, luminosity, or fullness. They fuse metaphysical depth with axiological richness.
When these traditions are read through a Whiteheadian lens, it can therefore seem as if Creativity itself carries a normative force, as if it is implicitly “good,” “wise,” or “loving.” But this, on Whitehead’s terms, would be a category mistake. The normative dimension belongs to God—the axiological ground—not to Creativity. And yet it is equally important to recognize that there is an aspect of Creativity that lies beyond God: a side of ultimate activity that is neither luminous nor loving, neither guiding nor valuing, but simply the sheer capacity for novelty and actualization. God expresses Creativity, yes, but God does not exhaust it, and is in the grip of it. Creativity includes God, but also exceeds God.
Does God exceed creativity? The question is strange, because God is creativity, but not the whole of it. It would seem equally strange to say that a human being, or a quantum event, or a cancer cell, or a butterfly exceeds creativity. They, too, are creativity, Creativity is, as Whitehead puts it, the 'prime matter' of all that is becoming, albeit best understood as pure activity.
The Groundless Ground and Beckoning Love
Is this enough to satisfy the seekers of a deeper ground? I do not know. For my part, I find it helpful to speak of Creativity as the Godhead—the formless, characterless ultimate—and to speak of God as the beckoning and receptive Love at the heart of the universe, the primordial form that Creativity takes. In this framing, God is not the ground of all being but the loving shape that the ground assumes in its primordial expression.
And it seems to me that, in most of the world’s wisdom traditions—including those mentioned above—the two are experienced together. The metaphysical depth and the axiological lure are felt as one inseparable reality: an inexhaustible source that is at once mysterious and compassionate, groundless and guiding, beyond all qualities yet encountered as love, wisdom, or luminosity. Whitehead separates these dimensions for the sake of metaphysical rigor and also—importantly—to make space for the self-creativity and freedom of creatures, who possess their own integrity and, in human life at least, their own capacities for love and for sin.
This is precisely the problem faced by those who want to say that everything that happens is the self-expression or manifestation of God. Such a claim would have to include rape, murder, cruelty, greed, exploitation, and the predatory violence found throughout the more-than-human world. It is hard—at least for me—to view all of this as “God godding.” But I can see it as an expression of a Creativity that is more than God, a Creativity with which God must work but which is not itself normative, luminous, or loving. God offers possibilities for healing and transformation within this Creativity, but does not control it.
Yet in lived religious experience these two dimensions—Creativity as groundless ground and God as beckoning Love—are often intertwined, like two faces of a single mystery: one silent and without character, the other tender, invitational, and morally weighty.
Whether this dual vision ultimately satisfies the longing for a deeper ground will differ from person to person. But it offers a way of honoring both sides of the intuition: the sheer, unformed generativity at the base of all becoming, and the felt presence of a guiding, empathic Love that moves through the world and through us.