Six Mistakes about God

by Charles Hartshorne
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Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000) was one of the most influential American philosophers and theologians of the twentieth century and a leading interpreter and developer of process philosophy in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead.

Hartshorne did sometimes use the phrase “process theology,” but he more often described his own position as “neoclassical theism” or “dipolar theism.” He embraced the term “process” because he believed reality itself is fundamentally made up of events, relationships, and ongoing becoming rather than static substances. For Hartshorne, God is not an unchanging, unmoved ruler standing outside the world, but a living, relational reality who participates in the unfolding process of the universe, feeling and responding to the experiences of creatures while also luring the world toward greater beauty, intensity, and harmony.

Over the course of his long career, he published more than twenty books and hundreds of articles on metaphysics, theology, religion, aesthetics, and bird song. (He was an ornithlogist as well as a philosopher, and argued persuasively that birds sing, among other reasons, because they enjoy singing.)

He is especially well known for developing “dipolar theism,” emphasizing a relational, dynamic God who feels the joys and sufferings of the world and whose power is persuasive rather than coercive. What follows is the first part of Chapter 1 of Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes by Charles Hartshorne. The chapter, titled “Six Common Mistakes about God,” offers a concise and provocative introduction to Hartshorne’s process-relational understanding of divine power, love, and reality. The remainder of the chapter, along with the entire book, can be found online at Religion Online.

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The Mistakes Briefly Presented

I introduce, with a minimum of criticism or argument, six ideas about God which have been held by a great number of learned and brilliant philosophers and theologians through many centuries and in many religious traditions, but which I and many others, including some distinguished modern theologians and philosophers, have found quite unacceptable. In other words, what we attack is an old tradition, but we attack it standing within a somewhat newer tradition. In this newer tradition there is a partial appeal (with reservations) to still a third tradition which is old indeed, expressed in various sacred writings, including the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. For it is our contention that the ''theological mistakes" in question give the word God a meaning which is not true to its import in sacred writings or in concrete religious piety. This result came about partly because theologians in medieval Europe and the Near East were somewhat learned in Greek philosophy and largely ignorant of any other philosophy. This happened in both Christianity and Islam, to a somewhat lesser extent in Judaism. In all three religions there was a development of mysticism, which was different still and in some ways partially corrective of the all-too-Greek form taken by the official theologies.

In section B, I develop at length my arguments against the six mistakes, which together form what I call classical theism (the one too strongly influenced by Greek philosophy as medieval scholars knew that philosophy) and in favor of what I sometimes call the new theism, sometimes process theology, sometimes neoclassical theism which is my version of a general point of view that has had a good many proponents in recent times.

First Mistake: God Is Absolutely Perfect and Therefore Unchangeable.

In Plato's Republic one finds the proposition: God, being perfect, cannot change (not for the better, since "perfect" means that there can be no better; not for the worse, since ability to change for the worse, to decay, degenerate, or become corrupt, is a weakness, an imperfection). The argument may seem cogent, but it is so only if two assumptions are valid: that it is possible to conceive of a meaning for "perfect" that excludes change in any and every respect and that we must conceive God as perfect in just this sense. Obviously the ordinary meanings of perfect do not entirely exclude change. Thus Wordsworth wrote of his wife that she was a ''perfect woman," but he certainly did not mean that she was totally unchangeable. In many places in the Bible human beings are spoken of as perfect; again the entire exclusion of change cannot have been intended. Where in the Bible God is spoken of as perfect, the indications are that even here the exclusion of change in any and every respect was not implied. And where God is directly spoken of as strictly unchanging ("without shadow of turning"), there is still a possibility of ambiguity. God might be absolutely unchangeable in righteousness (which is what the context indicates is the intended meaning), but changeable in ways compatible with, neutral to, or even required by, this unswerving constancy in righteousness. Thus, God would be in no degree, however slight, alterable in the respect in question (the divine steadfastness in good will) and yet alterable, not necessarily in spite of, but even because of, this steadfastness. If the creatures behave according to God's will, God will appreciate this behavior; if not, God will have a different response, equally appropriate and expressive of the divine goodness.

The Biblical writers were not discussing Greek philosophical issues, and it is at our own peril that we interpret them as if they were discussing these, just as it is at our peril if we take them to be discussing various modern issues that had not arisen in ancient Palestine. It may even turn out on inquiry that perfection, if taken to imply an absolute maximum of value in every conceivable respect, does not make sense or is contradictory. In that case the argument of the Republic is an argument from an absurdity and proves nothing. Logicians have found that abstract definitions may seem harmless and yet be contradictory when their meanings are spelled out. Example, "the class of all classes." Similarly, "actuality of all possible values," to which no addition is possible, may have contradictory implications. If perfection cannot consistently mean this value maximum, then the Platonic argument is unsound. Nor was it necessarily Plato's last word on the subject. (See Chapter 2B.)

Second Mistake: Omnipotence. God, being defined as perfect in all respects must, it seems, be perfect in power; therefore, whatever happens is divinely made to happen.

If I die of cancer this misfortune is God's doing. The question then becomes,, "Why has God done this to me?" Here everything depends on "perfect in power" or "omnipotent.'' And here, too, there are possible ambiguities, as we shall see.

Third Mistake: Omniscience. Since God is unchangeably perfect, whatever happens must be eternally known to God.

Our tomorrow's deeds, not yet decided upon by us, are yet always or eternally present to God, for whom there is no open future. Otherwise (the argument goes), God would be "ignorant," imperfect in knowledge, waiting to observe what we may do. Hence, whatever freedom of decision we may have must be somehow reconciled with the alleged truth that our decisions bring about no additions to the divine life. Here perfect and unchanging knowledge, free from ignorance or increase, are the key terms. It can be shown that they are all seriously lacking in clarity, and that the theological tradition resolved the ambiguities in a question-begging way.

It is interesting that the idea of an unchangeable omniscience covering every detail of the world's history is not to be found definitely stated in ancient Greek philosophy (unless in Stoicism, which denied human freedom) and is rejected by Aristotle. It is not clearly affirmed in the Bible. It is inconspicuous in the philosophies of India, China, and Japan. Like the idea of omnipotence, it is largely an invention of Western thought of the Dark or Middle Ages. It still goes unchallenged in much current religious thought. But many courageous and competent thinkers have rejected it, including Schelling and Whitehead.

Fourth Mistake: God's Unsympathetic Goodness. God's "love" for us does not, for classical theists, mean that God sympathizes with us, is rejoiced or made happy by our joy or good fortune or grieved by our sorrow or misery.

Rather God's love is like the sun's way of doing good, which benefits the myriad forms of life on earth but receives no benefits from the good it produces. Nor does the sun lose anything by its activity (we now know that this is bad astronomy). Or, God's beneficial activity is like that of an overflowing fountain that remains forever full no matter how much water comes from it, and without receiving any from outside. Thus it is not human love, even at its best, that was taken as the model for divine love but instead two inanimate phenomena of nature, fictitiously conceived at that. Bad physics and astronomy, rather than sound psychology, were the sources of the imagery.

In short, argument from an insufficiently analyzed notion of perfection and a preference for materialistic (and prescientific) rather than truly spiritual conceptions were for almost two thousand years dominant in Western theology.

Fifth Mistake: Immortality as a Career after Death.

If our existence has any importance for God, or if God loves us, He-She will notit was arguedallow death to turn us into mere corpses. Hence, many have concluded, a theist must believe that we survive death in some form, and that the myths of heaven and hell have some truth in them. Here the assumption is that a mere corpse on the one hand and on the other hand survival in a new mode of heavenly or hellish existence (in which our individual consciousnesses will have new experiences not enjoyed or suffered while on earth) are the only possibilities. There is, however, as we shall see, a third possibility, quite compatible with God's love for us.

It is notable that in most of the Old Testament, for instance in the sublime Book of Job, individual immortality is not even mentioned. To this day, religious Judaism is much more cautious about affirming, and it often denies, such immortality. In the New Testament Jesus says little that seems to bear on the subject, and according to at least one very distinguished theologian (Reinhold Niebuhr), even that little is not decisive in excluding the third possibility just mentioned.

Sixth Mistake: Revelation as Infallible.

The idea of revelation is the idea of special knowledge of God, or of religious truth, possessed by some people and transmitted by them to others. In some form or other the idea is reasonable. In all other matters people differ in their degree of skill or insight. Why not in religion? In the various sciences we acknowledge some people as experts and regard their opinions as of more value than those of the rest of us. The notion that in religion there are no individuals whose insight is any clearer, deeper, or more authentic than anyone else's is not particularly plausible. In all countries and in all historical times there have been individuals to whom multitudes have looked for guidance in religion. Buddha, Lao Tse, Confucius, Moses, Zoroaster, Shankara, Jesus, Muhammed, Joseph Smith, and Mary Baker Eddy were such individuals. New examples are to be found within the lives of many of us. Pure democracy or sheer equalitarianism in religious matters is not to be expected of our human nature. Some distinction between leaders or founders and followers or disciples seems to be our destiny. But there is a question of degree, or of qualification. To what extent, or under what conditions, are some individuals, or perhaps is some unique individual, worthy of trust in religious matters? It is in the answer to this question that mistakes can be made. Only a few years ago such a mistake sent hundreds to death, partly at their own hands, at Jonestown in British Guiana.

In religions that think of God as a conscious, purposive being, the idea of revelation can take a special form. Not simply that some are abler, wiser, than others in religion, as individuals may be in a science or in politics, but that divine wisdom has selected and so controlled a certain individual or set of individuals as to make them transmitters of the very wisdom of God to humanity. Since God is infallible (can make no mistakes), if no limitations are admitted to this conception of revelation, the distinction between fallible human beings and the infallible God tends to disappear. And so we find letters to newspaper editors in which the writer claims that his or her quotation from the Bible supporting some political position has the backing of "God almighty." Thus the essential principle of democracy, that none of us is divinely wise, that we all may make mistakes, is compromised.

One defense of claims to revelation is the reported occurrence of miracles. The fact, however, is that in every religion miracles are claimed. Hence the mere claim is not enough to establish the validity of the revelation. Buddha is reported to have spoken as a newborn infant. Was Shotoku Taishi, ruler-saint of seventh century Japan, shown to be of superordinary status by the fact that his death brought forth "rain from a cloudless sky"? Unless one believes (or disbelieves) all such accounts, how does one know where to stop?