Whitehead on the Goddess Atè

Finding God amid the Remorseless Working of Things
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Photo by Greg Johnson on Unsplash

​The function of God is analogous to the remorseless working of things in Greek and in Buddhist thought. The initial aim is the best for that impasse, but if the best be bad, then the ruthlessness of God can be personified as Ate, the goddess of mischief. The chaff is burnt. 

​- AN Whitehead, Process and Reality


​In Greek literature, Atè is the goddess of mischief, delusion, ruin, and blind folly. She lures mortals—and even gods—into actions that lead to destruction, downfall, and sorrow. Her presence is not gentle; it is unsettling, disruptive, purgative. She clears the stage by chaos. In Process and Reality, Whitehead suggests that, at times, God is akin to Atè. That is, we may encounter God not only as a source of comfort and order, but also within the disruptive and remorseless working of things. God is not always the healer who repairs; sometimes God is the fire that burns away the chaff. Below I offer an interpretation.

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All of us, as individuals and communities, experience what Whitehead calls “the remorseless working of things,” and sometimes they are quite painful: the loss of a loved one, the weight of illness, the sting of betrayal, the quiet ache of loneliness, the devastation of flood. These events are not softened by wishful thinking or theological platitudes. They simply are—concrete, actual, undeniable. Once they have happened, they cannot be reversed. We must find a way to live with them—sometimes in bitterness, sometimes in gentleness, often in both. We have no choice.

At some stage, the question arises: Where is God in all of this? One option—rejected by process theologians—is to imagine God as the sovereign controller of all things, the one who determines every detail, including the flood. Another—also rejected—is to picture God as wholly separate from what happens, a distant observer who watches or permits suffering for reasons unknown. But a third option, embraced by process philosophers and open and relational theologians, is to see God both within and beyond the unfolding events of the world—not as a coercive power, but as a gentle, indwelling lure toward order in the world, and also as a healing and flourishing, present throughout creation and sharing in its suffering.

And yet, if we adopt this view, we must also be honest: as the flood unleashes its torrents of destruction, God is not only present in the human heart striving to survive and help others, but also in the river itself—in the water’s relentless force and indifferent momentum. In such moments, the divine lure may be felt as a call to endure, to care, to rebuild, and to know that we are not alone in our pain. But it is also to recognize that God is present in the remorseless working of things—in the natural processes that unfold regardless of human desire or need.

God is not only comforter and companion, but at times, akin to Ate—the goddess of mischief—whose presence is felt within the very unfolding of painful events. In this, Whitehead invites us to a theology both sobering and spacious: a vision in which God does not stand apart from the world’s tragedy, but participates in it, even as God lures us—gently and persistently—toward whatever healing, beauty, and new possibility may still be found.

There are many ways to further imagine this side of God, all understandable. One is to speak of the remorseless working of things as fate; another, as karma. Both of these views—God as Fate or God as Karma—can help people survive and move on, as best they can.

Process philosophers offer a third option: imagining God as Ate. This is to say that we live in a universe that is not pre-programmed, not even by God, but that God is in the remorseless working of things as a non-controlling presence within the unfolding of events—and also in the possibilities for new life, for resurrection, that are “the best for the situation at hand.”

​This “best” may be far from ideal. It may not be deliverance from pain or restoration of what was lost. It may be the quiet courage to continue, the resolve to rebuild, the tenderness to care for another amid the wreckage. It may be the capacity to create meaning, to find beauty in sorrow, or simply to survive another day.

This is not a triumphant God who rescues from suffering, but a companioning God who dwells within it, offering the faint but persistent whisper of possibility. In this vision, the divine is both within the ache and beyond it—never coercing, always luring—inviting the world, moment by moment, into what healing it can yet become. No, God is not the cause of the remorseless working of things. But still—mysteriously, tenderly, persistently—God is within it.

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Whitehead mentions the goddess of mischief a second time in Process and Reality. In the second passage, he turns to his doctrine of “objective immortality”—the idea that every moment of experience is preserved in God’s consequent nature. He writes:

“Throughout the perishing occasions in the life of each temporal Creature, the inward source of distaste or of refreshment, the judge arising out of the very nature of things, redeemer or goddess of mischief, is the transformation of Itself, everlasting in the Being of God.”

In this context, Atè appears again—not as an external force but as a possible outcome of how a life is remembered in God. The same process that can redeem also judges; the same transformation that becomes a source of divine refreshment can also become a source of divine dissonance. God does not impose judgment from outside; it arises from the very character of what is preserved. The goddess of mischief thus stands alongside the redeemer as one of the faces of divine memory, shaped by the actual content of a creature’s life.

Taken together, these references to Atè deepen Whitehead’s vision of God as a dynamic and relational reality. Divine love is not sentimental or merely consoling; it is steadfast and honest, even when the truth of a situation is tragic. Whitehead’s God does not forcibly prevent ruin, nor does God erase its consequences. Instead, God faithfully receives what is, offers what can be, and remembers what has been.