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Hartshorne’s Dipolar Theism and the Mystery of God

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Abstract

Anselm said that God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, but he believed that it followed that God is greater than can be conceived. The second formula—essential to sound theology—points to the mystery of God. The usual way of preserving divine mystery is the via negativa, as one finds in Aquinas. I formalize Hartshorne’s central argument against negative theology in the simplest modal system T. I end with a defense of Hartshorne’s way of preserving the mystery of God, which he locates in the actuality of God rather than in the divine existence or essence. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.

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Notes

  1. Hartshorne, C. (1991). A reply to my critics. In L. E. Hahn (Ed.), The philosophy of Charles Hartshorne (p. 619). La Salle, Illinois: Open Court.

  2. Anselm (1966). St. Anselm: Basic writings (translated by S. N. Deane, with an introduction by Charles Hartshorne) 2nd ed. (p. 7). La Salle, IL: Open Court; Proslogion, ch. II, and p. 22; Proslogion, ch. XV.

  3. Kierkegaard faulted Kant for failing to establish the inexplicable as a category. “It is specifically the task of human knowing to understand that there is something it cannot understand and to understand what that is.” Hong, H. V., Hong, E. H. (assisted by Malantschuk, Gregor, Eds.) (1975). Søren Kierkegaard’s journals and papers, Vol. 3 (p. 406, L-R). Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

  4. Whitehead, A. N. (1925). Science and the modern world (p. 258; ch. XI, final paragraph). New York: Macmillan.

  5. Anthony Kenny ably brings together the evidence for Descartes’ view on omnipotence and necessary truths in Kenny, A. (1979). The God of the philosophers (pp. 17–20). Oxford: Clarendon. On this point, Aquinas is a model of moderation, for he denied God this ability. See Aquinas, T. (1956). On the truth of the Catholic faith, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book Two: Creation (p. 75; chapter 25, paragraph 14; Translated by James F. Anderson). Garden City, NY: Hanover House.

  6. Within the apophatic tradition I distinguish an intellectual claim and a meditative practice. The intellectual claim is that the most appropriate language for God is negative. The meditative practice is the emptying of concepts from the mind to find or prepare the way for feeling the presence of God. It is only the intellectual claim with which I am here concerned.

  7. Pegis, A. C. (Ed.) (1945). Basic writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Vol. 1, p. 25). New York: Random House; Summa Theologiae I, Q. III, Introduction (I make no effort to camouflage the exclusive language in quotations, including quotations from Hartshorne. As an octogenarian, Hartshorne began to use inclusive language for deity).

  8. Hartshorne, C. (1948). The divine relativity: A social conception of God (p. 35). New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

  9. In my view, the most searching discussion of Hartshorne’s views on God-talk is Ogden, S. (1984). The experience of God: Critical reflections on Hartshorne’s theory of analogy. In J. B. Cobb, Jr., & F. I. Gamwell (Eds.), Existence and actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne (pp. 16–37). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. See also Hartshorne’s response in the same volume, pp. 37–42.

  10. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, p. 124; Summa Theologiae I, Q 13, a. 7.

  11. For God’s knowledge as causative: Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, p. 147; Summa Theologiae I, Q 14, a. 8. God as the peak of nobility: Aquinas, T. (1955). On the truth of the Catholic faith, Summa Contra Gentiles, Book One: God (pp. 100 and 121; chapters 16 and 23). Garden City, NY: Hanover House. Causes as nobler than effects, Ibid., p. 104; Summa Contra Gentiles, Bk One, chapter 18, paragraph 6.

  12. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, pp. 135–161; Summa Theologicae I, Q 14.

  13. Hartshorne, C. (1990). The Darkness and the light, A philosopher reflects upon his fortunate career and those who made it possible (pp. 232–33). Albany: State University of New York Press. Essentially the same argument occurs many places, most notably in The Divine Relativity, pp. 13–14 and in his questions to Wild, J. in Rome, Sydney and Beatrice (Eds.) (1964). Philosophical interrogations (pp. 158–160). New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. William P. Alston discusses, and approves of, this argument and this aspect of Hartshorne’s theism. See Alston (1984). Hartshorne and Aquinas: A Via Media. (In Existence and Actuality (pp. 83–84), Op cit.).

  14. The system used here, commonly known as T, was set out in 1937 by Robert Feys. Its modal axioms are “□p → p” and “□(p → q) → (□p → □q)”. See Hughes, G. E., & Cresswell, M. J. (1991). An introduction to modal logic (pp. 30–31). New York: Routledge. George Shields gives an alternate formalization of the argument using the much richer Lewis S5. See Shields, G. (1983). God, modality and incoherence. Encounter, 44/1, 27–39. Using the variables and symbols as I have defined them here, Shields’ version concludes to the modal contradiction (□ □ W ∧ □ ∼ □ W).

  15. Hartshorne also presents the argument in terms of a choice among an inconsistent triad of propositions: “(1) The world is mutable and contingent; (2) The ground of its possibility is a being unconditionally and in all respects necessary and immutable; (3) The necessary being, God, has ideally complete knowledge of the world.” Hartshorne, C. (1976). Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven centuries of metaphysics of religion (p. 15). Milwaukee, Wis: Marquette University Publications. Hartshorne says (2) is the offending statement.

  16. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, p. 156; Summa Theologiae I, Q. 14, a. 3, Obj. 2.

  17. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas: 198–199; Summa Theologicae I, Q. 19, a. 3. See also, Aquinas, T. (1955). On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, Bk Two (p. 68). Garden City, NY: Hanover House; Summa Contra Gentiles, II, chapter 23.

  18. Hartshorne, C., & Reese, W. L. (2000). Philosophers speak of God (p. 133). Amherst, NY: Humanity.

  19. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, Bk One, p. 100; Summa Contra Gentiles I, chapter 16, paragraph 2.

  20. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, pp. 28–31; Summa Theologiae, I, Q 3, a. 3 and a. 4. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith, Bk One, pp. 116–121; Summa Contra Gentiles I, chapters 21 and 22.

  21. Dombrowski, D. (1996). Analytic theism, Hartshorne, and the concept of God (p. 39). Albany: State University of New York Press.

  22. John Wild dismisses dipolar theism in these terms: “So Professor Hartshorne concludes that God is a little bit of both, something in him (existence) being necessary and something else (his knowledge of the world) being contingent. This splits God up into parts that are not only different (which is bad enough), but absolutely contradictory.” Philosophical Interrogations, op cit., p. 160.

  23. Hartshorne, C. (1972). Personal Identity from A to Z. Process Studies 2/3, p. 211.

  24. Ibid., p. 214.

  25. The Divine Relativity, p. 87. While medieval philosophers never achieved a dipolar conception of deity, they held a kind of dipolar conception of angels. Aquinas says that angels are not subject to decay and destruction by natural means; they are incorporeal and have no corruptible bodies and so are immortal. Like God, their existence is not affected by the flow of time. Unlike the Thomistic God, however, they are susceptible to change. While their existence is immutable, they have free will, their knowledge can increase, and in a certain sense they can even move from place to place. Aquinas says that between the unqualified changelessness of God’s eternity and the qualified changeableness of corporeal existence, there is the qualified immutability of angelic being. The technical expression for this is æviternity, which is the mean between the extremes of eternity and time. What neither Aquinas nor any other scholastic philosopher, nor even philosophers to the time of Kant, could conceive is an æviternal God. See, Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, p. 499; Summa Theologiae, I, Q 10, a. 5.

  26. Gardner, M. (1983). The Whys of a philosophical scrivener (p. 251). New York: Quill.

  27. Viney, D. W. (Ed.) (2001). Charles Hartshorne’s letters to a young philosopher: 1979–1995. Logos-Sophia: The Journal of the Pittsburg State University Philosophical Society, 11, 46.

  28. Hartshorne, C. (1991). Peirce, Whitehead, und di sechzehn Ansichten über Gott. In M. Hampe, & H. Maaßen (Eds.). Die Gifford Lectures und ihre Deutung: Materialien zu Whiteheads ›Prozeβ und Realität‹, Band 2(p. 202). Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.

  29. Hartshorne, C. (1976). Mysticism and Rationalistic Metaphysics. The Monist, 59/4, 469. Also published in Wood, R. (Ed.) (1980). Understanding Mysticism (p. 421). Garden City, NY: Image.

  30. Hartshorne, C. (1975). Beyond humanism: Essays in the philosophy of nature (p. 120). Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith.

  31. Charles Hartshorne’s Letters to a Young Philosopher, p. 44.

  32. Hartshorne, C. (1984). Creativity in American philosophy (p. 199). Albany: State University of New York Press.

  33. For references to Simoni-Wastila’s interesting articles and a reply to him, see Viney, D. W (2001). Is the Divine Shorn of Its Heart? Responding to Simoni-Wastila. American Journal of Theology & Philosophy, 22/2, 154–72.

  34. Hartshorne, C. (1987). Wisdom as moderation: A philosophy of the middle way (chapter 6). Albany: State University of New York Press.

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    Donald Wayne Viney

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Viney, D.W. Hartshorne’s Dipolar Theism and the Mystery of God. Philosophia 35, 341–350 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-007-9077-5

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