Creativity and God: Whitehead According to Hartshorne

CREATIVITY AND GOD: WHITEHEAD ACCORDING TO HARTSHORNE CHARLES HARTSHORNE IS understandably sympathetic with the general metaphysics elaborated by Whitehead. His own metaphysical system is a variation on the process theme with Whitehead as a major influence .1 Hartshorne in turn has commented extensively on Whitehead. Creativity is a major focus of his commentary mainly because of its centrality in his own metaphysics. This paper will try to clarify the differences between Hartshorne and Whitehead concerning the relation of creativity to God. Hartshorne is puzzled by the fact that Whitehead never identifies creativity with God, while Hartshorne's own metaphysics seems to require it. If, in philosophies of beings, God is Being Itself, in a philosophy of creativity should he not be Creativity Itself? Yet Whitehead refuses to say this. Why? I think because he has his attention upon a possible misunderstanding. If we identify divine creating with creating in general, then it seems that the creatures can have no creativity of their own. To avoid this, and to avoid making God 1 " Undoubtedly the closest parallel to, and probably the strongest influence upon, my philosophy is Whitehead" (Creative Synth/!$iS and Philc>sophic Method [London : SCM Press; LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court, 1970), p. xv. Hereafter, cited in text and notes as "CSPM.") But Hartshorne initially arrived at his position independently of Whitehead. " I came to Whitehead already convinced that experience is essentially participation, that any reality we can conceive must be constituted of feeling in some broad sense, that reality is creative process and the future is open even for God . . . that metaphysical freedom is real. . . . The sources of my ideas about God are in good part elsewhere, though I enormously admire Whitehead's discussion of the theistic problem." (In Philosophical, Interrogations ed. by Sydney and Beatrice Rome [New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1964), pp. 8it2-28. See Two Process Philosophers: Hartshorne's Encounter with Whitehead, ed. by Lewis S. Ford [Tallahassee: American Academy of Religion, 1978], chapter 1.) 608 604 R. J. CONNELLY the selector of the detailed goods and evils of the world, Whitehead distinguishes between God and creativity.2 The concern expressed here is more typical of Hartshorne's works than Whitehead's. One of Hartshorne's strengths through the years has been his clarification of certain basic issues in natural theology. The refrain in many of his writings is: How can we understand the relation between deity and the world so that self-creation is attributable to both? The first paragraph of his systematic metaphysics raises the question as traditional theologians had to deal with it. Later on in CSPM he states: " If the religious issue is as central in metaphysics as it seems to be, to attempt to .settle everything else and only then to ask about ' God ' is to be in danger of begging the chief metaphysical questions." 3 But on the same page Hartshorne seems to say it doesn't really matter where you start. " Neo-classical metaphysics," when its ideas are adequately explicated , is neo-classical natural theology, and vice versa. In three several books I have tried to show, at least in outline, how from the mere idea of God a whole metaphysical system follows; one may also proceed in the opposite direction, and show how from general secular considerations one may arrive at the idea of God and a judgment as to its validity. But the two ways of proceeding differ only relatively and as a matter of emphasis.4 But even here, Hartshorne suggests that the most important function of philosophy is to clarify the religious issue or theistic question, by whatever means. And the question in a sense dictates the method and kinds of answers to be found. As Hartshorne says, " in metaphysics he who sets the question largely determines what answers can be given." 5 Hartshorne recognizes that Whitehead wa3 more concerned, as I would put it, with the secular issue or the actual world question.6 But I don't think he realizes how far apart this puts •Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays, 1935-70 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), p. 138. "CSPM 40. • CSPM 40-1. • Amelm's Discovery (LaSalle, Illinois: Open Court...