Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of Metaphysics of Religion by Charles E. Hartshorne (review)

308 BOOK REVIEWS Aquinas to Whitehead: Seven Centuries of Metaphysics of Religion. By CHARLES E. HARTSHORNE. Marquette University Publications: Milwaukee , 1976. Each year since 1937 the National Honor Society for Philosophy at Marquette University has invited a scholar to deliver a lecture in honor of St. Thomas Aquinas. Last year the lecturer was Charles Hartshorne. While the title of the lecture is rather formidable the main theme is quite simple. Hartshorne does not present a comprehensive statement of seven hundred years of metaphysics of religion, but instead an informal statement of the problem concerning the nature of God and his relation to the world and man. To one acquainted with Hartshorne and process thought in general this lecture offers nothing that is ultimately new nor that is more clearly stated than it has been previously by Hartshorne. Nevertheless, it is a good introduction to how process thinkers perceive the basic differences between themselves and classical theists. Hartshorne believes that "The entire history of philosophical theology, from Plato to Whitehead, can be focused on the relations among three propositions: (1) The world is mutable and contingent; (~) 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 " (p. 15) . Hartshorne maintains that Aristotle, Spinoza, Socinus and process philosophers " agree that the three propositions, taken without qualification, form an inconsistent triad, for they imply the contradiction: a wholly noncontingent being has contingent knowledge " (p. 15) . Aristotle escapes the dilemma by denying God's knowledge of contingent reality. Spinoza escapes by denying the contingency of the world and making it necessary and divine. Socinus and process philosophers remove the inconsistency by denying the immutability of God. In trying to maintain all three Aquinas places himself in an illogical position. Not surprisingly Hartshorne believes that Aquinas places himself in an untenable position because of a false axiom he acquired from Plato which he never challenged. That axiom is that " deity is defined as perfect " (p. 4) and as such is immutable. Hartshorne states that while both Aristotle and Aquinas realized that if God were such, contingent being could be related to him but not vice-versa, only Aristotle remained consistent and denied that God could have knowledge of the contingent world since such a gnoseological relation implies by necessity change in the knower. The heart of Hartshorne's critique then is that an immutable God cannot be BOOK REVIEWS 309 related to contingent reality. Only a changing God can be related to changing reality. It would be good at this point to make a few comments on the dilemma Hartshorne proposes. Because Aquinas understands God to be ipsum esse and thus actus purus there is no negative potency in God. This includes the fact then that God has no relational potency in the sense that he does not have to overcome some lack within himself in order to establish relations . Finite beings on the other hand must overcome a lack within themselves in order to establish causal relations. Finite beings, such as men, must relate themselves to one another through mediating actions, actions which actualize relational potency. Thus they must undergo change in order to be related to one another. Men, therefore, are never causally related to one another as they are in themslves, but only through some mediating action. This is not the case with God. Because God is ipsum esse he has no relational potency to overcome which would cause him to change when a relation is established and finite beings become related to him as creatures or, in the case of men, as sons/ daughters, and subjects. Thus whatever is related to God is related to God as God exists in himself and not by some mediating action which is an act that is other than himself or a partial expression of himself. The effect or change which occurs lies solely in the finite being. Because the finite being is related to God as a creature, or as sons / daughters and subjects, God as he exists in himself is seen and understood to be Creator, Father and Lord. God's absolute perfection and immutability...