Theology Today - Vol 22, No. 4 - January 1966 - BOOK REVIEW

530 - A Christian Natural Theology

A Christian Natural Theology
By John B. Cobb, Jr.
288 pp. Philadelphia, Westminster Press, 1965. $6.50.

This long-awaited book by John Cobb will be of immense interest to all students of contemporary theology. As one of the first systematic treatments of theological problems based on process philosophy, it represents, as its author admits, a new and healthy shift from the predominantly critical stance of most of this school to that of positive theological construction. For it is an attempt to frame a view of the world, man, God, and theological method that is both Whiteheadian and Christian, that is at one and the same time a "natural theology" explicitly based on a secular philosophy and an adequate Christian answer to these familiar theological problems. Since this is at least an unusual combination-for historically the words "natural" and "Christian" have often been used to designate contrasting sorts of theology-it might have been clearer if the excellent and creative last chapter presenting the author's defense of his theological method had come first. This reviewer was less confused and less troubled after reading this chapter than before, and would suggest that theological readers start with it. For there Cobb is no longer merely delineating and interpreting Whitehead's thoughts but himself entering current theological discussion. He makes clear how he understands his own effort to be both "natural" and "Christian," and how he sees the two major influences on his thought, process philosophy and the Christian community of faith, to fit together into one coherent theological whole.

The balance of the book is a straightforward introduction to and interpretation of Whitehead's philosophy with regard to some of the problems with which the theological tradition has had to do, This purely Whiteheadian content in a book entitled "a Christian theology" is made possible by Cobb's interesting and certainly novel view of theology (see pp. 17, 266, 269). For him apparently the philosophical system contributes the fundamental vision of reality and the criteria of truth to be used, and what Christian faith provides are the topics or questions to be discussed (note the fascinating reversal of Tillich), as well as in some unexplicated fashion the "stance" of the writer. Hence quite consistently the book assumes and so proceeds to outline the view of these "religious" or "theological" topics (e.g., man's personal being and soul, freedom, responsibility, immortality, God and religion) which was developed by Whitehead. Since this exposition is with few exceptions clear, informed,

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and accurate (though Cobb might have dealt more with variant philosophical interpretations of Whitehead), this reviewer has no quarrel with the book as a presentation of Whitehead's views, and recommends it highly for all those concerned with understanding this philosopher's position on religious matters.

By the same token, however, the book raises several important issues for theological debate, not at all concerning what Whitehead said, which is almost the sole subject of the book, but whether what he said can be taken undiluted and without further argument than the book provides as either "theology" or as "Christian." In this review we shall be largely concerned with some of the issues centering about this major problem.

Since this book is, as we have said, almost entirely about Whitehead's view of the world, man, and God, it is in effect an argument for Whitehead, not for Christianity or even for peculiarly Christian notions about things. Cobb seems in other words to assume that if a philosophical interpretation on "Christian subjects" is presented by a man who lives within the community of Christianity, the resulting set of ideas will be "Christian." Surely it is not my wish to deny this out of hand. But equally surely some appeal to such classical Christian authorities and sources as Scripture, traditional theology either Catholic or Protestant, or the general mind of the contemporary church is in some sense called for if the word "Christian" is to be used descriptively. Is the intention to write Christian theology, plus an interest in religious subjects, enough? Presupposed here apparently is the surprising assumption that there is no definite Gestalt or set of unique notions that can be called Christian and with which some diplomatic relations must be established. One of the most uninformed and unfortunate of Whitehead's offhand remarks was that Christianity was a "religion searching for a metaphysic," thereby implying to his followers this strange presupposition that there is in Christianity no definite or definable content to which a philosophy must be fitted if the result is to be called "Christian." And can one talk of a Christian notion of God with no mention of Scripture, the teachings of Jesus, traditional Christian concepts, or contemporary theological movements? Continually I was forced to ask myself, not so much because of what was said but because all reference to Christian authorities was omitted: "On what basis does this book call itself a Christian natural theology?"-and because of these omissions, I found no satisfactory answer.

It is at this point that Cobb seems to be in error when he compares his effort with those of Augustine and Thomas (pp. 263-4), and thereby in

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part seeks to justify his frankly determinative usage of philosophy. It is certainly true that both of these theologians used a secular philosophy to express their views, and that in both cases they thereby constructed a "natural theology," or at least proofs of God. Nevertheless there are two significant and unquestioned differences with Cobb's effort: (1) Both these men recognized a unique authority (i.e., Scripture and tradition) outside the philosophy of their choice, and they both insisted that agreement with that authority (even in matters relevant to natural theology) was necessary if their thought was to be called Christian; (2) both consciously baptized, i.e., radically reconstructed or distorted, depending on one's viewpoint, the secular philosophy they used in order to fit it to their Christian concepts. Augustine's Platonism and Thomas' Aristotelianism would have horrified their originators and have in fact horrified their purist followers. But since to both Augustine and Thomas the "visions of reality" (to use Cobb's phrase, p. 266) of Plato and Aristotle were vastly different from their own Christian ones' they knew they could not use these philosophies "as is" but had to adapt them to the new Christian content or vision and in accord with Christian standards.

In Cobb's use of Whitehead no corresponding Christian vision or Christian standards are taken into account. As a result, as he is careful to admit, there occurs in this philosophical theology no similar change of vision, categories or notions at all when Whitehead's ideas are brought out of their secular home into what is regarded as Christian thought: "I have not intended to distort Whitehead so as to render him more amenable to Christian use" (p. 269). On the contrary, the changes go all the other way, for many Christian notions are either radically redrawn or else dispensed with in order to fit the shape and the demands of Whitehead's system.

The fundamental assumption of this method, then, quite different from that which characterized Augustine's and Thomas' thought, is that the Christian vision of reality differs in no sense from that of this secular philosophy. And the consequence is that the philosophical system is capable of being used to express Christian meanings without significant change. This assumption is to this reviewer dubious, or at least highly debatable. And yet the question of its validity is surprisingly never even seen as a problem much less discussed in the course of the book. Certainly its validity is defended neither by Cobb's correct argument that philosophical categories are a necessity in theology, nor by his incorrect appeal to the tradition of scholastic thought.

The dependence of the philosophical theology (a better term, it seems to me, than natural theology for what is presented to us) outlined in this book on Whitehead's system cannot be overemphasized. Whenever

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Cobb seeks, as he frequently does, to criticize and so to "Improve" on Whitehead's stated views, he does so by showing us an interpretation more, not less, in accord with the basic categorial structure of the system. In other words, it is Whitehead the man, not his system, that can be at fault (sec pp. 74 and 176).

Furthermore, the Whiteheadian assumptions that metaphysical knowledge, if empirically derived, consistent, and universally applicable, is both a possibility and its results true, are made, in this anti-metaphysical age, without a murmur (sec pp. 24 ff., 53 f, 71 ff., etc.). Thus the book often gave this reviewer the same eerie feeling lie has when reading a Barthian treatise on some common human theme. The rather surprising set of unexperienced things that exist in the Whiteheadian world: prehensions, subjective forms, initial alms, and those omnipresent feelings, are simply assumed without further ado to be real, and this complicated picture to be the deepest and most certain sort of truth. What the book in effect does, therefore, is to take our more common, possibly more immediate, and certainly not more questionable, ideas, e.g., personal identity, freedom, responsibility, God, etc., and transpose them into the terms of this complex and, as far as direct experience is concerned, certainly more artificial or intellectualized scheme and thus, somehow, to render these common notions more certain and more intelligible. Somewhat as a biblical enthusiast poignantly thinks he has proved to us that we have responsibility, not by pointing to it in our experience but by showing us that the biblical view states it; so here in the same way an explication of something in terms of the system is taken to be an adequate guarantee of the validity of that concept. Thus the method of this philosophical theology seems to be to translate any concept we are seeking to understand or to test into Whiteheadian terms, and to leave the matter at that. At the end I felt that at least I, and possibly his whole skeptical age, needed another "natural theology," namely one that would justify to me this implicit rationalism and so the metaphysical system that was being used to justify our religious ideas. (One might note that one experiences precisely the same difficulty in reading modern neo-Thomists).

For surely it is an immense assumption, itself needing defense, that consistent thought on experience as a whole can present to us realities not directly experienced but nevertheless unequivocally affirmed to be there simply because in their terms we can render our experience coherent and orderly. Is reality so rational that the requirements for coherence in our thinking guarantee the reality of that which seems to satisfy coherence?

Cobb argues briefly (pp. 169-73) that all metaphysics and so all natural theology depend on an intuition of order in things that "is inescapable"

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(p. 173). As many in modern experience have not known "faith," so in our age many have had no such intuition of a basic Order in their world, and even if they had, this would in no sense guarantee so firmly as here presupposed the validity of any one of the many metaphysical explications of that order. But only if we are that certain these categories and universal principles are true, can such philosophical categories validly become (as in this case) the veritable determinative foundations for our religious ideas, rather than (as in classical theology) the useful but malleable instruments with which our religious certainties are expressed and elaborated. Again, the metaphysical element here is too dominant, too much the guarantor of certainty and the sole provider of intelligibility, and so too much the determiner of what is and can be said. Thus, ironically, that impulse towards rationality which was intended to be a universalizing agent tends as in all extreme cases to restrict the resulting thought to the minimal limits of a school. For as in the case of strict biblicists, if every idea is grounded, defined, and tested solely in the relatively esoteric terms of the system, who but admirers of it can enter the discussion?

The primary question, however, that must be asked about a theology subordinated in this way to any secular philosophical system concerns the general character of that system, or what Cobb calls its vision of reality. Can the system in question, if its vision remains quite unaltered, express the Christian vision of reality? Again one can only wonder that this crucial question was never either raised or debated in this book.

Certainly any careful and open student of Whitehead can see many striking similarities between his vision and that of a modern Christian faith, much as Augustine and Thomas felt bonds with classical thought. However, as with these ancient models, there are substantial differences between Whitehead's vision, typical as it was of the turn of the twentieth century, and that vision (or should we say, "that series or route of conformal visions" ?) which has traditionally been considered Christian.

Whitehead is frankly an essentialist; that is, he believes that the cosmos exhibits an essential, rational, and purposive order or structure which the mind of man can understand and express, if not with finality at least with dependable accuracy. While finite, therefore, man's reason is thus in no way distorted and so is capable by its natural powers of knowing whatever truth can be known about nature and destiny, his own being and that of God. Furthermore, reality is here viewed in idealistic terms, i.e., not only as generally purposive but impelled in each of its constituent parts by the character of its own freedom toward the ideal. No

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more optimistic philosophical sentences have ever been written than the following descriptions of the character of ultimate reality: "Every occasion aims at intensity of feeling both in its own subjective immediacy and in the relevant occasions beyond itself," (p. 109) and "the initial aim is always at that ideal harmony possible for that occasion" (p. 128). If one could only believe these metaphysical propositions against all other modes of evidence, then feelings of despair about the nature of things should surely vanish.

As he read these sentiments in Cobb's exposition, this reviewer kept asking himself: "But, amid all the human doubt and uncertainty Oil these cardinal points, how did the dear old gentleman know this? And how further did lie know, not only that finite realities had this sort of benevolent aim, but even more (pace Hume) that the process as a whole has this sort of aim? How does process thought know that the aim that structures everything is an aim towards increasing value? Certainly not by revelation, and surely not merely because it makes our thoughts consistent? As Hume said, is it either fair or rational to explain the good in things as coming from God and the evil from elsewhere, unless one knows on other grounds that the will of God is good?" Following Whitehead, process thought makes a good deal of the damage the problem of evil does to the orthodox notion of God. But surely the same problem renders suspect the "leap," criticized by Hume and Spinoza alike, from the benevolence of the creature's will to that of the will that is the creative source of things. And anyway, if, as is here metaphysically necessary, God presents to each occasion each possibility which it then embodies, in what way in this system is lie freed from responsibility for evil? In any case, the cosmic optimism of process thought is undoubted. One might say that while the naturalistic character of Whitehead's thought is in tune with the secular and this worldly mind of our age, nevertheless the rationalistic and idealistic character of process philosophy, equally -determinative of its vision of things, are strictly Edwardian or even Victorian, and in our more sober and empirical age seem almost as anachronistic as the biblicism this philosophy has consistently and rightly opposed.

Correspondingly, in such an undistorted and unfallen universe, man's moral problems are solely those of clarifying through thought and training through perseverence his given freedom to adapt itself to this initial aim at value (see pp. 113-121). Consistently with this view of man's problem, the function of God, and so of all religious relations to him, is to provide the basis of this order and value inherent in things, and to preserve from the peril of transience those values that have been achieved by finite, and so passing, crea-

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tures. God is in the first instance the orderer, valuer, and inspirer for the freedom of occasions, and secondly in everlastingness the preserver of what has been good. This is a vision. of reality in which a finite principle of order and value struggles, with the aid of finite freedom, with the principle of unformed vitality, and so in which human freedom is assumed to have the power to side with the divine in the struggle and thus to be brought into relation with that which transcends passingness. It is no wonder that Whitehead felt spiritually akin to much in Plato, and that his philosophy seemed a fortunate if not providential vehicle for much liberal Christianity based on the same essential outlook. There is also no question that a long tradition in Christian thought, exemplified by Justin, the Alexandrines, Pelagius, the Christian humanists and Platonists, and many Enlightenment writers, illustrates this same confidence in the rationality of the world, the goodness and potency of man's free will, and the complete congruence between the "good life well, generously, and prudently lived" and the benevolent will of God.

On the other hand, it is likewise true that there have been in Christianity themes, found both in Scripture and in the tradition, which are in marked tension with this vision of an unspoiled if still uncompleted reality. There one finds a sense of fundamental distortion as well as of essential goodness, of a recalcitrant freedom as well as of a good initial aim. These themes, therefore, speak of the tragedy as well as the joy and progress of life, of its sin and disruption as well as of its finiteness and transience. In much of this tradition the religious problem is not simply the preservation of the values we have achieved. It is the deeper and quite different problem of our frequent inability to achieve any significant value at all, and in fact of our continual creation of radical disvalue and so of unnecessary suffering. To such a problem the Whiteheadian promise that God will "lose nothing that can be saved" by "abstracting from the evil in the world while retaining its positive values" (p. 163, and see also p. 222), leaves the sinner, who knows he is of no value and was in fact the source and seat of that very evil, without recourse or hope.

III

The word "love" in reference to God is used in both of these visions, the Christian and the Whiteheadian. Because, however, the problem that God's love answers in each case is viewed so differently, the meaning of the word is also vastly different. God's love, says Whitehead (and here though philosophically a critic of Ritschl, lie is theologically his successor), saves the world by judging it by the same standard of valuation with which lie created and inspired the world (i.e., the unchanging

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conceptual valuation of PN). Set in classical theological language, this is to say that God's love judges the world according to the requirements of the divine law of creation, inherent in each entity and repeated but not changed in the covenant. Clearly such a prospect of a "saving love" determined and governed by the law of God-by his unchanging and righteous will-would have terrified Amos, Paul, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, and a host of others in the biblical and Christian traditions. Thus they rightly stated that since man's problem was precisely that he had defied the divine law, the Christian vision of reality included more than a vision of the creative source and everlasting preserver of order and of achieved value. It also included a sense of estrangement from that initial order, and even more a counteraction of God against the very supremacy of order and law that now condemned man. Thus the word "love" came for them to signify not only a receptivity in terms of the law for what is of value, but an unexpected and novel forgiveness beyond the law. This is a very different relation to human waywardness than is indicated by Whitehead's ominous prediction that God's love will "reduce to its true status of triviality whatever has not achieved a measure of value." In the Christian vision the requirements of the law, the unchanging standard of value, are abrogated in favor of mercy, and those who have incarnated evil are forgiven and accepted, not simply being regarded for the good they have achieved, but transformed so that they may incarnate value and be reunited with Him from whom they had once departed.

Such themes never seemed to have touched Whitehead's Edwardian spirit, for they were strange to the age that formed him-though he did lose some of his faith in rationality in his last work. Nor are they dealt with in the book here reviewed; the words sin and estrangement appear, to my knowledge, only once in the book, p. 245. But these themes cannot validly be disposed of merely by citing the excesses of orthodoxy when it sought to elaborate them (e.g., "original sin" or "predestination"), any more than philosophy can validly be rejected by biblicist enumerations of its frequently godless proclivities. These themes of sin, distortion and betrayal, of the fear of judgment, of the need for repentance and a new grace, of the promise of unearned forgiveness and restitution, of a love that comes not to what is of value but to the unworthy, are germane to great portions of both Old and New Testaments; they appear in the words and parables of Jesus and the teachings of Paul; they are evident in another form in the eschatological sense of the early community as they shine through its later incarnational theology; they form the main substance for the developing orthodox tradition; and finally they have been formative of the main traditions of the later church and its life.

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A philosophical theology that seeks to call itself Christian must, it seems to me, come to serious terms with these themes. This is not to say that every theology needs to adopt or even to make central use of all these elements of orthodoxy, and surely there is no call to submit to the theological categories devised by the tradition to express these themes. But any Christian theology must show that it cart express the full richness of the faith, of which these themes are a major portion, and not just those liberal and rationalistic insights characteristic of the later nineteenth century.

The major problem for process thought in its relation to Christianity lies, I suggest, right here. For despite the fact that it represents the broadest and most powerful philosophical system of the century, Whitehead's thought, like his age, does not share this vision, and his view of reality and so of God seem in fact to preclude most of its characteristic features. One might say that it is the rationalist and essentialist "faith" of Whitehead, the religious vision that underlies his thought, rather than the brilliant philosophical elaboration of it, that is most antithetical to the corresponding Christian vision. For as Thomas and Luther both knew, a God who represents merely the factor of order and value within process, a God without ontological transcendence over the structure of things, is hardly able to be a God whose mercy transcends the law, i.e., whose love abrogates, replaces, and thus fulfills the requirements of order. Thus a simple God of order, while philosophically coherent, cannot easily be a God of forgiveness as well. For this reason, for process thought to be theologically potent beyond the confines of its "school," this vision must be broadened to include a deeper sense of tragedy and sin, and the authority both of Whitehead's basic vision and of his categories must, when they are used, be qualified and the philosophy as a whole subjected to transformation. It was mainly on this account that Cobb's book seemed to me to break no new ground. Far from challenging or even transforming Whitehead's vision or his categories-as every theologian must do to even the most admired of philosophical masters-he seemed to submit more docilely than the master himself to the rigors of their demands, and even to chastise their originator for occasionally bursting out of their grip.

The central explicit concern of the book, however, is not so much to argue that Whitehead and Christianity provide us with compatible visions. Rather it is to formulate a Whiteheadian view of God that is more consistent with the categories of the system and coherent in itself than was

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the somewhat loose and incoherent, not to say careless, formulation of Whitehead himself (see pp. 176 ff.) Thus it is with this issue, internal to Whitehead's system, that we shall conclude our remarks.

With most of Cobb's exposition of and improvement upon Whitehead's view of God I am in complete agreement. For example, it is certainly clear that God must be thought of as a unified actuality and not as two separate natures (pp. 178 f), and as a consequence it seems obvious to me that the consequent nature of God (CN), far from being merely a "religious addition," is as much a philosophical requirement of the system as is the primordial nature (PN) (pp. 166 ff). However, as a onetime student of Whitehead's philosophy, I found Cobb's otherwise learned and balanced discussion of the God of process thought surprisingly inadequate at two points.

The whole problem of the relation in Whitehead's thought of God to the metaphysical categories descriptive of other actual entities has always been a baffling one. Is God merely one among the many things of process and so describable in the same terms as they; or is he in some way quite unique, in some fundamental sense essentially different from other things so that language about him must in some corresponding way be different from language about other things, about "creatures"? The rationalism of Whitehead drove him toward the first position, for only then is everything under discussion subsumed under identical categories and so the system fully coherent. But the unique position and function of God, which also led to his metaphysical necessity, drove in the other direction. And thus despite the rules, God is over and over made to be the great "exception to the categories."

Cobb expresses some impatience at Whitehead's apparent confusion or at least vacillation on this point, but he seems to fall into the same trap. First lie states that under no circumstances can there be attributed to God "any mode of being or relation inexplicable in terms of the principles operative elsewhere in the system" (p. 179). But then, when he is showing the necessity of God as the source of order amid novelty, Cobb posits God as the sole and unchanging source of each occasion's initial aim, lest all be confusion in existence (pp. 149 ff., 180-182); he calls him "the ground of the being of each entity" and so in apparently quite a unique relation to its existence (pp. 226 f); and he carefully points out the ways in which God is not only the unique source but also the everlasting preserver of value in life (pp. 219 ff). In each case God is clearly in a quite distinct relation to each entity and has a quite distinct function to fulfill in process as a whole; in fact upon analysis it appears that he is here not so much an example as one of the presuppositions of the categorial system. Thus is he rightly called a fundamental metaphysical

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factor explanatory of process as well as an ordinary actual entity in process (see pp. 147, 149, 168).

This divine uniqueness is expressed most clearly in the Whiteheadian doctrines of the unchangeability and the everlastingness of God. Cobb discusses this issue under the question of the relation of God to time, but clearly it has to do with the more fundamental ontological problem of the nature or mode of God's being. Both Whitehead and Cobb say blandly, as if it raised no large issues, that while other entities are "temporal" and so perish, God is on this basic ontological issue different (p. 147): as PN he is "eternal," i.e., "wholly unaffected by time or by process" (p. 187), and as CN he is everlasting, "the earlier elements are not lost as new ones are added" (p. 187). Both of these ontological attributes of God represent, let us note, fundamental abrogations of the categories descriptive of other entities, which are said to perish literally as soon as they become (see pp. 28-29 and then 147). In the face of this vast difference in modes of being, it is hard to see what Cobb can mean when he reiterates and in fact claims to strengthen the Whiteheadian refusal to "exempt God from the categories applicable to other things" (pp. 165, 179, 195).

The problem of God and language applicable to other things has been confusing for every natural or even philosophical theology. It is ironical that the Whiteheadians who tend to be scornful of the difficulties of others in this area should from the master on down have stumbled over it too. The reason for this perennial confusion in philosophical theology is simple enough. God is on the one hand regarded as in some way the principle of the whole (see the quotes from Whitehead p. 147), the source of cosmic limitation, of universal order, and thus of the existence of finite things, and so he is the sole condition of their existence, order, and value as nothing else is or can be. Now since philosophical analysis can show us that no ordinary entity can have these roles, and since these roles are seen by philosophical analysis to be necessary for things to be as they are, God thus becomes established or proved by philosophical argument. The uniqueness of God as the principle of the whole is the sole ground in all philosophical theology, and so also in Whitehead, for the rational assertion of his existence-one can't prove metaphysically that any particular ordinary entity exists. Nor, as Hume pointed out, can one prove God exists if other entities alone or together can do what God is purported to do. Thus the establishment by rational argument of the reality of God in any system requires that in certain essential ways he be radically different from other beings.

On the other hand, the same demand for rationality in the system as a whole requires as well that he not be transcendent to the categories

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and thus "incoherent" to the system as a whole-test things not be exhibited as rational and no philosophical arguments for him be possible. Here is the dilemma of theistic natural theology: in order rationally to prove God, you have to insist he is unique; but in order to remain fully rational, you can't let him be so! And whether the natural theologian be a classical Thomist who exempts a proved God from the Aristotelian categories that have just proved him, or Whitehead who puts God under the same categories God makes possible and coherent, and then exempts him from others, he will Hounder in its clutches. But such occupational hazards and embarrassments of the necessary trade of philosophical theology need not be fatal unless one of them laughs at the inconsistencies of the other or pretends he himself has none-which, unfortunately, having claimed to be "coherent," Whiteheadians have tended to do.

The central theological issue of God, other entities, and the categories reaches, as might be expected, its climax when the attempt is made to understand categorically how the mode of God's being can thus paradoxically transcend the categories. As Cobb readily admits, Whitehead never seeks clearly or carefully to explicate God's unique relation to the passage of other entities except to assert the paradox that while he is "like other things," he is also unlike them in that he "does not pass away." Two interpretations of this clearly unique being of God have so far appeared in the Whiteheadian tradition. One suggested by William Christian (in An Interpretation of Whitehead's Metaphysics, Yale, 1959) maintains that God must be one actual entity which endures throughout the process limiting it, ordering it, and preserving its values. But, as Cobb seems to agree, such a notion would make havoc of this carefully articulated system. If the categories were rigidly applied to such a concept of God, then so long as God endured he could not be prehended by any other entity ("only past occasions are felt," p. 31), and so he would be irrelevant to the world and unable to do any of his essential functions. On the other hand, if the categories were not applied to this concept, and he were allowed to exist over time and still to have "external" relations to other entities, then God would represent precisely that Aristotelian concept of substance as something that endures throughout passage which Whitehead's whole system was devised to combat. With the collapse of this interpretation, the other possible categorial suggestion is made by Cobb (pp. 188 ff): God is not one entity but a series or route of transient occasions ("an infinite succession of divine occasions of experience"), and thus he is strictly comparable to "persons"

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who are also "succession(s) of moments of experience with special continuity" (p. 188).

Unhappily, however, Cobb's proposal encounters variant but equally stubborn difficulties. As Cobb reiterates throughout the book, and as any student of Whitehead knows, it is a cardinal tenet of process philosophy that it is only because of PN that order, value, and so the world of societies as we experience it (i.e., a world of enduring objects) are possible. In a system where each entity has the freedom in part to form itself, no "special continuity" with its own past would be possible unless each new occasion received from some consistent, permanent, unchanging, and universal source an initial aim in congruence with what had gone before and what is still to come. Only with such structured freedom, provided by the unchanging envisagement of possibility which is the primordial nature of God, are both novelty and order possible and compatible. Only thus are there enduring societies made tip of occasions inwardly free from both their own past and the cosmos as a whole. Thus does Whitehead with great subtlety reverse the usual proofs of God, and make the cosmological argument depend upon the teleological: there is a world because there is order, and God is essential as the eternal ground of this order among possibility. Cobb repeats, although he does not explicate fully, this remarkable insight every time he touches this subject (see pp. 95-6, 145-161, especially 149 and 160-1); "It is by this initial aim that the general order of the universe is sustained, and likewise all the more special societies that constitute our world" (p. 157).

In other words PN is the necessary presupposition for any route or succession of occasions which make up any society or object and even more any "person." Without the permanent structure provided over time and passage by PN, such personal beings are inconceivable in this categorial system. It follows, therefore, that God as PN cannot himself be conceived univocally as such a series. For one essential element of that notion of a society is that it is dependent beyond itself upon a structuring that transcends it-like Thomas' contingent creatures, the societies of process thought point beyond themselves to a further ground for their actuality. If they do not, then all proof of God and so all rationality to his conception in this system vanishes. But if PN (as a univocally conceived society of successive entities) points beyond itself for its continuity of structure, then all is chaos: does it thus presuppose itself, which is contradictory, or is there another God beyond God, and so on ad infinitum? One might say that unless somehow one reaches finality and self-sufficiency with the conception of God, one has hardly yet reached "God," for, as Hume said, one has then to go on and on ad infinitum.

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And yet when one thinks of God in terms of finite things, which essentially do point beyond themselves, one seemingly cannot ever reach this conception. Whether any proof, which must start with the contingent, dependent world, can ever reach this level without "cheating" is an interesting but not easily answered question. In any case, while God certainly has relations to the world (this has never been doubted even if it has been poorly expressed), he cannot have exactly those relations of dependency that pressing things have to him and to each other, lest he be unable to do the very special things he is supposed to do to keep the system going.

It might, of course, be very helpful to use this Whiteheadian conception of finite personal being as an analogy for understanding the mystery (even for this tradition) of the mode of the divine being. But univocal language clearly leads, as might be expected when dealing with "the ground of finite existence and order," to self-contradiction and to the disruption of the system as a whole. For either alternative leads to categorical chaos, as we have shown. Why Cobb, who surely knows his Whitehead as well as anyone, did not see this problem facing his own solution, I do not know. For he says at the end of his discussion, "the view that God is a living person ... makes the doctrine of God more coherent, and no serious new difficulties are raised" (p, 192).

That Whitehead's philosophy is one of the greatest of modern metaphysical systems, I have no doubt; and that his categories may well prove the most useful of all presently available for the explication of Christian faith, I am also prepared to assert. There is, therefore, an extremely creative future in theology for those who like Cobb seek to interpret their faith with Whitehead's help-if, so it seems to me, they recognize two conditions of such use of a philosophy.

(1). If they take more seriously the definiteness and uniqueness of the Christian vision and agree to refashion in its light the secular philosophy they admire as fully as they transform the Christian notions they have inherited. They cannot continue to regard their secular philosophical categories as inviolate and only the Christian concepts as malleable if not disposable. For both are partial and the faith they acknowledge has had a definite and unique vision, even if that vision, like every other route of occasions, has itself undergone change and development. Only by such a recognition of the relevance of Christian as well as philosophical authorities and concepts will they be in such a relation to the Christian community of discourse as to achieve their full theological creativity-

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for like it or not, this, and not the secular philosophical community, is the community in which they must speak and write.

(2). They must recognize more than has been their wont the inherent difficulties of discourse about God. The incoherence of Whitehead and of his followers on this subject are no accidental mistakes to be brushed up by a closer application of the sacred categories-as Duns thought about Thomism as he picked scholasticism to bits. Very conscious and even scornful of the incoherences of other theologies, they have been too apt to regard their own philosophical approach as guaranteeing an easily consistent view of God. It is to be hoped that the graven internal as well as external difficulties the process view of God encounters will at least be taken seriously. At least one can hope that having been unable to comprehend the mode of God's everlastingness in terms of their categories, Whiteheadians cease to laugh at poor old Thomas for stumbling over the reverse problem of explicating the modes of God's relatedness. It is in fact illuminating of the mystery of God and the difficulties of the relation of faith to philosophy, that a medieval theology based on a philosophy of eternal being could not coherently express the activity of God in which it nevertheless thoroughly believed, while in our day a theology based on a philosophy of becoming equally cannot coherently express the permanence and continuity of God which it also strongly asserts. Strangely it seems established over and over again that contradictions (as in both these cases) always result when philosophical categories are too strictly applied to God, and that real coherence can be achieved only when the admitted uniqueness of God is methodologically expressed in terms of the recognition of the divine mystery.

The key point in acknowledging the divine mystery is surely to relax the demand for complete systematic rationality, for including all that is relevant-"from the slightest puff of matter to God"-univocally under the same sovereign categories. This requirement that all be subsumed under identical rules of usage, that God be exhibited like all else "in the grip of process," is, I suspect, the one note in Whitehead really antithetical to the Christian sense of the divine holiness and the divine mystery, as well as being that which. leads an otherwise coherent system into impossible contradictions. Thus it is the one element fatal, it seems to me, to Cobb's significant attempt to reinterpret Whitehead in a Christian direction. And it will, if it remains a dominant motif, be equally fatal to the theological creativity of this remarkable set of younger scholars.

In conclusion let me say how clear and helpful this book is, how well it introduces Whitehead to the inquirer, and how intelligible and creative the last chapter containing Cobb's own thought is. Also one cannot

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help but be grateful that, however serious our disagreements may be in this theological debate, we are at least arguing about the nature and understanding of God and not merely bemoaning his demise.

Langdon Gilkey
Divinity School
University of Chicago
Chicago, Illinois