I Hope My Process Friends Will Critique This!

On January 4 of this year I wrote a brief piece on the idea of CREATIO EX NIHILO, and how I believe it is possible to still believe in that and yet, as most process thinkers do, reject the idea of DIVINE OMNIPOTENCE.  You can read that piece here.

This past week I was a panelist for an international conference, a gathering of the process/open-and-relational community which featured some of the best authors and books of the past year written by members of this community.  I was not one of the authors.  I hope, if my OPEN AND RELATIONAL ETHICS is in print this year, that maybe I can be next time.  Maybe not.  OK, it is still a great conference.  I enjoyed being a respondent to my good buddy Dr. Bruce G. Epperly.

One of the things which came up in the discussion at some point during the weekend was Alfred North Whitehead's distinction between God's primordial nature and God's consequent nature. 

In PROCESS AND REALITY, Whitehead offers these two, not as completely separate natures, which are totally distinct and unconnected from one another, but, as I understand him, two different aspects of God which we need to keep in mind because otherwise we will not get the entire picture.  (I think Whitehead would say we do not get the entire picture, ever, but we sure will not if we do not keep these conceptions in mind.)  They are, I think (and my process friends can correct me if I am wrong) distinct without being unconnected.

Of the primordial nature, Whitehead says "the unconditioned conceptual valuation of the entire multiplicity of eternal objects."  

The consequent nature is "that aspect of the divine which prehends the world."  For Whitehead, a prehension is when one entity comes to awareness of another.  In other words, God is not totally separate from creation.  God experiences and relates to and is impacted by creation even as God creates.

Now, I used to stress to my students the importance of the law of non-contradiction.  The simple version of this law is that contradictory ideas can both be false but they cannot both be true. I think that is correct but it is incomplete.  The more complete idea would be that contradictory ideas can both be false but they cannot both be true at the same time and in the same respect.

Now, I still believe that what I wrote on January 4 is valid.  I especially believe that what I said is true, "Because God's nature is love, and love is generative, God had to create."  And I also believe that because love is not controlling, being love, God cannot control everything God creates.  Love of necessity involves risk.

And this is why I suggest one can believe in CREATIO EX NIHILO and still reject the idea that God is omnipotent.  My thinking there has not changed, but it has broadened out.  I think a few weeks after writing that piece I want to say that the metaphysical problem I saw with rejecting CREATIO EX NIHILO may be solvable.

If it is true that contradictory ideas cannot both be true at the same time and in the same respect, then I would posit that it is possible that people who affirm CREATIO EX NIHILO and those who do not may not be contradictory to one another, IF we posit that it depends on whether one is thinking of God's primordial nature as different from God's consequent nature. It is possible that we are not violating the law of non-contradiction because we are not talking about the same thing, in the same respect.

In other words, the problem I raised of how to account for the idea that matter has always existed and yet is still a creation of God, may be a matter of looking at what Whitehead would say is a partial picture of God's nature, not a complete one.

I can see that if God has aseity, self-sufficiency, as traditional theism wants to tell us, then God would be stupid to create a world like this.  All that did was disappoint God and frustrate God's creation.  I have lived with a boat-load of  frustration.  A God who is complete in Godself does not need to create and would probably be happier not having done so.  That is a plausible rebuttal to my piece on January 4 questioning why people would reject CREATIO EX NIHILO.

But if we are talking about BOTH God's primordial nature AND God's consequent nature, maybe the apparent contradiction disappears. Because we are talking about things in light of this distinction (remember, as I said above, distinct but not wholly separated), God can be prior to creation in God's primordial nature and yet alongside nature in God's consequent nature. And maybe those two things have been always true.

PROCESS FRIENDS: I am not sure if I am onto something here or not.  I may be barking up the wrong tree. Please tell me if this makes sense or if it is nonsense.