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From Process Studies, 6:3, Fall 1987, 203-215.
The “Kingdom of Heaven” and the Development of Whitehead’s Idea of God
Thomas Hosinski, C.S.C.
In The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics (EWM 142, 249), Lewis S. Ford has argued that the consequent nature of God in the strict sense is not to be found in Religion in the Making. He holds that in Religion in the Making Whitehead conceived of God “as a primordial, nontemporal actuality of conceptual feeling alone, endowed however with many of the functions Whitehead was later to assign to the consequent nature” (EWM 147). Recently, in his “Critique” of Ford’s book, David Ray Griffin has criticized Ford’s argument as confusing and weak (PS 15:198-201). It is weak, Griffin argues, in that Ford’s interpretations of several passages do “violence to the text of RM” (PS 15:200) by trying to establish that “God in RM is nothing but a conceptual synthesis of eternal forms and therefore is not receptive to the temporal world” (PS 15: 199). This interpretation is also confusing, Griffin holds, because it denies that the consequent nature even in a broad sense can be found in Religion in the Making, which contradicts Ford’s earlier statement that the argument about whether the consequent nature appears in Religion in the Making is largely semantic (PS 15:199; EWM 140). Griffin also criticizes Ford’s distinction between “ordinary” and “religious metaphysics” as confusing, especially as a way of understanding the divisions of Religion in the Making and Process and Reality (PS 15:201). Griffin believes that this distinction is involved in Ford’s “problematic treatment” of the consequent nature in Religion in the Making. Although Griffin concludes that “Ford’s project is important for understanding Whitehead’s thought,” he regards Ford’s positions on the understanding of God in Religion in the Making, on the consequent nature of God, and on “religious metaphysics” to be among “some unnecessary weaknesses which could be removed from his argument” (PS 15:205).
In this essay I want to evaluate the disagreement between Ford and Griffin on the consequent nature of God in Whitehead’s thought by studying Whitehead’s use of the symbol “kingdom of heaven.” Whitehead employs this symbol in both Religion in the Making and Process and Reality in ways that are crucial to what he was trying to accomplish. If we examine the use of the symbol in each book and discover any significant differences, this might shed some light on the development of Whitehead’s idea of God and contribute to a resolution of the disagreement between Ford and Griffin on this topic.
I
We must begin by recalling Whitehead’s understanding of why and how metaphysics must deal with religion. Like William James, Whitehead held that religious experience is a fact in experience and consequently must be taken into account by any truly empirical philosophy (see e.g., PR 208/318; 337-38/512-13). For Whitehead, religious intuitions constitute both data and evidence: they are data which metaphysics must taken into account and from which metaphysics may generalize concepts; and they are the evidence against which metaphysics must test its rational deductions concerning God. While metaphysics originates and develops the idea of God by reason, it must ultimately appeal to particular religious intuitions for empirical support.1 Whitehead made two extended attempts to integrate the testimony of religious experience concerning God with his own metaphysical system, one in the final two chapters of Religion in the Making and the other in the final part of Process and Reality. In both instances he employed the symbol “kingdom of heaven.” His use of this symbol was at the heart of his attempt to formulate a doctrine of God which avoids the over-simplifications of extreme positions and which reflects the testimony of religious experience. Whitehead took Jesus’ teachings concerning the “kingdom of heaven” as expressions of the most profound religious intuitions into the character of God and God’s relation to the world (RM 56f, 72f; PR 343/520f). He discerned at the core of these teachings an unusual insistence on God’s immanence as well as transcendence and an unusual vision of God’s mode of operation in the world—a view of God that does not fit well with any of the simple, extreme views. By using the symbol “kingdom of heaven” in both Religion in the Making and Process and Reality, Whitehead was appealing to these particular religious intuitions for concrete evidence in support of his novel formulation of the idea of God.
II
In Religion in the Making Whitehead first refers to the “kingdom of heaven” to point out that the teaching of Jesus contains an unusual vision of God and God’s relation to the world. He had already summarized the “three main simple renderings” of the concept of God as the extreme doctrines of immanence, transcendence, and monism (RM 68f) and discussed the major problems of the “simple Semitic concept” which expresses the extreme doctrine of transcendence (RM 69-71). He then says:
Christianity has not adopted anyone of these clear alternatives. It has been true to its genius for keeping its metaphysics subordinate to the religious facts to which it appeals.
In the first place, it inherited the simple Semitic concept. . . .
But even here important qualifications have to be made. Christ himself introduces them . . . . The point is the decisive emphasis the notions receive in his teaching. The first point is the association of God with the Kingdom of Heaven, coupled with the explanation that “The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.” The second point is the concept of God under the metaphor of a Father. (RM 7If)
Whitehead goes on to note that the Christian doctrine of God modifies the “simple Semitic concept” by insisting on the immanence of the transcendent God: “The notion of immanence must be discriminated from that of omniscience. The Semitic God is omniscient; but, in addition to that, the Christian God is a factor in the universe” (RM 73).
The context makes clear that Whitehead regards the religious intuitions expressed in Jesus’ teachings as the ultimate religious evidence which metaphysics must take into account in constructing its concept of God. His further use of the symbol “kingdom of heaven” indicates that he is seeking a technical metaphysical understanding of God that can be faithful to the unusual insistence in Jesus’ teachings on the immanence of the transcendent God. This, it seems to me, forms the context in which we must seek to understand the further uses of the symbol “kingdom of heaven” in two extended passages of Religion in the Making.
In Chapter III, section ii, entitled “The Contributions of Religion to Metaphysics,” Whitehead says the following:
The world is at once a passing shadow and a final fact. The shadow is passing into the fact, so as to be constitutive of it; and yet the fact is prior to the shadow. There is a kingdom of heaven prior to the actual passage of actual things, and there is the same kingdom finding its completion through the accomplishment of this passage.
But just as the kingdom of heaven transcends the natural world, so does this world transcend the kingdom of heaven. For the world is evil, and the kingdom is good. The kingdom is in the world, and yet not of the world. (RM 87f)
This passage is quite difficult to understand. It is usually read in light of the later doctrine of Process and Reality: the “kingdom of heaven prior to the actual passage of actual things” is taken as a description of the primordial nature of God and the “kingdom finding its completion through the accomplishment of this passage” is taken as a description of the consequent nature. I believe, however, that rather than reading this passage in light of a distinction Whitehead had yet to make, we ought to try to understand it in the context of his concern in Religion in the Making: to develop a technical understanding of how a transcendent God can be immanent in the world. This is the unusual character of Jesus’ vision of God (as Whitehead interprets it) and it is this unusual vision of God that Whitehead is seeking to conceptualize.
Seen in this light, the passage under consideration seems to be trying to characterize the transcendence and immanence of God. The stress of the preceding paragraph is on the mutual immanence and interdependence of the various elements of our experience. The main point of the two quoted paragraphs is to conceptualize the mutual immanence and interdependence of God and the world; but this also requires a reconceptualization of transcendence.
In this passage Whitehead conceives of God’s transcendence as metaphysical “priority.” “There is a kingdom of heaven prior to the actual passage of actual things. . .” (RM 87). The “kingdom,” it seems clear, should be interpreted as “the complete conceptual realization of the realm of ideal forms” (RM 154), or as God’s eternal “vision” which “determines every possibility of value” (RM 153). This kingdom is “not of the world” (RM 88). Whitehead is here conceiving of God’s actuality as transcendent in that it is nontemporal and not derivative from the world. The “kingdom” is thus “prior to the actual passage of actual things” (RM 87) in the sense that it establishes the basic conditions without which there could be no actual passage at all (see RM 104f, 119f). “[God] transcends the temporal world, because He is an actual fact in the nature of things. He is not there as derivative from the world; He is the actual fact from which the other formative elements cannot be torn apart” (RM 156; see also 154). Thus the symbol “kingdom of heaven” expresses God’s fundamental metaphysical tran-scendence of the world.
The main point of the passage under consideration, however, is to conceptualize God’s immanence in a preliminary way. Whitehead says: “There is a kingdom of heaven prior to the actual passage of actual things, and there is the same kingdom finding its completion through the accomplishment of this passage.” We must grant that this sentence sounds as if it refers to what Whitehead will later call God’s consequent nature. However, it is important to recall that the consequent nature conceptualizes how the actual world is immanent in God, not how God is immanent in the world.2 The main concern here is to conceptualize God’s immanence in the world. Thus it would be an error, I believe, to interpret this sentence as if it were expressing a doctrine of God’s reception of the actual world. We must seek, rather, to understand “the same kingdom finding its completion through the accomplishment of this passage” in light of what Whitehead has to say about God’s immanence in Religion in the Making.
There are two closely related ways in which Whitehead conceives of God’s immanence in Religion in the Making. First, God is immanent in that God’s complete conceptual harmonization of all ideal forms establishes the basic aesthetic order which is necessary in order for any temporal actual passage to occur (RM 104f, 119f). God is thus immanent in the world as the principle of both order and value. Whitehead says, in contrast to his discussion of God’s transcendence, “But equally it stands in [God’s] nature that He is the realization of the ideal conceptual harmony by reason of which there is an actual process in the total universe—an evolving world which is actual because there is order” (RM 156). But this “kingdom of heaven” is immanent not only as the harmonization of every possibility of value which makes concretion possible; it achieves another kind of immanence—and “its completion”—when actual things actualize the possibilities of value that God eternally envisions: “Every event on its finer side introduces God into the world. . . . The world lives by its incarnation of God in itself” (RM 155f). This, I submit, is what Whitehead means when he writes of “the same kingdom finding its completion through the accomplishment of this passage.” It is a “completion” because “the ideal conceptual harmony” which is actual in the eternal, nontemporal God, gains temporal actuality in the world as temporal occasions actualize the values of God’s eternal ideal vision. Thus Ford seems to be correct in suggesting that in this passage Whitehead is not speaking of God’s reception of the actual world (EWM 143); he is speaking, rather, of the double immanence of what he will later call the primordial nature of God.
This conclusion seems confirmed when we consider the other passage in which Whitehead employs the symbol “kingdom of heaven.” In Chapter IV, section 4, entitled “The Nature of God,” Whitehead says the following:
God, who is the ground antecedent to transition, must include all possibilities of physical value conceptually, thereby holding the ideal forms apart in equal, conceptual realization of knowledge. Thus, as concepts, they are grasped together in the synthesis of omniscience.
The limitation of God is his goodness. He gains his depth of actuality by his harmony of valuation . . . .
He is complete in the sense that his vision determines every possibility of value. Such a complete vision coordinates and adjusts every detail. Thus his knowledge of the relationships of particular modes of value is not added to, or disturbed, by the realization in the actual world of what is already conceptually realized in his ideal world. This ideal world of conceptual harmonization is merely a description of God himself. Thus the nature of God is the complete conceptual realization of the realm of ideal forms. The kingdom of heaven is God. But these ideal forms are not realized by him in mere bare isolation, but as elements in the value of his conceptual experience. Also, the ideal forms are in God’s vision as contributing to his complete experience, by reason of his conceptual realization of their possibilities as elements of value in any creature. Thus God is the one systematic, complete fact, which is the antecedent ground conditioning every creative act. (RM 153f)
Once again it is clear that Whitehead is seeking to conceptualize the immanence of the transcendent God. Careful attention to Whitehead’s repeated stress in this passage on God’s conceptual realization leaves no doubt that he is conceiving of God in terms of what he will later call God’s primordial nature. In this passage the symbol “kingdom of heaven” is identified with God understood as “the complete conceptual realization of the realm of ideal forms.”
It is important to note, however, that in this passage Whitehead refers several times to God’s knowledge and makes it an essential part of his conception of God. But Whitehead had not yet worked out his ontology of knowing. I believe that Ford is correct in suggesting that in Religion in the Making Whitehead was conceiving of God’s omniscient knowledge as nontemporal and exclusively conceptual (EWM 145f). This passage certainly supports such an interpretation, as does the continuation of the passage.
He gives to suffering its swift insight into values which can issue from it. He is the ideal companion who transmutes what has been lost into a living fact within his own nature . . . .
The kingdom of heaven is not the isolation of good from evil. It is the overcoming of evil by good. This transmutation of evil into good enters into the actual world by reason of the inclusion of the nature of God, which includes the ideal vision of each actual evil so met with a novel consequent as to issue in the restoration of goodness.
God has in his nature the knowledge of evil, of pain, and of degradation, but it is there as overcome with what is good. Every fact is what it is, a fact of pleasure, of joy, of pain, or of suffering. In its union with God that fact is not a total loss, but on its finer side is an element to be woven immortally into the rhythm of mortal things. Its every evil becomes a stepping stone in the all-embracing ideals of God. (RM 154f)
The “transmutation of evil into good” sounds a great deal like what Whitehead has to say about the consequent nature of God in Process and Reality (346/525f; 350f/531f), that is, God’s reception of the actual world into God’s own concrescence. However, it is clear from the larger context that God’s experience is being conceived as entirely conceptual. God overcomes evil by good conceptually. God knows each actual evil because that ideal form is part of God’s eternal vision of all ideal forms. It is overcome in that God’s conceptual harmonization of all ideal forms relates this evil to a “novel consequent,” that is, an ideal form which transmutes the evil into good in the harmony of the ideal vision. The complete conceptual harmonization of all ideal forms does not isolate good from evil but overcomes the evil by the way in which it relates the evil to a larger good in God’s complete ideal vision. This ideal vision, as we have seen, is doubly immanent in the world, first by providing the order necessary for actual passage to occur (RM 104f) and second by being actualized in temporal actualities (RM 155£). The latter is the way in which evil is overcome by good in temporal actuality.
But again, it should be noted that in this passage God’s knowledge is crucial to theway in which Whitehead is interpreting God and utilizing the symbol “kingdom of heaven.” It is through God’s knowledge of the actual world that there is an interaction between God’s ideal vision and temporal process (see RM 153-59). Thus Whitehead is trying to speak not only of God’s immanence in the world; God’s knowledge of the world raises also the issue of the world’s immanence in God. The way Whitehead is using the symbol “kingdom of heaven” in this extended passage implies that God somehow receives the world into the divine experience.
The question confronting us, however, is how Whitehead was conceptualizing God’s knowledge of the world and reception of it into divine experience. With regard to this question it must be admitted, I believe, that in Religion in the Making Whitehead’s intention outstripped his technical metaphysical understanding. He intended to say that God knows the actual world as distinct from a merely possible world. This implies that in some way God experiences the actual world, in some way receives it into the divine experience. But in Religion in the Making Whitehead seems to have thought of knowledge as being entirely conceptual; we are not told how God’s knowledge of the eternal forms differs from God’s knowledge of which forms have been actualized in the temporal world. Apparently on the weight of the evidence provided by religious intuitions (some of which is summed up in the symbol “kingdom of heaven”), Whitehead assumed that God has such knowledge; and at this time he thought of this knowledge as being conceptual in character. This is because Whitehead had not yet worked out his ontology of knowing.
In Process and Reality he worked out the ontological theory of knowing in great detail, introducing the important idea of physical prehensions and the complex theory of consciousness, intuitive judgments, and knowledge as necessarily involving the integration and reintegration of conceptual and physical prehensions (PR 160-66/243-53; 184-207/280-316; 219-80/334-428). Once the ontology of knowing was developed, it became clear that neither consciousness nor knowledge could be ascribed to mere conceptual realization (or the primordial nature of God taken in abstraction) (PR 343f/521f).
This is one of the main reasons that caused Whitehead to introduce the notion of the consequent nature of God, that is, God’s physical prehensions of the temporal actualities and the integration of them with the primordial conceptual prehensions (PR 344-511523-32). In Religion in the Making Whitehead wanted to make the same basic claim as he does in Process and Reality, that God experiences and knows the world. But he did not yet have the technical ontological theory of knowing that would have enabled him to make this claim with metaphysical precision. In Religion in the Making God’s experience and knowledge of the world is assumed to be conceptual in nature.
Thus what Griffin regards as Ford’s “confusing” treatment of the consequent nature of God in Religion in the Making really reflects the ambiguity of Whitehead’s position in Religion in the Making as seen from a post-Process and Reality perspective rather than any shortcoming in Ford’s analysis. In Religion in the Making Whitehead does want to speak of God’s reception of the world (Griffin’s consequent nature in the broad sense), and yet he conceives of God’s experience and knowledge as being entirely conceptual. This interpretation does not do “violence to the text of” Religion in the Making unless one insists on interpreting it from a post-Process and Reality perspective. An analysis of how Whitehead used the symbol “kingdom of heaven” in Religion in the Making supports Ford’s conclusion that in it “God was conceived as a primordial, nontemporal actuality of conceptual feeling alone, endowed however with many of the functions Whitehead was later to assign to the consequent nature” (EW 147).
III
The development of Whitehead’s idea of God is reflected in the fact that his use of the symbol “kingdom of heaven” is quite different in Process and Reality. The first of the three references to the “kingdom,” however, almost exactly parallels the function of the first reference to it in Religion in the Making. Whitehead states that in the development of human reflection on God “three main strands of thought emerge which, amid many variations in detail, respectively fashion God in the image of an imperial ruler, God in the image of a personification of moral energy, God in the image of an ultimate philosophical principle” (PR 342f/520). To these Whitehead then contrasts what he finds in the teachings of Jesus:
There is, however, in the Galilean origin of Christianity yet another suggestion which does not fit very well with any of the three main strands of thought. It does not emphasize the ruling Caesar, or the ruthless moralist, or the unmoved mover. It dwells upon the tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love; and it finds purpose in the present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world. Love neither rules, nor is it unmoved; also it is a little oblivious as to morals. It does not look to the future; for it finds its own reward in the immediate present. (PR 343/520f)
Whitehead is here stressing not only the immanence of the transcendent God (“The present immediacy of a kingdom not of this world”), but also the unusual vision of God’s mode of operation in the world.
Thus, just as in Religion in the Making, Whitehead first uses the symbol “kingdom of heaven” to point out that in his view Jesus’ teachings concerning God and God’s relation to the world do not express one of the simple, extreme doctrines of God, but an unusual one. As in Religion in the Making, Whitehead’s further use of the symbol is at once an appeal to the religious evidence in support of his metaphysical concept of God and a test of that concept against the religious evidence.
However, in his two further uses of “kingdom of heaven” in Process and Reality Whitehead’s application of it differs significantly from his use of it in Religion in the Making. The two further uses of the symbol, both of which occur in the final section of the book, do not apply it to God’s conceptual harmonization of the eternal objects (the primordial nature), but apply it to the consequent nature and superjective character of God. To summarize what I will argue below, this change seems to be due to a new problem that was created by the development of Whitehead’s technical understanding of God. The introduction of the distinction between the primordial and the consequent natures of God enabled Whitehead to solve the problem of God’s knowledge and to conceive of God’s transcendence in a new way. But it also created a serious problem concerning God’s immanence. Whitehead used the “kingdom of heaven” symbol to assist in the partial resolution of this problem. The support for this argument will emerge as we analyze the relevant texts.
In the first paragraph of the last section of Process and Reality Whitehead applies the symbol to the consequent nature of God.
Thus the consequent nature of God is composed of a multiplicity of elements with individual self-realization. It is just as much a multiplicity as it is a unity; it is just as much one immediate fact as it is an unresting advance beyond itself. Thus the actuality of God must also be understood as a multiplicity of actual components in process of creation. This is God in his function of the kingdom of heaven.
Each actuality in the temporal world has its reception into God’s nature. The corresponding element in God’s nature is not temporal actuality, but is the transmutation of that temporal actuality into a living, ever-present fact. (PR 350/531)
Here the symbol “kingdom of heaven” is being applied to the relationship between God and the world which is established in God’s experience and “transmutation” of each temporal actuality. Thus the symbol refers to God’s reception of each temporal actuality and the integration of that actuality with the primordial nature. There is no clear reference in this passage to God’s physical prehensions or to the integration of them with the primordial nature, but it seems legitimate to understand this passage in light of those ideas.
I suspect that Whitehead’s description of God’s reception of the world, which occurs earlier in the final chapter of Process and Reality, was deeply influenced by his reflection on several of the parables of the kingdom. In particular, the images contained in the parable of the wheat and the darnel (MT 13:24-30)—a parable Whitehead explicitly cites on two occasions (SMW 267; AI 63)—resonate with his description of God’s consequent nature.
The perfection of God’s subjective aim, derived from the completeness of his primordial nature, issues into the character of his consequent nature. In it there is no loss, no obstruction. The world is felt in a unison of immediacy. . . .
The wisdom of subjective aim prehends every actuality for what it can be in such a perfected system . . . The image—and it is but an image—the image under which this operative growth of God’s nature is best conceived, is that of a tender care that nothing be lost.
The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the world. He saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also the judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage.
Another image which is also required to understand his consequent nature is that of his infinite patience. (PR 345f/524f)
It is these images, so clearly drawn from the depths of the religious experience of God, combined with Whitehead’s technical understanding of God’s subjectivity, which enable him to call the consequent nature of God the “kingdom of heaven.” This use of the symbol is a clear appeal to the testimony of religious experience in support of his concept of God; or, alternatively, it shows how Whitehead’s technical concept of God can illumine the central image utilized in the teaching of Jesus.
Whitehead’s application of the symbol “kingdom of heaven” to the consequent nature of God, however, changes (or perhaps more accurately, deepens) his understanding of God’s transcendence and immanence. In Religion in the Making, as we have seen, the “kingdom of heaven” was understood to be transcendent in that God’s eternal conceptual harmonization is in no way derivative from the world. The “kingdom” was understood to be immanent as the ground of order required for any temporal actual passage and immanent as well in the ideal forms actualized by temporal actualities. In Process and Reality, although both this understanding of God’s transcendence and the two forms of immanence remain, the symbol “kingdom of heaven” is applied to neither. Instead, the transcendence of the “kingdom of heaven” lies in the fact that it constitutes God’s “private” experience. The “transformation” of the world as the temporal actualities are integrated and reintegrated in God’s everlasting concrescence occurs “beyond” the temporal world:
. . . the temporal world [is] perfected by its reception and its reformation, as a fulfilment of the primordial appetition which is the basis of all order. In this way God is completed by the individual, fluent satisfactions of finite fact, and the temporal occasions are completed by their everlasting union with their transformed selves, purged into conformation with the eternal order which is the final absolute “wisdom.” (PR 347/527)
This perfection, reformation, transformation, and purging of the temporal world—which Whitehead on one occasion calls “the Apotheosis of the World” (PR 348/529)—occurs in the privacy of God’s concrescence, in “everlastingness.” With the description of only the primordial and consequent natures (and extrapolating in analogy with the structure of temporal concrescence), there is no way for concrescing temporal occasions to prehend this aspect of God; it is radically private to God, “beyond” the temporal world, and hence transcendent.
This gives us an additional understanding of God’s transcendence, but it creates an important problem. If this were the final fact, then Whitehead’s description of the consequent nature of God would be mere speculation since there could be no conceivable evidence against which to test his theoretical deductions, no concrete evidence in support of the theory. Such a state of affairs would allow no firm answer to the question of ultimate meaning which motivated this discussion in the first place (see PR 340f/516-18). Furthermore, since Whitehead has depended on religious intuitions as evidence of this aspect of God, and since these intuitions must be experiences of this aspect of God, then there ought to be some way of conceptualizing how temporal actualities prehend what thus far can only be understood as God’s “private” experience. In other words, some metaphysical conceptualization of how religious intuitions can prehend the consequent nature of God is required.
This problem is a serious one and can be stated in another way. The problem is to find some way of characterizing the immanence of God as a total actual entity. The immanence of the primordial nature of God can be understood in the same way as God’s immanence was understood in Religion in the Making. But with the introduction of the distinction between the primordial and the consequent natures of God, this account of God’s immanence is rendered incomplete. Thus some metaphysical conceptualization of how the consequent nature of God is immanent in the world is now required.
These are the considerations which must have led Whitehead to employ his metaphysical principles and his understanding of subjectivity in speaking of God as “superject.” Since he had already spoken of each actual entity as at once “subject-superject” (PR 29/43), he applied this to the understanding of God.
But the principle of universal relativity is not to be stopped at the consequent nature of God. This nature itself passes into the temporal world according to its gradation of relevance to the various concrescent occasions . . . . In the fourth phase, the creative action completes itself. For the perfected actuality passes back into the temporal world, and qualifies this world so that each temporal actuality includes it as an immediate fact of relevant experience. For the kingdom of heaven is with us today. The action of the fourth phase is the love of God for the world. It is the particular providence for particular occasions. What is done in the world is transformed into a reality in heaven, and the reality in heaven passes back into the world. By reason of this reciprocal relation, the love in the world passes into the love in heaven, and floods back again into the world. In this sense, God is the great companion—the fellow-sufferer who understands. (PR 350, 351/532; see also 88/135)
Thus in Process and Reality the immanence of the “kingdom of heaven” is conceived as the prehension of the fullness of God. God’s “superjective” character3 makes present to the actual occasions of the temporal world the integrated primordial and consequent natures of God. God’s judgment, knowledge, and love, and God’s transformation of the actual world of the past, are not restricted to the privacy of God’s subjective experience but are shared in God’s presence in the world. “The kingdom of heaven is with us today.” The religious intuitions upon which Whitehead has relied in constructing his understanding of God are now able to be conceptualized as “intellectual feelings” of God as superject. They testify to encounters with God, to “feelings” of God’s judgment, knowledge, patience, and love. Consequently, it is most appropriate for Whitehead to appeal to the symbol “kingdom of heaven” when attempting to describe this aspect of God.
Thus in comparison with Religion in the Making, in Process and Reality Whitehead uses the symbol “kingdom of heaven” to characterize God’s transcendence and immanence in a new way. As we have seen, in Religion in the Making the symbol is used primarily to express the transcendence and immanence of God understood as the eternal conceptual valuation of all ideal forms (or, in the language of Process and Reality, the primordial nature). But in Process and Reality the “kingdom of heaven” is applied exclusively to the consequent and superjective natures of God. The “kingdom” is understood to be transcendent in a way analogically parallel to the transcendence of every subject over its past actual world: its reaction to the given past and to the available eternal objects is ultimately “private,” determined finally by its own subjective aim and its own subjective forms of feeling. Likewise, the “kingdom of heaven” is God’s private reception and transformation of the temporal actual world; in that privacy of response lies its transcendence over the world. But in privately creating itself, each actual entity also becomes a superject; it presents itself as just this actuality in the world prehended by other subjects. It thus becomes immanent in the world. Likewise, the “kingdom of heaven” becomes immanent in presenting itself as this reaction to the world. The understanding of God’s transcendence and immanence worked out in Religion in the Making remains, but the symbol “kingdom of heaven” is not applied to it; in Process and Reality that symbol is reserved for the understanding of the consequent and superjective natures of God and thus adds to the understanding of God’s transcendence and Immanence.
This is, however, only a partial resolution of the problem concerning the immanence of God. It is partial because it leaves unanswered the technical problem of how God, as a single actual entity, can have “objective immortality” (see PR 32/47) and be prehended by concrescing occasions without “perishing.” Whitehead states that the principle of universal relativity allows us to deduce or predict that the consequent nature of God must somehow be immanent (PR 350/532), and he appeals to religious intuitions as supporting this deduction (“For the kingdom of heaven is with us today” [PR 351/532]), but he never solved the technical problem of how this was to be understood with metaphysical precision.4 Thus the “kingdom of heaven” symbol plays a crucial role in allowing Whitehead to make this claim for the immanence of the consequent nature of God without having a fully developed rational basis for it.
IV
Why did Whitehead’s use of the symbol “kingdom of heaven” change? It seems clear that the major reason for the change is to be found in the development of his mature ontological theory and in the way this affected his understanding of knowledge. We have seen that God’s knowledge of the world is an essential part of how Whitehead conceived of God in both Religion in the Making and Process and Reality. God’s knowledge is also central to how Whitehead used the symbol “kingdom of heaven.” In both books this symbol stands for God’s judgment and knowledge, God’s reception of the actual world and God’s presence within it. God’s judgment, knowledge, patience, love, and the providential luring of the world’s freedom are integral to this symbol and to what Whitehead wanted to be able to say about God as both transcendent and immanent.
Initially, Whitehead appears to have thought that one could speak of God’s knowledge and love by conceiving of God as the eternal, nontemporal actuality of infinite conceptual valuation. But in Process and Reality Whitehead realized that he had to work out an ontology of knowing and that this must affect the understanding of God. A trace of this development can be found in a statement Whitehead made in his discussion of the theory of judgment: “The very possibility of knowledge should not be an accident of God’s goodness; it should depend on the interwoven nature of things. After all, God’s knowledge has equally to be explained” (PR 190/289). The necessity of explaining God’s knowledge was one of the major reasons provoking the development of Whitehead’s technical understanding of God. Given the idea of physical prehensions and the theory of judgment, knowledge, and consciousness as necessarily involving the integration and reintegration of physical and propositional prehensions, neither knowledge nor love could any longer be understood in terms of conceptual prehensions alone. They require an encounter with the known or loved actuality (not merely the conceptual grasping of the ideal form or eternal object actualized in the entity). Thus God must enjoy physical prehensions as well as conceptual prehensions. The doctrine of God’s consequent nature is partially the result of the necessity of explaining God’s knowledge.
Since God’s knowledge was central to the way Whitehead had used the symbol “kingdom of heaven” in Religion in the Making, in Process and Reality he restricted its use to his discussion of the consequent nature and superjective character of God. But this was not the only reason for limiting the use of this symbol. As I have argued elsewhere,5 the doctrine of God’s consequent nature initially has the methodological status of a theoretical deduction; since it is an attempt to answer the final metaphysical question concerning the meaning of experience by referring to God’s character, it remains speculative, merely hypothetical, unless Whitehead can appeal to some concrete experience as evidence. Since the main evidence concerning God’s character is to be found in religious experience or intuitions, Whitehead must appeal to them for empirical support for his doctrine of God’s consequent nature. It is to Jesus’ teachings regarding the “kingdom of heaven” that Whitehead turns for evidence. Since the testimony of religious experience is not required to establish the doctrine of the primordial nature of God (see PR 207/315f; 343/521; 344f/523), but is required for the consequent and superjective natures, Whitehead restricted the use of the symbol “kingdom of heaven” to his discussion of the latter.
In Griffin’s disagreement with Ford’s distinction between “ordinary” and “religious metaphysics,” there is truth on both sides. I would agree with Griffin that the development of the doctrine of God’s consequent nature was based on reason (PS 15:201); methodologically it is a rational deduction from the metaphysical system. But Ford is not wrong in holding that ultimately this doctrine is based on religious experience (EWM 136, 141); it is Whitehead’s appeal to religious experience (the “kingdom of heaven”) which allows him to affirm that the rationally deduced doctrine of the consequent nature is in fact supported in and by experience. Ford’s terminology (“ordinary” and “religious” metaphysics) is probably not the best way to express this point and may even be misleading. Still, Ford is calling attention to a distinction that is present in Whitehead’s procedure in both Process and Reality and Religion in the Making.
V
Even though there was a very important development in Whitehead’s thought and a change in how he employed the symbol “kingdom of heaven,” there is nevertheless an important continuity in Whitehead’s intent in using this symbol. He consistently wanted to use the symbol as a reference to the testimony of religious experience, specifically to the unusual vision of God he discerned in the teachings of Jesus. He wanted to use the symbol as an expression for God’s transcendence and immanence and knowledge of the world. Implicitly in Religion in the Making and explicitly in Process and Reality, he also uses the symbol to express the world’s immanence in God. This intention and meaning is consistent between the two books. What has changed from Religion in the Making to Process and Reality is the technical understanding of how this transcendence and mutual immanence is ontologically and metaphysically possible.
Notes
1 I have argued that this is Whitehead’s procedure in PR in “Whitehead and a New Direction for Christian Philosophical Theology.” The Modern Schoolman 62 (1984-85): 293-303, esp. pp. 298-302.
2 It is true that the brief doctrine of God’s “superjective nature” mentioned in PR (88/135; 351/532) expresses the immanence of the consequent nature in the world; but Whitehead’s discussion of the consequent nature concerns exclusively the immanence of the actual world in God.
3 I agree with Ford that it is misleading to think of a distinct “superjective” nature of God (despite the fact that this is Whitehead’s term); it is better to interpret this as God’s superjective character. See Lewis S. Ford, “Is There a Distinct Superjective Nature?,” Process Studies 3 (1973): 228f.
4 See A. H. Johnson, “Some Conversations with Whitehead Concerning God and Creativity,” in Lewis S, Ford and George L. Kline, eds., Explorations in Whitehead’s Philosophy (New York: Fordham University Press, 1983), pp. 9-10.
5 See note 1.
References
PS 15—David Ray Griffin. “Critique” of Lewis S. Ford, The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics. Process Studies 15/3 (1986): 194-207.
EWM—Lewis S. Ford. The Emergence of Whitehead’s Metaphysics, 1925-1929. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984.
Posted March 9, 2007