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  1. 2 Open Theology

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  1. 2 Oomen P. M. F.

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  1. 2 2015

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1

God’s Power and Almightiness in Whitehead’s Thought

100%
Oomen P. M. F.
Open Theology
|
2014
|
vol. 1
|
issue 1
EN
Whitehead’s position regarding God’s power is rather unique in the philosophical and theological landscape. Whitehead rejects divine omnipotence (unlike Aquinas), yet he claims (unlike Hans Jonas) that God’s persuasive power is required for everything to exist and to occur. This intriguing position is the subject of this article. The article starts with an exploration of Aquinas’ reasoning towards God’s omnipotence. This will be followed by a close examination of Whitehead’s own position, starting with an introduction to his philosophy of organism and its two-sided concept of God. Thereupon, an analysis of Whitehead’s idiosyncratic view on God’s agency will show that, according to this conception, God and the World depend upon each other, and that God’s agency is a non-coercive but persuasive power. The difference between coercion and persuasion will be explained as well as the reason why God, according to Whitehead’s conception, cannot possibly coerce. Finally, a discussion of the issue of divine almightiness will allow for a reinterpretation of divine almightiness from a Whiteheadian perspective, which will show how despite Whitehead’s rejection of God’s omnipotence, his concept retains essential elements of God as pantokrator (and thus markedly differs from Hans Jonas’ concept).
2

Language about God in Whitehead’s Philosophy

100%
Oomen P. M. F.
Open Theology
|
2014
|
vol. 1
|
issue 1
EN
The way Whitehead speaks of God in his ‘philosophy of organism,’ and the evaluation thereof, is the subject of this article. The background of this issue is the position - broadly shared in theology, and here represented by Aquinas - that one should not speak ‘carelessly’ about God. Does Whitehead violate this rule, or does his language for God express God’s otherness and relatedness to the world in a new intriguing way? In order to answer this question an introduction into Whitehead’s philosophy is given, and especially into his category of existence, the ‘actual entity.’ For Whitehead God is an actual entity, and so is the most trivial puff of existence. His perception of the similarity and greater dissimilarity between God and the worldly actual entities (and clusters thereof) is analyzed. In the main and final section of this article these insights are used as a tool to decrypt Whitehead’s God-language. Here the status of Whitehead’s and Aquinas’ statements about God are compared, Whitehead’s ideas concerning the analogical character of concrete language are discussed, and it is argued that in Whitehead’s philosophy too there is no discourse about God without a shift or breakdown of the ‘ordinary’ meaning of language.
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