Human betweenness means that the humans live between transcendence and ordinariness. Betweenness refers to ordinary human life transformed into the sacred. Transcendence lures ordinariness toward the sacred. Betweenness discloses the Way, a way to be human. This idea of human betweenness derives from the East Asian (Confucian-Daoist) interpretation of human being, in which the humans are one with Heaven and Earth. Here, the betweenness, that is, the 'being-between' Heaven and Earth, refers to everything in the world. It means that the purpose of human life is to integrate them into the wholeness of life, which is the sacred. This East Asian idea of human betweenness, the dissertation argues, resonates with the Western thoughts of Being, God, and/or Nature. This resonance will be examined in the modern and contemporary Western notions of human being in Heidegger, Corrington, Whitehead, Neville and Keller. In so doing, the dissertation discerns three forms of integration of the betweenness of transcendence and ordinariness. The East Asian idea of betweenness in Confucianism and Daoism stresses a human initiative, both Heidegger and Corrington emphasize the transcendent initiative, and process thinkers such as Whitehead, Neville and Keller appreciate the ordinary initiative. After all, human betweenness is the idea of the transformation of the ordinariness into the sacred by the luring force of transcendence. Both transcendence and ordinariness are betweenized because it is the way for human beings to live in a way of being human and to perceive the world. Ordinariness is transcended whenever human being experiences a certain sense of ecstatic union with things in the world. This sense of ecstasy, of a feeling of going beyond the ordinariness, is transcendental in the sense that it is extra/ordinary which means it is beyond ordinariness. In this way, human being is connected to the whole world, that is, the universe. Human life is all about this integration of transcendence and ordinariness into the sacred union. It asks human responsibility for it because it is human being that feels the luring and beckoning touches of transcendence over the ordinariness.

This dissertation argues that the philosophical and theological problem of the One and the Many as understood by process theologians in general, and Joseph A. Bracken in particular, is a pseudo-problem. This pseudo-problem arises from collapsing metaphysics into cosmology and denying the essential aspects of the distinction between God and the world as articulated in the various versions of classical theism. The argument is made by expositing, analyzing, and critiquing the process theology of Bracken. The thesis concludes that by denying key features of the traditional Creator, process theology in general and Bracken’s theology in particular both precipitate and make insoluble their understandings of the problem of the One and the Many. It is argued that the problem of the One and the Many in process thought is ultimately an attempt to account for all of reality based on the metaphysical principles applicable only to finite, created, in classical theism. This problem is described as the ‘problem of mutual ultimate causality.’ The thesis closes by setting forth the classical understanding of God as the infinitely transcendent Creator God who is self-existent, pure act, and simple. It argues that the problem of mutual ultimate causality is obviated only by admitting the necessity of an ultimate reality that is not subject to the metaphysical principles of finite, created, reality as defined by classical theism.