process studies articles @ religion online...
Volume 6 (1976)
- Number 1, Spring 1976
- Dipolar Theism: Psychological Considerations by John F. Haught
- Feeling as a Metaphysical Category: Hartshorne from an Analytical View by L. Bryant Keeling
- Rejection, Influence, and Development: Hartshorne in the History of Philosophy by Colin Gunton
- Two Conceptions of Power by Bernard Loomer
Many theologians who follow Whitehead and Hartshorne are largely concerned with questions of logical, theodicy, and compatibility with biblical and traditional theology. The author attempts to apply some basic Jungian criteria in evaluating the image of God in terms of these concepts.
Metaphysical principles have been attacked in recent years by analytic philosophers, but Hartshorne maintains that the analytic philosophers have succeeded only in tearing down antiquated metaphysical castles.
Gunton examines Hartshorne’s idealism -- his concept that God is dipolar, and that God is the soul of the world.
There are two kinds of power -- linear and relational. The former is the traditional, the later is the needed.
- Number 2, Summer 1976
- Christology Reconsidered: John Cobb’s 'Christ in a Pluralistic Age’ by Schubert M. Ogden
- Response to Ogden and Carpenter by John B. Cobb, Jr.
- The Christology of John Cobb by James C. Carpenter
- The Subjectivist Principle and the Linguistic Turn Revisited by James E. Lindsey, Jr.
The author writes that Cobb’s Christology describes a Jesus who is a mere possibility, not the actuality it purports to describe. Thus, it is at best a wholly speculative interpretation in no way grounded in the Jesus of history it professes to interpret.
This is Dr. Cobb's reply to two articles: "The Christology of John Cobb." by James C. Carpenter, and "Christology Reconsidered: John Cobb’s 'Christ in a Pluralistic Age’" by Schubert M. Ogden. A major difference between Ogden and Cobb lies in their divergent views of the possibility of cognitive and existential certainty. Cobb contrasts Carpenter’s ethical concept of the quality of life Cobb’s own interest in historical "progress," which has not led to greater and greater virtue or improved quality of life but to greater possibilities for good and evil.
Dr. Carpenter discusses two general problems faced by John Cobb: 1. Accounting for God’s presence in any person without displacing some aspect of that person’s humanity. 2. Accounting for God’s unique presence in Jesus.
The subjectivist principle is that the datum in the act of experience can be adequately analyzed purely in terms of universals. Part of Whitehead’s cure for the ills of modern philosophy involves the repudiation of aspects of the substance-quality mode of thought that are not immediate premises of the subjectivist principle and are not necessarily connected with the problem of repeatability and unrepeatability.
- Number 3, Fall 1976
- A Resonance Model for Revelation by Jerry D. Korsmeyer
- Intentionality and Prehension by Nicholas F. Gier
- Matthew’s ‘Undercurrent’ and Ogden’s Christology by Russell Pregeant
- Meland’s Alternative in Ethics by John B. Spencer
The author presents a process model for revelation, an approach that is in keeping with Whitehead’s extensive use of physical analogies in the formulation of his metaphysics.
Intentionality is found in process philosophy, particularly in Whitehead’s doctrine of prehension. There are substantial parallels between Whitehead and existential phenomenology.
A process perspective on the language through which Matthew brings his christological witness to expression lends support to Ogden’s contention that the message of the New Testament is one that "can be formulated in complete abstraction from the event Jesus of Nazareth and all that it specifically imports."
Bernard Meland’s aesthetic ethic acknowledges the value, though limited, of the moral obligations of continuity and faithfulness to the inherited good from the structure of experience. But it does not need to insist upon any given unchanging structure not itself subject to critical inquiry.
- Number 4, Winter 1976
- Becoming: A Problem for Determinists? by J. Brenton Stearns
- Cartesian Roots of the Ontological Principle by Juliana Geran Pilon
- On Prehending the Past by Charles Michael Johnson
- Whitehead’s References to the Bible by Frederic R. Crownfield
Determinism conflicts with the common sense understanding of time and is to be rejected on that ground, but determinism is not absurd. However, the issue resolved is of little systematic importance to process metaphysics. Process philosophers can maintain their critique of classical substance, of absolute idealism, of materialism, and of classical theology without having it rest on the rather flimsy structure of a "refutation" of determinism.
In attempting to answer some of the basic questions about the nature of causality, actuality and the mental and physical poles, Whitehead is seeking a system that unifies knowledge, and is keeping alive the Cartesian approach to science and philosophy.
An occasion in its lifetime passes from becoming through being into nothingness. But as it reaches its endpoint and becomes a single unified Feeling (just before it becomes nothing at all) it becomes part of an actual world composed of other occasions which have reached their endpoints simultaneously, relative to the standpoint of the new occasion whose actual world they conjointly form.
A comprehensive list of references and their sources made by Professor Whitehead about the Bible, along with some comments and observations by Dr. Crownfield.