process studies articles @ religion online...
Volume 12 (1982)
- Number 1, Spring 1982
- God as Thelarrhenic by Carl S. Keener
- The Basingers on Divine Omnipotence: A Further Point by James A. Keller
- Whitehead and Aristotle On Propositions by Peter J. Cataldo
- Whitehead and Nietzsche: Overcoming the Evil of Time by Strachan Donnelley
The author illuminates problems generated by the appropriation of the terms "androgynous" and "gynandrous" in process theology.
Classical theologians typically limit self-determining (free) creatures on this earth to humans (or perhaps also to certain higher animals), while process theologians typically would affirm that creative self-determination is characteristic of all beings.
For Aristotle a proposition contains reference to what is believed to be an actual state of affairs -- either positive or negative -- as a predicable within the proposition. Whitehead’s theory does not have such an element.
Nietzsche embraces the permanence of evil while Whitehead’s temporal process destroys worldy achievements.
- Number 2, Summer 1982
- Number 3, Fall 1982
- A. N. W.: A Biographical Perspective by Victor Lowe
- Actuality, Possibility, and Theodicy: A Response to Nelson Pike by David Ray Griffin
- Process Theodicy and the Concept of Power by Nelson Pike
- Whitehead’s Theory of Causal Objectification by William J. Garland
Whitehead he did not keep a diary, and was famous for not writing letters; they took too much time from his work. His talk was witty. In criticism he was truthful. A devastating comment was made with the utmost gentleness. He had a tendency to be ironic; but there was no malice in his irony.
The author challenges Nelson Pike’s criticism that everything that happens contributes to the ultimate good: There exists countless forms of real evil in the world.
Whitehead probably believed that no being is omnipotent. Thus the question: is there logical conflict between the statements "God exists" and "evil exists"?
The one thing that Whitehead expresses over and over again in Process and Reality is his conviction that we experience particular individuals and not just ‘universals’ or ‘previously-enacted forms’. Interpretations of Whitehead’s metaphysics which neglect this point cannot hope to do justice to his persistent endeavor to explain just how one actual entity can be present in another.
- Number 4, Winter 1982
- Can Whitehead Be Made a Christian Philosopher? by Paul G. Kuntz
- Continuity, Possibility, and Omniscience by Richard F. Creel
- Metaphors as Imaginative Propositions by D. Lynn Holt
- Plato as Dipolar Theist by Leonard I. Eslick
How do we define what a Christian is? Is it not dependent upon who does the defining? Whitehead was a Christian philosopher in the sense that will be recognized if Christianity becomes tolerant enough to universalize itself.
Does God know all possibilities that could come to pass? Can God knows possibilities before they become actual? The significance of this is that a possibility is not knowable in its distinctness until it becomes actual because before it becomes actual there is no it to be known.
How and where does the phenomenon of metaphor "fit" in Whitehead’s speculative scheme, and what contributions, if any, does the philosophy of organism provide for contemporary discourse on metaphor? The author maintains that the irreducible metaphor is a verbal approximation of a species of imaginative propositions.
Plato was in possession of two theisms, one of absolute fixity, the other of absolute mobility. The author proposes the possibility that the two Platonic theisms coalesce as complementary into One. Thus Plato can be understood as at least a prophetic quasi-dipolar theist although this is probably not possible until the process thinking of current times.