To discuss how God and the world interact, in Whitehead’s view, it may be helpful to first say a few words about creativity.
Creativity is so fundamental an idea in process thought that David Griffin argues that there are two ultimates: God and creativity.
Process denies the idea that only God is creative, or that the creativity of the creatures comes from God. In no way does this deny God’s all-surpassing eminence in the creative process, for without God no process would even be possible, creative or otherwise.
Just as there are no actual entities without some degree of creativity, there is no creativity without, or apart from, some actual entity. Apart from God and actual entities, creativity has no actuality of its own, and yet it transcends them both. Whitehead reveals just how interconnected are his three fundamental ideas:
But, of course, there is no meaning to ‘creativity’ apart from its ‘creatures,’ and no meaning to ‘God’ apart from the ‘creativity’ and the ‘temporal creatures,’ and no meaning to the ‘temporal creatures’ apart from ‘creativity’ and ‘God.’ (PR 225)
Again, this is Whitehead’s “ontological principle,” according to which “there is nothing which floats into the world from nowhere.”
For Whitehead the ultimate metaphysical category is creativity, the form of forms, and universal of universals. In Process and Reality, he writes,
Neither God, nor the World, reaches static completion. Both are in the grip of the ultimate metaphysical ground, the creative advance into novelty. Either of them, God and the World, is the instrument of novelty for the other. (PR 349)
Creativity is pervasive, spanning the entire spectrum of reality, from God all the way down to atoms, electrons, and quarks, though in these elementary particles the degree of creativity is so minimal as to be almost (but not quite) negligible. This is an aspect of the idea of panexperientialism—that all actual entities or dynamic singulars (units of process that act and feel as one) enjoy experience to some degree.
To be a creature, any creature, is to be creative, is to be a creator, though not of course the Creator. And rather than claiming that God is the only Power, process proposes that all creation is co-creation, and that the creative process is just that: a process involving both God and creatures. God does not unilaterally provide any finished products. Jesus made essentially the same point when he said, “My Father worketh hitherto, and I work.”
First, God provides the ultimate ground and order necessary for any experience whatsoever to occur. God also begets the subjective immediacy of each beginning actual entity, endows it with possibilities, the freedom to choose among those possibilities, and an aim towards its own self-completion.
From a process perspective, God is always present in the very midst of our becoming, offering perfect possibilities in every new moment for each individual’s highest good. Such possibilities Whitehead calls initial aims, and these aims are directive and persuasive, but never coercive. And so every becoming occasion begins with God as creative love: everlastingly leading, luring, urging all actualities to new heights of fulfillment and enjoyment.
Whitehead puts it eloquently:
Every event on its finer side introduces God into the world. . . . The power by which God sustains the world is the power of himself as the ideal. He adds himself to the actual ground from which every creative act takes its rise. The world lives by its incarnation of God in itself. (RM 155-56)
The point to be noticed here is that all creation is co-creation—the co-creation of God and the world.
* * *
In the closing pages of Process and Reality, Whitehead presents a litany to this ultimate complementarity of God and the world:
It is as true to say that God is permanent and the World fluent, as that the World is permanent and God is fluent.
It is as true to say that God is one and the World many, as that the World is one and God many.
It is as true to say that, in comparison with the World, God is actual eminently, as that, in comparison with God, the World is actual eminently.
It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World.
It is as true to say that God transcends the World, as that the World transcends God.
It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.
When I first read this it sounded like a paragon of paradox. I thought to myself, this cannot be! But then Whitehead gives an intriguing clue: “The concept of ‘God’ is the way in which we understand this incredible fact—that what cannot be, yet is.” (PR 350) Remember, in Whitehead’s view God is dipolar with both an abstract essence and concrete actuality. With this in mind, let’s take another look at the second sentence:
It is as true to say that God is one [as abstract essence] and the World many [the many becoming actualities], as that the World is one [unified in God’s concrete actuality] and God many [the many actual entities as they are initially prehended into God’s concrete actuality].
The conclusion to be drawn from this I’ll phrase in Whiteheadian terms:
It is as true to say that the world requires God, as that God requires the world. It is as true to say that the World cannot exist without God, as that God cannot exist without the world. It is as true to say that God contributes to the World, as that the World contributes to God.
What God contributes to the world are possibilities for actualization; what the world contributes to God is the actualization of those possibilities, possibilities that hitherto God, as abstract essence, had only known abstractly and conceptually.
In the everlasting cosmic rhythm of the many and the one, the many creatures are the source of actualized adventures for the one God just as the one God is the source of possibilities for adventures and novelty for the many creatures. In Whitehead’s words:
The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God’s vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World’s multiplicity of effort. (PR 349)
Key to Abbreviations
PR Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality. Corrected Edition. Ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne.
RM Whitehead, Alfred North. Religion in the Making.
HyC