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God, the Creatures, and Creativity
Is God the ultimate, you may wish to know.
I answer, yes, of course—but also, no.
For some in process thought there are three:
God, the Creatures, and Creativity.
Of these three, Creativity favors first in creation,
Since God is, of the Creativity, an instantiation.
But all three are required for any universe to exist,
As Whitehead made clear and was right to insist.
And not only to merely exist, but also required, you see,
For any advance into beauty, exuberance, and novelty.
It is by determination, and necessarily by chance,
By two types of process does the world advance:
Concrescence, as final causation, achieves self-actualization;
To pass on what is achieved is transition or efficient causation.
And, in beauty, these two interweave in perpetual oscillation.
(The latter, to be clear, is David Ray Griffin’s innovation.)