Ok the thread title is a bit of mouthful. But it refers to a something Professor A. N. Whitehead said, and a passage in CS Lewis's book Miracles.
I think CS Lewis would not necessarily agree with everything Prof. Whitehead wrote, nor with the Process Theology that takes some insights from Whitehead. I was interested in Whitehead and his thought at one point in my intellectual journey, but then I started to read Lewis.
In the following passage Lewis articulates his understanding of the difference between Theism and Pantheism.
"Probably no thinking person would, in so many words deny that God is concrete and individual. But not all thinking people, and certainly not all who believe in "religion" keep this truth steadily before their minds. We must beware, as Prof. Whitehead says, of paying God ill-judged "metaphysical compliments." We say that God is "infinite." In the sense that His knowledge and power extend not to some things but to all, this is true . But if by using the word "infinite" we encourage ourselves to think of Him as a formless "everything" about whom nothing in particular and everything in general is true, then it would be better to drop that word altogether. Let us dare to say that God is a particular Thing. Once He was the only Thing: but He is creative, He made other things to be. He is not those other things. He is not "universal being": if He were there would be no creatures, for a generality can make nothing. He is "absolute being" - or rather the Absolute Being - in the sense that He alone exists in His own right. But there are things which God is not. In that sense He has a determinate character. Thus He is righteous, not a-moral; creative, not inert. The Hebrews writings here observe an admirable balance. Once God says simply I AM, proclaiming the mystery of self-existence. But times without number He says, "I am the Lord" - I, the ultimate Fact, have this determinate character, and not that. And men are exhorted to "know the Lord," to discover and experience this particular character."
"The error which I am here trying to correct is one of the most sincere and respectable errors in the world; I have sympathy enough with it to feel shocked at the language I have been driven to use in stating the opposite view, which I believe to be the true one. To say that God "is a particular Thing" does seem to obliterate the immeasurable difference not only between what He is and what all other things are but between the very mode of His existence and theirs. I must at once restore the balance by insisting the derivative things, from atoms to archangels, hardly attain to existence at all in comparison with their Creator. Their principle of existence is not in themselves. You can distinguish what they are from the fact that they are. The definition of them can be understood and a clear idea of them formed without even knowing whether they are. Existence is an "opaque" addition to the idea of them. But with God it is not so: if we fully understood what God is we should see that there is no question whether He is. It would always have been impossible that He should not exist. He is the opaque centre of all existences, the thing that simply and entirely is, the fountain of facthood. And yet, now that He has created, there is a sense in which we must say that He is particular Thing and even one Thing among others. To say this is not to lessen the immeasurable difference between Him and them. On the contrary, it is to recognise in Him a positive perfection which Pantheism has obscured; the perfection of being creative. He is so brim-full of existence that He can give existence away, can cause things to be, and to be really other than Himself, can make it untrue to say that He is everything."
Quote from the CS Lewis book : Miracles - Chapter: Christianity and "Religion" (italics in original)
I've known some christians to eventually react against elements of the Biblical-Classical Synthesis, only to then embrace the Biblical-Modern Synthesis. I suspect the latter is not so uncommon in Emergent Church circles.
But I think CS Lewis here has managed to masterfully distinguish Theism from Pantheism without going down the Process Theology path.
I think CS Lewis would not necessarily agree with everything Prof. Whitehead wrote, nor with the Process Theology that takes some insights from Whitehead. I was interested in Whitehead and his thought at one point in my intellectual journey, but then I started to read Lewis.
In the following passage Lewis articulates his understanding of the difference between Theism and Pantheism.
"Probably no thinking person would, in so many words deny that God is concrete and individual. But not all thinking people, and certainly not all who believe in "religion" keep this truth steadily before their minds. We must beware, as Prof. Whitehead says, of paying God ill-judged "metaphysical compliments." We say that God is "infinite." In the sense that His knowledge and power extend not to some things but to all, this is true . But if by using the word "infinite" we encourage ourselves to think of Him as a formless "everything" about whom nothing in particular and everything in general is true, then it would be better to drop that word altogether. Let us dare to say that God is a particular Thing. Once He was the only Thing: but He is creative, He made other things to be. He is not those other things. He is not "universal being": if He were there would be no creatures, for a generality can make nothing. He is "absolute being" - or rather the Absolute Being - in the sense that He alone exists in His own right. But there are things which God is not. In that sense He has a determinate character. Thus He is righteous, not a-moral; creative, not inert. The Hebrews writings here observe an admirable balance. Once God says simply I AM, proclaiming the mystery of self-existence. But times without number He says, "I am the Lord" - I, the ultimate Fact, have this determinate character, and not that. And men are exhorted to "know the Lord," to discover and experience this particular character."
"The error which I am here trying to correct is one of the most sincere and respectable errors in the world; I have sympathy enough with it to feel shocked at the language I have been driven to use in stating the opposite view, which I believe to be the true one. To say that God "is a particular Thing" does seem to obliterate the immeasurable difference not only between what He is and what all other things are but between the very mode of His existence and theirs. I must at once restore the balance by insisting the derivative things, from atoms to archangels, hardly attain to existence at all in comparison with their Creator. Their principle of existence is not in themselves. You can distinguish what they are from the fact that they are. The definition of them can be understood and a clear idea of them formed without even knowing whether they are. Existence is an "opaque" addition to the idea of them. But with God it is not so: if we fully understood what God is we should see that there is no question whether He is. It would always have been impossible that He should not exist. He is the opaque centre of all existences, the thing that simply and entirely is, the fountain of facthood. And yet, now that He has created, there is a sense in which we must say that He is particular Thing and even one Thing among others. To say this is not to lessen the immeasurable difference between Him and them. On the contrary, it is to recognise in Him a positive perfection which Pantheism has obscured; the perfection of being creative. He is so brim-full of existence that He can give existence away, can cause things to be, and to be really other than Himself, can make it untrue to say that He is everything."
Quote from the CS Lewis book : Miracles - Chapter: Christianity and "Religion" (italics in original)
I've known some christians to eventually react against elements of the Biblical-Classical Synthesis, only to then embrace the Biblical-Modern Synthesis. I suspect the latter is not so uncommon in Emergent Church circles.
But I think CS Lewis here has managed to masterfully distinguish Theism from Pantheism without going down the Process Theology path.
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