PROCESS AND
TRINITY
Some reflections
With the significant exception of the work of Joseph
Bracken, thinkers in the Process tradition have had very
little to say about the ancient Christian doctrine of the
Trinity. What
they do have to say happens often in appendices. Bracken's process
modelling is a modelling of a
Eastern Church theology.
My intention in the following is to revise this in the
direction of a more Western Church, Augustinian-Thomistic like
modelling, putting somewhat more stress than Bracken as
usually interpreted on the unity of the Divine mystery.
(A)Classic
Whitehead:
Whitehead's conception of the Divine is that of an (i.e. One) Eternal Actual Entity or
Event or Process in the sense of concrescence, in respect of
which it is usual to distinguish two or sometimes three
aspects or natures: Primordial, Consequent and Projective.
One is tempted by this threeness
to identify Father or Creator as Primordial Nature, Son or Redeemer as Consequent Nature
and Spirit or Sanctifier as Projective Nature. There is some value
to such a modelling. Jesus,
the suffering servant, takes on the sins of the world in their
utmost seriousness and dies on the cross; but on the
third day he rises from the dead and after that ascends into
heaven. This is
quite a good symbol of the Consequent Nature of the Divine as
modelled by the process thinkers. The Consequent
Nature is the Divine Actual Entity considered as receptive of
the world process: everything is received, the joys and
sorrows, the good and the evil.
But the evil, while received as it is, is not allowed
to contaminate the Divine Process nor use God as another way
into the world. On
the contrary, the cosmic process is saved firstly in the
divine life itself, before being saved in the world, = the
resurrection, ascension and descent of the Holy Spirit, this
latter being the symbol for the Projective Nature of the
Divine.
There are however a number of
problems with this modelling.
Firstly and most
importantly, Primordial, Consequent and Projective in classic
Whitehead designate God-in-relation-to-the-world-process. Primordial is God
considered as primordial to the world, unconditioned condition
of its general character; Consequent Nature is God considered
as consequent on the World Process, receptive of it;
Projective Nature is the divine persuasive activity considered
also as receptive of the world process. Nor are these to be
understood as a gracious creative and redemptive expression of
a deeper Triune mystery: God needs the world in order to have these natures or
aspects. Even
more strongly, God needs the world in
order to be God:
without the world God has no consequent nature, is
deficient in actuality, not a bona fida
actual entity. This
is made explicit by Whitehead himself. Secondly, even if
this were not the case, the modelling in terms of classic
Christian heresies is probably 'modalistic'.
(B)Classic
Hartshorne:
Hartshorne's modelling of the Divine is that of a
series of actual entities or happenings with personal order,
each member of which has the same two or three aspects or
natures. These
constitute one person in a sense analogous to that in which
'person' is said of a human person, only much more strongly
bonded in so far as there is total and complete reception and
acceptance of previous divine moments, nothing at all being
lost.
This may or may not be a better modelling than
Whitehead of the one personal God in Whiteheadian
conceptuality but as the basis for models of the Trinity it
faces exactly the same problems as
that of classic Whitehead.
(C)Joseph Bracken
(Eastern Christian - Hartshorne)
Joseph Bracken solves both sets of problems by positing
as model three such series of divine happenings, three
enduring objects or living persons in the Whiteheadian or Hartshornean sense, constituting one
divine field for everything else. This looks blatently tri-theistic, but when
looked at closely is probably less so than at first appears. The three series are
so related to each other that no one of them could survive in
isolation from each other.
They are constituted by/constitute themselves in,
internal relations to each other. Still, the suspicion
of tri-theism remains, so long as the modelling continues to
include three persons in the Hartshornean
sense.
Creation and redemption, Christ
and personal and communal life in the Spirit, meanwhile, are
to be understood as the gracious expression and reflection of
the inner divine life within the cosmic process. This at least is in
Christian terms an improvement.
(D)Revised
Bracken-Hartshorne:
(I)The Model
Instead of three living persons or enduring objects
constituting one divine field, why not push Bracken's model
even more in the direction of three types of happenings so
related as to constitute something approaching one and only
one enduring object or living person: three 'persons' in the
one Whiteheadian or Hartshornean
person? That is to say, why not model the
Trinity as three kinds of happenings which together constitute
the one personal God? Or
at least more in this direction.
See enclosed diagram for details.
The three types of Divine Events would be construed as
follows:
Source or Creator
or Mother/Father type happenings:
here resides the Primordial Nature of God in the strict sense. But given
Logos/Sophia Events and Ruah/Spiritus events, Source
happenings also acquire a Consequent Nature and a Projective
Nature.
Logos/Sophia
happenings: this is the event which is constituted
by/constitutes itself on the base of a total and complete
acceptance and affirmation of the primordial divine
envisagement of eternal objects.
But given the Spirit happenings as well as the Source
happenings (and previous Logos/Sophia happenings), it is also
concresive or creative in its
self-constitution, a genuine many-becoming-one. And it is also
projective in its turn.
This notion of the Divine Logos or Hagia Sophia as
constituting itself/being constituted by a total and complete
acceptance and affirmation of the primordial divine
envisagement of eternal objects, in fact is fairly traditional. It is traditional in
the sense that it relates quite closely to the Neoplatonic
conceptual apparatus that served as background to much early
Trinitarian speculation.
It is rather like the Neoplatonic Nous, the Divine Mind
with the Ideas or Forms inside it; but Christianized,
co-equal with the Father and the Spirit. It is along the
lines of a Christian Neoplatonizing
of Whitehead the last of the Cambridge Platonists.
Ruah/Spiritus
happenings: this kind of event is constituted by/constitutes
itself on the base of the love of the Logos/Sophia for the
Source and the love of Source for Logos/Sophia: the Spirit is
constituted from the love between the [Father] and the
[Son]..It is needed for either of the other two kinds of
events to be bona fida actual
entities, characterized by a genuine element of creativity.
Why describe this as one enduring object or living
person, or at least as more like one such person than three??
(i)because each event of whatever type
is an Empty One (Cobb):
--each event is
constituted by/necessarily constitutes itself on the
basis of the other events (see later for creation as gracious,
strictly speaking unnecessary to the integrity of the divine
life though factually inevitable);
--there is no
'negative prehension': everything given is received;
--there is no
'judgement': everything received from other events is taken up
in the course of self-constitution
and contributes fully to the 'projective nature' of the event
in question.
(ii)because of the
way they are connected together:
. Without the
Logos/Sophia, the Source Event would not have a consequent
nature and so would not be a bona fida
event or actual entity. On
the other hand, without the Source, there would be no
Logos/Sophia - the [Son] is begotten from the [Father].
. But what about
the Holy Spirit? The
Holy Spirit enables genuine concrescence in the other two
events, enables each of them to be a genuine
many-becoming-one, otherwise nothing to do except to repeat
and to repeat the repetition, and so on. Previous Source or
Logos events don't help.
I affirm you, you love me
affirming you, I love you affirming me affirming you and so
on. The Holy
Spirit brings free play into the Godhead: the
Spirit moves where it wills.
The Spirit brings movement, excitement
and continuing creativity.
It also makes possible a kind of love with no trace of
selfishness: a commitment to the relations and not just to
each other and a commitment to this third type of event which
is in no way a simple mirroring of either of the others. Given this
functioning of the Spirit within the Godhead, Spirit events
are just as metaphysically necessary as the other two types. On the other hand,
without the Source and Sophia events, there would be no Spirit
events: the Spirit proceeds from the [Father] and the [Son].
In this model, therefore, each needs the other two
kinds of events in order to exist
as a proper event. Even
though the events once constituted also receive from previous
events of the same kind, a series of any one kind of event in
isolation would be a non-social nexus, not capable of
maintaining itself even for a moment. Also, the reception
from the other types of events is just as total as the
reception from previous events of the same type. Also, what is
inherited is essentially the previous way of taking into account of the two other
kinds of events.
Alternatively, we could take a lead from Cobb's
Christology and regard each 'person' as co-constituted by its
past and its relation to events of the other two types. Each event gets its
sense of identity as much or, I would suspect, even more from
its relations with events of the other two types than with
previous events of the same type. "I and the Father are One". There is no
division, no sense of me and not me, mine
and thine, and yet the threeness
is not lost. And,
once again, what is inherited is essentially the previous way
of taking account of the two other kinds of events.
(II)Application
to Creation and Redemption.
God pertaining to us is to be considered as the
overflow of something happening in God in and for God, the
overflow and flooding back of the everlastingly existing,
dynamically self-surpassing inner divine life.
Creation is necessary in the sense that it will happen,
cannot but happen, in so far as "goodness diffuses itself"; it
is inconceivable that such a Life would not bring Cosmos out
of chaos. But it
is not necessary in the sense that God depends on it in order to be God, or in order to be
happy as God. So creation and redemption are still
eminently capable of being experienced as gracious, it can
still be said in a very real sense that "God did not have to
create", and it might still be claimed that creation is the
expression of Agape as usually understood rather than Eros. Creation is also
gracious in the further, more familiar process sense that the
kind of overflow is decided by God within the inner divine
life, by the free-play within the
Godhead.
Again as in typical process,
God continues to be Receptive of the Cosmic Process as well as
Primordially active and Projective. It is just that
these three aspects in respect of creation are now seen to be
rooted in the divine life itself. There is no reason
why God should not be receptive; as I've noted elsewhere, in a
vision in which God does not actually depend on creation for
Her/His happiness, this makes the agape even more astounding. Creation, then, to
cut a long story short, is so many different reflections of
the fulness of divine reception to be found in the Divine
Wisdom and Word, which reflections are then received into the
divine life, saved and projected
back into the world.
It might be noted that the model is strongly correlated
with Creation not being metaphysically necessary. If Creation is not
necessary, there has to be
something like the Trinity if there is to be God at all, and
if there is something like the Trinity, then Creation need not
be necessary. This
requires us to take seriously the feelings we sometimes have
concerning the contingency, the needing to be created-ness of everything we
experience in our daily lifes,
which feelings get expressed in such questions as, Why is
there anything rather than nothing? Also, the other,
brighter side of this same experience, the feeling for the
graciousness of everything, the giftedness of our lives and of
everything in them.
My favourite images for
this model, not exactly original, are music and dance. God is like a Jazz band of cosmic class or a cosmic
version of the Trout Quintet (but with only three Divine
Players), with theme announced, taken up, creatively
modulated, dynamically self-surpassing and eternally exciting
in its intensity and beauty.
We are all taken up into this music, reflecting it and
modifying it in our own ways, with what we do being in turn
reflected even in the Divine Music, which then floods back to
us, for us human beings and the rest of creation and for our
salvation. Or
else a three-partner dance of cosmic class full of grace and
beauty, which turns the whole universe into a cosmic dance
reflective of this grace and beauty, which then serves to
modify even the original Divine Dance, which is then reflected back to us for our good and
grace. Except
that in typical Process fashion there is only the music, no
players, only the dance, no dancers: the 'players' are
constituted by the music, and the 'dancers' by the dance.
(III)Value:
(a) This model of
the Divine Mystery, in language of Gibson Winter, is artistic
in it connotations, rather than
either individualistic/mechanistic (classical theism with its
immutable completely independent entirely self-sufficient and
therefore impassive Deity), or organic (like classical process
according to which God needs the world as much as the world
needs God and depends on the world for His/Her
self-fulfillment and indeed very being).
(b) If this
modelling works, it will help to remove a number of serious
obstacles to Western Catholic Christian reception of process
theology, by providing in one fell swoop (i)
a theology of Trinity which is not modalistic
and which is better calculated to avoid the alternative charge
of tri-theism; and (ii) a doctrine of Creation and Redemption
as truly gracious, and yet making a difference to God.
(c) In spite of (a)
and (b) and any other advantages this revised Bracken model
may have, this conception is and can be only a tentative
modelling, a hopefully helpful likely story, valuable in so
far as it helps us to participate in this receptive-active
divine life and to bring about the reign of God in our time
and place through the actions to which this leads.
(d) One serious
problem on the horizon is the relationship between the model
of the Trinity as above, and Whitehead's metaphysical
ultimate, 'Creativity'. The
Trinity is the religious, also ethical
and aesthetic ultimate, not the metaphysical ultimate. But the metaphysical
ultimate, whether conceived as Whitehead's Creativity or
Heidegger's Being, is not a kind of God, not the kind of thing
which might be worshipped??
But how is this Triune God and the metaphysical
ultimate to be related? God
is the Prime Embodiment or Exemplification of Creativity. It is this in Its own right and out of Its own
power. It is as
well the prime shaper and enhancer of the creativity of
everything else, the Principle of Novelty as well as the
Principle of Order. It
is also, in Its gracious goodness, the Creature of the
Creativity of everything else.
And if you like in its external Consequent and
Projective Nature it is the Creature
of the field of force brought into existence by everything
else, just as everything else is the creature of the Field of
Force brought into existence by the Intra-Divine Life. But it is not the
creature of some being, actual
entity or series of such, called Creativity.
(E)A Whiteheadian
version of the same?
Instead of three types of Events constituting one
everlasting Divine Life, we would in this case have just three
eternal co-dependent Events or Processes or concrescences
constituting one eternal Divine Life. There would be a
threefold concrescence within the Godhead, but no transition
of divine moments. This
would probably do better than the other in respect of
preserving the Unity of the Divine, by eliminating previous
moments of the same kind of event: each event then is
constituted by/constitutes itself entirely on the basis of internal relations with
the other two events.
I can't see how relations to give and to receive
between eternal concrescences would present any more problems
than do real relations in both directions between one eternal
concrescence and a world consisting of a nexus of temporal
series of momentary concrescences. There would not be
much more difficulty in reconciling such a model with
Whiteheadian metaphysical categories, than is already found
with the classic Whiteheadian God. This very difficulty
would serve to increase the sense of mystery, which is
probably a good thing in respect of the Holy One. But this
mysteriousness would be purchased at the cost of lack of
clarity and, I think also, a lessening of the sense of
dynamism and excitement.