What Is the Proper
Conception of God?
• As stated in the previous class, in this
course, we shall proceed in the “Spirit of
Toledo.”
• Part of that Spirit is the conviction that
Philosophy can be used to help
explicate whatever a particular religious
tradition has received as Revelation.
• For 500 years before the School of
Toledo was founded, Islamic and
Jewish scholars had been using
Philosophy to explicate what they took
to be Revelation.
• With the advent of the 12th and 13th
Centuries, Christian scholars, aided by
their Jewish and Islamic predecessors,
began to do the same.
• Actually, they began to do again what
they really had not done, at least in the
West, for 600 years.
• A consensus among scholars from all
three of the West’s monotheistic
religions emerged about how God
should be conceived.
• This consensus conception of God can
be summed up in a phrase taken from
the work of an 11th Century Christian
theologian, St. Anselm of Canterbury.
• In his book Proslogion, Anselm
maintained that God should be
conceived as The Being than Whom
none greater can be conceived.
– God is the maximally perfect Being.
– God is as perfect as any Being
possibly can be.
– God possesses, to a maximal
degree, all the perfections a being
can possess.
– God is:
• Omnipotent (i.e. all-powerful)
• Omniscient (i.e. all-knowing)
• Omnibenevolent (i.e. all-good)
• Incorporeal (i.e.without a body)
• Eternal (i.e. existing beyond time)
• Immutable (i.e unchangeable)
– This is a logical consequence of God’s
eternality.
– God freely created from nothing (ex nihilo)
everything that exists besides Himself.
• Over the centuries, this way of conceiving God
became known as Classical Western
(Mono)Theism.
• Process Theism
– Beginning in the late 19th Century, some
theologians and philosophers became very
dissatisfied with Classical Theism’s
Conception of God.
– These theologians and philosophers claim
that Classical Theism’s conception of God
is the unhappy result of forcing the
scriptures and pieties of the West’s three
great monotheistic religions into the box of
Greek philosophy, especially Platonic
metaphysics.
• “[I]t is our contention that [Classical
Theism’s conception of God] give[s] the
word God a meaning which is not true to
its import in sacred writings or in
concrete religious piety.”
Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other
Theological Mistakes
– Process Theists propose another
conception of God they believe to be
truer to the scriptures and popular
piety of Western Monotheism.
• God is
– Limited in power, knowledge, and
goodness
– Corporeal (i.e has a body,
namely the visible world.)
– Temporal (i.e exist in and is
limited by time.)
– Mutable (i.e. changeable)
» Mutability is the logical
consequence of temporality.
• God does not create everything
from nothing; rather, God is the
“Super Consciousness” that
continually emerges from the
material world, which has always
existed.
• As a consequence, God grows and
evolves as the material world grows
and evolves.
• “God alone has enjoyed the entire
past and will enjoy all the future.
He-She is both physical and
spiritual, and the divine body is allsurpassing and all-inclusive of the
creaturely bodies, which are to God
as cells to a supercellular
organism. His-Her spirit embraces
all the psychical there is with allsurpassing, unstinted love.”
Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and
Other Theological Mistakes
– Process Theists argue that, in order
to embrace everything with “allsurpassing, unstinted love,” God must
suffer with anything and everything
that suffers.
• “The Old Testament seems to give
ample proof that [God] not only is
passible [changeable] but that He
also indeed suffers. God revealed
Himself to be a personal, loving,
and compassionate God who has
freely engaged Himself in,
• “and so ensconced Himself within,
human history. He mercifully heard
the cry of His enslaved people in
Egypt and determined to rescue
them. Moreover, God revealed
Himself, especially in the prophets,
to be a God who grieved over the
sins of His people. He was
distressed by their unfaithfulness,
and suffered over their sinful plight.
So disheartened was God by their
hard-heartedness that He actually
became angry.
• “However, ‘my heart recoils within
me; my compassion grows warm
and tender. I will not execute my
fierce anger; I will not again destroy
Ephraim; for I am God and not
mortal; the Holy One in your midst
and I will not come in wrath’ (Hosea
11:8-9). Thus, God in the Old
Testament suffers on account of,
with, and on behalf of His people.”
Thomas G. Weinandy, “Does God Suffer?”
• Process theists maintain exactly
the same can be adduced from the
New Testament as well.
• Which conception of God (Classical
Theism’s or Process Theism’s) is really
truer to the scriptures and pieties of
Western Monotheism?
– God’s relation to the everything else
that exists
• Classical Theists maintain that God
created ex nihilo everything
besides Himself that exists.
– Process theists maintain that God
emerges from the material world and
evolves and changes with it.
– Two critical scripture passages:
• “In the beginning, God created the
Heaven and the Earth, and the
Earth was without form and void;
and darkness was on the face of
the deep.”
Genesis 1:1-2a (KJV)
• “In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was
God . . . . All things were made by Him,
and, without Him, was not anything
made that was made.”
John 1:1,3 (KJV)
• Both of these critical scripture passages
– one from the Hebrew Scriptures and
one from the New Testament – both
seem to be much more consistent with a
God who creates ex nihilo than a God
who emerges from and evolves with the
material world.
– Process Theists maintain that the
eternal, changeless God of Classical
Theism is incapable of love because
to love requires that one suffer with
the ones one loves.
– Is this true?
• “While God and rocks may both be
impassible [unchagable], they are
so for polar opposite reasons. A
rock is impassible because, being
an inert impersonal object, it lacks
all that pertains to love.
• “God is impassible because His love
is perfectly in act (‘God is love’) and
no further self-constituting act could
make Him more loving. God is
absolutely impassible because He is
absolutely passionate in His love.
Thus, creatures, and particularly
human beings, through the act of
creation are immediately and
intimately related to God as He exists
in His perfectly actualized love.”
Thomas G. Weinandy, “Does God Suffer?”
• Weinandy’s point is that, being
eternal and unchangeable God’s
love is always as perfect as it can
be.
• God’s love does not wax and wane
as must the love of any temporal
being who changes.
– But, how can Classical Theists
handle scripture passages that seem
to indicate that God changes?
• “[Such passages] are predicated not
upon a change in God but upon a
change within the others involved.
God is sorry that He created human
beings (Genesis 6:6-7) and that He
appointed Saul king (1 Samuel
15:11,35) because they have become
sinful. He relents of His anger and
threatened punishment of the
Ninevites (Jonah 4:2) and of the
Israelites (Exodus 32:14) because
they have repented.”
Thomas G. Weinandy, “Does God Suffer?”
• Since who’s clearly changed in
these passages are people, not
God, it’s possible that God
remains always the same.
• Perhaps God remains always
the same and people’s
experiences of Him differ from
time to time, given how they, not
He, differ from time to time.
• “If God did need to adapt and readapt and re-adapt Himself again
to every personal situation in every
momentary instance, He would be
perpetually entangled in an
unending internal emotional
whirligig. Correlatively, human
beings are able to . . . experience
the various facets of God’s fully
actualized love in accordance with
their personal situation.
• “In sin they experience God’s love
as rebuke and admonishment. In
repentance they experience God’s
love as compassion and
forgiveness. But, it is God’s
unchanging love that is moving
them and they experience that
unchanging love in various ways as
they [not God] move.”
Thomas G. Weinandy, “Does God
Suffer?”
– In the end, whose God is truly worthy
of worship as the Supreme Being –
the God of the Classical Theists or
the God of the Process Theists?
• “[I]f God, having lost His singular
transcendence, is now infected by
evil and suffering, then He too is
immanently enmeshed in an evil
cosmic process from which He, like
all else, cannot escape. God may
now suffer in union with all who
suffer –
• “and those who espouse a suffering
God boast this to be of singular
value – but in so suffering,
humankind, and even God Himself,
are deprived of any hope of ever
being freed from evil and so the
suffering that it causes. There is no
hope of divine justice ever setting
things right nor is there any hope of
love and goodness vanquishing
evil.
• “The transcendent One, All-Holy
God . . . who, as Creator, is present
to all creation, and who, as Savior,
acts immanently within that
creation, vanishes. Thus, a
suffering God is not only
philosophically and theologically
untenable, but also religiously
devastating.”
Thomas G. Weinandy, “Does God
Suffer?”
• A Process Theist would probably
respond that the hope Weinandy
speaks of is an illusion, the product
of Platonic dreams of a prefect,
eternal world beyond the imperfect,
evolving world in which we all live.
• Still, the scriptures to which the
Process Theists claim they are true
do seem to speak of an ultimate
triumph of good over evil and an
eternal and perfect world.
– “I also saw a new Jerusalem, the
Holy City, coming down out of
Heaven from God . . . . I heard a
loud voice from the throne cry out:
‘This is God’s dwelling among
men. He shall dwell with them . . .
. He shall wipe every tear from
their eyes, and there shall be no
more death or mourning, crying
out or pain, for the former world
has passed away.’”
Revelation 21:2-4 (NAB)
– Similar passages can be cited
from both the Hebrew Scriptures
and the Koran.
• Final Thoughts
– Process Theists often complain that
Classical Theism’s conception of God
is merely “empty abstractions.”
– But, is their conception of God any
less so?
– Isn’t any CONCEPTION of God
nothing more than an abstraction?
– If Process Theists find Classical
Theism’s conception of God “empty,”
it’s because it’s a conception, not
because it’s Classical.
– The “meat and potatoes” of a
satisfying religion is not its conception
of God, but the actual experiences of
God it provides.
– Still, conceptions of God are not
without value.
• “Merely learning and thinking about
. . . [God], if you stop there, is less
real and less exciting than the sort
of thing my friend got [experiencing
God] in the desert. [Conceptions of
God] are not God; they are only a
kind of map. But, that map is
based upon the experiences of
hundreds of people who really were
in touch with God – experiences
compared with which any thrills or
• “pious feelings you and I are likely
to get on our own are very
elementary and very confused . . . .
[Y]ou will not get eternal life by
simply feeling the presence of God
in flowers or music. Neither will
you get anywhere by looking at
maps without going to sea, nor will
you be very safe if you go to sea
without a map.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
• Lewis’ point is that conceptions of God
help people make sense of personal
religious experiences.
• Lewis values conceptions of God
derived from the actual experiences of
believers, for example, Classical
Theism’s conception of God.
• This conception of God is derived from
the philosophical reflection of hundreds
of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic
scholars upon the actual religious
experiences of themselves and of their
co-religionists.
• This cannot be said of Process
Theism’s conception of God, which
is derived from the recent
philosophical musings of a small,
rather elitist, group of academics.
• Next Time
– The Problem of God-Talk
– How can we use language designed
to describe imperfect creatures to talk
about the perfect Creator?