Preface to The Divine Relativity
Charles Hartshorne
In this book, which is a considerable expansion of the lectures as given, the attempt is made to apply logical analysis to the religious idea of God. One making such an attempt must expect the opposition both of many of the orthodox and of some of their skeptical opponents, holding respectively that the conception of deity is above, or ‘below, the useful application of such analysis: The main thesis, called Surrelativism, also Panentheism, is that the “relative” or changeable, that which depends upon and varies with varying relationships, includes within itself and in value exceeds the nonrelative, immutable, independent, or “absolute,” as the concrete includes and exceed: the abstract. From this doctrine, the proof for which is chiefly in the second chapter, it follows that God, as supremely excellent and concrete, must be conceived not as wholly absolute or immutable, but rather as supremely-relative, “surrelative,” although, or because of this superior relativity, containing an abstract character or essence in respect to which, but only in respect to which, he is indeed strictly absolute and immutable.
Thus Surrelativism, although a single logical principle, not an eclectic conjunction of doctrines, synthesizes into a higher unity “relativism”—all [concrete] beings are relative—and “absolutism”—there is a wholly nonrelative [abstract] being. The brackets show the qualifications by which the synthesis is effected. “Divine Relativity,” it is maintained, includes all the divine absoluteness (or eternity) that logical analysis shows to be conceivable without sheer contradiction. (Some of the contradictions arising from the traditional doctrine of a wholly absolute deity are exhibited in Chapter I, second and third sections, and in the first section of Chapter II.) In this way the “personal” conception of deity required in religion is reconciled with the requirements of philosophic reason—which indeed, as I argue, is just as much in need of such a conception as is religion. A personal God is one who has social relations, really has them, and thus is constituted by relationships and hence is relative—in a sense not provided for by the traditional doctrine of a divine Substance wholly nonrelative toward the world, though allegedly containing loving relations between the “persons” of the Trinity.
As the long argument between those who said that light was corpuscular and those who said it was a set of waves seems, in our time, to have ended with the admission that it is both, in each case with qualifications; so the longer argument between those who said, There is nothing higher than relative being (and thus either there is no God or he is relative), and those who said, There is a highest being who is absolute, is perhaps to be ended by showing a way in which both statements may consistently be made. As Morris Cohen says, in his Preface to Logic (pp. 74-75): “The law of contradiction does not bar the presence of contrary determinations in the same entity, but only requires . . . a distinction of aspects . . . in which the contraries hold.” And again, “. . . we must be on our guard against the universal tendency to simplify situations and to analyze them in terms of only one of such contrary tendencies. This principle of polarity is a maxim of research. . . . It may be generalized as the principle . . . of the necessary co-presence and mutual dependence of opposite determinations.” Surrelativism is the doctrine of absolute and relative that conforms to the polar principle. How “mutual dependence” between absolute and relative is compatible with the independence properly connoted by the former is shown in Chapter II.
The theory is of course not wholly new. From Plato’s Timaeus through the obscurities of Schelling’s Ages of the World and the clearer pages of Fechner’s Zend-Avesta (chap. xi) to Whitehead’s Process and Reality or Montague’s Ways of Things—or, in more mystical vein; Berdyaev’s Destiny of Man and Niebuhr’s Human Destiny (note the second section of chap. iii of that book)—not to mention many other philosophers and theologians of recent times, one can trace its emergence.
In this book I do not conceal my own faith—shared with those just mentioned—that theistic religion, thus reformulated, is true as well as conceivable; but the only bearing of this personal religious belief upon the argument is that it may afford some evidence that theism can avoid logical absurdities and still be a religious doctrine. One may go further, and hold that the severe discipline to which modern logic—stimulated by advances in knowledge, especially mathematics—has been subjecting philosophy can help to free religion from some confusions which are not merely logical but are also emotional and ethical. Had I the training and skill in logic of a Carnap (to whose sharp but impersonal and helpful criticisms I am much indebted) I could demonstrate the soundness of this belief—if it be sound— more convincingly than, as it is, I can expect to do. But there seems to be no one with such equipment who possesses also adequate familiarity with religious thought. It is the usual situation in our age of complex specialization. There are some gratifying signs, however, that to be a technical logician may not much longer, to the same extent as in the recent past, mean to view theology with contempt or despair.
The logical core of surrelativism is mostly in Chapter II, and is a theory of “external” and “internal” relatedness, connected respectively with the absolute and the surrelative aspects of deity. This chapter contains also my criticisms of Absolute Idealism and defends the logical heresy (but medieval commonplace): not every actual relationship has an actual converse, i.e., a relation a R b can be real although the converse relation b R a (for example, “b is known by a,” where a does know b) is only nominal, a mere way of speaking. This medieval doctrine I regard as the only valid basis of a realistic theory of knowledge, the true way out of the “ego-centric predicament.” Despite the too polemical tone of my references to classical theology, especially Thomism, I am obviously indebted to this tradition—perhaps almost as much as to Whitehead, whose views are so much closer to those affirmed in this book. To have stated with precision and completeness what nearly everyone else had long been holding more vaguely and confusedly, is a high merit in philosophy, no matter how incorrect may be what is stated—and who has possessed this merit in greater degree than Thomas of Aquin? Our gratitude may not be measured by our agreement. For if, as I believe, his doctrine was shipwrecked on certain rocks of contradiction, has he not left us an admirable chart showing the location of the rocks!
Surrelativism, as remarked above, is a single tenet (regarding the relations of absolute and relative) not an eclectic assemblage of tenets. Nevertheless, it can appeal to the following authorities for support of its various corollaries: to modern pluralists, such as G. E. Moore, R. B. Perry, and William James, and contemporary logicians generally, in behalf of external relations (better, external relatedness, for the same relation may be external to one term and internal to another); to Thomas Aquinas in behalf of the identification of absolute (or independent and immutable) with externally related ; to both modern and medieval realists—save as the latter were guilty of abandoning their principle when treating of deity—in behalf of the view that a particular or actual knowing, even in the divine instance, must depend upon and internally have relation to the thing known, while the latter does not, in general, depend upon being object of any particular knowing. Further, the conception of a relative nature in God can be associated to some extent with two influential trends of today, Existentialism and Crisis Theology. In concrete or surrelative aspect, God, like all existents, has qualities that are accidental, that do not follow from any necessity of his essence. This is, of course, in so far an existentialist tenet, though applied, as Existentialists refuse to apply it, to deity.
Further, that man is, in some degree, self-created (Sartre) is a corollary of surrelativist or panentheist theism (cf. Whitehead’s “self-created creature”). With Crisis Theology, which in a fashion is existential, our theory can agree that God is personal and self-related to the creatures, and that his acts of self-relationship are not rationally deducible, but require to be “encountered.” However, as Barth and Brunner seem not to see, this is compatible with there being an essence of God which is philosophically explicable and knowable. The concrete volitions of God may be contingent or “arbitrary” (not that they do not express goodness, but that goodness has more than one possible expression in a given case); nevertheless, contingency or arbitrariness, as such, is not itself arbitrary but a necessary, or a priori, and intelligible category. For each man, indeed, religion is a matter of the actions of God as self-related to him, that is, to a wholly contingent being, or to humanity, likewise contingent. Relations whose terms are contingent can only be contingent. Philosophy seeks that general principle or essence of the divine being of which such concrete actions of God are mere contingent illustrations. But from a religious point of view, it is the illustrations that count. Thus the religious and the philosophical attitudes are complementary, not conflicting. Our doctrine appears, then, to effect a peculiarly comprehensive synthesis of past and present thought concerning theism.
The crucial question is whether or not the synthesis is consistent. It certainly avoids some of the inconsistencies classically charged against theism, but are there perhaps new ones, peculiar to surrelativism? Consistency is here hard to prove, since the proof by exhibition of an actual instance (the only conclusive method known to logic) would in this case mean exhibiting God himself. However, in a sense perhaps this can be done. I intend to devote a book—dealing with the arguments for the divine existence—to the attempt. Meanwhile, I content myself with asking, where is there contradiction in the doctrine as defined, taken in its own terms?
Since this is an essay in metaphysics, some remarks should be made concerning the now fashionable dictum, all knowledge is to be gained by the “empirical method” of science. The first remark is that many able philosophers and logicians do not accept the dictum, in any sense which would clearly exclude metaphysics as distinctive in method (e.g., C. I. Lewis—chap. 1 of Mind and the World Order—E. J. Nelson, and others). The second remark is that mathematics has a partially different method from that of the concrete or special sciences, and that the justification for this difference is parallel to one which can be given for a distinctive procedure in metaphysics. Mathematics has a distinctive method because it deals with entities, for example, numbers, which are of different “logical type” from concrete things or events. The principle here is: A logical difference justifies a methodological difference. Now metaphysical doctrines seem to be of different logical type from all others, unless indeed mathematics and logic are compelled, as some authorities hold, to accept a metaphysical principle, such as “It is a necessary or a priori truth that there are real individuals.”
Apart from such a view, which would apparently make mathematics and logic a part of metaphysics, we may divide knowledge as follows: mathematics, dealing with various “possible worlds,” or better, various possible logical structures; natural and social science, dealing with the one actual world; metaphysics, dealing with what is common and necessary to all possible states of affairs and all possible truth, including adjudication of the question whether “there is no world at all” represents a conceivable truth or is mere nonsense or contradiction. Now God is conceived as the actual creator of the actual world and the potential creator of possible worlds (according to theism, they could only exist if he created them), or as, through his omniscience, the measure of all actual and possible truth; hence divinity is not a mere fact or fiction of the actual world, but is either nonsense, in relation to all possible states of affairs, or a necessary reality, in the same relation, that is, the idea is metaphysical.
The question of theism thus logically calls for a distinctive method, as compared to that of what is ordinarily called science. Merely to assert that no such method can be valid is to beg the question of theism, not to argue it.
Whether and how we can distinguish between metaphysics and logic is more difficult to say. I am not sure that they do differ. It seems easy to show that logicians today disagree on what are plainly metaphysical questions (referring to what is common to all possibility): such as, Is all truth eternal? Is there an a priori principle of causal connectedness? Is “some world exists” true not merely in fact, but necessarily, or in any possible case? In this book I am trying to set forth the logic of basic theological concepts; but perhaps these are the same as the theistic implications of basic logical concepts. If only a few logicians could be induced to look into the matter! On one point, at least, I believe metaphysics can agree with contemporary logic: metaphysical truths, if valid, must since they are to be necessary be “analytic,” if that means, “certified by meaning alone.” I am confident that the theistic question will be rationally settled when, if ever, it becomes really clear to educated persons what are the possible consistent meanings, if any, of “supreme being,” “absolute,” “perfect,” “necessary being,” and the like. To hasten that time is the main object of this study.
Concerning the present political plight of the world, which often makes one wonder with what right one can yield to the fascination of metaphysical problems, something is said toward the end of the book. Here I wish to express gratitude toward those, including multitudes of Russians (who may not have intended just this effect, to be sure) whose recent sacrifices make it still possible to discuss philosophical problems with intellectual honesty, without interference from persons who would like to silence or suborn those with whom they are not competent to argue. The doctrine of divine relativity is not entirely unconnected with the great drive toward a synthesis of freedom and order which, as Heimann reminds us, is our political goal. God orders the universe, according to panentheism, by taking into his own life all the currents of feeling in existence. He is the most irresistible of influences precisely because he is himself the most open to influence. In the depths of their hearts all creatures (even those able to “rebel” against him) defer to God because they sense him as the one who alone is adequately moved by what moves them. He alone not only knows but feels (the only adequate knowledge, where feeling is concerned) how they feel, and he finds his own joy in sharing their lives, lived according to their own free decisions, not fully anticipated by any detailed plan of his own.
Yet the extent to which they can be permitted to work out their own plan depends on the extent to which they can echo or imitate on their own level the divine sensitiveness to the needs and precious freedom of all. In this vision of a deity who is not a supreme autocrat, but a universal agent of “persuasion,” whose “power is the worship he inspires” (Whitehead), that is, flows from the intrinsic appeal of his infinitely sensitive and tolerant relativity, by which all things are kept moving in orderly togetherness, we may find help in facing our task of today, the task of contributing to the democratic self-ordering of a world whose members not even the supreme orderer reduces to mere subjects with the sole function of obedience. If even God thinks enough of the least and worst of us to permit us to form, with all that we are, integral self-determined members of his present reality, rivulets poured into his “ocean of feeling,” it ought not to be beneath our human condescension toward each other to accord that “respect for the human individual” (or still better, that Reverence for Life—Schweitzer) which contemporary thought acclaims as the universal ethical standard.
I am grateful (and the reader may be grateful) to Dorothy C. Hartshorne for editing manuscript and proofs. I also feel indebted to Paul Weiss for generous encouragement; to Yale University for furnishing the occasion of this writing; and to members of the seminar of faculty and graduate students—which my colleague, then chairman, Charner Perry, so wisely instituted, several years ago, in our department of philosophy—for criticisms upon portions of the manuscript read or summarized before them.
Source:
Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God, pp. ix-xviii.
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