God Can Do More: A Critique on Hartshorne's Process God
Have we not been fascinated when we were so young, that our parents know so much and can do so many things? Weren’t they the first person we run into to ask questions we do not know? Yet, as we got older, we come to realize the grips of this faulty logic, especially when we start to ask them more challenging questions and even ask them to do a more challenging, if not impossible tasks.
This has also been my growth experience as regards my view about God.
As held by the classical theists, I believed in a God who is all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. When I was young, I had this experience when my mother instilled in me that fear of God who punishes bad children. I have read in the bible how God has been in control to the events of people, sending aid and privileges when He gets pleased, while casting punishments when disgruntled. The idea of a God who is perfect presented to me a God who knows everything: whether past, present or future, thoughts and desires, and even what is unsaid. It would seem proper of a God who is all-powerful to be all-knowing. And, God is God because He is all-good, merciful and loving, as embodied by Jesus in the Gospels. This has been my initial view about God. And I admit that I got satisfied and awestruck in this belief.
As I grew older and got to immerse myself more into the realities of life, I could not but help myself to ask deeper questions, even bolder ones, questions that could even shake one’s faith if I am not too careful, questions like, “Why?” With all the attributes I knew of God, why the suffering in the world? Often, I would interpret it as a form of punishment from God for people who have not been good or faithful. Yet, my eyes did not fail to see good, honest and virtuous people who suffer. I could not decipher what was in the mind of God. Has He gotten to do anything with these? Are these part of what we call as His Divine plan?
Indeed, it is so disturbing to think about the many evil in the world face to face with a God whom we used to cling on amidst these difficulties. With the cries of injustices around us, I tend to ask, “what is God doing?” And it is even more disturbing for me to go and to catechize students in public schools whose refrain of question is: “is God fair?” considering their sad plight in being poor vis-à-vis the cruel people getting richer all the more.
Classical theism, in defending God’s absolute simplicity, infinity, omnipotence and providence, seem to find itself irreconcilable with the problem of evil. What is God’s relation as regards evil? How accountable or responsible is He from the fact that everything as seen by Him and controlled by Him are in accordance to His Divine Plan?
Yet, that is not all. God as all-Good is also claimed as God who is loving. We even identified God as Love Himself. But if truly God loves, how does a lover respond to this object of His love who suffers? If He is not affected , what seems to be the LOVE that is? What kind of LOVE is that He is showing?
As Hartshorne’s Process God is being presented in class, these questions were gradually addressed. I was opened to the probability that God may be absolute-relative in His desire to relate to every man. God is seen here as a lover who gets affected by his loved one. And so God feels. This is consoling. That in the midst of man’s suffering, God is not simply detached and unaffected, but He indeed wails and cries with us. It is in this great love that God gave the greatest gift of a lover to the loved one: his or her freedom. Consequently, this respect for freedom bound His hands to never directly intervene in the affairs of men in a sense that He should be in control. And since men have their freedom, the course of events rested on their shoulders. Even God gets to be excited as he awaits for what could ever come about. Yet this does not diminish the value of God’s omniscience. He has perfect knowledge, but that the future which is not yet here, not yet existing, is not yet known. Consequently, when things do happen, that would not be taken as God’s will, but that, it just happened. Even for God, it would seem that “Life,” from the words of the great philosopher Forrest Gump, “is a box of chocolate. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
Hartshorne’s Process God works not by compulsion nor by coercion, but by persuasion. Indeed, it is morally admirable for someone to guide, to influence, to give cues rather than to command. This divine lure is what God can most do, given the circumstance of His respect for man’s freedom, so that everything may be brought into goodness, or into what Hartshorne termed as “maximal value.”
It would seem that the Process God have liberated Himself from the pointing-finger of the problem of evil. More so, it highlights a very impressive essence of God which is love. It also emphasizes the freedom of man which God values and respects.
Having presented these two views: both the classical and the process God, I know it has been very obvious in the way of my presentation where my inclination would tend to. In presenting my position, I’d like to share this little account.
I had a dream. I dreamt one night that I had a son. He looked just like me and he was running about and around the living room area of the house, while I would chase after him, holding a cup of ice cream and teaspoon in order to feed him. Despite the “kalikutan” I find this more enjoyable and fulfilling, for the simple reason that I love my son. A little later, I had no idea that my son, in my dream, went out of the house. Realizing, he was missing, I went off to look for him, asking my neighbors nearby. One neighbor told me that he saw the boy crossed the street to go to a house of a friend. I had mixed feelings wrapped with worry, fear, and irritation. And I remember saying these words, “ang tigas talaga ng ulo ng batang ito, mas matigas pa ang ulo kaysa sa’kin.” It is this dream I where I get to see myself as a parent, and how a parent I could be.
Now, given this fantasy, what if someone were to offer me a choice: whether to have a child without any effort on my part to always and automatically do exactly what I want him to do or to be; or to have a child in a normal fashion, having a will of his own, resisting my wishes, and even acting against his own best interest; I would definitely take the latter.
To a greater extent, I believe in Hartshorne’s Process God considering all the merits I have previously mentioned. My only reservation is about His intervention. While moral persuasion is more admirable than force, I still feel God’s shortness in this kind of intervention. And so I strongly ask, “could He not do something more?” While we put into question the relevance of petition prayer in classical theism from the fact that everything has already been decreed, the same is true in process theism, from the fact that God could not do anything in the affairs of me given the circumstance of man’s freedom which he highly value.
But, I firmly believe that God, given his Divine wisdom, can intervene at the most appropriate and favorable time. Such is the affirmation of my vocation, that without God’s intervention and preparation of the path towards this vocation, I would not be currently following Him. What He did is not just persuasion. He intervened, He provided and He prepared the necessary arsenals He thinks that I would be needing, while He would await for my free response to His invitation to follow Him. I believe in His providence which is taken not in the sense of a Divine plan, but the very action of God in the world. Supernaturally speaking, I would consider God as the source of grace, and that He would pour grace upon grace in response to His loved one who prays and seeks for help. And even if he would not seek for help, God continues to pour upon His abounding graces.
From my previous illustration,I, as a parent, would not only serve as a guide or a cheerleader to my child. I would definitely do something other than persuading. I would invest a great deal of effort in his education, with good hopes to be sure, but without any advance of guaranteed success. For I know that it would really be up to him, according to what he freely chooses. And there is the risk, indeed, in the certainty that my child will choose otherwise, he may inflict on me considerable pain and suffering, as I strive to help him all that he can be and even ought to be. But I would never run out of actions to raise him loved and loving. As a parent, I believe, God is much wiser and greater than any other.
