Abstract
Let me begin by saying quite sincerely that I find Hartshorne’s philosophical theology a truly “noble” one. It articulates a rich religious sensitivity and presents us with a God that is a totally admirable person, worthy of deep religious reverence and love. It is not surprising to me that some of the authors who have written on it declare that this is the only brand of theism they could accept.
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Notes
I have developed this point at greater length as applied to Whitehead in my book, The Philosophical Approach to God (Winston-Salem, NC: Wake Forest Univ., Philosophy Dept., 1979). Chap. 3: “Christian Theism and Whiteheadian Process Philosophy: Are They Compatible?”; see esp. pp. 67–86.
See, for example, Hartshorne’s Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes ( Albany: SUNY Press, 1984 ).
Summa contra Gentes, Book III, ch. 68 (Pegis trans. On the Truth of the Catholic Faith); De Veritate (On Truth),quest. 9, art. 2.
Summa Theologiae, I—II,q. 9, art. 6, ad obj. 3: “God moves man’s will, as the Universal Mover, to the universal object of the will, which is the good. And without this universal motion man cannot will anything. But man determines himself by his reason to will this or that, which is a true or apparent good. Nevertheless sometimes God moves some specially to the willing of something determinate, which is good; as in the case of those whom He moves by grace, as we shall state later on.” Cf. On the Power of God,q. 3, art. 7. ad obj. 13: “The will is said to have dominion over its own act not by exclusion of the First Cause, but because the First Cause does not act on the will in such a way as to determine it by necessity to one object, as it determines natures, and therefore the determination of the act remains in the power of the intellect and the will.” See also Sum. Theol.,I—II, q. 10, art. 4: “As Dionysius says, it belongs to the divine providence, not to destroy, but to preserve the nature of things. Therefore it moves all things in accordance with their conditions, in such a way that from necessary causes, through the divine motion, effects follow of necessity, but from contingent causes effects follow contingently. Since, therefore, the will is an active principle that is not determined to one thing, but having an indifferent relation to many things, God so moves it that He does not determine it of necessity to one thing, but its movement remains contingent and not necessary, except in those things to which it is moved naturally.”
Cf. Anton Pegis, “Molina and Human Freedom,” in Gerard Smith (ed.), Jesuit Thinkers of the Renaissance (Milwaukee: Marquette Univ. Press, 1939), pp. 99 ff.; Gerard Smith, Molina and Freedom ( Chicago: Loyola Univ. Press, 1966 ).
The finest article I know that brings out with umambiguous clarity and textual support St. Thomas’s doctrine of the non-determining causality of God on the human free will — in respectful but firm opposition even to his own Dominican brethren of the Baiiezian School — is that of the distinguished Italian Dominican metaphysician, Umberto degl’Innocenti, O.P., “De actione Dei in causas secundas liberas iuxta S. Thomam,” Aquinas 4 (1961), pp. 28–56.
See the critique by Colin Gunton, Becoming and Being: The Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth ( Oxford Univ. Press, 1978 ), pp. 57–58.
I only recently discovered that the same critique of Hartshorne’s position on this point has been clearly and incisively made some time ago by Merold Westphal, in his very insightful article in defence of classical theism against the arguments of Hartshorne, “Temporality and Finitism in Hartshorne’s Theism,” Review of Metaphysics 19 (196566), pp. 550–64.
Sum. Theol,I, q. 14, art. 13.
I understand Hartshorne feels he is now off the hook on this thorny point over which he has received so many objections (including from Lewis Ford) because of the startling new development in physics deriving from Bell’s theorem, showing apparently that subatomic particles, once joined together, are forever joined in complementary properties, responding to each other’s changes instantaneously across space faster than the speed of light, thus suggesting that the physical cosmos is somehow a space- (and time-?) transcending whole behind the scene of space. This may help him, but it is not clear yet that there is but one common time for this whole — it might transcend time entirely as it does space in certain limited respects.
See Hartshorne’s A Natural Theology for Our Time (LaSalle: Open Court, 1967), p. 24: “Only potentiality can be strictly infinite… actuality… is finite….”
Cf. W. N. Clarke, “The Limitation of Act by Potency: Aristotelianism or Neoplatonism?” New Scholasticism 26 (1952), pp. 167–94.
See Chap. 3 in my book, The Philosophical Approach to God (note 1), pp. 87 ff.
See the reference in note 10 above.
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Clarke, W.N. (1990). Charles Hartshorne’s Philosophy of God: A Thomistic Critique. In: Sia, S. (eds) Charles Hartshorne’s Concept of God. Studies in Philosophy and Religion, vol 12. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1014-5_7
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