Hayathology as Anthropo-Theology 4

My purpose in using such a rather unfamiliar terminology is that I want to over-come the opposition between ontology and sunyatology from the standpoint of a Biblical theology. In so far as we adhere to the concept of God as Absolute Being in Christian theology, we can not enter into a fruitful dialogical relation to Buddhists because the very denial of such an absolute being lies in the core of Buddhist teachings of pratitya sumutpada and sunyata. If the concept of God as Absolute Being was, as I believe, imposed upon Christianity by the Greek philosophy and essentially alien to the Biblical understanding of God and the world, then it become possible to appreciate the essence of Buddhist teachings from a Christian perspective. Moreover, hayathology, sharing with Buddhism a non-dualistic approach, can bear Christian witness to the significance of practice in the historical world. If we grasp the metaphysical ultimate only as Absolute Being, or only as Absolute Nothingness, then we can not but ignore the historical aspect of deity which is essential to Christianity. We would fall into another kind of dualism, between eternity and temporality, absoluteness and relativity. The adjective "absolute" in Absolute Nothingness would become a misleading one, because there is no such thing as the absolute in all aspects. The ultimate beyond the opposition between being and nothingness should be called Becoming rather than Absolute Nothingness, pace the Kyoto School. The weak points of this school lies in the fact that there was not given a mediating link between the philosophy of Nothingness and the domain of social and ethical practices in history. Many representatives of this school took ambiguous attitudes toward militarism and political totalitarianism in Japan during the second world war, and they did not discuss the responsibility of war crimes Japan had committed in the name of Holy War. One great exception was Tanabe Hajime, who wrote "Philosophy as Metanoetics" after the defeat of Japan.⁽¹⁵⁾

Though Tanabe's criticism of Nishida's philosophy was not fair in many respects, his own conception of absolute mediation is worth noticing. The relation of an individual to the universal was not conceived by him as unilaterally deterministic, but as reciprocal through the mediating link of species (the local community with its own environmental and historical restrictions) in the ever-going process of the world history. Each of the triad of an individual, the species, and the genus plays a role of mediator between the other two, and does not make a hierarchic order. Especially important is the concept of an individual who takes the role of mediation between his own limited standpoint of species and the truly universal one through "metanoia (repentance) ". As metanoia was an essential element of the message of the historical Jesus, Tanabe's philosophy as metanoetics pointed to a possibility of revising the philosophy of Absolute Nothingness in such a way that Christians as well as Buddhists who take seriously a crisis of the historical world can find an adequate conceptual apparatus in this philosophy.

Returning to the problem of irreversibility, I agree with Takizawa that the divine-human relation is an irreversible one if irreversibility means asymmetry of the relation. To accept the reality of an asymmetrical relation is a necessary condition in order to prevent a fallacy of metaphysical monism where the individual has to be totally swallowed up in the Absolute. So the non-identity of any relation implies its asymmetrical character. On the other hand, I consider Takizawa's thesis of irreversibility as one-sided and inadequate, if irreversibility means the denial of reciprocity between God and man. Takizawa's concept of God in the primordial relation was absolute in the sense that God is absolutely independent of any human decision, though we are unilaterally dependent on God. This conception of God is necessary to .such aspects of religious life as conversion, but not an adequate one if we consider the whole spectrum of the divine-human relation. The God who is absolutely antecedent to our own subjectivity should also be absolutely posterior to it. The consequent divine-human encounter in the historical process is not, as Takizawa insisted, to be considered as a mere reflection of the primordial relation. Far from being a derivative reflection, the consequent divine-human relation should be considered as the actualization of the primordial one. The complementary concept of Becoming God in the world history is also necessary if we are to retrieve the reciprocity of the divine-human relation. The doctrine of universal relativity which some Buddhist scholars, especially Stcherbatsky, identified with that of sunyata⁽¹⁶⁾, is, when applied to the divine-human relation, not acceptable to Christianity until it is reinterpreted and revised on the basis of the Biblical concept of God as Becoming. The personalistic "I-thou" character of the divine-human encounter should be stressed more explicitly than Buddhism because God's self-revelation, as it was recorded in the Bible, occurred simultaneously with a human's self-awakening in their inter-personal en-counter in history. This encounter is more suitably characterized as a sympathetic communion rather than as a mystic union with Godhead.

The prophetic tradition of Judaism seems to preserve the element of mutuality between God and man more explicitly than Christian theology. Martin Buber captured this tradition in these words: "you know always in your heart that you need God more than everything; but do you not know too that God needs you - in the fullness if His eternity needs you.⁽¹⁷⁾"

The concept of God as Becoming requires the reversal of the Aristotelian thesis concerning the metaphysical status of becoming. Whereas being is the act of becoming in ontology, becoming is the act of being in hayathology. There is no such thing as an independent substance which needs nothing more in order to exist. The very eternity of Godhead requires God's Becoming in history. This is one of fundamental theses of hayathology.

The concept of God-with-us contains an element of mutual transcendence as well as mutual immanence. The dynamism of the divine-human encounter in the Biblical tradition can not be understood enough without the concept of divine exile from humanity.

"The will of God is to be here, manifest and near; but when the doors of this world are slammed on Him, His truth betrayed, His will defied, He withdraws, leaving man to himself. God did not depart of His own volition; He was expelled, " ⁽¹⁸⁾ writes Heshel. Such aspects of deity can not suitably be grasped within the traditional conceptual scheme of Christian theology where God as Absolute Being is unilaterally transcendent from the world.

Neither can they be easily understood by traditional categories of Buddhism where the element of transcendence in the historical world was underestimated, and the doctrine of mutual immanence without hindrance was one-sidedly emphasized. The doctrine of dependent co-origination and emptiness is not sufficient to the Biblical understanding of the divine-human relation in so far as it lacks an element of transcendence in the historical world."

Then how should we incorporate a Buddhistic insight into pratitya samutpada and sunyata in the more universal framework of hayathology?

In the recently published book "Beyond Dialogue", John Cobb discussed a possibility that a Christian may accept the concept of sunyata as the ultimate reality, and at the same time worship God as the ultimate actuality." His distinction of actuality from reality is derived from Whitehead's metaphysics where God as an actual entity is a manifestation of the metaphysical ultimate which is called Creativity. Though I appreciate Cobb's thesis of complementarity between Christianity and Buddhism, I do not consider sunyata nor creativity as the ultimate reality. The alternative thesis which I propose here as a heuristic principle is that sunyata and creativity are complementary transcendentals in terms of which we can conceive the God-world relationship. I mean by "transcendentals", as medieval Christian philosophers such as Duns Scotus did, those abstract yet very real concepts which escape classification in the Aristotelian categories by reason of their greater extension and universality of application.⁽²⁰⁾ As they are predicable both of God and of the world, they can provide a necessary framework to philosophical theology. Whereas the medieval theory of transcendentals discussed mainly "being" and "one" under the overwhelming influence of the Aristotelian ontology, hayathology regards being as being/nothingness, and one as one/many in their inseparability, and creativity and sunyata as complementary transcendentals. Both God and the world are sunyata (empty) as well as creative. Emptiness signifies the infinite openness of the topos of the non-temporal primordial divine-human relation which waits for actualization. Creativity signifies the infinite openness of the process of the consequent divine-human relations in history.

Hayathology as Anthropo-Theology 5

As hayathology intends to synthesize the eternal and the temporal dimensions in the concept of God as Becoming, it needs the two complementary transcendental concepts to express the topos and the process of the divine-human relation respectively.

The importance of such transcendentals lies in the fact that they liberate Christian theology from the yoke of the Aristotelian categories. Although I consider Whitehead as a precursor of hayathology.20 I do not think that he was completely freed from the Aristotelian logic and ontology. In Whitehead's metaphysics actual entity constitutes the highest genus that includes both God and worldly occasions, and such a trans-categorial concept as creativity was classified among the category of the ultimate. The thesis that God and other actual entities belong to the same genus is a fallacious one, and contradictory even in Whitehead's own metaphysics, for there is no element of perpetual perishing in God's Becoming. l The dipolar God in process theology should be re-interpreted as the God who reveals Himself in the primordial and the consequent relations rather than as the , non-temporal actual entity with two natures.

The denial of the Aristotelian categories was characteristic of the Christian doctrine of trinity. Hayathology furthers this mode of thinking in such a way that the non-dual but non-identical relations among three persons should be universalized to the God-world relation without being restricted to divinity. This universality, however, should not be confused with the universality of genus. Just as being does not constitute a genus, so the meaning of entity in Whitehead's metaphysics can not be univocal between God and the world. In the traditional theory of transcendentals the eminent meaning of being was attributed to God, and the creature's being is derivative from it. The problem situation is not so simple in hayathology. On account of the asymmetrical relation of God to the world, it is true to say that God's being is eminently real, but on account of the inverse relationality of the world to God, it is equally true to say that the world is eminently real. The mutuality between God and the world is based, not on the third ultimate . reality, whose manifestations are God and the world, but on the inverse relationality which the asymmetrical relation of God to the world necessarily involves.

Returning again to Takizawa's anthropo-theology, I evaluate his emphasis on irreversibility as a deep insight into the asymmetry of the divine-human relation. It was a valid protest against a monistic fallacy of trying to grasp God and the world in the same categorial scheme. What Takizawa's theory lacks is the retrieving of reciprocity between God and the world in his conception of God-with-us through the inverse relationality which an asymmetrical relation necessarily involves. The consequent divine-human relation is neither a reflection of, nor derivative from the primordial one, but the inverse relation of the primordial one. The God who shows Himself at every time and everywhere as absolutely antecedent to a human's subjectivity is, in one sense, an abstraction which should be actualized as the God who shows Himself as absolutely posterior to a human's historical decision. The absoluteness which appears in the above formulation always means a one-sided absoluteness. God is absolutely independent of the world whereas the world is relatively dependent on God in the primordial divine-world relationship.

In the inverse relationality of the world to God, i. e. the consequent divine-world relation, the world is absolutely independent of God whereas God is relatively dependent on the world is noteworthy to point out a similar problem situation when we encounter in discussing the irreversibility of time. The past contains an element of independence of its future in the sense that what is done can not be undone whereas the future is dependent on its past in the sense that any real possibility presupposes the past.
It is reasonable to say that the past is closed and determinate whereas the future is open and indeterminate. We cannot assert the symmetry between the past and the future at the concrete level of experience. But the asymmetrical relation of the past to the future involves the inverse relation of the future to the past. The past is, in one sense, open and indeterminate because the future will change the form (Gestalt ) of the past in the organic structure of time. The doctrine of mutual interpenetration which we find in some Buddhistic texts, notably in Hua Yen, is a fallacious one if it is interpreted in such a way that temporal order is reversible.12 We can not give any empirical meaning to the reversed temporal order because every possible experience presupposes the asymmetry of time. On the other hand, it is equally inadequate to assert the irreversibility of time as something like a metaphysical axiom, unless the so-called irreversibility is complemented with its inverse relationality in the organic whole.
Lastly, I add some comments on the complementarity between temporality and spatiality, because we have discussed the process and the topos of the God-world relation.
The openness of future is mediated with the determinateness of the past through a self-decision of the present. It is one-sided to regard time only as fleeting away.

Temporality is always and necessarily connected with the non-temporal topos which may be, after St. Augustine, called "Eternal Now". Memory and anticipation are impossible without the communion of moments of time in the Eternal Now. It is true to say that we can not go back to our past, but the very possibility of asserting the impossibility of going back to the past shows that our past is directly present to us in the Eternal Now. For if you say that the past is only indirectly present through some present images of the past, you would be able to tell what objects of the past these present images refer, which is impossible if all you have are present images and the past itself is not directly pre-sent to us.

The Eternal Now is not a fabrication of metaphysical speculation, but signifies the basic structure of our temporal experience. The direct presence of our past and future in the Eternal Now is a necessary condition of the possibility of memory and anticipation. The point which I underscore is that the communion of moments of time is not only compatible with the asymmetrical structure of time, but also provides a necessary condition to the possibility of a linear temporal experience. On the other hand, the linear temporal experience supplements the elements of concreteness for the topos of Eternal Now, for the concrete always involves finiteness against the background of infinite possibility.

Notes and Bibliography

Notes and Bibliography

l ) Katsumi Takizawa, Fundamental Problems of Buddhism and Christianity. (Houzoukan) 86 1973, pp. 251 362
2 ) Karl Barth, Die Kirchlische Dogmatik, Studienausgabe Band 2 1 Die Lehre von der Versohnung S 57pp. 1 -21
3 ) The Mahayana Zen Buddhism (ed. by Ryomin Akizuki No. 7111983p. 12.
4 ) Timothy Richard, The Awakening of Faith in the Mahayana Doctrine, 1907p. vi
5 ) Katsumi Takizawa, Fundamental Problems of Nishida 's Philosophy (Houzoukan) 19 72 p. 191
6 ) Katsumi Takizawa, The Study of Karl Barth (Houzoukan) especially his open letter to Karl Barth pp. 467 - 493
7 ) Shin'ichi Hisamatsu "Ultimate Crisis and Resurrection" contained in The Eastern Buddhist 1975, Vol. viii No. l, pp. 12 -3(), No. 2, pp. 37-66 also contained in The Collected Works of Shin 'ichi Hisamatsu (Risousha ) Vol. 2
8 ) Buddhism and Christianity (ed. by Masao Abe and Seiichi Yagi) (Houzoukan 19 81 ) contains the debate concerning the irreversibility thesis. It should be noted that Zen Master Ryomin Akizuki accepted Takizawa s formula of "inseparable, non-identical, and irreversible at the same time" as antidote against the self-complacence of the vulgar Zen.
9 ) Masao Abe, "The problem of irreversibility in religion ) in Buddhism and Christianity.
10) Nishida's last writings are translated into English with an introduction by D. A. Dilworth, under the title of Nothingness and the Religious World View (University of Hawaii Press 1987) The Complete Works of Daisetsu Suzuki (Iwanami Shoten) Vol.3pp. 352 - 365 Nishida's letter to Suzuki, (dated May 11 in 1945), is contained in The Complete Works of Nishida Kitarou (CWNK) (Iwanami Shoten) Vol. 19 , p. 399
11) CWNK vol. 4. pp. 208-28q.
12) Trans-descendence means going down through the depth of the relative topos rather than going beyond the phenomenal world.
13) Schin'ichi Hisamatsu "The Way of Absolute Subjectivity" ( Risousha:) 1972
14) The first scholar that used the term, "hayathology" was Tetsutarou Ariga. Cf. Tetsutarou Ariga, The problematic of ontology in Christian Thought (Soubunsha l 981 )
15) Hajime Tanabe, Philosophy as Metanoetics translated by Yoshinori Takeuchl (Universi-ty of California Press 1986)
16) Th. Stcherbatski, The Conception of Buddhist Nirvana (Leningrad 1927) Chap. 14
17) Martin Buber, I and Thou (Macmillan 1958) p. 82.
18) A. J. Heshel, Man is Not Alone, A Philosophy of Religion (New York 19 51 ) p. 153
19) John Cobb Jr., Beyond Dialogue, Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism
20) Concerning the significance of transcendentals in a Christian Philosophy, see Allan B. Wolter, The Transcendentals and Their Function in the Metaphysics of Duns Scotus, (Franciscan Institute 1946) pp. 4 - 13 Concerning the logical analysis of transcendentals and emptiness, see Yutaka Tanaka "Anstotelian Ontology and Modal Syllogistic Reconstructed" in Historia Scientiarum No 24 (1983) pp. 87-109.
21) Yutaka Tanaka, "Hayathology and Whitehead's Process Thought" in Process Thought vol. l. (1985) pp. 19-32
22) Concerning a Whiteheadian criticism of Hua-yen, see Steve Odin, Process metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism (SUNY I 982) Part II

Hayathology and Process Theology 1

Hayathology and Process Theology
-The Relevance of the Biblical Concept of Becoming to Process Theology-

Yutaka Tanaka

Section I

It is a well-known fact that the traditional doctrines of Christianity have been formulated under the strong influence of Greek ontology. The Fathers had to presuppose the concept of being, which was an essentially static and substantial one, strictly forbidding the entrance of a dynamic process aspect into deity. The Hebrew pictures of God, which seemed often to be repugnant to the eminently real Being"(ontos on), was explained away by allegorical exegeses . The apologists considered the Old Testament ascription of such passions as joy, pity, anger, or grief to God as a saving concession to the weakness of human mind. When they argued in purely philosophical terms, they affirmed God to be immutable and invariable in his being, and always in the same identical mode of existence, admitting neither progress nor diminution. The so-called Christological problem, which arose from the New Testament attribution of suffering to incarnate deity, was to them an aporia beyond human reasoning. They preferred to keep theology from being exposed to philosophical criticism when they asked ironically," Quid ergo Athenis et Hierosolymis ?"

The famous doctrine of " creatio ex nihilo " could not have been formulated without any impact of Hebraism upon Hellenism, because it palpably contradicted a fundamental presupposition of Greek ontology, i.e. "ex nihilo nihil fit."

As the early dogmatists wanted to be true to the biblical messages in spite of the insufficient conceptual framework, they often had to rely upon somewhat paradoxical formulae such as creation out of nothing.

The situation remained to be essentially the same when scholastic theologians attempted the synthesis of biblical thoughts and Aristotelian philosophy. As E. Gilson clearly pointed out, the cornerstone of Christian metaphysics was thought by them to be laid out by Moses , who received God's revelation of His own name. According to the Bible ( Exod. 3-16)God s name was literally "ehyeh asher ehyeh" which was afterwards translated into Greek Septuaginta as "ego eimi ho on " (I am the Being) .

As the very name of God was identified with the Being itself, the quest for God became a philosophical inquiry after the real Being, which Aristotle had considered as the chief concern of his metaphysics.

The text of Exodus however, presupposes the concept of "hayah" which is the original of the verb "ehyeh" in God's name. According to the Old Testament hermeneutics (cf. Boman ) the Hebrew verb contains a unified meaning of Being, Becoming, and Effecting, while the corresponding term "on" in Greek translation excludes any trace of change OF becoming from the self-sufficient Being. The static and substantial view of Being was characteristic for Aristotle's philosophy as well as Plato's. The dynamic aspect of God had to be ignored under their influences because He was considered as the absolute substance , or the unmoved mover. The biblical God, however, cannot stand aloof from the historical process of the world. He is essentially related with the fate of mankind as if the Bible were a book of God's antholopology rather than Man's theology. (cf. Heschel ) The culmination of God's concern for men was shown in Christ's incarnation and suffering, which was always a stumbling block to the Hellenistic mind, because such ideas were repugnant to the absolute being of God. If we want to explicate God's immanence in Christ as well as Christ's immanence in God, we need some other conceptual frameworks than Greek one. Historically speaking , the doctrine of trinity was invented to satisfy that need. It was notoriously a difficult one, because the formulation of trinity was borrowed from the neo-Platonism while its content was totally alien to Greek thoughts.

What the present author intends is a project of metaphysics, which is based upon the concept of "hayah". In comparison with Greek ontology it may well be called "hayathology" after the late Prof. Ariga, as he used this term in his studies of historical theology.

Hayathology aims at the reconstruction of Christian philosophy. It uses the results of comparative researches between Hebrew and Greek thoughts, and undertakes a difficult task of synthesis between them in a different manner from that of medieval scholastics.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a preamble to hayathology as an immanent criticism of Greek ontology.
The following malnly consists of
(1) a critical consideration of ontological problems, especially the status of Forms and Matter as conceived by Plato and Aristotle, and
(2) an examination of Whitehead's process thought, especially of his doctrines about eternal objects and actual entities, creativity, of his elimination of materialism and of his doctrine of mutual immanence.

Whitehead's system is treated by the present author as a precursor of hayathology because it gives us many suggestions about how to go beyond the limits of Greek ontology. The examination of Whitehead's process thought will show us that there are many similarities between his conception of reality and the implicit metaphysics of the Bible. . Contrary to a wide spread view of Christianity, the Bible has no dualism of body and mind, no doctrines about soul's immortality, and no principle of the other world. What the Bible deals with is this world as standing in relation to God and not with the divine nature or essence in isolation from the world. The above features are also found in Whitehead's philosophy, which can be interpreted as a transformation of Platonism to the thoroughgoing realism.

Hayathology and Process Theology 2

Section II

According to Whitehead, the history of European philosophy merely consists of Plato's footnotes. (PR39) His imagination is so great that he can anticipate almost every school of philosophical thought. Perhaps the most influential doctrine of Platonism may be found in the middle dialogues of his development, i.e. the theory of Forms and the soul's immortality.

In the Phaedo (64a) the whole concern of philosophy is summed up as the practice of death, i.e. the denial of this world. The soul sincerely thirsts for the separation from the body because it dwells in the body as the result of fall. It needs an ascetic training through philosophy in order to escape from the cycle of metempsychosis. To Platonism the material world is not the true reality, but merely the place from which the philosopher must flee as soon as possible. (cf.Theaet.176a) If we compare this other-worldliness with the biblical idea of salvation, the difference between them is clear.

In the biblical anthropology we find no dichotomy of mind and body; the term soul (nepes, psyche ) is completely interchangeable with the term flesh (basar, sarx ). Both of these point to one reality, i.e. the earth-bound living man. To the biblical tradition salvation cannot be found in ascetic practice because the total man with body must be saved. This is the reason why the early Christians must state that the resurrection should not be without body against the neo-Platonic heresy.

The structure of the immortality proof in the Phaedo runs as follows; if we admit the independent existence of Forms,i.e. the intelligible realities as the true causes of the sensible appearances, then we are forced to accept the soul's immortality. The details of the proof , indeed more complex than the above outline, show that the relation between the realm of Forms and the world of sense perception is very problematical, and it needs further research because the dualism concerned must be overcome.

The theory of Forms is not only a matter of historical concern, but also one of the most crucial problems of hayathology; the latter does not separate being from becoming, while the former posits the absolute existence of timeless forms independent of the world of becoming. As our aim is the truth of hayathology, we must examine the immanent criticism of the theory which only uses purely philosophical arguments. Recent Platonic exegeses elaborate on the so-called Third Man Argument which appeared originally in Alexander's commentary of metaphysics. This argument runs as follows ; if the Form of man and particular men belong to the same logical type, the relation between them forces us to posit another kind of Form, the Third Man, and this leads to an infinite regress. If we reformulate the argument in terms of modern logistics, we find the above aporia in the self-predication of the Form.

It is very interesting that Whitehead met a very similar type of paradox, when he collaborated with Russell on the type theory of Principia Mathematica. The reason why such a queer result occurs is due to an instance of the fallacy of misplaced concreteness, i.e. mistake of the abstract for the concrete reality. Whitehead points out the origin of the fallacy as follows;

--- Greek philosophers, and in particular Plato, seem to have held this doctrine in respect to qualitative abstractions. In so far as we abstract from our experience the brute particularity of happening here and now amid this environment, there remains a residue with self identities, differences, and essential interconnections, which seems to have no essential reference to the passage of events. According to this doctrine, as the result of this discard of the factor of transition, we rivet our attention on the eternal realm of Forms. In this imagined realm there is no passage, no loss, no gain. It is complete in itself. It is self-sustaining. It is, therefore, the realm of the "completely real " --- (MT 68)

The criticism of the theory of Forms is indeed a starting point of metaphysics, which is to provide the most universal principles for this world of sense as well as. for invisible realities. Being aware of the fact that Plato's theory of Forms rests on the mere abstractions from the reality, Aristotle , elaborates on his own revision of the theory; the immanent princip1e of what things are. The Forms occupies one of the four causes of Aristotelian metaphysics. As Platonic Forms cannot explain the movement of the sensible world, he introduces the concept of matter as the substratum of changing qualities. All sensible things are complexes in which Form embedded in more or fewer layers of matter. The world presents itself to Aristotle as a hierarchy, the highest member of which is the immaterial form, the unmoved mover, and the lowest of which is the prime matter, the negative principle of movement. The conception of God as the Form of forms, which is at the same time the first cause, was adopted by the medieval scholastic philosophy in spite of the fact that it is too static for Christians to accept Aristotle ascribes to God presented in the twelfth book of his metaphysics, only that kind of mental activity which owes nothing to the body, because physical activity is excluded by the immaterial nature of God. Though St. Thomas and other schoolmen tended to interpret Aristotle in a theistic sense, the relation between God and the world as conceived by him, is one-sided and lacks the dynamism of biblical revelations. It is not too much to say that Christian philosophy is destined to suffer from the idea of' " theos apathes " ( God without suffering) if it remains to be under the influence of Aristotelian metaphysics. The idea is the very opposite of the biblical picture of God, who can feel the pains of men, represented by Jeremiah as one who says, "My bowels are troubled for him."

One of the most remarkable features of Hebrew thought is that it totally lacks the concept of matter.( cf. C. Tresmontant) While Platonists look on any move from the one to the many as a degradation and a fall, the Hebrew considers the same as a creative advance, which cannot be 'explained away by the negative principle of matter.

To Platonic type of philosophy the One, separated from Itself, is undone in multiplicity by the negative principle, "matter" or "chora". The fact of movement must be explained away by it, because only the particular things can move. The implicit metaphysics of the Bible, by avoiding this negative principle, is able to look upon the genesis of things as a positive act, in itself desirable because it is excellent. Individuation is no longer to be disposed of through the intervention of matter. The explanation lies in the creative act itself, which wills the existence of this, or that being. The reason why the problem of individuation has been one of the most controversial problems must be sought in the great gap between two different conceptions of the individual: one is merely the necessary postulate of the theory of movement, the other the very object of God's concern.

Aristotle, though taking the individual substance as the basis of ontological discourse, retains the primacy of Forms. He identifies the concept of Form and matter with that of actuality and potentiality. The Form causes us to catch an individual as what it is, because the actual precedes the potential. The primacy of the concept of substance as well as that of Forms are the leading features of his metaphysics. The inquiry after what constitutes the substance of the world is the theme of metaphysics in Aristotelian philosophy. The concept of substance, however, is no less problematic than that that of Forms. The definition of it immediately creates an aporia; how is it possible for different substances to interact each other ? The absolute character of substance leads to the monistic system such as Spinoza's, in which there is only one substance, the World identified with God. Pantheism is an inescapable result if we consistently follow the logic of substance. If we are to avoid it, we must assign a different meaning to the word "substance" when we apply it to God. This is a kind of equivocation, which makes God an exception of the philosophical principle. It only reveals the weakness of the system unless the equivocal concepts are analysed clearly.

Hayathology and Process Theology 3

Section III

It is customary that Whitehead is called a Platonist. The philosophy of organism, as he himself calls his own system, is thought to be a modern revival of Platonism "with the least changes necessary by the intervening two thousand years of human experiences". (PR 39) The title, however, is a misleading one, for it involves the dualism which Whitehead earnestly tries to overcome in his writings. There is no dichotomy of appearance and reality, of the sensible and the intelligible in his system. As for the theory of Forms, he even mentions it as if he were another Aristotle, as a severe critic of the so-called participation theory. According to Whitehead the most simple theory about types of being is that some extreme type exists independently of the rest of things, and its naive attachment to the realm of Forms is entirely without justification. So he asks ironically, citing Parmenides' words, " How about the form of mud, and the forms of evil, and other forms of imperfection ?" (MT69) Of course this does not contradict the high estimate of Plato which he usually shows in a respectful manner.

The greatness of Plato does not consist in systematizing, but in the critical attitudes with which he has anticipated most of the criticism against his doctrines.(cf. AI l04) Whitehead is not a disciple of Platonism, but a critical successor of Plato's philosophy.

It must be remembered that the late dialogues after the Republic were Whitehead's main concern (cf. D W 177) , as treasure of philosophical suggestions, while the Platonists mainly derives their inspirations from those in which the theory of Forms plays the principal parts.

When we compare Whitehead's revision of the Ideal Theory with that of Aristotle's, we find that both try to overcome the "chorismos"(separation) of the Forms from the sensible world by means of the modal concepts, i.e. actuality and potentiality.

Aristotle takes the immanent forms as actualities and matter as potentialities. Whitehead's conception of modality is exactly the opposite; he gives the status of pure possibility to his eternal objects (i.e. his version of Ideas) and that of actuality to the unified concept of Becoming and Being, i.e. Actual Entities.

Why does the realm of Forms become that of pure possibilities in the case of Whitehead? The answer must be sought in the different modes of logic behind ontology between Aristotle and Whitehead. We proceed to explicate that difference in the following.

Whitehead's logical thought is based upon the he ramified type theory in Principia Mathemetica. The self-predication which causes many aporias is prohibited by the vicious circle principle; whatever involves all of a collection must not be one of the collection. The forms become to have both objective and functional characters; objective to the higher type and functional to the lower type. (PM 37) To Aristotle the logical principle that the predicate of a predicate is predicable of the first subject, i.e. nota notae est etiam nota rei ipsius is the foundation of his theory of substance.

The substance is the ontological basis of other categories. To Whitehead the logical principle concerned does not hold at all. It is a type-mistake, and flatly denied. The category of substance disappears as the subject-predicate structure of dependence is a misplaced one. The concept of modality suffers from a radical change as well as that of substance. According to Russell, the collaborator of Whitehead, much false philosophy has arisen out of confusing propositional functions with propositions. In all traditional philosophy there comes a heading of modality which discusses necessary, possible, and impossible as properties of propositions, whereas in fact they are properties of propositional functions. The propositional function" is a technical term, which is not true or false in itself. The forms take a part of propositional function to the objects of the lower type. If anything is red, what makes us think of it as a red thing, the form, is not red. So the propositional function that x is red is neither true nor false. The particular object, on the other hand, can not be "necessarily red", or "possibly Fed", unless some functional characters are taken into consideration. The logical theory of types is a preamble of the theory of objects in the later stage of Whitehead's development. The forms make an abstract hierarchy(SMW 191), which is not a completed self-sufficient system.

--- The forms are essentially referent beyond themselves mere fantasy to impute them any " absolute reality", which is devoid of implications beyond itself. The realm of forms is the realm of potentiality, and the very notion of potentiality has an external meaning. It refers to life and motion. It refers to inclusion and exclusion. It refers to hope, fear, and intuition. Phrasing this statement more generally,--- it refers to appetition. It refers to the development of actuality, which realizes and yet more than form. It refers to past, present, and future.( MT 69)----

While the realm of the forms loses substantial characters, the concept of matter completely fades away in Whitehead's system. His elimination of materialism is radical; first he criticizes the scientific concept of matter which causes us to bifurcate nature; second, he disposes of the metaphysical concept of matter in his categorial schemes. The bifurcation of nature has a historical reason for its introduction into science, the explanation of which is the theme of his "Concept of Nature". It is the unquestioned tendency to postulate a substratum for whatever is disclosed in sense awareness, namely, to look below what we are aware of for the substance in the sense of concrete thing. This is the origin of scientific concept of matter, and it leads scientists to accept the causal theory of perception according to which scientific objects such as molecules, atoms, an magnetic waves are the realities which causes our body to receive sense perceptions.

Whitehead protests against the bifurcation of nature because it posits two kind of nature, which, in so far as they are real, are real in different senses. One is the causal nature, which is the study of speculative physics. This would be the reality which is there for knowledge, though on this theory it is never known. For what is known is the other sort of reality, the apparent nature, which is only the by-play of mind. Thus there would be two natures, one is the mere conjecture, the other is the dream.

Though the denial of matter can be maintained within the purely phenomenalistic domain, Whitehead proceeds to undertake a difficult task of speculative philosophy; he provides an alternative scheme of concepts other than that of matter in order to explain the experience of movement and creation. What takes the place of the metaphysical concept of matter is one of the ultimate categories in Whitehead's system, i.e. creativity.

----"Creativity " is another rendering of the Aristotelian matter and of the modern neutral stuff. But it is divested of the notion of passive receptivity, either of form or of external relations; it is the pure notion of the activity conditioned by the objective immortality of the actual world, a world which is never the same twice, though always with the stable element of divine ordering. (PR 31)----

Whitehead cites the vision of Ezekiel in order to explain the miraculous power of creativity ;"So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding army."(PR 85)(Ezek.37-10)

The breath of feeling which creates a new individual fact has an origination not wholly traceable to the mere data. They clothe the dry bones with the flesh of a real being, emotional, purposive, appreciative.

Both for Plato and for Aristotle there is more in the immutable than in the moving, and one goes from the stable to the unstable by a simple diminution. Whitehead, on the other hand, has attached greater importance to the contrary movement, that of biogenesis, of creative evolution.

He has transformed the Greek concept of time into the diametrical one; the separation of time from space is condemned as a fallacy of misplaced concreteness: for it makes us to lose sight of the true nature of events.

In fact time and space are intimately connected in the four dimensional manifolds as Whitehead's physical works teach us. The concrete basis of time and space is provided by events with interrelations of each other. The mathematical concepts of space-time are abstracted from this basis. An instant of time as well as a geometrical point of space is a product of extensive abstraction.

Hayathology and Process Theology 4

Section IV

We have seen that the concept of creativity is one of the ultimate categories in Whitehead's philosophy. It has a transcendental character to the other categories; it precedes both actual entities and eternal objects. We have also observed that biblical metaphysics by avoiding the negative principle of Platonism, lacks the concept of matter as the principle of movement or individuation; to the Hebrew the multitude of beings is the result of an eminently positive act, a creation.

Though Whitehead repudiates the official formulation of authoritarian theology as "the deep idolatry" which fashions God in the image of the despotic prince of this world(PR.342), he basically agrees to the biblical ideas involved by the doctrine of trinity. He estimates the contribution of Alexandria and Antioch theologians as the only thinkers who in a fundamental metaphysical doctrine have improved upon Plato, because they had to grapple with the problem of mutual immanence between God and the world. (AI 168)

What metaphysics requires is a solution exhibiting the plurality of individuals as consistent with the unity of the Universe, and a solution which exhibits the World as requiring its union with God, and God as requiring his union with the world. The trinitarian doctrine points out the way in which Platonic metaphysics should develop, if it is to give a rational account of the role of the persuasive agency of God.(AI 169) Against the Platonic doctrine of subordinate derivations, the final insistence on the immanence of God was a fine effort of the early Christian ages. According to Whitehead their general concept of the Deity stopped all further generalization; they made no effort to conceive the world in terms of the metaphysical categories by means of which they interpret God, and they made no effort to conceive God in terms of the metaphysical categories which they applied to the world .

What Whitehead mentions is the doctrine of mutual immanence among three persons of the trinity. He applies it to every actual entity as the principle of relativity.

---The principle of universal relativity directly traverses Aristotle's dictum, "A substance is not present in a subject." On the contrary , according to this principle an actual entity is present in other actual entities. In fact, if we allow for degrees of relevance, we must say that every actual entity is present in every other actual entity.

The philosophy of organism is mainly devoted to the task of making clear the notion of "being present in other entity." (PR 50)---

The originality of Whitehead consists in applying of this principle to the theological problem on the relation between God and the world. God needs the world, i.e. a multiplicity of actual occasions because the completion of God's nature into a fullness of physical feeling is derived from the objectification of the world in God.

In the similar way the world needs God because He is the principle of concretion from which each temporal concrescence receives that initial aim from which its self-causation starts. (PR 245) God and the actual world jointly constitutes the character of the creativity for the initial phase of the novel concrescence. Whitehead deals with the key concepts of theology as if they were always involving ambiguity.

In the last part of Process and Reality he proposes a group of antitheses as the final summary of his speculation. They seems self-contradictory if we lose sight of a sift of meaning which converts the opposition into a contrast.

While the traditional theology insists on the one-sided transcendence of God over the world, he contrasts with it the transcendence of the world over God. Similarly God's immanence in the world is contrasted with the immanence of the world in God, God's permanency with the permanency of the world , and so on.

The point of Whitehead's, summary can be found in the doctrine of subject-superject. Every actual entity including God has this character: it transcends other entities as subject, and it is immanent in other entities as superject. As subject every actual entity is in a process, while as a superject it enjoys objective immortality. The concept of objective immortality is not only a religious one, but also a metaphysical description of the highest generality. Actuality in perishing acquires objectivity, while it loses subjective immediacy. (PR 29) The "perpetual perishing" of individual absoluteness is foredoomed because the concrete finality of the individual is nothing else than a decision referent beyond itself. The very perishing of absoluteness is the attainment of "objective immortality" . (PR 60) The creature perishes and immortal. (PR 82) The religious dimension of mortality follows from the general description. Each actuality in the temporal world has its reception into God's nature. The correspondent element in God's nature is not temporal act but is the transformation of that temporal actuality into a living, ever-present fact. An enduring personality in the temporal world is a route of occasions in which the successor some peculiar completeness sum up their predecessors. The fact in God's nature inherits from the temporal counterpart according to the same principle as in the temporal world the future inherits from the past. Thus in the sense in which present occasion is the person now, and yet with his own past, so the counterpart in God is that person in God. (PR350)

Thus we arrive at the conclusion of Process and Reality, which presents the image of God, the great companion, and justifies the insistent craving for immortality on the basis of " the present, unfading importance of our immediate actions, which perish and yet live for evermore "


References

The key for references to the cited works of Whitehead is as follows:

PR -- Process and Reality , corrected edition ed. by David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne

MT -- Modes of Thought, The Free Press, New York.

AI -- Adventures of Ideas, The Free Press, New York

DW -- Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead, as recorded by

Lucien Price

PM-- Principia Mathematica, Cambridge University Press

SMW -- Science and the Modern World, Collins Fontana Books.

CN-Concept of Nature, Cambridge University Press.

RM-- Religion in the Making, The World Publishing Co, Cleveland and new York

l. E. Gilson , L'esprit de la philosophie medievale, 2ed. (1944) p. 51

K. Kremer , Die neuplatonische Seinsphilosophie und ihre Wirkung auf Thomas von Aquin (1966) p.396

2 Thorleif Boman Das hebraische Denken im Vergleich mit dem Griechishen, pp.27-39.

3. Abraham, J.Heschel, God in Search of Man, p.16, 412

4. Tetsutaro Ariga, The Problem of Ontology in Christian Thought p.177-200.

5. Studies in Plato's Metaphysics, ed. By R.E. Allen, p.97-147. Plato I. A Collection of critical essays ed. By G. Vlastos, p.184-200

6. W.D. Ross, Aristotle's Metaphysics Introduction

7. K.Kitamori, Theology of the Pain

8. C. Tresmontant, A study of Hebrew (Essai sur la pensee hebraique), p.39-51