Two types of creationist philosophy: Thomas and Whitehead1

Thomas Aquinas was rather successful in integrating Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, despite the obvious pagan features of Aristotle's thought. He did so largely by placing it on a creationist basis. In addition to form and matter (or, more precisely, form), Thomas argued that actualization required esse, the 'to-be-ness' of a thing, which raised the possibility into full being. This esse was communicated to the creature from esse-ipsum, Being itself, its creator.

This is widely acknowledged. What is rarely recognized, however, is that Whitehead achieved a creationist version of process philosophy just as Thomas achieved a creationist version of substance philosophy.

In many circles, Whitehead's philosophy is coterminous with process philosophy,2 but we also need a broader, more denotative version of 'process philosophy.' Nicholas Rescher provides a helpful definition in Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to Process Philosophy.3 He sees process philosophy as based on two contentions:

In a dynamic world, things cannot do without processes. Since substantial things change, their nature must encompass some impetus to internal development. In a dynamic world, processes are more fundamental than things. Since substantial things emerge in and from the world's course of changes, processes have priority over things.4

Rescher explores these basic ideas as they pertain to particulars, universals, nature, persons, knowledge, scientific inquiry, and God. This denotative definition of process applies to Heraclitus, James, and Bergson, among others. It can even apply to Leibniz, if we interpret the monad's inner principle to be constituted out of its perceptions, instead of vice versa. Then the way each monad mirrors all others constitutes what that monad is. Read the other way, however, the inner principle determines the perceptions, which are coordinated with the other monads by the pre-established harmony, the way in which all these inner principles are divinely determined.

The general features of processes systematically explored by Rescher can be best found in Whitehead's philosophy of nature.5 Nature is analyzed in terms of events, which are the ever-changing, infinitely divisible, overlapping processes that Rescher considers. Process and Reality does not really discuss this sort of process, but the process of process, a kind of second order process. I shall argue that concrescence, which Rescher's generalizing approach ignores, is best understood as creation, reconceived on a process basis.

RELATIONALITY AND BECOMING

Let us proceed to what may be a more fundamental level. Whitehead set out to offer an alternative to scientific materialism, particularly to its notion of 'matter,' which was regarded as 'simply located.' Matter "can be said to be here in space and here in time, or here in spacetime, in a perfectly definite sense which does not require for its explanation any reference to other regions of space-time."6 In other words, it is only externally related to other regions and events. Whitehead proposes to understand an actual occasion in the diametrically opposite manner: it is constituted by its relations to all other actual occasions. The specific relations in question are termed prehensions. 'Prehension' is a generalization from perception to cover unconscious activity. This causal relation affects the prehender, but not the actuality being prehended.

The theory of concrescence, or the unification of prehensions, attempts to explain how such occasions come into being. Since the occasion is constituted out of its relations or prehensions, these are given at the outset, but as a multiplicity. How they should be ordered into the unity of being is as yet indeterminate. 'Concrescere' is the growing together of these prehensive relations into concrete unity.

Any given concrescence unifies its actual world; that is, the occasions already in existence at its outset. These occasions must be determinate to be prehensible, which excludes both contemporaries and future occasions. The concrescence will be momentary, requiring some lapse of time but no more than is necessary for its unification. Its act of becoming is indivisible, but not the resultant being, which is (coordinately) divisible.

While a concrescence prehends other beings, it has no being of its own, for it is indeterminate as to its unity. Classically, being and unity are convertible. While that is true, the more important convertibility is between becoming and unification. Becoming is primary, and being is derivative from concrescence. Being is not, on this scheme, the all-inclusive category whereby everything has being in some sense or other. But the only features excluded from (objective) being are present activity, subjectivity, and God (as concrescent).

Let us characterize the position that actualities are constituted out of their relations to other actualities as relationalist. It contrasts with substantialist positions, which range from the extreme of excluding all relations to various intermediate positions permitting some features to be relational. Descartes represents the extreme, defining a substance as that which requires nothing but itself in order to exist. In some ways, Leibniz is just as extreme, if we consider how each monad is what it is in terms of its inner principle and its internal development, and all of its perceptions are generated by this inner principle. On the other hand, the monad is wholly constituted by these perceptions, and the perceptions could be construed as relations to other monads. After all, each monad mirrors all other monads within itself. Aristotle represents an intermediate position, allowing for both substance and accidents.