PLAUSIBILITY OF PANENTHEISM, THE

Hartshorne, we should point out, thinks as a philosopher and is not committed to the traditional Christian theism of Clayton, Swinburne, Peacocke, and Polkinghorne. We may also conclude that these men think in terms of "faith in search of understanding," as do several theologians who explore panentheism in In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being.59 They maintain an ontological dualism between God and the universe. Inquiry for them is not so open-ended.

Clayton, Peacocke, and Polkinghorne embrace the panentheistic analogy enthusiastically, and Swinburne less so. They discuss the mind-body relation similarly. Peacocke and Polkinghorne make very strong affirmations of an intimate God-universe relation. Polkinghorne espouses a method very similar to Hartshorne's when the former writes, "theology will want to exercise its own autonomy. But in constructing the metaphysical backing for its discourse, theology will wish to take careful account of what science can suggest about the process of the world and the character of its causal nexus. Physics does not determine metaphysics, but it can certainly constrain it."60 Peacocke recently has written, "we have to conceive now of God giving existence to all entities, structures, and processes 'all the time' and to all times as each moment, for us, unfolds. They would not be if God was not."61 The panentheistic analogy lends intelligibility to theology informed by empirical investigation of complex systems. Yet I believe this is not to provide plausibility so long as there is an ontological gap.

Hartshorne's dipolar panentheism differs significantly from that of the other thinkers discussed in this paper. How God is more than just the universe is an issue for his view that will require more discussion. I interpret this "more" to be the genetic identity of the universe as divine residing in the dimension of time. Analogically speaking, all events in the universe contribute to the divine life and awareness. This includes the puzzling events on the microcosmic (quantum) as well as those on the macrocosmic (classical) dimensions.62 Hartshorne considers these two dimensions as one physical reality, the universe, of which sentient and mental experience are parts. All cosmic, terrestrial, and historical events literally are the divine "strict identity" by means of what he terms the divine "modal coincidence" with the universe.63 In this way Hartshorne's dipolar panentheism lends plausibility to belief in a personal God intimately related to us and to all creatures.

1 Charles Harvey Arnold, God Before You and Behind You: The Hyde Park Union Church through a Century 1874-1974 (Chicago: Hyde Park Union Church, 1974), 159.

2 George Burman Foster, "Professor George B. Foster on Dr. Ames' New Book," The Christian Century 35, no. 41, October 24, 1918, 17.

3 Foster, "Concerning the Truth of Religious Ideas," The Biblical World 41 (1913): 65.

4 Gregory R. Peterson, "Whither Panentheism?" Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 36, no. 3 (2001): 395-405. See also Edgar A. Towne, 'The Variety of Panentheisms," Zygon 40, no. 3 (2005): 779-86. See note 59.