Page History

...

Hartshorne speaks of "the necessary aspect of deity" as "the ultimate determinable," only to go on to say a page later, "The ultimate determinable is the supreme creativity" (AD: 58 f.). Do these two statements use the same phrase to refer to what – -- on Whitehead's view – -- are two different, if closely related, things, i.e., God, or the primordial nature of God, on the one hand, and creativity, on the other? Or is what the phrase refers to in the second statement the same as its referent in the first, i.e., God, in God's necessary aspect?

I judge that the referent is the same, because what Hartshorne means here by "the supreme creativity" is not Whitehead's "creativity" as distinct from God, and thus some kind of a "God above God," if you will, but rather precisely God's creatiyity, God's own (unbegun and unending) self-creation in response to, or interaction with, the nonsupreme but nonetheless genuinely real and significant self-creations, and so creativity, of all others. Thus he says later in the same book, "God has the supreme form of creativity, creatures have lesser forms." And, more telling still, "supreme reality consists in supreme creativity," and "lesser realities must be lesser – -- but nonnot-zero – -- forms of such creativity" (197, 207).

...