By Schubert Ogden
Whitehead is clear in saying that "the primordial nature of God [sc. the ideal realization of potentialities in a primordial actual entity] constitutes the metaphysical stability whereby the actual process exemplifies general principles of metaphysics, and attains the ends proper to specific types of emergent order" (40 [64]). He also says, explicitly confirming the second point, that "'God' is the actuality in the world, in virtue of which there is physical 'law'" (283 [434]).
It seems only fitting, then, that Whitehead should allude to God as "the timeless source of all [sc. physical as well as metaphysical] order" (32 [47]).
11 October 2000