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Wiki MarkupAccording to Hartshorne, "the principle of process" is that "the togetherness of what-does-not-become-and-what-becomes itself becomes ... with the consequence that reality in its inclusive sense coincides with process (as something _indicated,_ not merely named; process-now, not just process taken generically) and the further consequence that God, or reality itself, is Process-itself, our God now, more inclusively than \ [God\] is immutable or eternal Being-itself" ("Tillich's Doctrine of God": 194).unmigrated-wiki-markup

But why should this principle of process be affirmed? Aside from the dialectical argument that the alternative principle-\--that fixed being is inclusive-\--has the consequence of denying the reality of process altogether (169), there is the appeal to our direct experience: "\[O\]ur experience, itself a process, discloses only processes and what can be abstracted therefrom\[.\] A 'being' which is neither any process nor any datal constituent of process, but something- _{-}simpliciter{-}_ -more inclusive than all process-\--this _cannot_, it seems, have literal meaning, for nothing of the sort appears in experiencing\!" (195).

March 1998