1739.The Essence

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The essence or individuality of God is given as a datum implicitly in an of our most universal conceptions, i.e., transcendentals. All that is necessary is to make this implicit conception of God explicit. ** * * * * * There is, with certain qualifications, a single religious idea of God. This is true, at any rate,if one prescinds from fanciful mythical ideas of quasi-divine gods and demons and focuses attention solely on the higher religions. Once this is done, there is a rather definite, coherent, and universal idea that may be said to provide the religious Ineaning of the term "God." But although the idea of God is thus religious in intuitive origin, philosophy has tried, more or less successfully, to find logical forms or patterns appropriate to express this intuitive idea. ** * * * * * The intuitive idea of God more or less adequately expressed by all religions (along with other logically independent accretions) may be defined in various ways, in essentially equivalent terms, as follows:

worshipfulness (or the worshipful One)

Thus "God is whatever is the adequate object of unstinted or wholehearted devotion, whatever could be loved with all one's being" (Hartshorne).

Also, modal all-inclusiveness

God is modally all-inc1usive

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God is "the all-inclusive yet individual actuality and the aH-indusive yet individual potentiality" (Hartshorne).== unsurpassibiJity (both relative and absolute, i.e., both by another and even by self) == nonfraglnentariness ..;. modal all-inc1usiveness. == modal coextensiveness == modal coincidence. (== lnodaUy coextensive == modally coincident) in that God is all actuality unified into oneindividual actuality and all possibility unified into one individual potentiality, or capacity.. for ilctUilJity_ ** * * * * * It

"Actual" Ineans detenninate, "potential," more or less indeterminate. Whitehead says, "definition is the soul of actuality"

Possibility is silnply an aspect of existing individuals and therefore of the momentary actualities in which existing individuals are fully concretized or particularized. Actualities have data whose futures they further determine, and they themselves will in turn be data in actualities that are anticipated but not fully determined by their own futures as in the present, or as what not only can be but also Inust be further determined subsequently.is not the case that everythjng is either actual or potential. The ultimate universals, or transcendentals, including the essence of God, are eternally real but are not and cannot be actual in themselves. This is because they are the common factors in al1 possibilities, abstract elements of being in all bec01ning. Events, by contrast, even though past, are not thus COlnmon to aI1 (but only to sOlne) possibilities and therefore are either actual or potential. (PRc: 223) to which Hartshorne adds, "and the reason for its superior value" ** * * * * * The most concrete or detenninate realities are not individuals, in the sense of things or persons existing through successive changes, but rather events, in the sense of momentary actualities that happen, that become and perish, but do not change-change being the successive becolning of distinguishable,

IndiViduality-even In ordInary cases-is relatively abstract or general as compared to the momentary events or actualities, the states, in which individ uality is

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concretized or particularized. But only God's individuality is so utterly abstract or general as to be a transcendental that, as such, is and must be somehow concretized or particularized inif often closely related and very similar events, or actualities. all momentary events or actualities whatever, possible as well as nctuaI. God is thus "the elninent individual, concretely actualized in an eminent form of actuality, one aspect of which is eminent possibility or futurity. 'Eminence' can be defined as 'unsurpassability by another,' the last two words indicating that selfsurpassing is compatible with elninence," provided that itis "the elninent form of self-surpassing" and that "there must also be an eminent form of 'unsurpassability even by self'" (Hartshorne)."IA JII abstractions and possibilities are contained in concrete actuality, all past actuality [is containedl in present actuality, and all ordinary actuality [is contained] in divine actuality. Thus quite literally alJ reaJity is [contained 1in God. And yet both God and every other individual have some creative freedom .... [God) is an individual, eminently acting upon and receiving influences from the nondivine individuals. The 'glory of God' is neither God apart from the world, nor the world and God, but the world taken into the divine life. And this life is genuinely such. It has a settled past and a future open to endless further enrichment" (Hartshorne). ** * * * * * Anyone who says that she or he has no faith in God, and yet goes on living, thereby shows that she or he has faith in

To think as well as to live in any world whatever would express sOlne sort of faith. And a theist holds that this faith can become fully intelJigibJe only as faith in God and in God's essential attributes of eminent power, wisdom, and goodness.somethillg. Let her or him explain what that sOlnething is, and a theist wi1l hold that, unless it is explained to be God, it will not fit the faith that she or he has in it. 4The "global argument" for God's existence, of which all the particular argulnents are simply phases, is that a properly fonnulated theistic view of life and reality is the most intelligible, self-consistent, and satisfactory view that can be conceived.

All the so-called proofs of God's existence except the ontological may be interpreted as showing that the idea of God, taken as true, is required for the interpretation of some fundamental aspect of life or existence.5May 2009