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Reenchantment without Supernaturalism: A Process Philosophy of Religion
Occasionally, a book comes along that is definitive for its field of study, a book that marks a milestone in thought.... Griffin has written just such a book―a book that, by all rights, should mark a watershed in the academic study of religion.... Griffin makes about as strong a case as one can in a single volume for a genuine and viable alternative. ― The Journal of Religion The process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne has made many distinctive contributions to the philosophy of religion. David Ray Griffin now offers the first full-scale philosophy of religion written from this perspective, discussing such topics as the relationship between science and religion, the validity of religious experience, the nature and existence of God, religious pluralism, creation and evolution, and the problem of evil. Griffin's clear and comprehensive book also serves as a valuable introduction to process philosophy itself. In his vigorous defense of a worldview that is fully naturalistic and fully religious, Griffin shows not only how this position reconciles naturalism with freedom, genuine religious experience, and even life after death, but also how its naturalistic theism "reenchants" the world in the sense of providing cosmic support for moral values. Highly original and sometimes controversial, Griffin's book develops its stance in conversation with influential proponents of other philosophical positions, including William P. Alston, Jürgen Habermas, John Hick, Colin McGinn, Alvin Plantinga, Hilary Putnam, Willard Quine, Ninian Smart, Jeffrey Stout, and Bernard Williams.
440 pages, Paperback
Published November 14, 2000
About the author
David Ray Griffin
79 books88 followersDr. Griffin, a retired emeritus professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology at the Claremont School of Theology, has published over 30 books and 150 articles. His 9/11 books have been endorsed by Robert Baer, William Christison, William Sloane Coffin Jr., Richard Falke, Ray McGovern, Paul Craig Roberts and Howard Zinn.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 27, 2024
GRIFFIN EXPLAINS HIS CONCEPTION OF ‘NATURALISTIC THEISM’
Retired theologian David Ray Griffin (b. 1939) has written/cowritten other books such as Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition; Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology; Two Great Truths: A New Synthesis of Scientific Naturalism and Christian Faith; God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology; Varieties of Postmodern Theology]], etc. [He has more recently become well-known for his skeptical views on 9/11: e.g., Debunking 9/11 Debunking]].]
He wrote in the Preface to this 2001 book, “By using the word ‘reenchantment’ in the title of this book, I allude to Max Weber’s well-known claim that modern thought has resulted in the ‘disenchantment’ of the world, by which Weber meant that the world in no longer believed to contain any inherent meaning or normative values around which human beings should orient their lives… Completely rejecting supernaturalism… I present a worldview that, although saturated with values, is fully natural. This worldview DOES involve a form of theism, but it is a fully naturalistic theism, according to which divine influence is a naturalistic dimension of the world’s most fundamental causal order, never an interruption thereof.” (Pg. vii) He begins the Introduction with the statement, “This book is an articulation, from the point of view of an advocate, of a process philosophy of religion. It is written, of course, from on particular understanding of the best way to develop a self-consistent process philosophy of religion.” (Pg. 1)
He summarizes the ‘Core Doctrines of Process Philosophy’: “1. The integration of moral, aesthetic, and religious intuitions with the most general doctrines of the sciences into a self-consistent worldview as one of the central tasks of philosophy in our time… 2. Hard-core commonsense notions of the ultimate test of the adequacy of a philosophical position… 3. Whitehead’s nonsensationist doctrine of perception, according to which sensory perception is a secondary mode of perception… 4. Panexperientialism with organizationa duality… 5. The doctrine that all enduring individuals are serially ordered societies of momentary ‘occasions of experience.’ … 6. The doctrine that all actual entities have internal as well as external relations… 7. The Whiteheadean version of naturalistic theism, according to which a Divine Actuality acts variably but never supernaturally in the world… 8. Doubly Dipolar Theism… according to which the divine reality has two aspects, or ‘poles.’ … 9. The provision of cosmological support for the ideals needed by contemporary civilization as one of the chief purposes of philosophy in our time… 10. A distinction between verbal statements (sentences) and propositions both of these and propositional feelings.” (Pg. 5-7)
He suggests, “As long as religion seems to require supernaturalism while science seems to support naturalism, science and religion will seem to be completely opposed to each other… If there is to be a real reconciliation, it will require the kind of basis proposed by Whitehead: a scientific-religious naturalism, supportive of the necessary presuppositions of the scientific and religious communities… One argument of this book is that theistic religions can express their fundamental convictions better within the framework of process philosophy’s naturalistic theism than within that of a supernaturalistic theism.” (Pg. 28-29)
He explains, “The term ‘panexperientalism’ … is my own… The traditional term for the position that the ultimate units of the world contain experience (and perhaps spontaneity) is ‘panpsychism.’… But this term… is less suitable for two reasons. It suggests, in the first place, that the ultimate units of the world are enduring things… In the second place, the term panpsychism suggests that these ultimate units contain rather high-level mentality, with consciousness.” (Pg. 97)
He observes, “According to this conception, divine influence in the world is always formally the same but variable in content… because God acts in relation to all finite actual occasions by providing them with initial aims… Thanks to this idea that god acts in the world by means of initial aims, the … polarization between liberal and conservative approaches, can be avoided. On the one hand, this doctrine does not involve a God of the gaps, either epistemically or ontologically. The role played by god in the formation of each finite actual occasion is IN PRINCIPLE not a role that could be played by some finite agency, so it is not a ‘gap’ in our present empirical knowledge that might be closed by some future scientific discovery. And the divine influence is not an interruption of the world’s normal causal process but a regular, even necessary, factor IN this process.” (Pg. 147)
He lists the 13 characteristics traditionally attributed to God, and points out, “Process theism… gives a different interpretation to some of these features… process theism denies that being ‘supreme in power’ means being ‘omnipotent’ in the sense of ESSENTIALLY having ALL the power … process theism, while affirming that God created our universe, denies that this creation was ‘ex nihilo’ … [Process philosophy] cannot credibly be said not really to be a doctrine of GOD. Process theists, in fact, claim that their doctrine explicates the RELIGIOUS idea of deity, as that which is alone worthy of worship, far better than does traditional theism.” (Pg. 166-167)
He notes, “process philosophy’s cosmological argument can be stated thus” Universal throughout our cosmic epoch are… [what] we call the laws of physics. Without the order provided by these laws… actual occasions of the types at the root of our universe… could not come into existence… The existence of our particular cosmos, therefore, suggests the existence of a being with at least many of the attributes of ‘God’ as generically conceived.” (Pg. 178)
He argues, “Because our universe was created out of a chaos rather than out of absolute nothingness, so that creative power is inherent in the world… the creatures’ twofold creative power of self-determination and efficient causation cannot be canceled, overridden, or completely controlled by God. On this basis, process philosophy… [states] God CANNOT unilaterally prevent all evil… the fact that genuine evil occurs is not in conflict with the existence of God. That is the first part of process theism’s solution to the problem of evil.” (Pg. 223-224)
He suggests that the existence of a nonbodily soul “is empirically supported… by evidence for out-of-body experience… a considerable empirical evidence supports the view that such extrasomatic experiences do occur, whereas the intrasomatic interpretation of all such cases has nothing supporting it except materialistic prejudice.” (Pg. 243)
He concludes, “I have suggested that we can rightfully claim to have knowledge of those religiously important ideas that belong to our hard-core common sense… We can, accordingly, claim knowledge of such things as the reality of freedom, normative values, genuine evil, a Holy Power, and ultimate meaning. We can be said to know the falsity, therefore, of a wholly disenchanted worldview… to put the issue of theism in context, I would say that some form of naturalism is overwhelmingly more probable than either some form of supernaturalistic dualism or some form of naturalism… we can think of the belief in some form of life after death as considerably more probable than its denial. With these final reflections about ultimate matters, I conclude this presentation of a process philosophy of religion.” (Pg. 391-392)
This book will be of great interest to anyone seriously studying him, Process Theology, or other forms of liberal/progressive Christianity.
Retired theologian David Ray Griffin (b. 1939) has written/cowritten other books such as Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition; Primordial Truth and Postmodern Theology; Two Great Truths: A New Synthesis of Scientific Naturalism and Christian Faith; God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays in Postmodern Theology; Varieties of Postmodern Theology]], etc. [He has more recently become well-known for his skeptical views on 9/11: e.g., Debunking 9/11 Debunking]].]
He wrote in the Preface to this 2001 book, “By using the word ‘reenchantment’ in the title of this book, I allude to Max Weber’s well-known claim that modern thought has resulted in the ‘disenchantment’ of the world, by which Weber meant that the world in no longer believed to contain any inherent meaning or normative values around which human beings should orient their lives… Completely rejecting supernaturalism… I present a worldview that, although saturated with values, is fully natural. This worldview DOES involve a form of theism, but it is a fully naturalistic theism, according to which divine influence is a naturalistic dimension of the world’s most fundamental causal order, never an interruption thereof.” (Pg. vii) He begins the Introduction with the statement, “This book is an articulation, from the point of view of an advocate, of a process philosophy of religion. It is written, of course, from on particular understanding of the best way to develop a self-consistent process philosophy of religion.” (Pg. 1)
He summarizes the ‘Core Doctrines of Process Philosophy’: “1. The integration of moral, aesthetic, and religious intuitions with the most general doctrines of the sciences into a self-consistent worldview as one of the central tasks of philosophy in our time… 2. Hard-core commonsense notions of the ultimate test of the adequacy of a philosophical position… 3. Whitehead’s nonsensationist doctrine of perception, according to which sensory perception is a secondary mode of perception… 4. Panexperientialism with organizationa duality… 5. The doctrine that all enduring individuals are serially ordered societies of momentary ‘occasions of experience.’ … 6. The doctrine that all actual entities have internal as well as external relations… 7. The Whiteheadean version of naturalistic theism, according to which a Divine Actuality acts variably but never supernaturally in the world… 8. Doubly Dipolar Theism… according to which the divine reality has two aspects, or ‘poles.’ … 9. The provision of cosmological support for the ideals needed by contemporary civilization as one of the chief purposes of philosophy in our time… 10. A distinction between verbal statements (sentences) and propositions both of these and propositional feelings.” (Pg. 5-7)
He suggests, “As long as religion seems to require supernaturalism while science seems to support naturalism, science and religion will seem to be completely opposed to each other… If there is to be a real reconciliation, it will require the kind of basis proposed by Whitehead: a scientific-religious naturalism, supportive of the necessary presuppositions of the scientific and religious communities… One argument of this book is that theistic religions can express their fundamental convictions better within the framework of process philosophy’s naturalistic theism than within that of a supernaturalistic theism.” (Pg. 28-29)
He explains, “The term ‘panexperientalism’ … is my own… The traditional term for the position that the ultimate units of the world contain experience (and perhaps spontaneity) is ‘panpsychism.’… But this term… is less suitable for two reasons. It suggests, in the first place, that the ultimate units of the world are enduring things… In the second place, the term panpsychism suggests that these ultimate units contain rather high-level mentality, with consciousness.” (Pg. 97)
He observes, “According to this conception, divine influence in the world is always formally the same but variable in content… because God acts in relation to all finite actual occasions by providing them with initial aims… Thanks to this idea that god acts in the world by means of initial aims, the … polarization between liberal and conservative approaches, can be avoided. On the one hand, this doctrine does not involve a God of the gaps, either epistemically or ontologically. The role played by god in the formation of each finite actual occasion is IN PRINCIPLE not a role that could be played by some finite agency, so it is not a ‘gap’ in our present empirical knowledge that might be closed by some future scientific discovery. And the divine influence is not an interruption of the world’s normal causal process but a regular, even necessary, factor IN this process.” (Pg. 147)
He lists the 13 characteristics traditionally attributed to God, and points out, “Process theism… gives a different interpretation to some of these features… process theism denies that being ‘supreme in power’ means being ‘omnipotent’ in the sense of ESSENTIALLY having ALL the power … process theism, while affirming that God created our universe, denies that this creation was ‘ex nihilo’ … [Process philosophy] cannot credibly be said not really to be a doctrine of GOD. Process theists, in fact, claim that their doctrine explicates the RELIGIOUS idea of deity, as that which is alone worthy of worship, far better than does traditional theism.” (Pg. 166-167)
He notes, “process philosophy’s cosmological argument can be stated thus” Universal throughout our cosmic epoch are… [what] we call the laws of physics. Without the order provided by these laws… actual occasions of the types at the root of our universe… could not come into existence… The existence of our particular cosmos, therefore, suggests the existence of a being with at least many of the attributes of ‘God’ as generically conceived.” (Pg. 178)
He argues, “Because our universe was created out of a chaos rather than out of absolute nothingness, so that creative power is inherent in the world… the creatures’ twofold creative power of self-determination and efficient causation cannot be canceled, overridden, or completely controlled by God. On this basis, process philosophy… [states] God CANNOT unilaterally prevent all evil… the fact that genuine evil occurs is not in conflict with the existence of God. That is the first part of process theism’s solution to the problem of evil.” (Pg. 223-224)
He suggests that the existence of a nonbodily soul “is empirically supported… by evidence for out-of-body experience… a considerable empirical evidence supports the view that such extrasomatic experiences do occur, whereas the intrasomatic interpretation of all such cases has nothing supporting it except materialistic prejudice.” (Pg. 243)
He concludes, “I have suggested that we can rightfully claim to have knowledge of those religiously important ideas that belong to our hard-core common sense… We can, accordingly, claim knowledge of such things as the reality of freedom, normative values, genuine evil, a Holy Power, and ultimate meaning. We can be said to know the falsity, therefore, of a wholly disenchanted worldview… to put the issue of theism in context, I would say that some form of naturalism is overwhelmingly more probable than either some form of supernaturalistic dualism or some form of naturalism… we can think of the belief in some form of life after death as considerably more probable than its denial. With these final reflections about ultimate matters, I conclude this presentation of a process philosophy of religion.” (Pg. 391-392)
This book will be of great interest to anyone seriously studying him, Process Theology, or other forms of liberal/progressive Christianity.
April 2, 2021
Two stars for readability for someone who's a graduate student in theology but not accustomed to dense philosophical writing. But it's a thorough and helpful philosophy of religion from a preeminent process philosopher.
May 14, 2023
Read this if you take the "Problem of God" seriously. It is not a casual read, but it is well worth the investment of time and energy required to fully assimilate. A succinct roadmap to the opaque landscape of process philosophy.
July 27, 2014
I am a Process Philosophy guy, so this book resinates soundly with me. I appreciate that Griffin takes the time to walk the reader through different types of Naturalism.
The majority of Christianity attempts to solve the "Problem of Evil" by simply stating that G_D is all powerful, and so anything G_D does is inherently good. This is unsatisfactory in a world in which evil clearly exists, and does so abundantly.
What then can man do as he/she attempts to find meaning in the natural world and hold a believe in G_D at the same time? A G_D that belongs to a natural system, one in which G_D does not break the rules whenever G_D feels like it is a G_D that can be all loving and all good without having to be all powerful or all knowing.
The idea that G_D must intervene in an otherwise perfectly natural universe by "interrupting" the natural order of things to perform a "miracle" that bends reality or operates outside the confines of natural law is a bit of a stretch. Griffin does an amazing job taking the reader through this concept and many others.
Highly recommend the book if you are looking for a way to solve the "Problem of Evil" and find the traditional Christian notion in which G_D's omnipotent power and omniscient mind are protected; THIS IS IT!
The majority of Christianity attempts to solve the "Problem of Evil" by simply stating that G_D is all powerful, and so anything G_D does is inherently good. This is unsatisfactory in a world in which evil clearly exists, and does so abundantly.
What then can man do as he/she attempts to find meaning in the natural world and hold a believe in G_D at the same time? A G_D that belongs to a natural system, one in which G_D does not break the rules whenever G_D feels like it is a G_D that can be all loving and all good without having to be all powerful or all knowing.
The idea that G_D must intervene in an otherwise perfectly natural universe by "interrupting" the natural order of things to perform a "miracle" that bends reality or operates outside the confines of natural law is a bit of a stretch. Griffin does an amazing job taking the reader through this concept and many others.
Highly recommend the book if you are looking for a way to solve the "Problem of Evil" and find the traditional Christian notion in which G_D's omnipotent power and omniscient mind are protected; THIS IS IT!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews