Charles Hartshorne and the Horizons of Free-Will

Charles Hartshor= ne and the Horizons of Free-Will

Donnie Featherston

= Un= iversity of North Texas

Inspection of the ‘religious’ begin= s at the focal point of the believer. &nbs= p; The believer is required to believe in something for it to be a religion; religion itself cannot be an inactive or simply acquired custom or accessory. To truly and adequ= ately examine what one believes, there is a requirement of belief to be present, = not merely familiarity. It is at = this point of activity, engagement with the religious, the divine, the holy, the eternal, or the sacred, that free will suddenly clashes head first into its= own inherent and ever-changing horizon.

&= nbsp; The horizon of free will is not something to be feared or defeated by. Rather, = the horizon of free will is an ever-present and ever-necessary force that guides and allows for understanding and activity within that religion. If there were no horizon of free w= ill, there would be chaos. A simple example is that a human body is incapable of flight without external support and/or assistance. No matter how much one wills this, unassisted flight rem= ains a steadfast impossibility. Th= is is not a danger to the integrity of choice and certainly does not support a determining scheme of the universe. It simply states the obvious, that at some point, choice is limited. There is scope and magnitude of every choice and = the very place where that scope eclipses the impossible is that which must be studied. [1]

&= nbsp; Charles Hartshorne does a magnificent job of describing the nature of the divine in= an open and remarkably novel world. He challenges common held notions of God and delivers impacting arguments agai= nst each. Perfection, omnipotence= , omniscience, divine love, immortality, and revelation are all presented in a classical l= ight and then refuted and reworked into a contemporary scheme. [2]

&= nbsp; The basic ontology of God is not refuted, however, but changed to fit the method and structure of Harthorne’s theology. God is made up and constituted by = each individual person, animal, and being. The objects of the world act as mass that creates God’s body a= nd are infinitely constituted by God. The struggle against non-being is predominantly fought by God, but t= he being that is God is physically made up of objects in the universe. The relationship between God and t= he universe is inseparable; they are always preceding and interacting with each other. Just as atoms and mole= cules interact and are both sustained by and sustaining our physical bodies, so d= o we and the rest of the universe act upon and in accordance with God. As Harsthorne states, “God&#= 8217;s cosmic body is a society of individuals, not a single individual…so G= od is the super-creaturely individual of the inclusive creaturely society. Simply outside of this super-socie= ty and super-individual, there is nothing.”[3]

&= nbsp; Utilizing this explanation of onto-theology one can then derive a system where free w= ill becomes the centralized focus of humanity’s existence. The component of human activity as= a specific placement in the being of God allows humanity a special role when = it comes to choice making. Harts= horne argues against the classically held notion of God’s omniscience and omnipotence and argues that chance must be present in the universe, or the universe would be dead.[4] As we humans experience novelty in the universe God also experiences the same novelty and newness. There is= a constant becoming of both God and human, divine and physical. Dr. Hartshorne clearly states that choice has its limitations, that system of chance is not purely open with infinite possibility. Hartsho= rne speaks clearly and directly on this matter by saying, “…there i= s a highest conceivable or supreme power, creative of and controlling the world, but it does not and could not achieve the absurdity of monopolizing decision-making; rather, it is creative of and controls individuals with so= me decision-making power of their own, some ability to settle details left undetermined by the highest power. The argument is that only in this form is the highest power either consistently conceivable or worthy of worship.” [5]

&= nbsp; Here, we are obligated to understand the limitations of humanity’s freedom.= In Hartshorne’s work there i= s a certain lack of clarity as to where a person’s freedom ends and God’s divine will begins. It can be derived from the text that the ‘concept’ of divine will = is synonymous with that of natural will, and the limitations; as in the exampl= e of the human body defying gravity with no assistance. Tillich in Systematic Theology Vol= ume Two suggests his argument on the limitation of free will, “Man is fre= e, in so far as he has language…Man is free, in so far as he is able to = ask questions about the world he encounters, including himself, and to penetrate into deeper and increasingly deeper levels of reality. Man is free, in so far as he can r= eceive unconditional moral and logical imperative which indicate that he can trans= cend the conditions which determine every finite being. Man is free, in so far as he has t= he power of deliberating and deciding, thus cutting through the mechanisms of stimulus and response.” [6] In Tillich we see that individuals= find their horizon of free will in their own natural proclivity towards the ques= tion and answer scheme. It would a= lmost seem that divine will or nature plays the part in producing something in humanity that strives for answers to the most difficult and often frustrati= ng questions.

&= nbsp; Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge offer up a theory of religion that incorporates the human necessity of the question and answer phenomenon. They argue that religion as a sociological activity acts on the principle of costs and benefits, in the s= ame way as any other economic activity. Their argument continues in that humans accept compensators as rewar= ds for certain things that they cannot obtain in a natural or realistic way. For example, humans have a desire = to be immortal; they will then take a belief of a life after death of some sort a= nd invest in this as a compensator. The compensator does not become an actual reward before crossing into some other metaphysical context. Answers to questions act in the same manner that any other compensat= or does, specifically as, “untestable and extremely general explanations= .” = [7]

&= nbsp; I argue that there is shifting and yet stable horizon of free will at the poi= nt in which God or any sort of metaphysical explanation is brought into thought. At the point we beco= me beings of social habit, we engage in the journey to the questions that need answering, we become subject to our own desire to rid ourselves of excess freedoms. We have the ability= to forgo freedom for the sake of compensators and we encourage others to do th= is as well. As Tillich explains,= this is “…the quality of human freedom, namely, the power of surrendering his freedom.” [8]

&= nbsp; The definition and question of God, or the explanation of His-Her presence and = activity within the world of humans, is a question that requires the general sort of compensation that Stark and Bainbridge discuss. We actively search for a localized understanding of God and produce a metaphysic based on this definition. Even the choice to not define, nam= ely atheism, becomes still an active choice to define God in some form and cont= ext; simply as non-existent. Jean-Luc Marion describes this in his essay “= The Marches of Metaphysics” by arguing, “If, then, ‘God’ covers a particular semantic terrain, the refutation will not eliminate God absolutely but only the meaning of God that its initial ‘God’ offers to be disputed.”[9] The non-existence or existence of God becomes the focus of our inquiry when= we discuss the religious and non-religious.&n= bsp; There cannot be a definition of God outside the framework of the question and answer scheme, meaning there cannot be a definition of God that escapes the fate of requiring an investment of individual freedom.

&= nbsp; Freedom given up for the definition is taken a step further when a general descript= ion of God is invested into by many and a religious organization forms. The organization itself requires i= ts member to invest even more free will to the general idea and notion of God. It seems to be a n= atural occurrence in human history to see this sort of activity, humans tend to wa= nt to exchange costs and benefits with other humans as well as compensators wi= th the Gods. There is a tendency= of groups to merge under a single definition of God in order to gain better grounds for negotiating with the generally determined definition of God. [10]

&= nbsp; Humanity’s freedom is a specific phenomenon with its own particular paradigms and paradoxical nature. People individually choose what they believe and receive their personal belief as = an answer to a question they cannot answer.&n= bsp; Anything outside of the self, the inclusion of ‘the other̵= 7;, requires the person to make a choice, the choice of perception. Perception, or the act of classify= ing, moralizing, and factualizing the sensation of ‘the other’ is a purely subjective activity. W= hen ‘the other’ enters into our field of perception we must make a radical decision, we are forced to determine what ‘the other’ is and what ‘the other’ constitutes of ourselves. This does not change when applied = to God or the divine. We must confro= nt the divine at all times and on all levels; we as humans are obligated to subjectively define God. We t= hen must factualize the divine and subjectively grant existence or non-existence. This is a choi= ce we must make and at the same time, paradoxically, a choice that limits our freedom.