from "Process and Reality": Process Versus Fact

Jack Whelan at his After the Future blog has been talking about the future and a forward looking Christianity as opposed to the all prevalent, yes dominant, "rear-view mirror" kinds of Christianity. See his post on Sacramental Semiotics here.  So in the last few days I've directed my reading along this line of thought.  Both of us are influenced by the thought of Teilhard du Chardin.  And me by some of his current explicators like Ilia Delio and John Haught.  But last night I picked up my copy of Alfred North Whitehead's "Process and Reality".   I believe he adds to this view.

In chapter 1, he divides philosophy into two contrasting approaches.

One side makes process ultimate; the other side makes fact ultimate.*

Facts are static.  Life is motion, flux, process; however.  Reminds me of something I've heard from Phyllis Tickle in You Tube videos.  She says today's Emergents believe the Bible is actual not factual.  I think I know what she is getting at.

Later, in Chapter 10, entitled "Process", he recounts that he had to search for a poetical and memorable phrase to summarize these contrasting approaches.  He found it in that beautiful traditional hymn that I have sung many times.

                                                  Abide with me:                                                                                                 Fast falls the eventide.                                                              

Here the first line expresses the permanences 'abide,' 'me' and the 'Being' addressed; and the second line sets these permanences amid the inescapable flux. Here at length we find the complete problem of metaphysics. Those philosophers who start with the first line have given us the metaphysics of 'substance'; and those who start with the second line have developed the metaphysics of 'flux'. **

To me, part of the meaning of the word 'process' implies that something is happening for a purpose and towards an end.  In this postmodern era, we are seeing even in science a move away from concentrating on the 'substance' side of things and more to the relational.  This is where we need to go.

*p. 7,  P&R The Free Press, NY, NY ISBN 0-02-934570-7

** p 209.