The Active Future as Divine :: Philosophy Religion Papers

The Active Future as Divine Normally, activity is regarded as discernible, but according to relativity theory whatever is discernible lies in the past of the discernible. Only the present subjective immediacy is properly active. Subjectivity is properly understood as present becoming; objectivity as past being (so Whitehead). I propose that we extend the domain of subjective immediacy to include the future as well as the present. This future universal activity is pluralized in the present in terms of the many actualities coming into being. Subjectivity is the individualization of becoming, and so can apply to the future as a whole as well as to particular present subjects. The future as divine grows out of Whitehead's revisions of traditional notions of omnipotence and omniscience. But he separates creativity (best understood in terms of Hindu and Buddhist thought) from the God of Western theism. This separation can be overcome if God is future creativity individualized in its own realm, which is the source of the creativity within each of us. Ordinarily we think of the future as a blank background on which we imaginatively project our plans, hopes and fears. Or we may consider it as a receptacle, passively registering the conditions the present and past lays upon it. Once all these conditions are completed, it comes into being-only then it is no longer future but present. As long as it is still future and still indeterminate, we do not see how it could be active. How could the future actively receive and respond to its world? Besides the ordinary passive future we are all familiar with, I wish to propose a notion of the future which can serve as the appropriate mode of divine activity. First, I need to show how an active future is possible. Then I must try to show that God can be appropriately conceived as the activity of the future. In this account I shall be relying heavily on the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, primarily as found in his main work, Process and Reality (1929). In part I shall be presenting his ideas, while in part I shall be building on them in ways he did not foresee. The future is usually considered to be exclusively passive because it lacks any discernible activity. Most deem whatever discernible activity there is to be present, relegating to the past whatever is no longer active. This makes good sense for those who assume that world is constituted out of enduring substances, but it makes less sense if the world is conceived in terms of events.