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Monopolar Theism and the Ontological Argument

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2011

H. D. McDonald
Affiliation:
London Bible College, London, England

Extract

Monopolar and dipolar are terms brought but comparatively recently into vogue in theological discussions by Charles Hartshorne, the American philosopher. The distinction intended by the two concepts has been made the basis for contrasting views of theism consequent upon man's rational reflection upon the divine Object in whom he finds satisfaction for his more fundamental emotional and practical needs and his primary worship of Him. According to certain modern philosophers of religion man has rightly interpreted the idea of God suggested by this satisfaction and this worship in theistic terms. The issue, however, concerns the correct statement of this implied theism. According to Hartshorne, historical theism has been altogether conditioned by Greek philosophy, and has become, as a result, definable exclusively according to its concepts. Classical theism, as it is called, has therefore its origin in the notions of Plato and Aristotle rather than in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures. “Not the Gospels and the Old Testament,” declares Hartshorne, “but Greek philosophy was the decisive source for the Classical idea of divine perfection.”

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1965

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References

1 Charles Hartshorne and William L. Reese (ed.), Philosophers Speak of God: Readings in Philosophical Theology and Analyses of Theistic Ideas (1953); cf. also, Schubert M. Ogden, “Bultmann's Demythologizing and Hartshorne's Dipolar Theism,” Process and Divinity, ed. William L. Reese and Eugene Freeman (1964), 493–514.

2 Cf. C. A. Campbell, On Selfhood and Godhood (1957), ch. xii.

3 Ch. Hartshorne, The Logic of Perfection and Other Essays in Neoclassical Metaphysics (1962), 34; cf. Nicholas Berdyaev, “The static conception of God as actus purus having no potentiality and completely self-sufficient is a philosophical, Aristotelian, and not a Biblical conception.” The Destiny of Man (1937), 37.

4 Contra Acad., iii, c. 19, 42.

5 Cf. Phaedo, 75.

6 Meta., v, i.

7 Ibid., xii, 7.

8 Phys., viii, 6.

9 Cf. E. L. Mascall, Existence and Analogy (1949), 11–15.

10 Cf. The Logic of Perfection, 8f.

11 “Classical theism has the great merit that … it can be correct, in large part, or something, and something really in God.” Philosophers Speak of God, 76f.

12 “An underlying reason for conceiving deity in monopolar terms was the belief that changelessness is implied in the very conception of a ‘necessary’ being.” ibid., 71.

13 Cf. The Logic of Perfection, 131; cf. also, Philosophers Speak of God, 7.

14 Cf. Schubert Ogden, M., “Theology and Philosophy: A New Phase of the Discussion,” Journal of Religion 44 (1964), 4CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Cf. Hartshorne's position with the teaching of Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) on the “coincidence of opposites.” See his De docta ignorantia; H. Bett, Nicholas of Cusa (1932), Part III, ch. ii.

16 Cf. Philosophers Speak of God, 4.

17 Cf. The Logic of Perfection, 109.

18 Ibid., 149; cf. 37.

19 Philosophers Speak of God, 4.

20 The Logic of Perfection, 44.

21 Philosophers Speak of God, 208.

22 Ibid., 176.

23 See F. von Hügel, Essays and Addresses on the Philosophy of Religion (1926), 197f.

24 Cf. Philosophers Speak of God, 152ff.

25 Philosophers Speak of God, 15; cf. 20.

26 Ibid., 285f.

27 Berdyaev, op cit., 41.

28 Cf. The Logic of Perfection, 44; cf. also Hartshorne, Ch., “Whitehead and Berdyaev: Is There Tragedy in God?Journal of Religion 37 (1957), 7184CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 Philosophers Speak of God, 117.

30 Cf. Philosophers Speak of God, 5, 434; cf. also, Hartshorne, Charles, “The Structure of Givenness,” The Philosophical Forum 18 (1960–61), 34Google Scholar: “God as the sole fully conscious being will always and without qualification contain each item of reality which he experiences or knows as but a constituent of his total reality.”

31 The Logic of Perfection, 126.

32 Ibid., 40.

33 Ibid., 313.

34 Cf. The Logic of Perfection, 270.

35 Ibid., 268.

36 Ibid., 214.

37 The Logic of Perfection, 42.

38 Ibid.; cf. Ch. Hartshorne, art. “Panentheism,” Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. V. Ferm (1945).

39 Cf. Philosophers Speak of God, 32.

40 See above, n. 28.

41 Philosophers Speak of God, 243.

42 Ibid., 257.

43 Ibid., 273.

44 Ch. Hartshorne, Reality as Social Process: Studies in Metaphysics and Religion (1953).

45 Cf. The Logic of Perfection, ch. vii; Ch. Hartshorne, Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1941), ch. ii; see his contribution to the Philosophical Essays in Memory of Edmund Husserl (1940); On Some Criticisms of Whitehead's Philosophy,” The Philosophical Review 44 (1935), 323CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Is Whitehead's God the God of Religion?Ethics 53 (1942–43), 219Google Scholar; cf. also, A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality (1929), and The Concept of Nature (1920); Ewing P. Shahan, Whitehead's Theory of Experience (1950); Hooper, S. E., “Whitehead's Philosophy: Actual Entities,” Philosophy 16 (1941), 285CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Dorothy M. Emmet, Whitehead's Philosophy of Organism (1932).

46 Cf. Journal of Religion 44 (1964), 1f.

47 Neothomists would, of course, cheerfully blow Kant out of existence with the ontological proof which he is supposed to explode. His presence obscures their backward gaze to Aquinas and through him to Aristotle. For them it is enough that the Christian saint and the pagan sage have no place for the Argument. But while the neothomists say to us with regard to the Proof: You can't have it; the Barthians respond: We don't want it — as a proof.

48 Cf. Alston, William P., “The Ontological Argument Revisited,” The Philosophical Review 69 (1960), 453CrossRefGoogle Scholar; G. E. Moore, “Is Existence a Predicate?” in Logic and Language (Second Ser.), ed. A. Flew (1953), [repr. fr. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. vol. 15 (1936)]; but see Nakhnikian, G. and Salmon, W., “‘Exists’ as a Predicate,” The Philosophical Review 66 (1957), 541CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaffer, Jerome, “Existence, Predication and Ontological Argument,” Mind 61 (1962), 307fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research (1953), 180.

50 “Can God's Existence be Disproved?” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. A. Flew and A. MacIntyre (1955), 55.

51 Cf. On Selfhood and Godhood, 378.

52 The Logic of Perfection, 24.

53 Cf. The Philosophical Review 69 (1960), 452: “The ontological argument has often been criticised on the grounds that it mistakenly supposes ‘exists’ to be a predicate. I am going to argue (1) that the way in which this criticism is usually presented is faulty, (2) that these faults result from overlooking certain basic features of the concept of existence, and (3) that when these features are fully taken into account, new and sounder reasons can be given for denying that ‘exists’ is a predicate and for rejecting the ontological argument.”

54 Anselm's Ontological Arguments,” The Philosophical Review 69 (1960), 41fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

55 Ibid, 55.

56 A history of the Ontological Argument, taking up the account from D. Henrick's Der Ontologische Gottesbeweis, who gives details of the attitudes towards it throughout the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, would help clear away a good deal of the confusion which surrounds its denial and defence in present day thinking.

57 Cf. The Logic of Perfection, 25f. Philosophers Speak of God, 96.

58 Cf. The Logic of Perfection, 30.

59 Op. cit., 44.

60 Op. cit., 47

61 Ibid., 54.

62 Cf. The Logic of Perfection, 33.

63 J. N. Findlay, loc. cit.

64 The Logic of Perfection, 50.

65 Cf. ibid., 73f., 83.

66 Ibid., 88.

67 Cf. J. B. Cobb, Living Options in Protestant Theology (1962), 50f.

68 Cf. Philosophers Speak of God, 97f., 103.

69 Ibid., 105.

71 The Logic of Perfection, 88f.

72 Journal of Religion 44 (1964), 6.

73 Beyond Humanism: Essays in the New Philosophy of Nature (1937), 8.

74 Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (1941), 274f.; cf. also, 79–83.

75 Malcolm, N., “Ontological Arguments,” The Philosophical Review 69 (1960), 61fCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76 Cf. Faith and the Philosophers, ed. John Hick (1964), 27; cf. 35.

77 Karl Barth, Anselm: Fides Quaerens Intellectum (E.T. 1960), 170.

78 Ibid., 39.

79 Faith and the Philosophers, 32.

80 Cf. E. Sillem, Ways of Thinking about God (1961), 107.

81 Cf. Faith and Reason: Anselm and Aquinas,” Journal of Theological Studies 14 (1963), 68Google Scholar.

82 Ibid., 73.

83 Ibid., 90.