There is hardly a word in the religious language, both theological and popular, which is subject to more misunderstandings, distortions and questionable definitions than the word “faith.” It belongs to those terms which need healing before they can be used for the healing of men. Today the term “faith” is more productive of disease than of health. It confuses, misleads, creates alternately skepticism and fanaticism, intellectual resistance and emotional surrender, rejection of genuine religion and subjection to substitutes. Indeed, one is tempted to suggest that the word “faith” should be dropped completely; but desirable as that may be it is hardly possible. A powerful tradition protects it. And there is as yet no substitute expressing the reality to which the term “faith” points. So, for the time being, the only way of dealing with the problem is to try to reinterpret the word and remove the confusing and distorting connotations, some of which are the heritage of centuries. It is the hope of the writer that he will succeed at least in this purpose even if he does not succeed in his more far-reaching aim to convince some readers of the hidden power of faith within themselves and of the infinite significance of that to which faith is related.

Cambridge, September 1956

1. Theology and Religious Philosophy

In the empirical sciences one's own standpoint is something that must be overcome. Reality is the criterion by which what is right is measured, and reality is one and the same. As between two contradictory standpoints, only one can be right, or both can be wrong. The progress of scientific experience must decide between them. It has decided that the earth is a body in space and not a flat, floating plate, and that the five Books of Moses stem from various sources and not from Moses himself. Standpoints opposed to this are wrong. Scientific progress has not yet decided who is the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Among the various hypotheses only one, or none, is correct.

The situation is different in the systematic cultural sciences; here the standpoint of the systematic thinker belongs to the heart of the matter itself. It is a moment in the history of the develop-

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ment of culture; it is a concrete historical realization of an idea of culture; it not only perceives but also creates culture. Here the alternative "right or wrong" loses its validity, for there is no limit to the number of attitudes which the spirit can adopt toward reality. There is a Gothic and a baroque style in aesthetics; a Catholic and a modern Protestant dogmatic theology; a romantic and a puritanical code of ethics; but in none of these pairs of alternatives is it possible simply to call one right and the other wrong. Therefore it is also impossible to form useful universal concepts of cultural ideas. The true nature of religion or art cannot be learned through abstract reasoning. Abstraction destroys what is essential, the concrete forms, and necessarily neglects any future concretizations. Every universal concept in cultural science is either useless or a normative concept in disguise; it is either an alleged description of something that does not exist or an expression of a standpoint; it is a worthless shell or it is a creative act. A standpoint is expressed by an individual; but if it is more than individual arbitrariness, if it is a creative act, it is also, to a greater or lesser degree, a creative act of the circle in which the individual moves. This circle, with its peculiar spiritual quality, has no existence apart from the cultural groups that surround it and the creative acts of the past on which it rests. Thus, in the same way even the most individual standpoint is firmly embedded in the ground of the objective spirit, the mother soil from which every cultural creation springs. From this soil the concrete standpoint derives the universal forms of spirit. And viewed from there, it finds its own concrete limitation through the ever narrower circles and historical components of concrete spiritual quality, until, by its own creative self-expression it develops the new individual and unique synthesis of universal form and concrete content. There are three forms of nonempirical cultural science which correspond

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to this: philosophy of culture, which is concerned with the universal forms, the a priori of all culture; the philosaphy of the history of cultural values, which, through the abundance of concretizations, constitutes the transition from the universal forms to one's own individual standpoint and by so doing justifies the latter; and finally, the normative science of culture, which provides the concrete standpoint with a systematic expression.

Thus the following distinctions must be made: between the philosophy of art, i.e., a phenomenology of art, and a presentation of art within a philosophy of value concerned with the essence or value of "art" on the one hand, and "aesthetics," i.e., a systematic and normative presentation of what must be considered as beautiful, on the other hand. Or between moral philosophy-which asks "What is morality? "-and normative ethics, which asks "What is moral?" The same distinction must be made between philosophy of religion on the one hand and theology on the other. Theology is thus the concrete and normative science of religion. This is the sense in which the concept is used here, and in my opinion it is the only sense in which it is entitled to be used in any scholarly context. By this means two allegations are refuted. First, theology is not the science of one particular object, which we call God, among others; the Critique of Reason put an end to this kind of science. It also brought theology down from heaven to earth. Theology is a part of science of religion, namely the systematic and normative part. Second, theology is not a scientific presentation of a special complex of revelation. This interpretation presupposes a concept of a supernaturally authoritative revelation; but this concept has been overcome by the wave of religious-historical insights and the logical and religious criticism of the conception of supernaturalism.

It is therefore the task of theology, working from a concrete

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standpoint, to draw up a normative system of religion based on the categories of philosophy of religion, with the individual standpoint being related to the standpoint of the respective confession, the universal history of religion, and the cultural-historical standpoint in general. This is no hidden rationalism, for it recognizes the concrete religious standpoint. Nor is it hidden supernaturalism, such as may still be found even in our historical-critical school of thought, for it is the breaking down of all the authoritarian limitations upon the individual standpoint by means of a philosophy of history. It is oriented to Nietzsche's notion of the "creative" on the basis of Hegel's concept of "objective-historical spirit."

One final word on the relation between a philosophy of culture and a normative systematization of culture: they belong together and each exercises an influence over the other. Not only is theology oriented to philosophy of religion, but the reverse is also true. As indicated at the outset, any universal philosophical concept is empty unless it is at the same time understood to be a normative concept with a concrete basis. Accordingly, this does not constitute the difference between philosophy and the science of norms, but the fact that each works in a different direction. Philosophy provides universal, a priori categorical thought forms on the widest empirical basis and in systematic relationship with other values and essential concepts. The normative sciences provide each cultural discipline with its content, with what is peculiar to it, with what is to be regarded as valid within the specific system.

Out of the power of a concrete, creative realization the highest universal concept gains its validity, full of content and yet comprehensive in form; and out of a highest universal concept the normative system acquires its objective scientific significance. In

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every useful universal concept there is a normative concept; and in every creative "norm" concept there is a universal concept. This is the dialectic of the systematic science of culture.

2. Culture and Religion

Traditionally, systematic theology has included theological ethics as well as dogmatics. Modern theology usually divides the system into apologetics, dogmatics, and ethics. What is this peculiar kind of knowledge which assumes a place beside the general philosophical subject of ethics under the name of theological ethics? To this one can give various answers. One can say that philosophical ethics is concerned with the nature of morality and not with its norms; in which case the two differ from each other as do moral philosophy and normative ethics. But why should normative ethics be theological ethics? Philosophy, or better the science of culture, cannot refrain from producing a system of normative ethics of its own. Insofar as both now claim to be valid, we would then have admitted in principle the existence of the old double truth in the sphere of ethics. But one can also say: the moral life likewise tends to become concrete, and in ethics, too, there must be a standpoint that is not only the standpoint of an individual but also stems from a concrete ethical community in historical contexts. The church is such a community.

This answer is correct wherever the church is the dominating cultural community or wherever culture is under the leadership of the church and not only ethics but also science, art, and social life are controlled, censored, kept within limits, and systematized by the church. In Protestant areas, however, the church has long ago abandoned any claim to do this. It recognizes an overlapping cultural community outside the church, where the individual view

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point is rooted in the contemporary viewpoint of the cultural community in general. There is no more room for a system of ethics, aesthetics, science, or sociology based on theological principles than there would be for a German or Aryan or bourgeois system of the same kind, although these concretions naturally play an important part in the actual shaping of the individual standpoint. Once a secular culture has been recognized in principle by the church, there is no longer any question of a theological system of ethics-nor of a theological system of logic, aesthetics, and sociology.

My assertion now is the following: What was essentially intended in the theological system of ethics can only be realized by means of a theology of culture applying not only to ethics but to all the functions of culture. Not a theological system of ethics, but a theology of culture. This calls for a few remarks on the relation of culture to religion. Religion has the peculiarity of not being attributable to any particular psychic function. None of the theories advanced either by Hegel, who assigned religion to the theoretical sphere of the mind, or by Kant, who assigned it to the practical sphere, or by Schleiermacher, who assigned it to the realm of feeling, has survived. The last theory is the one nearest to the truth, inasmuch as it signifies the indifference of the genuinely religious realm toward its cultural expressions. But feeling accompanies every cultural experience without necessarily justifying its being described as religious. However, if a definite feeling is meant, then with this certainty a theoretical or practical element is already given. Religion is not a feeling; it is an attitude of the spirit in which practical, theoretical, and emotional elements are united to form a complex whole.

In my opinion, the following is the way of systematizing which most nearly approaches the truth. If we now divide all cultural

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functions into those through which the spirit absorbs the object into itself-i.e., intellectual and aesthetic functions, grouped together as theoretical or intuitive-and those through which the spirit tries to penetrate into the object and mold it after itselfi.e., the individual and the socioethical functions (including law and society), which is the practical group, we find that religion can become operative only in relation to a theoretical or practical attitude. The religious potency, i.e., a certain quality of consciousness, is not to be confused with the religious act, i.e., an independent theoretical or practical act containing that quality.

The connection between religious principle and cultural function now enables a specifically religious-cultural sphere to emerge: a religious perception-myth or dogma; a sphere of religious aesthetics-the cultus; a religious molding of the person-sanctification; a religious form of society-the church, with its special canon law and communal ethic. In forms like these, religion is actualized; the religious principle only exists in connection with cultural functions outside the sphere of religion. The religious function does not form a principle in the life of the spirit beside others; the absolute character of all religious consciousness would break down barriers of that kind. But the religious principle is actualized in all spheres of spiritual or cultural life. This remark, however, seems to have set new boundaries. In every sphere of cultural life there is now a special circle, a special sphere of influence of "the religious." How are these spheres to be defined? Here indeed is the field of the great cultural conflicts between church and state, between the religious community and society, between art and cultic form, between science and dogma-conflicts which occupied the first centuries of the modern era and which have not yet entirely ceased. No conflict is possible as long as the cultural functions are held by a heteronomy dominated by religion; and it

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is overcome as soon as the cultural functions have won complete autonomy. But what happens then to religion? The autonomy of the cultural life is thr~atened, and even abolished, as long as science stands in any way side by side with dogma; or society side by side with a "community"; or the state side by side with a churchall of them claiming definite spheres for themselves alone. For through this a double truth, a double morality, and a double justice come into being, and one out of each pair has its origin not in the legitimacy of the cultural function concerned but in an alien kind of legitimacy dictated by religion. This double existence must be abolished at all costs; it is intolerable as soon as it enters consciousness, for it destroys consciousness.

The solution can only be found through the concept of religion. Without offering proof, for that would mean writing a miniature philosophy of religion, I shall present the concept of religion I presuppose here. Religion is directedness toward the Unconditional. Through existing realities, through values, through personal life, the meaning of uncoriditional reality becomes evident; before which every particular thing and the totality of all particularsbefore which every value and the system of values-before which personality and community are shattered in their own selfsufficient being and value. This is not a new reality, alongside or above other things: that would only be a thing of a higher order which would again fall under the No. On the contrary, it is precisely through things that that reality is thrust upon us which is at one and the same time the No and the Yes to every thing. It is not a being, nor is it the substance or totality of beings; it is-to use a mystical formula-that which is above all beings which at the same time is the absolute Nothing and the absolute Something. But even the predicate "is" already disguises the facts of the case, since we are here dealing not with a reality of existence, but with a

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reality of meaning, and that indeed is the ultimate and deepest meaning-reality which shakes the foundation of all things and builds them up anew.

At this point it now becomes clear without further reference that one cannot speak of special religious spheres of culture in the true sense of the term. If it is the nature of fundamental religious experience to negate the entire cognitive sphere and affirm it through negation, then there is no longer any place for a special religious cognition, a special religious object, or special methods of religious epistemology. The conflict between dogma and science is overcome. Science is in full possession of its autonomy, and there is no possibility of a rule of heteronomy exercised by religion; but in exchange for this, science as a whole is subordinated to the "theonomy" of a fundamental religious experience which is paradoxical. The same holds good of ethics. It is impossible, for a special code of personal or communal ethics in relation to the religious object to exist side by side with an individual or social code of ethics. Ethics, too, is purely autonomous, entirely free of all religious heteronomy and yet "theonomous" as a whole in the sense of the fundamental religious experience. The possibilities of conflict are radically eliminated. By that the relation of religion to culture is clarified in principle. The specifically religious spheres of culture have in principle ceased to exist. The question of what importance may still be attached to them can only be decided after the question of the meaning of a theology of culture has been answered.

3. Theology of Culture

Various references have been made in the last few pages to an autonomy and theonomy of cultural values. We have to follow

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these up still further: that is, I would like to propose the hypothesis that the autonomy of cultural functions is grounded in their form, in the laws governing their application, whereas theonomy is grounded in their substance or import, that is, in the reality which by these laws receives its expression or accomplishment. The following law can now be formulated: The more the form, the greater the autonomy; the more the substance or import, the greater the theonomy. But one cannot exist without the other; a form that forms nothing is just as incomprehensible as substance without form. To attempt to grasp import disengaged from form would constitute a relapse into the worst kind of heteronomy; a new form would immediately come into being, now opposing the autonomous form and limiting it in its autonomy. The relation of import to form must be taken as resembling a line, one pole of which represents pure form and the other pole pure import. Along the line itself, however, the two are always in unity. The revelation of a predominant import consists in the fact that the form becomes more and more inadequate, that the reality, in its overflowing abundance, shatters the form meant to contain it; and yet this overflowing and shattering is itself still form.

The task of a theology of culture is to follow up this process in all the spheres and creations of culture and to give it expression. Not from the standpoint of form-that would be the task of the branch of cultural science concerned-but taking the import or substance as its starting point, as theology of culture and not as cultural systematization. The concrete religious experiences embedded in all great cultural phenomena must be brought into relief and a mode of expression found for them. It follows from this that in addition to theology as a normative science of religion, a theological method must be found to stand beside it in the same way that a psychological and a sociological method, etc., exist along-

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side systematic psychology. These methods are universal; they are suited to any object; and yet they have a native soil, the particular branch of knowledge in which they originated. This is equally true of the theological method, which is a universal application of theological questioning to all cultural values. We have assigned to theology the task of finding a systematic form of expression for a concrete religious standpoint, on the basis of the universal concepts of philosophy of religion and by means of the classifications of philosophy of history. The task of theology of culture corresponds to this. It produces a general religious analysis of all cultural creations; it provides a historicalphilosophical and typological classification of the great cultural creations according to the religious substance realized in them; and it produces from its own concrete religious standpoint the ideal outline of a culture penetrated by religion. It thus has a threefold task, corresponding to the threefold character of the cultural-systematic sciences in general and the systematic science of religion in particular:

1. General religious analysis of culture

2. Religious typology and philosophy of cultural history

3. Concrete religious systematization of culture

Attention must be paid to two things in regard to the culturaltheological analysis. The first is the relation between form and substance. Substance or import is something different from content. By content we mean something objective in its simple existence, which by form is raised up to the intellectual-cultural sphere. By substance or import, however, we understand the meaning, the spiritual substantiality, which alone gives form its significance. We can therefore say: Substance or import is grasped by means of a form and given expression in a content. Content is accidental, substance essential, and form is the mediating element. The form

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must be appropriate to the content; so there is no oppos1uon between the cultivation of form and the cultivation of content; it is rather that these two represent one extreme, and the cultivation of substance represents the other. The shattering of form through substance is identical with the loss of significance of content. Form loses its necessary relation to content because the content vanishes in the face of the preponderance of the substance. Through this, form acquires a quality of detachment, as of something floating freely in space; it is directly related to substance; it loses its natural and necessary relation to content; and it becomes form in a paradoxical sense by allowing its natural quality to be shattered by the substance. This is the first point to which attention must be paid; for it is precisely in the substance that the religious reality appears with its Yes and No to all things. And this is the second point: the relation between the Yes and the No, the relation and the force in which both find expression. There are innumerable possibilities here, because the relations and the reciprocal interactions are infinitely rich in possibilities.

But there is also a certain limitation: and this leads us to the second task assigned to theology of culture, the typological and historical-philosophical task. A limitation is given by the aforementioned image of the line with the poles of form and substance (or import) respectively. This image leads us to three decisive points representing the three fundamental types: the two poles and the central point where form and substance are in equilibrium. From this may be derived the following fundamental classifications for typology: the typically profane or secular and formal cultural creation; the typically religious-cultural creation in which the substance or import is predominant; and the typically wellbalanced, harmonious, or classical cultural creation. This universal typology now leaves room for intermediate stages and transitions and is extraordinarily varied by reason of the different con-

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crete forms of religion which it covers. If this doctrine of types is applied to the present and systematically related to the past, a historical-philosophical classification develops which then leads us directly to the third and, properly speaking, systematic task of theology of culture.

How far can the theologian of culture be at the same time a religious-cultural system-builder? The question has to be answered first from its negative side. It is impossible as far as the form of the cultural functions is concerned; that would be a forbidden infringement and would amount to cultural heteronomy. It is possible only from the side of substance, but substance only attains cultural existence in forms; to this extent it must be said that the theologian of culture is not directly creative with regard to culture. The theologian of culture as such is not productive in the sphere of science, morals, jurisprudence, or art. But he adopts a critical, negative, and affirmative attitude toward autonomous productions on the basis of his concrete theological standpoint; he draws up with the material at hand a religious system of culture by separating this material and unifying it again in accordance with his theological principle. He can also go beyond the material at hand, but only in making demands and not in fulfillment; he can reproach the existing culture because he finds nothing in its creative acts which he can acknowledge as an expression of the living substance in himself; he can indicate in a very general way the direction in which he visualizes the realization of a truly religious system of culture, but he cannot produce the system himself. If he attempts to do so, he ceases to be a theologian of culture and becomes in one or more ways a creator of culture; but in so doing he steps over to the full and completely autonomous criticism of cultural forms, which often leads him with compelling force to goals quite different from those he wished to attain. Herein lies the limitation of the task of systematization assigned to the theologian

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of culture: but his universal significance also originates here. Far removed from every restriction to a special sphere, he can give expression from the standpoint of substance to the all-embracing unity of the cultural functions and demonstrate the relations that lead from one phenomenon of culture to another, through the substantial unity of the substance finding expression in them; he can thereby help, from the viewpoint of substance, to bring about the unity of culture in the same way that the philosopher helps from the viewpoint of pure forms and categories.

Cultural-theological tasks have often been posed and solved by theological, philosophical, literary, and political analysts of culture ( e.g., Simmel); but the task as such has not been understood or its systematic meaning recognized. It has not been realized that in this context it is a matter of a cultural synthesis of the greatest importance, a synthesis that not only embraces the various cultural functions but also overcomes the culture-destroying opposition of religion and culture by a design for a religious system of culture in which the opposition of science and dogma is replaced by a science religious in itself; the distinction between art and forms of cultus is replaced by an art religious in itself; and the dualism of state and church is replaced by a type of state religious in itself, etc. The task of theology of culture is only understood if it is seen within so wide a scope. Some examples should serve to explain and lead further.

4. Cultural-Theological Analyses

In what follows I want to limit myself mainly to the first, or analytical, part of cultural-theological work, with occasional references to the second, or typological part, since I do not wish to introduce at this point a concrete theological principle

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without offering proof; that, however, would be necessary for the completion of the historical-philosophical and systematic task of theology of culture. One or two indications with regard to systematization, however, will make some appearance m the course of the analysis.

I begin with a cultural-theological consideration of art-to be precise, with the Expressionist school of art in painting, because it seems to me to offer a particularly impressive example of the above-mentioned relation between form and substance; and because these definitions were worked out partly under its influence.

To start with, it is clear that in Expressionism content has to a very great extent lost its significance, namely content in the sense of the external factuality of objects and events. Nature has been robbed of her external appearance; her uttermost depth is visible. But, according to Schelling, horror dwells in the depths of every living creature; and this horror seizes us from the work of the Expressionist painters, who aim at more than mere destruction of the form in favor of the fullest, most vital and flourishing life within, as Simmel thinks. In their work a form-shattering religious import is struggling to find form, a paradox that most people find incomprehensible and annoying; and this horror seems to me to be deepened by a feeling of guilt, not in the properly ethical sense, but rather in the cosmic sense of the guilt of sheer existence. Redemption, however, is the transition of one individual existence into the other, the wiping out of individual distinction, the mysticism of love achieving union with all living things. This art therefore expresses the profoundest No and Yes; but the No, the form-destroying element, seems to me still to be predominant, although this is not what the artists, with their passionate will toward a new and absolute Yes, intend. Many of the remarks made by these artists confirm the exist

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ence of a strong religious passion struggling for expression. It is no accident that in the lively debates carried on about these pictures, the enthusiastic representatives of Expressionism make constant references to philosophy and religion and even to the Bible itself. The religious meaning of this art is to a large extent consciously affirmed by its representatives.

And now for an example taken from philosophy. The autonomous forms of knowledge achieve perfect clarity in the NeoKantian school. Here we have a truly scientific-and unreligious -philosophy. Form rules absolutely. There are contemporary attempts to go beyond this, but that is harder in this field than in any other; during the idealistic period the experience of reality had engulfed the form too brutally. Not only that: · Neo-Kantianism had forged for itself a new form, which in the name of intuition opposed the autonomous forms of knowledge. This was not a struggle between the different fields of knowledge; it was the old struggle between a particular religious mode of cognition and a profane or secular one. It was a piece of heteronomy which science was compelled to counteract, and did counteract, most vigorously. If now a new movement toward intuition succeeds in gaining influence when the fight against the materialistic shadow of idealism has been completely won, then a mistrust on the part of science is understandable, but not necessary. For a new intuitive method can never attempt to compete with the autonomous methods of science; it can only find an opening where the substance itself shatters the form of these methods and where the way into the realm of the metaphysical opens up. Metaphysics is nothing but the paradoxical attempt to fit into forms the experience of the Unconditional which is above and beyond all form; and if at this point we look back to Hegel, there still being no outstanding metaphysics at present, we find one of the most profound accounts

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of the unity of negation and affirmation, though it must be admitted that it has a strong optimistic tendency to raise affirmation above everything else. It does not include the experience of horror which is a fundamental part of Schelling's and Schopenhauer's work and should not be lacking in any modern metaphysics.

We come now to the sphere of practical values: first, to individual ethics. Nietzsche could serve as a splendid and characteristic example for a theology of culture in this sphere. His apparently totally antireligious orientation makes it particularly interesting to analyze, from the theological point of view, his doctrine of the shaping of the human personality. It should now be recognized that the; opposition between the ethics of virtue and the ethics of grace is contained in his message and that, since Jesus' fight against the Pharisees and Luther's fight against Rome, there is hardly a parallel case where the personal forms of ethics are shattered by the substance with such violence.

"What is the greatest experience you can have? The hour in which you say: What does my virtue matter? It has not yet made me rage!" But the virtue that makes men rage is beyond virtue and sin. The theological sentence of destruction hangs mightily over each individual: "Thou shalt wish to consume thyself in thine own flame. How wouldst thou be new again if thou wert not first burned to ashes?" But almost at the same moment the affirmation arises, with unparalleled fervor and passion, whether as a sermon by the Ubermensch or as a hymn to the marriage ring of rings, the ring of eternal return. This experience of reality which Nietzsche gained and contrasted with the personal goes so far beyond the individual-ethical form that he could be called the antimoralist kat' exoken (par excellence), just as Luther has to be stigmatized as the great libertine by all those whose personal thinking takes place within the categories of virtue and reward.

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From the standpoint of form, it is simply paradoxical how an overwhelming metaphysical substance deprives the ethical contents (norms) of significance, shatters the form adapted to them, and then still, of its own volition, presents within this shattered form a higher order of becoming a person than would have been possible within those other forms. The person who, according to Nietzsche, is beyond good and evil, is just "better" from the absolute viewpoint, even if he is "worse" from the relative, formalethical viewpoint, than the "good and righteous man." The former is "pious," whereas the righteous man is "impious."

In social ethics, it is the new mysticism of love now stirring everywhere that signifies a theonomous overcoming of the autonomous ethical forms without a relapse into the heteronomy of a specifically religious community of love. If you take the speeches of the idealistic socialists and communists, the poems of Rilke and Werfel, Tolstoi's new interpretation of the Sermon on the Mount — everywhere the formal system of ethics of reason and humanity oriented to Kant is being eliminated. Kant's formulae of ethical autonomy, his demand that man should do good for the sake of the good itself, and his law of universal validity are unassailable principles of autonomous ethics; and no interpretation of ethics as a divine commandment or of love as the overcoming of the law can be allowed to shake this foundation; but the content of love overflows the narrow cup of this form in an inexhaustible stream. The world that merely exists and is split up into individual beings is destroyed and experienced as an empty, unreal shell. The man who thinks in terms of the individual can never attain to love, for love is beyond the individual; the man who thinks in terms of the end to be attained does not know what love is: for love is pure experience of being, pure experience of reality. The man who tries to impose a limit or a condition upon love does not know that love

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is universal, cosmic, simply because it affirms and embraces everything that is real as something real.

Now we pass on to the theology of the state. This theology shows the substance embedded in the different forms of the state; it shows how this substance outgrows the form of the state, or, alternatively, how the form of the state stifles the substance. The rational theories of the state from which the autonomous state developed in the struggle against theocracy led to an abstract state floating above society, described in Thus Spake Zarathustra as "the coldest of all cold monsters." "Faith and love create a people, but the sword and a hundred greedy desires create the state" is a magnificent characterization of the unreligious power-state or utility-state. Nor does it help matters if we adorn this abstract, autonomous state with all the functions of culture and turn it into God on earth, as does Hegel; for then the spirit itself becomes a power-object or utility-ob;ect. The religious substance shatters the autonomous form of the state: that is the profoundest meaning of idealistic "anarchism," not to make way for a new theocracy but in favor of a theonomy built up from communities themselves and their spiritual substance. Even this is still a form of society-a state, but one created by negation, by the destruction of the autonomous form pertaining to a state; and this very paradox is the form of "anarchy." Such. a state, built up from cultural communities, a "state" in the paradoxical sense of the term, is what must be termed "church" in the sense of the theology of culture: the universal human community, built up out of spiritual communities and bearing with it all cultural functions and their religious substance, with the great creative philosophers for its teachers, artists for its priests, the seers of a new ethic of the person and the community for its prophets, men who will lead it to new community goals for its bishops, leaders and recreators of the economic

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process for its deacons and almoners. For the economy, too, can be shattered in its pure autonomy and in its quality of being an end in itself, through the substance of the religious mysticism of love, which produces not for the sake of production but for the sake of the human being. Yet it does not curtail the process of production in accord with the principles of heteronomy, but directs it along the lines of theonomy as the universal form of the earlier, spedfically ecclesiastical care of the poor which has been eliminated on socialist territory along with the concept of poverty.

With this we want to close the list of examples. I have given so many of them that they amount almost to the outline of a system of theology of culture. They will in any case serve to illustrate what is meant. At this point now the question could be raised why the whole of the work is limited to the analysis of culture and why nature ( or technology) is excluded. The answer is that for us nature can only become an object through the medium of culture, if at all. For us, nature derives its sole importance from the functions of the spirit; and culture is conceived as both the subjective and objective embodiment of these functions. The essence of nature in itself is quite out of our reach, and we cannot even comprehend it sufficiently to be able to speak positively of such an essence. But as nature only becomes a reality to us through culture, we are justified in speaking exclusively of "cultural theology" and in rejecting a concept such as "natural theology." Any religious substance or import that may exist in nature lies in the cultural functions insofar as these are related to nature. The religious substance of a "landscape" is a religious-aesthetic phenomenon; the religious substance of a law of astronomy is a religiousscientific one. Technology can function in a religious way through aesthetic, socioethical, or legal interpretations; but in every case we find ourselves dealing with theology of culture, which unques

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tionably comprises the whole of nature and of technology. An independent natural theology would have to presuppose the existence of a mythology of "nature in itself," and that is unthinkable.

5. Theology of Culture and the Theology of the Church

We still have to deal with a question that has been postponed several times: What happens to the specifically religious culture, to dogma, cultus, sanctification, community, and church? How far does a special sphere of holiness still exist? The answer must be based on the relationship of polarity existing between the profane or secular and the religious aspects of the line of culture. In point of fact, they are never apart; but they are separated in abstracto, and this separation is the expression of a universal psychological need. In order to experience anything at all, we are perpetually compelled to separate things that in reality are bound up together, so that our conscious mind may become aware of them.

A specific religious culture must already have come into being before we can experience religious values in culture, or develop a theology of culture, or identify and label the religious elements. Church, cultus, and dogma must already have come into being, and not only that, before we can conceive of the state as church, or art as cultus, or science as theory of faith. To be able somehow to comprehend the Holy and experience it as distinct from the profane or secular, we must take it out of context and bring it into a special sphere of cognition, of worship, of love, and of organization. The profane or secular pole of culture-the exact sciences, formal aesthetics, formal ethics, the purely political and economic aspects-claims our whole attention if it is not balanced by the opposite pole; a universal profanation and desecration of life would be inevitable if no sphere of holiness existed to oppose and

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contradict it. This contradiction cannot be resolved as long as a distinction must be made between form and content, and as long as we are forced to live in the sphere of reflection and not in the sphere of intuition. This is one of the profoundest and most tragic contradictions of cultural life. But the importance of the progress made in recent centuries is revealed by the fact that we have learned the true nature of this conflict and have ceased to credit it with any real, fundamental significance, so that it has lost its residue of active power.

The relation of the theology of culture to the theology of the church is a consequence of this. Our whole development of this theme has taken culture and its forms as a starting point and has shown how culture as such receives a religious quality when substance or import flows into form, and how it finally produces a specifically religious-cultural sphere in order to preserve and heighten that religious quality. This sphere is one of teleo-logical, not independently logical, dignity. The church theologian now understands this sphere as the expression of a definite religious "concreteness," no longer derived from culture but with an independent history going back much farther than most other cultural creations. It has evolved its own forms, each with its separate history, its independence, and its continuity, in spite of all the influences exerted by autonomous forms of culture. Yes indeed, from its own nature it has exercised the very greatest influence on the evolution of these forms. That is an accurate statement of fact; but it is not adequate to decide the attitude that must be adopted toward theology of culture.

There are three possible attitudes that the church theologian can adopt toward culture. He can group all its aspe~ts together under the heading of "world" and confront this group with the "kingdom of God," which is realized in the church. The result is

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that the specifically religious-cultural functions, insofar as they are exercised by the church, share in the "absoluteness" of the religious principle; and that there are absolute science, art forms, morality, etc.-i.e., those realized in the church, in its dogma, in its cultus, etc. Starting from this typically Catholic attitude, there is no possible road to a theology of culture.

The second possibility is the old Protestant attitude. Here church, cult us, and ethics are freed and seen in their relativity; but the cognitive tie, the idea of absolute knowledge as a supernatural revelation, is still retained. But since the period of the theology of the Enlightenment this position has been seriously shaken, for it is basically inconsistent; and the preference given to the intellectual sphere could no longer be justified, once the absoluteness of its only possible advocate, the church, had been allowed to lapse.

The task now facing present and future Protestant theology is to arrive at the third attitude. On the one hand, the distinction between religious potentiality and actuality, i.e., between religious principle and religious culture, will be strictly drawn and the character of "absoluteness" assigned only to the religious principle and not to any factor of the religious culture, not even that of its historical foundation. On the other hand, the religious principle will not be defined in purely abstract terms, nor will its concrete fulfillment be entrusted to every fleeting fashion of cultural development. Every effort, however, will be made to ensure the continuity of its concrete religious standpoint. Only if this !tttitude is adopted can there be any positive relation between theology of culture and the theology of the church.

In this relationship the church theologian is in principle the more conservative and the more selective, looking backward as well as forward. "The Reformation must continue" is his principle; but it is reformation and not revolution; for the substance of

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his concrete standpoint is preserved and the new mold must be adapted to the old one in every field.

The theologian of culture is not bound by any such considerations; he is a free agent in the living cultural movement, open to accept not only any other form but also any other spirit. It is true that he too lives on the basis of a definite concreteness, for one can live only in· concreteness; but he is prepared at any time to enlarge and change this concreteness. As a theologian of culture, he has no interest in ecclesiastical continuity; and this of course puts him at a disadvantage as compared with the church theologian, since he is in danger of becoming a fashionable religious prophet of an uncertain cultural development divided against itself.

In consequence, the only relationship possible is one in which each is the complement of the other; and the best way of achieving this is through personal union, which is admittedly not always desirable, as types must be free to develop unhampered. In any case, a real opposition becomes impossible the moment the theologian of culture acknowledges the necessity of the concrete standpoint in its continuity, and the church theologian in turn acknowledges the relativity of every concrete form compared with the exclusive absoluteness of the religious principle itself.

The cultural-theological ideal itself, however, goes farther than the distinction between cultural theology and ecclesiastical theology. Yet it does not demand a culture that eliminates the distinction drawn between the profane or secular pole and the holy, for that is impossible in the world of reflection and abstraction, but it does demand one in which the entire cultural movement is filled by a homogeneous substance, a directly spiritual material, which turns it into the expression of an all-embracing religious spirit whose continuity is one with that of culture itself. In that case, the

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opposition of cultural theology and church theology is eliminated, for it is only the expression of a split between substance and meaning in culture.

Even in a new, unified culture, however, the task of working on the predominately religious-cultural elements would be entrusted to the theologian, with the idea of producing a specifically religious community that would not differ in reality from the rest of the cultural community. Instead, and precisely in the manner of the pietistic communities in the seventeenth century, which liked to refer to themselves as ecclesiola in ecclesia, the church, as far as theology of culture is concerned, will be something like an ecclesiola in ecclesia to the cultural community as such. The church is the circle, as it were, to which is assigned-ideally speaking-the task of creating a specifically religious sphere and thus removing the element of contingency from the living religious elements, collecting them, concentrating them in theory and in practice, and in this way making them into a powerful-indeed, into the most powerful-cultural factor, capable of supporting everything else.

Let me add a few closing words on the subject of the most important supporters of cultural-theological work, that is, the theological faculties. What is the meaning of the theological faculties, and what significance do they possess in this particular connection? The theological faculties are regarded by science with suspicion, and rightly so, in two cases. First, when theology is defined as a scientific knowledge of God in the sense of one particular object among others. Second, when theology is taken to mean a description of a definite and limited denomination with authoritarian claims. In both instances the autonomy of other functions is threatened, even if outwardly they still seem to run independently side by side. A universitas litterarum, considered in terms of sys

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tematic unity, is then not possible. These objections at once disappear when theology is defined as a normative branch of knowledge concerned with religion and put on the same level as normative ethics, aesthetics, etc. The meaning of "standpoint" in the cultural branches of knowledge must be made clear at the same time, as was done at the beginning of this lecture. Regarded from the standpoint of theology of culture, however, the theological faculties are not only entitled to the same rights as others, but acquire, as do the purely philosophical faculties also, a universal and outstandingly high cultural significance. The theological faculties then perform one of the greatest and most creative tasks within the scope of culture. The demand for the removal of the theological faculties originated in the age of liberalism and of individualistic and antithetical culture. Socialism, by reason of its enmity toward the existing churches, unhesitatingly took up this demand for removal; although the demand contradicts the nature of socialism, for its nature is that of a cultural unity. It must be admitted that socialism has no room for a hierarchy or theocracy or heteronomy of the religious, but in order to complete its own development it needs the all-embracing religious substance which through theonomy alone can free the autonomy of the individual and also that of the individual cultural function from their self-destroying isolation. For this reason we need theological faculties for the new, unifying culture springing from socialist soil; and the first and fundamental task of these faculties is a theology of culture. For nearly two hundred years theology has been in the unfortunate but unavoidable situation of a defender whose position is finally untenable and who is forced to relinquish point after point, and now must again take the offensive, after abandoning the last trace of its untenable, culturally heteronomous position. It must fight under the banner of theonomy, and under this banner it will conquer,

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not the autonomy of culture but the profanation, exhaustion, and disintegration of culture in the latest epoch of mankind. It will conquer because, as Hegel says, religion is the beginning and the end of all things, and also the center, giving life and soul and spirit to all things.

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The paradoxical formulation of our title stands in need of justification. "Paradoxical" can mean "ingenious," but in that case the paradox is based upon an ambiguous and contradictory verbal formulation, and belongs in the aesthetic realm. The word can also be understood dialectically. Then it refers to the tension of two patterns of thought which are contradictory, though in themselves consistent and necessary. In this sense the paradox belongs in the logical realm. In both cases the paradox is a function of the subject, either of the caprice of artistic imagination or of the necessity of logical structure in thought. But there is a point where paradox is grounded completely in the object rather than in the subject, where paradox is as necessary to every assertion as consistency is to every empirical scientific assertion: the point at which the Unconditional becomes an Object. The fact that it becomes an object is indeed the primal paradox, since by its nature the Uncon-

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ditional stands beyond the antithesis of subject and object. Thus, every statement about the Unconditional is necessarily in the form of paradox. Aesthetic and logical paradoxes are in principle resolvable. Both present a problem to be solved, either by common sense or by logical thought. But the paradox of the Unconditional is not resolvable. It poses a problem that calls for intuition (Schauen).

This appears to make philosophical statements regarding the Unconditional into religious ones. To this possibility it should be remarked that a philosophy of religion which stands apart from the religious reality is as absurd as an aesthetic unrelated to the actual world of art. In both cases one seeks to speak about an object whose sole given form remains inaccessible. But at the same time, reference to the thing itself can take on a quite contradictory form, if this contradiction arises solely out of the object itself. Thus Nietzsche, since he acted in the name of the God who spoke through him, had a right to fight against God; Strauss, on the other hand, had no such right, for it was the human, the all too human, that spoke through him. In this regard, it is on the basis of the religious reality itself that I indicate my spiritual affinity in the following ideas with men like Barth and Gogarten whose concern is the religious Word. I have been surprised to see how, without mutual influence, the unqualified affirmation of the Unconditional within philosophy of religion as in religious thinking proper has led us to the same position in principle. Nevertheless, the following lines of thought are to be understood in their own right; they are philosophical ideas and they aspire to be nothing other than philosophy. The paradoxical nature of every ultimate statement concerning the Unconditional does not compromise the rationality and necessity of the fundamental relationships out of which this paradox arises.

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It remains to be demonstrated that the concept of religion contains within itself a paradox. "Religion" is the concept of a reality which through this very concept is destroyed. Yet the concept is unavoidable. The point is to use it in such a way that its destructive force is eliminated through its subordination to a higher concept. That, however, is the concept of the Unconditional. To be sure, the inner dialectic of the concept of religion makes a certain amount of ambiguity unavoidable, inasmuch as the concept is used, in a general orientational sense as well as in a more precise, polemical sense. This difficulty cannot be avoided, since every relatively new conceptual creation would fall into the same dialectic, and the meaning would have to be determined contextually.

Having established our basic problem, we will address it in four stages: (1) the protest of religion against the concept of religion; (2) the dominance of the concept of religion in philosophy of religion; (3) the conquest of the concept of religion; and (4) the dialectic of autonomy.

1. The Protest of Religion Against the Concept of Religion

There are four objections that religion raises against the concept of religion. First, it makes the certainty of God relative to the certainty of the self (Ichgewissheit). Secondly, it makes God relative to the world. Thirdly, it makes religion relative to culture. Fourthly, it makes revelation relative to the history of religion. In short, through the concept of religion the Unconditional is grounded upon the conditioned and becomes itself conditioned, and thereby destroyed.

a. The certainty of the Unconditional is unconditional. Nevertheless, whenever thinking is determined by the concept of religion, another certainty is believed to be more fundamental than

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that of the Unconditional, namely, the self's certainty of itself. The subject's self-certainty is given priority over the certainty of God. The self is seen capable of self-apprehension apart from any awareness of God. But self-certainty is no basis for unconditional certainty. When the objective world to which it is related dissolves into appearances, then self-certainty takes on the veil-like character of a dream. The subject falls with the object. On the other hand, the Unconditional stands beyond both subject and object. Only when the self is understood as the medium for the selfapprehension of the Unconditional, does it participate in unconditional certainty, whether this latter be expressed in terms of absolute life, as with Augustine, or in terms of absolute form, as with Descartes. But the Unconditional is always that which provides a ground, and the self is its medium and that which is grounded. Where this is not the case, and the self makes itself independent, religion, it is true, comes into being-but in losing God the self ultimately loses itself.

b. If the certainty of the Unconditional is lost, the Unconditional loses its reality as well. Religion remains as a function of the conditioned within the world of the conditioned, and it starts from this its own world in order to reach the Unconditional. Since religion has a self-sufficient conception of the world which needs only peripheral supplementation, God in this way becomes a correlate of the world but thereby himself part of the world. But the true Unconditional lies beyond both this God and the world. In this situation a God beneath God comes into being, namely, the God of deism. Or there is yet another alternative: namely, that the concept of the world needs no supplementation, that the universe is complete in itself, and God is identical with it. Here God is seen as the totality, the synthesis of all finite forms, identical with the universe of the conditioned (though this can never be the Uncon

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ditional). This God is the God of pantheism. Wherever the concept of the world is complete without God, God has become an empty name that one utters for the sake of religion, but which can be dispensed with completely, since it is all the same whether the universe is called "matter" or "spirit."

c. In effect the spirit of the concept of religion destroys not only the certainty and reality of God, but also religion itself. "Religion" is a function of the human spirit. It remains so, even when (along with Scholz) one makes it into a creation of God in man. For the human spirit must at least have the functional possibility for religion, and of course, nothing more than that is intended here. Consequently, religion stands alongside the other functions of the human spirit. But where? At first it sought haven in one of the other functions, namely, the practical. But autonomous ethics is complete in itself, and thus it either assimilates religion or drives it on to the theoretical function. But autonomous philosophy likewise has no need of religion, and so subordinates it to itself as a preliminary stage, as a transitional phase, assimilates it and drives it on to feeling. Feeling, however, accompanies every function, and therefore, one must always speak of a definite feeling, such as a feeling for the universe. But then if religion is identified with feeling, it is no longer the function but the object that determines religion. Thus, attempts are made to find the homeless one a place of its own: a province within the spiritual life (Schleiermacher), a religious a priori (Troeltsch), the highest category of act (Scheler). Just as a person is ethical, scientific, aesthetic, or political, so he is also religious. Here the Unconditional stands alongside the conditioned. But religion does not allow a person to be also religious; in fact, it does not grant that a person is "religious" at all. It tolerates no co-ordination of the functions, even the hierarchical form in which religion stands at the top. It is, rather,

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a consuming fire over against every autonomous function of the human spirit. He who would seek a religious a priori must be aware that all other a priori' s thereby sink into the abyss. The concept of religion, however, knows nothing of this.

d. Just as the concept of religion dissolves the unconditionality of faith into the relativity of the various spiritual functions, so it also dissolves the unconditionality of revelation into the continuous evolution and alteration within the history of religion and culture. "Religion" as a general concept is indifferent to the revelatory claims of the particular religions. Absolute religion is a "square circle." Whenever Christianity has become religion, it a priori has lost its absoluteness. In this respect, Troeltsch's insistence upon the a posteriori was legitimate. At the most, faith gives the predicate "religion" to that religion which does not bring salvation, to false religion. "Religion" is a derogatory term, indicating that inferior quality within religion which consists in its failure to go beyond the subject. In that case it is nothing more than a God-ward intention that does not have God, because God has not manifested himself within it. And the content of this derogatory term then becomes the foundation upon which revelation is supposed to ground itself-and yet cannot. For if it does, revelation either becomes a transmission of knowledge which the autonomous spirit would have discovered anyway, and thereby deteriorates into a rationalism occasionally supplemented by the supernatural. Or it becomes cultural history (Geistesgeschichte) and is dissolved into the contingencies of the cultural process. If revelation is a "religious" concept, then it is no concept at all.

This is what is involved in the protest that religion raises against the spirit of the concept of religion. Let us see how this matter has been regarded up until now in the philosophy of religion.

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2. The Dominance of the Concept of Religion in Philosophy of Religion

The development of philosophy of religion in the Western world has taken place in three periods ( or typical forms) : the rational, the critical, and the intuitive. Running concurrently with all three is the empirical philosophy of religion. The latter, however, can be left out of consideration, because it can be consistent only in its statements about the actualization of religion in the individual and historical life and not in those about religion itself. As soon as it tries to say something about religion itself, it borrows from one of the other methods.

a. In the rational period the dominance of the concept of religion is unconscious, in the critical period it is conscious, and in the phenomenological period it is declining. In the philosophy of the Renaissance, world-consciousness is still embedded in a mystical or ecstatic God-consciousness. Apart from God there is no world, just as, to be sure, in contrast to the Middle Ages, apart from the world there is no God. The distinction between nature and the supernatural is abolished. Nature is supernatural in quality, and the supernatural is nature itself. However, this was but a transition. Beginning with Galileo the mathematically-oriented natural sciences banished the supernatural. Nature becomes purely objective, rational, and technical; it becomes divested of the divine. It is now possible to have a concept of the world without having a concept of God. In this manner the way was made free for the dominance of the concept of religion. This becomes immediately evident at the beginning of the whole development, namely, in Descartes. The basis for certainty is the self, and God is inferred from the self. What is historically fateful here is not the fact that

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the principle of all rationality is found in the self's certainty of itself, for that principle certainly involves the unconditionality of logical form, which as unconditionality bears a quality of holiness within itself. But the real change in the total situation is to be seen in the contrast of the post-Cartesian outlook with, for example, that of Augustine. For no longer is the Unconditional element extracted out of self-certainty in order through it to apprehend God, but rather is the rational principle extracted, in order from it to deduce God. This becomes fully apparent for the first time in the philosophy of the Enlightenment, which sought, with the aid of the technical-objective category of cause and effect, to infer God from the world. The certainty of God is made to rest upon the certainty of the world and the power of logical inference. Here we see already the domination of the concept of religion, to be sure in concealed form, since in general God rather than religion remains the focus of discussion.

Kant correctly perceived that without an ontological proof this goal is unattainable. But the ontological way was no longer an open possibility. It is possible only where consciousness stands in immediate unity with the Unconditional. But then the ontological way is not a logical conclusion from the idea of the Unconditional to its existence (Sein), a procedure that, of course, is impossible. It is rather the expression of the unconditional certainty which the Unconditional has in face of everything conditioned insofar as the Unconditional stands beyond the antithesis of thought and being. As soon as consciousness of the world is rendered independent, and thinking and being are no longer connected, and God is objectified, this expression of a real (realen) state of consciousness becomes a syllogism whose premise is invalid. Thus, the critique of the ontological proof was the result of the spiritual development from the medieval to the modern period, from God

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consciousness to autonomous world-consciousness. At the same time it marked the end of the rational period.

Corresponding to this concealed dissolution of the certainty of God is the concealed dissolution of his reality. Almost all the philosophers of this period have a world view in which God becomes the central element in the construction of the world. He is the bearer of world-harmony, the ingenious watchmaker of the cosmic system, the mediator between subject and object. Even when he is called the source of our ideas or that which is beyond thinking and extension, he is always understood in a technical and objectified manner, as though he were a thing. For through the deterministic idea of pre-established harmony, thinking has also become thingified (dinghaft). The God who is supposed to be a supplement to the world is not God but the world itself. Only Spinoza's religious depth overcomes these concepts unworthy of God and points toward the following period. But he, too, remained dominated by the contemporary thingified conception of the world, so that even in his view God becomes an absolute thing. He exposed the innate tendency of the concept of religion, and thus his contemporaries rightly saw in him the real danger of their time.

The unconditionality of religion over against culture was also abolished in a concealed manner. The colere et intelligere Deum stands alongside the colere et intelligere of man and the world. As God stands alongside the world, so also religion stands alongside science and politics, art and morality. Here, too, the destructive consequences of the concept of religion remain concealed. There is knowledge of the world—and also of God; there is the stateand also the church; there is art—and also cultus. Religion is still a universal phenomenon, but in all cases it is only one component and has lost its omnipresence. The same problem appears in the

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relation of the Unconditional to philosophy. The absoluteness of revealed truth emerges as the absoluteness of religion based on reason. Thus, revelation has become a chapter of metaphysics, and has been drawn into the dialectic of proof and refutation. As long as faith in absolute reason prevailed, in spite of all opposition, the consequences of the concept of religion remained concealed. When reason became historical, religion based on reason developed into the history of religion.

b. In the critical period the relativistic consequences of the concept of religion became apparent. The certainty of God loses its theoretical meaning. In terms of its true import the moral proof for the existence of God can do nothing more than endow moral autonomy with the sanctity of the Unconditional. But all the attempts of philosophical and theological Kantians to extract a theoretical existence of God from the Unconditional by means of ethical postulates are in vain. In this matter Neo-Kantianism had drawn the obvious conclusion from its critical foundation. The Philosophy of "As If" performed a distinct service for philosophy of religion in perceiving the fictional character of this theoretically existing God who was supposed to be provable through moral postulates. For the idealistic Kantians a certainty of God is not possible apart from certainty of the world. Religion is a special way of experiencing the world which either is sublated into philosophy, as in Hegel, or has an abiding unique significance, as in ,Schleiermacher. The effect of the concept of religion is most evident at the point where nominalistic thinking fails to recognize any objective conception of the world, as with Simmel, and religion is -accordingly located exclusively in the subject. Religion becomes a rhythm or hue of the soul, an expression of its metaphysical significance, and thus a consecration not of the objective world, as in realism, but of the subjective life. The concept of religion, which

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sought to proceed from the self to God, has relapsed into the self.

Upon the horizon of the idea of God settle the threatening clouds of Spinozism from the preceding period, but it is a Spinozism stripped of its objectifying character by the (new) idealistic point of departure. No longer is God independent of the world. Deism becomes pantheism. God is the "world idea," the form of all forms, the ultimate synthesis, conceived either as a reality or as an infinite task. He is the world sub specie aeternitatis. In this manner the unity of God and the world is restored, but not, as in the Renaissance, from the side of God who has taken the world up into himself, but rather from the side of the world, into which God has been absorbed. Thereby the objective, scientific formation of concepts becomes here the pathway to God. The concept of the world is the creative basis for the concept of God and makes the latter dependent upon itself. This dependence upon the concept of the world is true not only for idealism, but also for subsequent developments. The concept of God follows the concept of the world along the paths of materialism, voluntarism, naturalism, and positivism. In so doing it reveals the impossibility of fulfilling the romantic yearning to reach God through the structure or form of the world, to reach a new immediacy, a new ontologicallyoriented spiritual situation on the basis of the scientific apprehension of the world. Through its clear understanding of this situation it was again the Philosophy of "As If" which perceived that the concept of God had to lose its roots the moment God was degraded to the state of a derivative reality, instead of being recognized as the primordially given itself.

The results of all this also appear in the attitude of the critical period to our third point: in analogy with the transition from deism to pantheism, religion turns into culture. It is tacked on to one of the functions of the human spirit, and without fail is assim

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ilated to this function. The effect of this transition upon the spiritual situation of the nineteenth century is clearly evident. Among individual Hegelian thinkers and among the working-class groups influenced by Hegel and Marx, science ( Wissenschaft) usurps the role of religion; among the ethically-oriented middle-class, morality fills the gap left by religion; and among the most highly cultivated, the arts. The attempts to preserve religion as a special function fail, because its absoluteness brooks no relativization, and because the religious function called for here must revert into culture just as surely as l:he God prescribed by the deists reverts into world. Of course, it is not to be denied that culture in this way takes on a religious tone. But this quality comes to it as a supplement, and thus it can also be absent, and indeed is so as soon as the concept of the world comes to be seen in a materialistic or a voluntaristic rather than in an idealistic framework.

The victory of historical reason within idealism in this period signifies alike the victory of the history of religion. Throughout the period the latter was conceived as the history of revelation, naturally not in a supernatural sense, but in an immanent culturalhistorical sense. It is God himself who comes to self-awareness within the finite in this history; it is the potencies of the world which become successively manifest in mythology and revelation. With the breakdown of the idealistic presupposition the history of revelation becomes a part of man's spiritual history whose meaning is absorbed into the general history of culture. Here, too, the concept of religion is completely victorious.

The critical period is more consistent than the rational period. Therein lies its superiority. It exposes the destructive consequences of the concept of religion, for religion itself, but it also achieves something positive. It represents a powerful reaction against the secularization and evisceration of the world which result from objectification. To be sure, this reaction remained ro

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mantic and aesthetic, and then reverted into its own opposite. For the destroyed religious consciousness cannot be restored through the will of individuals, but only through the fate of nations and masses. Nevertheless, the romantic philosophy of religion provides the bridges and creates the forms by means of which the new spirit of an ontological consciousness of God can again flow.

The world, culture and history all have qualities of holiness. They may have them, but they need not have them. But what if the order were reversed? What if we were to ask: must they have them? How would it be, if above all the religious dimension had the qualities of unconditionality and certainty, and the world, culture and history were tentative and dubious secularizations of the holy which needed to be overcome? With this question we turn our attention to the third, the intuitive period.

c. This third period begins at the turn of the century, not only in the form of phenomenological philosophy (in its narrower sense) but also in the general movement of spiritual life away from the objective-technical apprehension of the world to an immediateintuitive one. It is more difficult to discuss this period, since it is still in process of development. Nevertheless, it is already possible to get a glimpse of its broadest contours. Its significance for the philosophy of religion lies in its conscious opposition to the dominance of the concept of religion. It seems prepared for a new ontologically-oriented spiritual situation. There are many manifestations of this tendency: Otto's apprehension of the numinous as a reality breaking through all objective forms, Scheler's elevation of the value of holiness above all other levels of value, and Scholz's complete separation of religious and theoretical existential judgments. We must now ask how successful these trends have been in exorcising the spirit of the concept of religion.

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Both Scheler and Scholz seek vigorously to overcome the functional justification of religion: Scheler by ascribing primary certainty to the religious object rather than the religious act and thus by settling the God-question before considering the question of religion; Scholz by strongly opposing the interpretation of religion as an autonomous creation of the human spirit and seeing in the simple statement, "God is," the primary indication of the nature of religion. It could be argued that these views threaten to reinstate the rational method, but in reality this danger does not exist. God is not to be deduced from an established concept of the world by means of syllogisms, but rather his reality is to be directly intuited (erschaut) apart from any consideration of the world. In order to emphasize the difference of this intuitive perception (Anschauen) from objective-reflective knowledge of the world, Scheler builds up the apprehension of reality in stages: the scientific, metaphysical, and religious forms of knowledge. The way to overcome the rational as well as the critical method is without doubt thereby prepared. But it is still not attained, for it is not clear just how the levels are related to each other. The difficulties involved here become obvious when Scheler permits metaphysics to invalidate itself, by a sacrificium intellectus, for the sake of religion. Awareness of God is thereby made dependent upon a selfnegating awareness of the world. The certainty of the world is sacrificed for the sake of the certainty of God; its reality is sacrificed for the sake of his reality. Yet the world makes this sacrifice. God lives on the basis of this sacrifice, and he disappears once the autonomous spirit refuses to make such a sacrifice. The autonomous spirit, however, must refuse this sacrifice in order to avoid the inner disruption occasioned by theoretical judgments coming from alien sources.

The Protestant philosopher of religion, Scholz, does not de

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mand a sacrificium intellectus, but rather attempts to demonstrate to the intellect the credibility of religion. He thus presupposes a consciousness before which this credibility would have to be demonstrated. This consciousness is that of the moral personality. Confidence in the truth of a revelation can only be awakened by the ethical character of the bearer of revelation. Who could fail to see here the moral proof for the existence of God so deeply engrained in Protestantism, simply transposed into the personal key? In the case of both Scheler and Scholz, the certainty and reality of the world are retained as the basis for the certainty and reality of God. Scheler does so by making the world a stage, Scholz by making it a criterion. The only thing achieved is this duality: God is neither deduced from the world, as in the rational period, nor is he drawn into the world, as in the critical period.

As for our two other points, the relations of religion and culture, and revelation and history, Scheler again supports his views by appeal to the idea of stages. That is to say, the religious values stand at the top of a hierarchy of values. The sacred values—the values of holiness—are placed above even those of personality. And again, among the values of holiness, God's reality in Christ stands on the highest level, beyond the prophets and saints. Religion is the highest cultural value, and the Christian religion the highest sacred value. Obviously the concept of religion still dominates even this scheme. The series of stages permits each higher level to be grounded on the lower ones, both in terms of the image and in terms of the actual matter which this image is supposed to illustrate. The thinking here continues to be an ascending movement, from the bottom upwards. But at this point we must say that there are no stages leading to the Unconditional. The highest and the lowest are equidistant from the Unconditional.

Scholz replaces the theory of stages, whose medieval Catholic

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origin is evident, with the idea of the ethical-cultural personality, an idea clearly rooted in Protestantism. Religion is a reality independent of the rest of the spiritual life and can be either present or lacking. But if it is present, the norm for its evaluation is its capacity to be experienced by the contemporary cultured man, i.e., by the ethically and spiritually-formed personality. Of the experienceable religions, however, only three are finally taken into consideration: Christianity, pantheism and mysticism. It is, nevertheless, a complete contradiction of the unconditionality of the Unconditional to make its nature and scope dependent upon a particular state of ethical-spiritual personality or upon a specific cultural situation. All these ideas still come from a way of thinking that looks not to the Unconditional, but to the conditioned, in order to provide a norm for the Unconditional. They have not been able to expunge the [destructive] spirit of the concept of religion. Yet is there any way in which it can be eJ{punged? Or is it the fate of philosophy of religion to be possessed by it? Is it the fate of human history to have the capacity for only the one or the other, religion or philosophy of religion?

3. The Conquest of the Concept of Religion

The decisive objection we have raised against previous philosophy of religion is that it founds the Unconditional upon the conditioned, either by co-ordinating them or, since this is intolerable, by assimilating the Unconditional into the conditioned. A philosophy of religion that wishes to do justice to the nature of the Unconditional must apprehend the Unconditional in everything conditioned as that which grounds both itself and the conditioned. The conditioned is the medium in and through which the Unconditional is apprehended. To this medium belongs, likewise, the per

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ceiving subject. It, too, never appears as something that provides the ground, but rather as the place where the Unconditional becomes manifest within the conditioned. Consequently, one must make a distinction in principle between the meaning of statements about the Unconditional and those about the conditioned. But since every statement as such is expressed in the subject-object mode, and hence in the forms of the conditioned, statements about the Unconditional must, to be sure, utilize these forms. But this must occur in such a way that their inadequacy becomes evident, i.e., they must bear the form of systematic paradox.

a. Under domination by the concept of religion the self's certainty of itself is the basis for certainty of God. But two factors are contained in the self-certainty of the ego: the unconditionality of an apprehension of reality that lies beyond subject and object, and the participation of the subjective self in this unconditional reality which supports it. The self is the medium of the unconditional apprehension of reality, and as medium it participates in the certainty of that which it mediates. Still, it participates only as a medium; it is not that which upholds, but rather that which is upheld. The possibility exists for the ego to experience its selfcertainty in such a way that the unconditional relation to reality contained within it stands in the foreground. This is the a priori religious mode of self-apprehension. On the other hand, the possibility exists for the ego to experience its self-certainty in such a manner that its relation to its own being stands in the foreground. This is the a priori unreligious mode of self-apprehension. In the first case, the self penetrates, so to speak, through the form of its consciousness to the ground of reality upon which it is based. In the second type, this underlying ground remains, to be sure, effective—without it there could be no self-certainty—but it is not touched upon; the self remains in its detached state, it settles for

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the form of consciousness. One can properly call this second position unreligious, but only with regard to its intention and not with regard to its outcome. There is no consciousness unreligious in substance, though it can certainly be so in intention. Every act of self-apprehension contains, as its foundation within reality, the relation to the Unconditional, but this relation is not in every case intended. The two states of consciousness are differentiated accordingly.

The statement that the certainty of the Unconditional is apprehended in self-certainty is paradoxical, for though it has a theoretical form, it is anything but theoretical in content. When it is said that the self grasps within itself the Unconditional as the basis of its own self-certainty, the opposition of subject and object is contained in the very form of this statement. But the import of the statement stands in direct contradiction to that, for the Unconditional is neither object nor subject, but rather the presupposition for every possible antithesis of subject and object. For this reason, apprehension of the Unconditional also stands prior to every theoretical judgment; and in its foundation as well as its consequences, it is independent of every theoretical certainty. Whether the spirit's intention is religious or unreligious is a matter of theoretical indifference, since the Unconditional is certainly the supporting ground of every theoretical judgment, and can be an absolute presupposition but never an object of theory. If nevertheless it becomes an object-and it must if anything is to be said about it at all-then the following statement necessarily has a paradoxical form: God-certainty is the certainty of the Unconditional contained in and grounding the self-certainty of the ego. Certainty of God is in this way utterly independent of any other presuppositional certainty. Both the self and its religion are subordinated to the Unconditional; they first become possible through the Uncondi

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tional. For this reason, there can be absolutely no certainty in which the certainty of God is not implicite present. Whether, however, it is likewise present explicite constitutes the decisive religious distinction. Objectively considered, all consciousness is related to God; but subjectively, consciousness can be God-less. Thus there is no way from the self to God, but there is, in terms of directedness rather than substance, a way from God to the self. Once one has embarked on this way, one can never go back. Only the breakthrough or eruption of the ground implicitly present in all self-consciousness through the autonomous forms of consciousness can free him from the compulsive flight from God. Religion calls this breakthrough "grace." Religion is aware that no theoretical pointing to the ground of all theory can make the Unconditional alive within consciousness. For theory makes the Unconditional into an object, i.e., precisely what it is not.

b. Under domination by the concept of religion the reality of God is grounded upon the reality of the world. Admittedly, every actuality exists in the forms of objectivity, of which one is existence itself. At the same time, however, within every actuality there is something unconditionally real to be grasped. This unconditionally real is not defined by the forms of objects and has, therefore, likewise no existence. Where the spirit directs itself upon the world and its contents in such a way that it brings to awareness the impulse of unconditionality implicit in all things, there it is directed toward God. This power of unconditional reality in every conditioned actuality is that which is the supporting ground in every thing (Ding), its very root of being, its absolute seriousness, its unfathomable depth, and its holiness. It is the import of its reality as distinguished from its accidental form.

All objective thinking must be strictly excluded here. We are not dealing with an object to be found either alongside things, or

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above or within them. The material-objective (Gegenstandlichen) is not under consideration here at all, but rather the primordial (Urstandlichen) as such, that which is exempt from all form, including that of existence. But here again it is the case that every statement is expressed in a material-0bjective form, and therefore is true only as a broken, paradoxical statement. Thus, in respect to its form the statement "God is" is theoretical. No classification according to levels can change this, since God is thereby brought into the order of the world of objects. This pigeon-holing of God, however, is atheism. If the statement "God is" is likewise theoretical in its import, then it destroys the divinity of God. Meant as paradox, however, it is the necessary expression for the affirmation of the Unconditional, for it is not possible to direct oneself toward the Unconditional apart from objectification. By virtue of these considerations both deism and pantheism are overcome. Deism, which is not simply the orientation of a given historical period but an element in every representation of God, i.e., that point at which God is objectified and made finite, and which generally appears wherever the paradoxical meaning of divine being is no longer apprehended, is overcome. Pantheism, which, because the Unconditional is apprehensible within every actuality, equates the Unconditional with the universal form of materiality, i.e., with the world, is likewise overcome. It remains fixed upon an objective form, namely, the universal form of objective reality, and does not realize that the Unconditional is as far removed from the totality as it is from the individual. What is called for is a theism that has nothing in common with the customary semi-deism of the churches, a theism that says simply that the Unconditional is—the Unconditional. There is no theoretical necessity for this attitude either. It is possible to focus one's attention upon the system of conditioned

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realities and to affirm it in this its character, as the autonomous self does. It is possible to disregard the relation to the unconditionally real inherent in everything that is, and to regard only the existence and form of objective reality, for everything in the world has the form of existence as well as of objectivity. This is possible without any theoretical reservation, since the Unconditional is at no time and at no point an object of theoretical contention. On the basis of theory it can be neither defended nor rejected. Nor does it venture into the arena of conflict over existential judgments, over questions of existence (Dasein) or non-existence (Nichtsein). If by renouncing the reality of God, however, one has once arrived at a reality of the world which is by intention independent of the divine-in substance, it can never be so—then there is no way back to the reality of God. For God is either the beginning or he does not exist.

c. Under domination by the concept of religion, religion is founded upon culture, either as a separate cultural function or as the synthesis of the cultural functions. This is fully analogous to the deistic and pantheistic conception of God. Yet there is a function of the spirit which neither stands alongside the other functions nor is their unity, but rather comes to expression in and through them, namely, the function of unconditionality. It is the root function, that function in which the spirit breaks through all of its forms and penetrates to its ground. For that reason it is not (properly) a form of the spirit and can only paradoxically be called a function. Phenomenologically expressed, there is a class of acts which originates out of a depth in which the contrast between one act and another is transcended. Consequently, the acts of this category can only take on a specific character by breaking into the medium of consciousness. Essentially, however, this is nothing other than the relation to the Unconditional inherent in

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every act. There is, therefore, no special religious function alongside the logical, aesthetic, ethical and social functions; nor is it confined either in one of them or in the unity of them all. It is rather that which breaks through each and all of them, and it is the reality, the unconditional significance of each of them. Just as things are the medium of the Unconditional in the world, so culture is the medium of the Unconditional in the life of the spirit.

On this basis we most emphatically reject the view that through religion a new value is introduced into a system of values. There are no values of holiness as such. The Holy is rather that which gives the values their value, the conditionality of their validity and the absoluteness of their relation to reality. Philosophy of religion is, therefore, under no condition a supplement to the philosophy of the spirit (Geistesphilosophie) or to the philosophy of values. In this instance as well, the Unconditional does not enter into the discussion of conditioned realities. The quality of holiness or the function of unconditionality can be absent without causing the slightest change in the system of values. Granted, here as everywhere, it can only be absent with respect to intention and not with respect to substance. For if it were absent in substance, thinking would be without truth, intuition without reality, action without purpose, community without vitality. Its presence, however, need not be intended. The human spirit can concern itself with the autonomy of its functions, whose forms it penetrates throughout, but whose root in reality it fails to touch. Through an autonomous self the spirit can produce autonomous culture in an autonomous universe. In doing so, however, it has blocked its own way to God. Within the realm of autonomous culture there can be at best—religion.

It is at this point that the dialectic of the concept of religion is to be made fully clear. As soon as consciousness directs itself

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toward the Unconditional, the duality of act and object arises. Yet, a religious act is no special act; it can only become actual in other acts of the spirit. That is to say, it must give these other acts a formation in which their religious quality is visible, and that formation is paradox, i.e., the simultaneous affirmation and negation of autonomous form. Religious thinking-and intuitive perception is thus a mode of thinking-is a "perceiving" (Anschauen) in which the autonomous forms of thought and intuition are simultaneously employed and shattered. The same holds true for the moral a~d social forms.

Thus, in the presence of the Unconditional, knowing is inspiration, intuitive perception is mystery, acting is grace, and community is the kingdom of God. These are all paradoxical concepts, i.e., concepts that immediately lose their meaning when construed objectively. Understood as a sort of supernatural transmission of knowledge, inspiration becomes a plain contradiction; mystery, understood in the sense of a real material presence of the Unconditional within the conditioned, becomes a meaningless statement; grace, understood as a supernatural impartation of power, becomes ethical nonsense; and the kingdom of God, conceived as material grandeur, becomes a utopia of mechanistic thinking. In each case the paradox has been replaced by supernaturalism, i.e., the attempt to make a conditioned reality unconditional. But corresponding to supernaturalism there is always a naturalism which attempts to eliminate the Unconditional entirely.

Yet religion can do nothing other than work with these concepts. In order to make any statements at all, it must objectify. Its desire to make assertions is its holiness; the necessary objective character of all its assertions is its secularity. Only when religion sees through its own dialectic and gives all honor to the Unconditional, can it be justified. Where it fails to do this, religion debases

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the Unconditional and leads it within the arena of controversy concerning conditioned realities, where it must of necessity be overcome. Religion then becomes a cultural phenomenon that has lost all connection with the Unconditional, a way of thinking that no longer knows anything of inspiration as the breakthrough of unconditional reality, an intuition that has lost sense of the mystery of the ground within the forms of things, an acting that in the absence of grace has lapsed into law, a community that has become remote from the breakthrough of unconditional love. This is one possibility for religion. The other is a religion that has made supernatural laws of all these concepts, objectifying the paradox and rendering the Unconditional finite. Such is the state of the human spirit under the domination of the concept of religion Conquering the spirit of that concept means the redemption of religion from the fate of objectification, redemption of culture from the fate of secularization, and the Unconditional breaking through every mode of relativization.

d. Under domination by the concept of religion, revelation is based upon the autonomous life of the spirit, whether this be in the sense of a revealed religion of reason or in the sense of a history of religion. In this way the absolute divine act becomes a relative evolution of man's religious spirit. Religion, however, does not seek religion, not even absolute religion, but rather it seeks redemption, revelation, salvation, regeneration, life and consummation; it wants the t10conditionally Real, it desires God. It calls true religion that in which God manifests himself, and false religion that in which he is sought in vain. But the concept of religion cannot acknowledge such distinctions, not even in the veiled form of experienceable versus non-experienceable religion. The concept of religion is a leveler, putting the divine and the human on the same plane. Thus, whenever one particular religion

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is made unconditional, this is already a result of the concept of religion, already a relativizing of the Unconditional. As religion, every religion is relative, for every religion objectifies the Unconditional. As revelation, however, every religion can be absolute, for revelation is the breakthrough of the Unconditional in its unconditionality. Every religion is absolute to the degree that it is revelation, i.e., insofar as the Unconditional manifests itself within it as something unconditional, in contrast to everything relative that belongs to it as religion.

Yet it is the character of every living religion that it carries within itself a constant opposition to its own religiosity. Protest against objectification is the pulse beat of religion. Only where this is lacking does it no longer contain anything absolute. It has then become mere religion, completely human. The typical protest of living religion against its objectification has taken three forms: mysticism, predestination, and grace. Mysticism penetrates to the paradoxical meaning of every statement about the Unconditional. It seeks unity with that which is absolutely objective, with the abyss, with the transcendent (Uberseienden), with pure "nothingness" (Nichts). It knows, furthermore, that this union can only be brought about by the Unconditional; it knows that it is a matter of grace. Nevertheless, it prepares itself to become worthy of grace, and for that end it both utilizes the forms of religion and creates forms of its own. It never leaves the soil of religion, and that is its limitation. Predestination, on the other hand, ascribes all activity on behalf of the salvation of the individual and of humanity to God. Neither religion nor the church is a precondition for election or the kingdom of God. They are at best divinely ordained mediations of those ends. As a result of this, their significance diminishes; and because the divine decree takes place in secret, all human religious activities and representations are devaluated and

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soon approach the point where they completely cease and pass over into secular cultural activity. That is the danger of placing the religious element entirely within the sphere of the hidden and absolute. The third form is concrete grace. To be sure, mysticism and predestination also live from grace. However, concrete grace also locates salvation completely in the Unconditional, but in its concrete, historical self-manifestation and not in its abyss, not in its hidden will. Consequently, it issues in a vigorous affirmation of the religious and ecclesiastical media, of the mediator and means of revelation, of prayer and living fellowship with God. But this view almost inevitably goes astray at this point by elevating these media into an absolute status and thus the revelation of grace becomes a religion of the means of grace.

Each of these three forms in which religion is overcome within religion is characterized by the same dialectic as religion itself. They can set themselves in the place of God. For that reason it is likewise false to make these forms into an absolute religion. They are forms of expression for the absolute element in every living religion, but as soon as they become forms of religion they themselves become relative. Absolute religion is to be found in all religions. True religion exists wherever the Unconditional is affirmed as the Unconditional, and religion is abolished through its presence.

The presence of true religion is generally hidden. It becomes manifest "now and then" in the form of the great mystical or prophetic reactions against mere religion. The degree to which a religion is open to such reactions determines its relative rank. Absolute religion is never an objective fact, but rather a momentary and vital breakthrough of the Unconditional. God himself demonstrates what absoluteness is by shattering the claim of religion to absoluteness, not through skepticism or the history of

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religion, but by revealing his unconditionality, before which all religion is nothing.

Thus here, too, the sustaining element is the Unconditional, and God's activity is the substance without which religion cannot exist. But religion can ignore this. It can consciously or unconsciously leave this substance untouched and devote attention to its own autonomous forms. Religion can become autonomous and selfsufficient, far removed from God. And it can consummate the idolatry by calling itself absolute religion.

The justifiability of the four objections religion raises against philosophy of religion has now been acknowledged. But it does not follow from this that philosophy of religion must be abolished for the sake of religion. Instead, an attempt has been made to establish a philosophy of religion upon the demands contained within these objections, i.e., a philosophy of religion that starts with the Unconditional rather than the conditioned, with God rather than religion. The fate of philosophy of religion, as well as the attitude of the life of the spirit toward religion, does not rest upon the success or failure of this present endeavor, but rather upon the success or failure of some such undertaking in general. We confront the following alternatives: either the dissolution (Aufhebung) of religion through culture, or the breakthrough of the unconditionally real as the ground or reality of the whole of culture in all its functions. The manner in which this breakthrough could be effected within the scientific realm should be indicated by the thoughts expressed in this essay. There can be no doubt for me concerning the objective (viz. breakthrough), but the form of these ideas presented here is simply an attempt and nothing more.

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4. The Dialectic of Autonomy

Everything said thus far had basically one goal. It was to prepare the way for a state of mind in which the self-certainty of the conditioned was shattered before the certainty and reality of the Unconditional. My main concern was not to solve a theoretical problem, but rather to indicate a spiritual situation towards which, I am convinced, the course of spiritual development fatefully moves. Thus it is all the more needful to render an account of the methods of thought which we have employed. Two points must be considered: a particular method and a particular philosophy of history, or a logical presupposition and a metaphysical one.

a. The method employed throughout the essay but especially in the analysis of self-certainty, may be described as a criticalintuitive method. It proceeds from the conviction that neither the critical nor the intuitive method alone is capable of solving the central problem of philosophy of religion, and hence also of philosophy of culture-namely, the question concerning the ultimate meaning and reality of every actual thing. The critical method fails because under no circumstances can it get beyond the forms of the given to the given itself. The intuitive method fails because it is so immersed in every possible given that it must completely disregard the form of givenness. The critical method cannot grasp the "whatness" of things; the intuitive method cannot grasp their "thatness." In considering the problem of reality the critical method loses the reality itself, and becomes formalism. Because of its immediate intuition of what is actual the intuitive method loses sight of the problem of reality, and becomes romantic and reactionary. But the problem of the Unconditional is to determine the point where the distinction between existence and essence is tran

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scended, and for that purpose the employment of these methods alongside each other is impossible. To approach that point it is absolutely imperative to have a method in which the other two are united, namely, a "critical-intuitive" method. When this demand has been fully realized, an adequate name for the method will also emerge. But it seems to me to consist essentially of the following elements: it finds its basis in the critical method, and starts from the functions of the spirit considered as the forms in which all things are given. It turns back upon itself, however, and sees that all these forms are empty unless they are filled with the import of something unconditionally real which cannot be grasped either by any single form or by the totality of all forms. That which gives meaning to all things is not itself a meaning, nor is it the totality or even the infinity of meaning. That which is the "real" (Reale) in all things is not itself a reality, nor is it the totality or even the infinity of the real. The perception of this, however, is no longer a matter of criticism but of intuition. Where criticism establishes its boundary concepts (which are testimony to its own limitedness), there intuition perceives the unconditionally real that constitutes the root of reality from which all criticism lives. Indeed, it intuits this root not beyond those boundaries set by criticism, but precisely in the midst of the critically defined realm. Intuition is the method appropriate to paradox, to the constant breakthrough and annulment of form for the sake of the reality within it. Neither formlessness nor domination by an alien form can be tolerated to break through the critically defined form, for that would be a renunciation of all methodical inquiry, and hence of philosophy. Rather, in full affirmation of autonomous critical form, the import of the Unconditional is to break forth and sharter form, not formlessly but paradoxically. Life within this highest of tensions is life from God. Intuition of this infinite paradox is thinking about God;

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and if it is methodically developed, it becomes philosophy of religion or theology. Of course, no one can be systematically compelled to employ this method, as in the case of the merely critical method. It is possible to live and think without discerning the roots out of which one does so. It is possible to make the Unconditional into a boundary concept, or an ideal concept, or something similar; it is possible to push it to the side and to remain within the autonomy of mere form. All this is possible, but the result is self-destructive. That leads us to the second point, concerning philosophy of history.

b. A spiritual situation may be termed "theonomous" in which all forms of the spiritual life are an expression of the unconditionally real breaking through within them. They are forms, in other words, laws, and therefore, theonomous. But they are forms whose meaning does not lie within themselves, laws which grasp that which breaks through every law, and therefore, theonomous. In certain periods, e.g., the medieval period in the West, this spiritual situation was almost actualized. As soon as a theonomous period approaches its end, it attempts to preserve those forms which were once the adequate expression of its import. These forms, however, have become empty. If they are maintained through authority, heteronomy results. Heteronomy always emerges out of a religion that has lost God and has become mere religion. But then autonomy springs up in opposition to heteronomy. It is always in reaction against that autonomy of mere religion which seeks to subject all of culture to its heteronomy. The autonomy of religion over against God produces the autonomy of culture over against religion. The close of the Middle Ages is typical of this spiritual situation. Autonomous culture is justifiably opposed to religion. Logical form has the right to oppose an erstwhile paradoxical form that has been divested of its meaning and

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now, as mere contradiction, seeks to overthrow the claims of logic. In this conflict the victory of autonomous form, whether in the logical or aesthetic, the legal or ethical sphere, has been determined from the outset. This victory signifies an insight into the objective forms of things; it signifies an exact scientific discipline, and technical-rational control of the world.

The victory is, nevertheless, a costly one. The right of auton• omy over against heteronomy becomes unjustified over against theonomy, for autonomous form is law. Things can be made technical and rational through law, but it is impossible to live under the law. When the Unconditional is grasped only as the unconditional validity of logical, ethical or aesthetic form, life is destroyed. For the Unconditional is then a judge that condemns every individual form because it fails to fulfill the law, because it fails to attain the conditionality of the Unconditional. For this reason, every period of autonomy necessarily breaks down. By means of its formal unconditionality it can rationalize and destroy everything living, but it cannot create a single content of life. It loses truth and remains in the empty form of identity; it loses personality and remains in the empty form of "thou shalt"; it loses beauty and remains in the empty form of synthesis; it loses community and remains in the empty form of equality. But every desperate struggle to fulfill these forms, in the logical as in the ethical realm, in thought as well as action, only expresses the tragedy of autonomy.

This struggle is overpowering in magnitude, and this tragedy shakes the very foundations. Out of these times of struggle great individual cultural creations have issued. Yet such periods terminate in a vacillation between pretentious rationalism and despairing skepticism in the logical sphere, and between Pharisaism and lawlessness in the ethical sphere. Autonomy breaks apart into legal

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ism and antinomianism. Life remains viable only for those who evade the great tensions of the human spirit and utilize the autonomous forms for technical and tactical purposes in science and economics, in politics and art. They already have their reward; but the reward of the spirit that perseveres is the Unconditional breaking through all forms, not as law but as grace, as fate, as an immediately given overpowering reality-as, for example, it was granted to antiquity in the dual form of Neoplatonic mysticism on the logical level and Christianity on the ethical.

The theme of cultural history is the struggle between theonomy and autonomy. Theonomy is victorious so long as it remains a living breakthrough, so long as the paradoxical is experienced as paradox. But it is the fate of theonomy ever and again to transform the living paradox into an objective contradiction. Then out of the struggle against this heteronomous end of theonomy there emerges victoriously an autonomy of form, only to come in due course to its own fate of dissolution. This philosophy of history is not to be understood in a mere seriation sense, for this conflict rages in every moment of the history of the spirit. But the victory or defeat of one or the other of these spiritual possibilities does produce a sequence or philosophy of history which applies not only to the cross-section of single historical moments or periods, but also to the longitudinal development of history.

We have observed the struggle of autonomy and theonomy within the philosophy of religion. That is the place where the conflict is most visible. In its development philosophy of religion is itself a part of this struggle. It can be philosophy only because the autonomous development has provided it with forms. But it can be philosophy of religion only when theonomy provides it with import, with rootage in the Unconditional. But that can happen only if it escapes domination by that concept which is the character

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istic symbol of an autonomous period that has turned away from God, namely, the concept of religion. That can happen only if philosophy of religion perceives that God and not religion is the beginning and end, the center of all things. It can happen only if it realizes that every religion and every philosophy of religion loses God the moment it forsakes this ground: lmpossibile est, sine deo discere deum. God is known only through God!

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INTRODUCTION §
SUBJECT MATTER AND METHOD OF PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
—§§§—

a. Religion and Philosophy of Religion

The subject matter of philosophy of religion is religion. This elementary definition, however, raises a problem at the outset. It is, generally speaking, the basic problem of . In religion, philosophy encounters something that resists becoming an object of philosophy. The stronger, purer, and more original the religion, the more emphatically it makes the claim to be exempt from all generalizing conceptual structures. Concepts such as "revelation" and "redemption" stand in clear opposition to the concept of "religion." They express an action happening only once, transcendent in origin and transforming in its effect on re-

• Translated by James Luther Adams, Konrad Raiser and Charles W. Fox.

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ality, while "religion" subordinates a whole series of spirtual acts and cultural creations under a general concept. "Revelation" spe~ks of a divine, "religion" of a human, action. "Revelation" speaks of an absolute, singular, exclusive, and self-sufficient happening; "religion" refers to merely relative occurrences, always recurring and never exclusive. "Revelation" speaks of the entrance of a new reality into life and the spirit; "religion" speaks of a given reality of life and a necessary function of the spirit. "Religion" speaks of culture, "revelation" of that which lies beyond culture. For this reason religion feels an assault is made upon its inmost essence when it is called religion. For that reason it closes its mind to philosophy of religion and opens itself at most to theology, insofar as the latter is nothing other than a "science" of revelation. Thus philosophy of religion is in a peculiar position in face of religion. It must either dissolve away the object it wishes to grasp or declare itself null and void. If it does not recognize religion's claim to revelation, then it misses its object and does not speak of genuine religion. If, on the other hand, it acknowledges the claim to revelation, then it becomes theology.

Philosophy of religion can travel neither of these paths. The first leads it astray from its goal. The second leads to the dissolution not only of philosophy of religion but also of philosophy generally. If there is one object that remains fundamentally closed to philosophy, then philosophy's claim over every object is brought into question. For then it would certainly be in no position to draw for itself the borderline between this reserved subject matter ( i.e., religion) and other fields of research. In fact, it might be possible that revelation would extend its claim to all disciplines, and that philosophy would have no weapon with which to resist this claim. If it surrenders at one point, it must surrender at every point. As a matter of fact, revelation does make this claim.

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If revelation is the breakthrough of the Unconditional into the world of the conditioned, it cannot let itself be made into something conditioned, becoming one sphere alongside others, religion alongside culture. It must rather consider the truth it proclaims as the foundation of all knowledge of truth. It must set up a theology of knowledge in place of a philosophy of religion, and it must add to this a theology of art, of law, of community, etc. It cannot admit that there is a conditioned perspective of equal value alongside its unconditioned perspective. To do that would be to annul its own unconditionality.

This antithesis between philosophy of religion and the doctrine of revelation poses the problem of philosophy of religion in its most acute form. It is not only a dialectical problem. The reality of the problem becomes evident when we consider the fact that it has led to both the most serious conflicts and the most powerful creations of culture. In its entire range the cultural history of philosophy and religion reveals phenomena in which one or the other of these forms attains almost pure realization. The early Middle Ages could serve as an example for the one approach, and the Enlightenment for the other. On the other hand, we discover attempts at mediation between or at synthesis of the two positions, as is true for the high Middle Ages from the side of the doctrine of revelation, and for idealism and romanticism from the side of philosophy. Finally, there are periods in which the two are maintained alongside each other, as in the late Middle Ages, British empiricism and theological Kantianism. But no marking off of boundaries can bring about a solution. It denies the philosophical conviction of truth as much as it denies the unconditionality of revelation to allow either of them to be forced into one sphere alongside others. Every attempt of this kind must miscarry. As a way of answering the question who should determine the limits of 29 the two disciplines, the method of demarcating boundaries fails by necessity, because both sides claim this right. And yet the opposition cannot be allowed to remain, for it leads to the shattering of the unity of consciousness and to the dissolution of religion or culture. As long as a naive faith holds one position or the other as obviously authoritative-whether it be the doctrine of revelation or philosophy-and derogates tlie other position as subsidiary, the conflict is disguised. But once the naivete is shattered-the philosophical as well as the religious-only the synthetic solution remains. Every other escape is cut off. A calculated return to naivete is a delusive step. Only the way forward remains, namely, the way toward the inner overcoming of the antithesis. The way of synthesis alone is genuine and legitimate. It is required, even if it fails again and again. But it is not necessary that it fail. For there is a point in the doctrine of revelation and philosophy at which the two are one. To find this point and from there to construct a synthetic solution is the decisive task of .

b. The Place of Philosophy of Religion in the System of Knowledge.¹

The demand must be made of every systematic presentation of an individual discipline that it define its place in the system of the sciences ( or of knowledge) as to subject matter and method. This is especially true for the normative cultural sciences ( Geisteswissenschaften ), in which subject matter and method belong more closely together, and in which they are to a much higher degree disputable, than in the purely formal and empirical sciences (Denkund Seinswissenschaften). It is true above all for philosophy of

¹ Regarding this and the following sections see my System der Wissenschaften (Giittingen, 1923), reprinted in Gesammelte Werke, Vol. I (Stuttgart, 1959).

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religion, whose initial problem is its right of individual existence among the other sciences. Incorrect determinations of the relation of philosophy of religion to the other disciplines make the solution of the basic problem of philosophy of religion impossible from the outset. Philosophy of religion is from the beginning dependent upon the systematic theory of knowledge (Wissenschaftssystematik). But the dependence is mutual. The system of the sciences is conditioned by the conception of the individual disciplines, and since science in general is brought into question by the basic problem of philosophy of religion, it is conditioned especially by philosophy of religion. The systematic theory of the sciences is in its totality dependent upon the solution of the problem of philosophy of religion. This reciprocity corresponds to the living character of knowledge. It signifies that all aspects of knowing are conditioned by the basic, systematic insight into the nature of things ( Wesensschau). This does not exclude the individual elements, however, from being considered successively in their own right, and then being incorporated into a onesided fundamental framework. Therefore, we begin with a discussion of the system of knowledge. But we are aware that this is contingent upon the solution of the basic problem of . There are three questions we wish to answer: (1) the relation of philosophy of religion to the empirical science of religion; (2) the place of philosophy of religion in the system of the normative cultural sciences, particularly its relation to philosophy in general and to theology; and (3) the relation of philosophy of religion to metaphysics.

Philosophy of religion belongs to the cultural or normative sciences. It sets forth in a creative and productive synthesis what is valid as religion. It employs for its normative construction the materials provided by the history of religions, the psychology of religion, and the sociology of religion. But it is not identical, either

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entirely or in part, with any of these empirical disciplines. Its task is not to consider what actually is (Seiendes) but rather what ought to be (Gültiges). Factual data serve as material to be used in its constructive work, but they are not the goal of its work. The methodology of the cultural sciences determines the manner in which this empirical material will function. Thus the attempt to assign to philosophy of religion, directly or indirectly, tasks that should be accomplished by history and by the psychology and sociology of culture, must be repudiated. This includes every kind of theory of types, for the concept of type represents the aim of the study of forms, especially in psychology and sociology-but it does not represent a goal of knowledge for the cultural or normative sciences.

Any presentation of the cultural sciences contains three elements: a philosophy, a cultural history, and a systematics (Systematik). In philosophy the particular sphere of meaning and its categories are articulated. In cultural history the material that the empirical sciences present is systematically understood and arranged. In systematics the concrete normative system is presented on the basis of the philosophical conception of the essence of the particular matter in hand and on the basis of the historical material understood in the light of cultural-historical construction. Every genuine cultural science consciously or unconsciously proceeds in this threefold way. It proceeds from a universal function of the. spirit and the forms through which objects are constituted therein. It then shows in a critical way the actualization of this essential function in the various directions of historical development. Finally, it gives its own systematic solution on the basis of the problems that are brought to the fore by the conceptualization of the essence of the thing and by the cultural history. This threefold relationship appears as the philosophy of art, the cultural

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history of art, and normative aesthetics; or as the philosophy of knowing (Erkennen), the cultural history of science, and a normative theory of science; or as the philosophy of law, the cultural history of law, and a normative theory of law, etc. The same threefold relationship is evident in philosophy of religion, the cultural history of religion, and the systematic theory of religion or theology.

With this in mind we can state provisionally the task of philosophy of religion and its relation to theology. Philosophy of religion is the theory of the religious function and its categories. Theology is the normative and systematic presentation of the concrete realization of the concept of "religion." The cultural history of religion acts as a bridge between philosophy of religion and theology. It grasps critically the individual realizations of the concept of religion in history and thereby leads on to a special systematic solution of its own (which can be the solution of a group, a "school," or a church). Thus philosophy of religion and theology are two elements of a single normative cultural science of religion. They belong inseparably together and are in continual interaction with each other and with the third element, the cultural history of religion. For this reason no one of the three elements should without hesitation be given special emphasis in the presentation of a normative science. The separation of philosophy of religion and theology is no better founded than the separation of philosophy of art and normative aesthetics, or of moral philosophy and normative ethics. These separations are justified only for the sake of a division of labor, but not in terms of the subject matter. And wherever these separations are made, the mutual dependence of the elements persists, even if it is not recognized. Every theology is dependent upon the presupposition of a concept of the essence of religion. Every philosophy of religion is depen

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dent upon a concept of the norm of religion. And both are dependent upon comprehension of the cultural-historical material. On this basis we shall consider in detail proper, that is, the theory of the essence and categories of the religious sphere. On the other hand, we shall consider the cultural history of religion briefly to indicate its main tendencies, and theology solely in connection with the general definition of the concept of the norm of religion. Philosophy of religion would remain abstract and indistinct if cultural history and theology were not also taken into account. On the other hand, a complete presentation of both the other elements would lead out of the particular frame of reference of philosophy of religion and into a system of the normative science of religion in general. Such a procedure would in fact be the scientific ideal.

The definitions given above for the relationship of philosophy of religion and theology have passed over the basic problem of philosophy of religion. They have treated religion as one function alongside others, and theology as one discipline alongside others. It is now necessary to discuss the relation of religion to the other spheres of meaning and accordingly to examine the relation of the normative science of religion to the other cultural sciences. This is possible, however, only through the definition of the essence of religion, that is, by anticipating what is to be set forth in what follows. Only this much can be said: The "alongsidedness" must not be permitted to stand; that is, religion and theology must not remain alongside the other functions and sciences. The synthesis under discussion in the first section of this essay can be attained only if the normative science of religion is in some sense a normative cultural science in general, and only if religion is presented not as one function alongside others but as an attitude in all the other functions. The concept of religion must itself show in what sense that is the case.

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The task now still remains to clarify the relation of philosophy of religion to metaphysics. All controversies about metaphysics are fruitless insofar as one does not recognize that it is not a science but an independent function of the mind, and that it is accordingly not a problem within the sciences as to how they are related to each other, but a problem of the philosophy of spirit as such (Geistesphilosophie uberhaupt). All the errors of metaphysics spring from the attempt to make it a science alongside or above the other sciences. It is insight into the independence of the metaphysical attitude which alone makes possible a conception that gives a rightful place to both science and metaphysics. To be sure, even at this point the difficulty arises that a complete clarification of the essence of metaphysics is not possible without philosophy of religion. For metaphysics is necessarily and at all times a religious attitude. It is directedness toward the Unconditional (Richtung auf das Unbedingte) in the theoretical sphere of the functions of the spirit. Only so long as it is thus conceived, that is, only so long as it is religious, does it have independent existence. And only thus is it kept from falling into the status of a sham science. It follows from this that a philosophy of metaphysics, that is, a theory of the essence and categories of the metaphysical function, is impossible without a philosophy of religion. In order that philosophy of religion may be free from metaphysical taints, the following definition of the relation between science and metaphysics may be given. Metaphysics, together with the scientific and the aesthetic functions, forms the group of theoretical and world-embracing functions of meaning. To be sure, metaphysics stands over against both of these insofar as it unites in itself a scientific and an aesthetic element, and is not like them directed to conditioned forms but toward the Unconditional itself. But since human consciousness has no other forms than those which are conditioned, it must use these in order to express the Unconditional in them. This means

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that it must use scientific concepts symbolically and not literally. Science provides the symbols for metaphysics, but these symbols are selected not in terms of their validity (Geltungswert), that is, not scientifically, but for their expressive values (Ausdruckswert), that is, aesthetically. Conversely, in every act of apprehending the conditioned forms the ultimate attitude or relation to the Unconditional is a decisive element, whether it involve aesthetic style or scientific method. The metaphysical attitude ( not the system of metaphysical symbols) is determinative for both. Metaphysics functions not as a science, but as a spiritual attitude influencing science. This is the interdependence that at the same time permits a complete mutual freedom and makes it possible for philosophy of religion to begin its work without reference to a metaphysical symbolism.

From this special relationship between science and metaphysics is to be distinguished the general relationship that obtains between science and every function of meaning, insofar as science wishes to grasp the latter scientifically. Here the way in which knowledge functions in relation to metaphysics is in no way different from its functioning in relation to art, law, science, ethos, etc. In relation to the functions of meaning, the knowing process is always receptive as well as productive. It is determined by the independent, creative process of every sphere of meaning. It is, however, at the same time determinative for that process. The act of knowing in the cultural sciences stands over against its object not merely objectively, but in the process of knowing the object it is itself affected. The act of knowing in the cultural sciences is a systematic bringing to consciousness of the creative spiritual process, and as such is simultaneously determinative for the process itself. Thus the theory of science or knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) affects the scientific process, the theory of art affects the creation of art, the theory of law affects the legislative process, and in the same way

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the theory of metaphysics affects the metaphysical stance. But just as the theory of art does not produce the art process, but merely co-determines it, so the theory of metaphysics does not produce metaphysics, but it affects its conscious formation.

Thus the question of the relation between philosophy of religion and metaphysics gains decisive importance through the question concerning the relation between religion and metaphysics. But the answer to this question belongs in philosophy of religion itself, and cannot be settled as a preliminary question.

c. The Method of Philosophy of Religion

(i) Methods Alien to Philosophy of Religion

The method of philosophy of religion is identical with the method of normative Geisteswissenschaft in general. But since no agreement obtains concerning this method, and since as a consequence of the individual, creative character of the cultural sciences such agreement can obtain only in a very limited way, it is necessary that every cultural-scientific investigation make clear its methodological principles. This is especially true for philosophy of religion, for alongside the general methodological problems of cultural science special problems must be taken into account which proceed from the individual character of its subject matter. All methods in philosophy of religion which come to it from the science of religion or from theology and metaphysics, are heterogeneous. The empirical, the supernatural, and the speculative methods are of this character.

The method of the empirical sciences is heterogeneous to that of philosophy of religion. The latter does not make religion an object of psychological, sociological, and historical consideration. It is based neither on psychology of religion nor on sociology of

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religion, nor on history of religion. It proceeds from the knowledge that a concept of essence in the realm of spirit is to be grasped neither through abstraction from individual phenomena nor through the consideration of its origin and formation in a particular object in society or in the whole of history.

Abstraction presupposes an awareness of that which is to be acquired through abstraction. For without such an awareness the range of phenomena on the basis of which abstraction is to take place would be vague and arbitrary. In order to decide whether Buddhism or the like comes into consideration for the definition of the essence of religion one must previously decide what is meant by religion. Accordingly, that decision can not be made by abstraction from these phenomena. The same holds also for the psychological, sociological, and evolutionary explanations of religion. Either they must presuppose in advance what religion is, and they can then indicate the forms in which religion appears in individual and social life; but they cannot in this way determine the essence of religion in itself. Or if they want to determine the essence of religion itself by such explanations, they must assume that religion does not have one single essence, but is a collection of extra-religious elements. This means that the genetic method presupposes a negative a priori concept of essence if it wishes to be philosophy of religion, while the method of abstraction presupposes a positive a priori concept. But whether an essence of religion be recognized or not, whether the a priori be positive or negative, it is not in any case acquired from experience but is brought to experience, and is determinative for the direction of the whole process.

The method of psychological understanding (verstehende Psychologie) tries to do justice to this state of affairs. According to this method, the religious life is to be understood on the basis of one's

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own religious experience, and this individual experience in turn may be clarified and purified through the understanding of the religious lives of others. In this psychological "circle," in this "to and fro" of one's own experience and understanding the experience of others, knowledge of the essence of religion is to develop. The introduction of this circular principle as a methodological axiom no doubt has put an end to the self-deception~ of the empirical methods that claim to be objective. But the fundamental defect of empirical method in general is not overcome by the circular principle. Religious experience, on the basis of which the religious life should be understood, is itself an indefinite and, from the point of view of method, accidental datum. Moreover, one cannot see why religious experience is supposed to acquire objective validity by understanding the religious experience of others and by being shaped by it, for this is likewise accidental and undefined. The reciprocal action of two or even of many actualities cannot itself produce anything valid. The psychological method of the "psychological circle" only has claim if it presupposes that a valid, transcendent form is involved in one's own experience and in empathy with the experience of others. But it then ceases to be the psychological method, and becomes the critical and phenomenological method.

Back of the method of the psychological circle stands historically and logically the theological method. This is the attempt to derive the concept of religion from one's own revealed, and therefore true, religion. The difference is only that the psychological method has given up the supernatural presupposition of the miraculous character of one's own experience, and therefore can freely acknowledge the other religions. The point of departure, however, remains the same, that is, one's own religion. The specifically theological method proceeds from a concept of the norm of religion, and derives from it the concept of the essence of religion. It

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is empirical, even though it limits its empiricism to one supernaturally designated place. It depends on the opposition of true and false religion, but it is not consistent in doing so. If it were, it would not permit a concept of the essence of religion to be sought at all. It would have to repudiate the concept of religion as an attempt to place the true and the false on the same level. It would not be at liberty to make the claim to be philosophy of religion, and would have to remain theology, a normative theory of religion.

In contrast to the empirical methods stands the speculative method. While the former methods attempt to proceed from the religious function and to deduce the essence of religion from the religious act, the speculative method tries to determine the essence of religion from the object toward which the act itself is directed. The way to the knowledge of the essence of religion is accordingly thought to be identical with the way of knowing the religious object, that is, with metaphysics. If the religious object is determined metaphysically, then religion is defined as the sum total of the theoretical and practical acts directed toward the object. But this method also contains an inner contradiction. It assumes that the religious object can be grasped apart from religious acts. It assumes that the Unconditional is an object of rational knowledge, that metaphysics is a science. But this supposition is false. The Unconditional is not given otherwise than in religious acts, and metaphysics is the religious act in which the Unconditional is grasped in theoretical and rational symbols. It is for that reason impossible to grasp the religious object apart from the religious act. This is the core of all criticism of the speculative method.

Consideration of the methods mentioned so far has led to negative results. They do not attain the vantage of the cultural sciences. And yet they are not of merely negative value. They set up

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demands for the completely satisfactory method. The method of the history of religion demands from the concept of the essence of religion that it make intelligible every possible religious phenomenon. The method of psychological understanding (verstehende Psychologie) recognizes that spiritual realities must be immediately given to the subject. The theological method demands an unequivocally valid concept of the nature of religion which is independent of subjective psychological contingency. Finally, the speculative method demands that the religious object as well as the religious act be taken into account in the concept of the essence of religion. These demands must be fulfilled by the method proper to .

(ii) Methods Proper to the Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy is the science of the functions of meaning and their categories. It is the first, basic element of every normative cultural science. Upon it the cultural history and also the systematic theory of norms are constructed. Thus philosophy of religion is the science of the religious function of meaning and its categories. A function of meaning is comprehended when one shows the necessary place it occupies in the structure of meaning-reality (Sinnwirklichkeit). Consequently, a dual demand is placed upon philosophical method. It must abstract the formative principles from the reality that is informed by meaning. And it must bring the principles of meaning into a unified and necessary relationship. Insofar as philosophy abstracts the principles of meaning from the meaning-reality, it is critical. Insofar as it systematically relates the principles of meaning to each other, it is dialectical. Both methods, however, are one: the critical method is always dialectical as well. For there is no possibility of articulating the principles of meaning from the meaning-reality other than by demonstrating

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their necessity for the construction of a unified order of being ( Seinswelt); and the dialectical method is necessarily also critical, for a necessary interconnection of meaning (Sinnzusammenhang) appears only in a system of the principles of meaning and not in the meaning-reality itself. Where the critical method neglects the dialectical element, it will not be free from empirically accidental concepts in the delineation of the functions and the categories ( as, for example, in Kant). Where the dialectical method forgets the critical element, it becomes an inadmissible metaphysic of being and history (as, for example, in Hegel).

The critical-dialectical method presupposes the autonomy of the spiritual over against every immediately given existing thing (unmittelbar Seiendes). But it does not need on that account to advocate an epistemological idealism. It need not assume that spirit gives laws to nature. Nevertheless, it cannot hold an epistemological realism to be true. It cannot assume that nature gives laws to the spirit. It must assume that the principles of meaning to which consciousness submits itself in the spiritual act are at the same time the principles of meaning to which being is subjected. It must assume that the meaning of being comes to expression in the consciousness informed by meaning. If it hopes in this matter to avoid the difficulties of an exclusive idealism as well as of a doctrine of pre-established harmony, then it is best to speak of the spiritual process fulfilling being through meaning (Sinnerfullung des Seins). On this premise, which is ultimately nothing other than a self-apprehension of the spirit as spirit and not as being, the critical-dialectical method develops the universal forms of meaning, which are at the same time functions of the spirit and principles of the meaning-reality.

Although critical-dialectical activity is the basic element of every cultural-scientific and philosophical method, it is nevertheless

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not its only element. The critical method, especially in the development it has undergone in Kant and in the Neo-Kantian school, investigates the preconditions of a unified structure in the meaningreality. It is directed toward the interconnection of the forms of meaning. It separates the principles of meaning from all the contents of the meaning-reality, and subordinates them to the fundamental logical principle of unity. By this means, however, it involves only the one element inherent in all consciousness of meaning, namely, the form of meaning, while it misses the import or substance of meaning. The import of meaning is the ground of reality presupposed in all forms of meaning, upon whose constant presence the ultimate meaningfulness, the significance, and the essentiality (Wesenhaftigkeit) of every act of meaning rest. The unity of forms, like every individual form, is utterly empty without the relation to the import of meaning. Now the critical method, insofar as it presents the unity of the forms of meaning, may abstract from this import; it can trace out the purely logicaldialectical relations of the separate principles, and it then finds itself in possession of a system of forms-which, to be sure, are absolutely empty. The reproach of emptiness or formalism against a system of scientific concepts would be completely unjustified if these concepts were appropriate to the objects they are supposed to grasp. This, however, is not the case. In the pure critical method all the principles of meaning appear in logistic abridgement. They are seen only so far as they have a purely logically apprehensible dimension related to a formal unity. The dimension related to import and the metalogical forms resulting from the dialectic of form and import are not grasped by this means.

This holds for all theoretical and practical functions. But it holds basically for philosophy of religion. Wherever the critical philosophy of religion is carried through without metaphysical

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admixtures, it arrives at the conception of religion as orientation to the unity of the forms of meaning, to the absolute synthesis of the functions. There are all kinds of attempts to merge religion with one of the other functions or to make it a special function beside the others. But these attempts fail by reason of the impossibility of establishing a dialectical basis for such a function in the system of the forms of meaning. No place is found for this function; and thus it is identified with the unity of forms. This is undoubtedly justified in the critical system, and it is also grounded in the subject matter itself. But it is not satisfactory. At this point the basic problem of philosophy of religion becomes immediately significant for the delineation of the method itself. Religion objects to being turned into a synthesis of the spiritual functions. It gives expression to this by refusing to admit a parity between the divine and the human, the holy and the natural spirit. It points to the radical difference between the Holy and every cultural phenomenon. If this sheer opposition is taken over into , it can lead to a complete repudiation of the critical method. This would undoubtedly be justified if the critical element had to be the only element of the philosophical method. As a matter of fact, a method that cannot grasp concepts such as grace, revelation and the demonic, which break through all forms, is absolutely inadequate for religion. The critical element, however, must not remain the only element.

The most vigorous criticism of the critical method today comes from phenomenology. This is the attempt to construct a system of essences through the recovery of logical realism-a system that is brought to consciousness by an immediate intuition of essences (Wesensschau). Every essence is a priori. Empiricism furnishes only the material of intuition in which the essence is perceived. However, the essence itself is not empirical. The rational, formal

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character of the critical a priori is thereby overcome. The phenomenological a priori is the vivid, intuited essence itself. The distinction between the formal principles of meaning and the contents that are determined empirically is done away with so far as the sphere of essences is concerned. As a result, the intuition of essences extends uniformly to all objects, spiritual and sentient. In place of distinguishing between being and spirit, phenomenology distinguishes between essence and existence. Essence is the fullness or completeness in which existing things more or less participate. It is the eternal truth of existing things. The intuition of essence can be occasioned by any object, real or imaginary. It is true when it penetrates to the essence. According to the phenomenological method, a philosophy of religion would therefore be able to intuit the essence and the peculiar qualities of religion in any example of it. It would be independent of the empirical and yet would have an a priori rich in content and not merely formal. It is consequently supposed to have no difficulty in recognizing the uniqueness of religion over against all other spiritual essences, for it has no other task than to intuit essences. Existential problems emerge beyond its borders. If one had to choose between the critical and the phenomenological method, phenomenology without any doubt would be preferable for philosophy of religion. It is able to approach the real object of inquiry more closely and vitally than is possible for either criticism or dialectic. It lives in the very thing itself, not in its rational-abstract aspect.

Weighty objections, however, in both methodology and principle, qualify this merit of phenomenology. These objections are based on the relationship that obtains between essence and existence. For phenomenological realism, existence originates only in an accidental and ultimately indifferent coming together of distinct essential attributes in one individual. The individual has no advan

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tage beyond sheer existence, over the essential attributes in which it participates. The inner infinity and eternal significance of the individual are blotted out. This consequence is especially disastrous for history. For phenomenology has no organ for apprehending the uniquely creative character of the historical event. Thus, as for example in philosophy of religion, it would have to establish an "essence" of religion that transcends all empirical religion and yet that possesses content. This essence either bears the features of one particular religion, as is evident in the actual application of the method, or it constructs a new, ideal religion. In the first case a methodologically inadmissible traditionalism emerges which comes very near to the supernatural method. In the second case a constructive rationalism could be avoided only if a prophetically religious view rather than a methodological science were involved. It will not do, however, to equate the concept of essence and the concept of norm. Only if the concept of essence retains a formal character does it leave room for a material fulfillment through history and for a concept of norm which is consciously created from history and which justifiably displays the features of a historical sequence of tradition.

Phenomenology faces this alternative: Either it can interpret the individual historical reality as an insignificant manifestation of essence, in order to be able to undertake the intuiting of essence in any and every religious phenomenon; or it can offer a proof (a procedure that could not be phenomenological) as to why just one particular phenomenon is employed as the material for the intuition of essence. Phenomenology is right in cases where the essence is related to the phenomenon as the mathematical triangle is to an actual one, that is, where the phenomenon is nothing more than concrete illustration. This means, however, that with respect to history phenomenology is wrong.

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Criticism of the phenomenological method on the basis of the individual-creative character of historical phenomena forces us to define our position over against the method that affirms the individual by rejecting the universal. We refer to the version of nominalism which today has become significant in the form of pragmatism and the "Philosophy of 'As If.' " It regards concepts as subjective constructions, as words or fictions, which have meaning for life but no reality in the sense of objective truth. Their meaning for life consists in the fact that they facilitate the control exercised by an organism or a species of being, especially of mankind, over the environment and the inner world, thus strengthening the power of life in the subject that devises the concepts. To understand a reality like religion means therefore to indicate the life-enhancing significance of the religious fiction, to point out the place in the life-process at which this fiction necessarily arises. The pragmatic method takes the individual-creative character of the living reality into fullest account. It is in the sharpest opposition to every rational, intuitive, or supernatural fixation of spiritual essences. But it is subject to the fundamental objection that it is by nature lifedestroying, and can therefore be tolerated only by a spiritual attitude for which theory remains theory and does not become living conviction. Moreover, it contains in itself the ineradicable antithesis that at the moment when by its victory it destroys life, the only criterion for the truth of a fiction which it accepts, namely, its lifestrengthening power, turns against itself. For that reason the pragmatic method must be rejected for philosophy of religion.

The critical, phenomenological and pragmatic methods are determined on the one hand by logical considerations. On the other they are, like every basic methodological attitude, the expression of a general spiritual situation (Geisteslage). A discussion of these methods must not fail to show this ultimate metaphysical back

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ground by means of which alone their spiritual import can really be understood. The phenomenological method is the expression of an attitude that turns away from the world of appearance to the inner essence of things. This inversion of the natural view of the world, this inner intuition of essences, contains a mystical and ascetic element and is the expression of a static metaphysics and of the desire to achieve union with the eternally abiding reality through an act of knowledge. The equating of the concept of essence with the concept of norm presupposes a spiritual situation in which a self-sufficient world view shut off from criticism is dominant, and for that reason the given spiritual forms of life can become immediate examples of eternal essences. In the field of epistemology the phenomenological method is the authentic expression for such a spiritual situation. As soon, however, as the unity and the immediate certainty of the traditional meaning-reality is broken by the fateful course of history, and as soon as concern for changing appearances has replaced preoccupation with eternal essences, then phenomenology loses its deepest meaning. It cannot do justice to the problem of existence, and retains only the significance of a standing protest against the exclusively critical and formal attitude.

In full opposition to phenomenology the pragmatic method in general refuses to recognize anything static in things or anything connected with the idea of essence. It considers a concept to be an act of object-manipulation which can be changed at every instant and which is a transitional moment in the dynamics of power relations; and this concept is the only thing that can be affirmed as an "essence" of the world. Standing behind this method is the spirit of an active technological, world-transforming attitude, oriented to Becoming. It presupposes the dissolution of all comprehensive spiritual unities. It knows only the concept of norm

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and not the concept of essence. As a consequence of this, the concept of norm changes together with the subject that posits the norm, without claiming to have anything to do with essence. The pragmatic method is the epistemologically formulated renunciation of knowledge. The significance that it nevertheless has for knowing is its insight into the individual-creative character of all normative concepts in the realm of spirit, and its awareness of the dynamic, creative character of existence, a creativity that transforms even essences.

Between the phenomenological and the pragmatic spiritual situation stands the situation determined by the critical-dialectical attitude. It no longer possesses the unity inherent in an immediately given order of convictions. But it is not ready to throw itself unreservedly into the stream of dynamic subjectivism. It believes in a transcending spirit, in validity of meaning, but it cannot intuit and grasp it in terms of its content, and therefore constructs it critically out of the form. But the form is empty, and where it dominates it empties the living content and replaces it with a rational scheme the filling out of which is supposed to be provided by an endlessly advancing empiricism. This method is the expression of a critical detachment from an immediately given, unified and selfsufficient order of convictions. It is the attitude of protest not for the sake of caprice but for the sake ot the pure form. It is a heroic attitude that would rather dwell in the emptiness of pure form than in the mystical fullness of static essences that no longer carry with them the power of conviction, or in the biological fullness of dynamic laws of nature which are bound to no form. It is a turning back to existence, to the empirical order and history, but not a direct return; it is rather a return that has been conditioned by rational form. Heroism and criticism, however, are only forms of transition or change and not forms of life. They live either from

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the old contents that they dissolve through criticism or from the new ideal that they construct through reason. But they do not live from a power of their own. And for that reason the critical method, just as surely as it gives expression to the unique fate of the Western world, is a transitional method. The continuation and transformation of this method is the cultural-historical demand of our day. If this demand is not met, then the cleavage of our spiritual life into a romantically conceived mysticism of essence and an arbitrary dynamism that goes beyond the very realm of spirit is unavoidable. The fate of the cultural sciences -and the possibility of a solution of the basic problems of philosophy of religion depend upon the extension of the critical method in response to the demands of phenomenology and pragmatism. For whereas pure pragmatism leads out of the sphere of science or knowledge altogether, pure phenomenology is an explication of the concept of the religious norm, and thus it is theology and not philosophy of religion; and pure criticism is a philosophy that does not perceive the negative character of the religious sphere in face of philosophy of religion, and for this reason dissolves away religion, the very thing it seeks to understand.

(iii) The Metalogical Method

When the critical method is modified in terms of the intuitional and the dynamic methods we call it metalogical. It is logical in the sense that the orientation to pure rational forms, involved in the critical method, is retained. It is metalogical because it goes beyond pure formalism in a double sense, on the one hand in that it apprehends the import inhering in the forms, on the other in that it sets up norms in an individual-creative way. The metalogical method is based on the critico-dialectical method. Like the latter, it abstracts the functions and categories of meaning from the

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meaning-reality, and brings them as the conditioning factors of a meaningful construction of reality into a necessary dialectical connection. A function and a category are recognized in terms of both their essence and their necessity when their place in the construction of the meaning-reality is discovered.

The critical element, however, is not the only element of the metalogical method. That aspect of functions and categories which is related to import should also be taken into account. The living dialectic of the elements of meaning (i.e., of form and import) which penetrates the whole of reality, should be gr:asped. Metalogical intuition of essences is not directed toward particular things and qualities: it does not remain attached to the individual form, but rather it perceives the tensions and polarities that seem to it to constitute the really essential element in the essence. The intuition (Schau) of the inner dynamic in the structure of the meaning-reality is the goal of metalogic. In this process, it draws a sharp line between the forms of meaning and the objects of meaning. It is directed only toward the forms of meaning, the functions and categories through which the objects or realizations of meaning are constituted, but which are not themselves objects. On the other hand, it leaves the objects of meaning, the living wholes (Gestalten) of nature and history, to empirical investigations supported by the categorial intuition of essences. Just because it knows of the infinite tension between form and import it cannot even consider trying to apprehend the objects of meaning metalogically in the manner of the Hegelian dialectic or of Schelling's system of nature. The awareness of the infinity of everything real makes such an intention impossible.

Contrasted with phenomenology, the peculiarity of metalogic can therefore be defined in two ways. On the one hand metalogic does not remain attached to particular forms, but rather reaches

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back critically and intuitively to the principles of meaning which are condicioned by both form and import, upon the apprehension of which all particular intuitions of essence depend. On the other hand, it cedes the apprehension of particulars to empiricism-of course not to every kind of empiricism, but rather to an empiricism guided and supported by the categorial apprehension of essences. It therefore parcels out the phenomenological realm of essences, on the one hand to the dynamic dialectic of the elements of meaning, and on the other to objective experience. It thus achieves on the one hand a basis for criticism (which is lacking in phenomenology) without becoming formalistic, and on the other it raises empiricism to the height of a living intuition of essences, without thereby having to posit, like phenomenology, a second mystical empiricism beside the objective one.

Nevertheless, the way of metalogic is not without some relation to mysticism, namely, to its intuitive element. The basic insight of all mysticism, that the principles of the macrocosm are given in the microcosm, finds its epistemological expression in the theory of the spirit fulfilling being through meaning. This signifies, however, that the elements of every meaning, form and import, are the essential elements of everything as such. The apprehension of the import of meaning has used symbols, especially in Occidental mysticism, which are derived from psychological language: the ground of the soul, the unconscious, the will, and the like. The lastnamed concept has gained great significance through the voluntaristic metaphysics of Boehme, Baader, Schelling, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and others. In this process the symbolic character of the concept of the will has often been misunderstood and the great mystical epistemological conception of it thus has been forced down to the level of a rational, and hence impossible, biological or psychological metaphysics. It has not been recognized that the

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breakthrough to a new, indeed to the metalogical-dynamic method, to a new fundamental attitude of mind, is at stake here. For the carrying out of metalogic it follows from this, its prehistory, that it of course can express the dynamic of the elements of meaning in symbols that stem from the emotional side of consciousness. But it follows at the same time that the goal of this symbolism is the intuition of the forms of meaning filled with a living import, not the intuition of any sort of independent metaphysical essences. For the elements of meaning belong together; there is no import apart from a form, and no form without import. This antithesis of form and import obtains only for that intuiting of essences which perceives life and the relations of the forms of meaning through the manner in which they give expression to the import.

The inner dynamic of the forms of meaning, of the functions and categories, leads beyond philosophical considerations to cultural history, and then to the establishment of norms. The inner polarity of all forms of meaning makes possible a constructive understanding of the fulfillments of meaning realized in cultural history, and pushes on to the idea of a resolution of tension, not in an abstract manner, but in a creative solution of the problems brought to the fore by the spiritual process (Geistesprozess). The individual-creative element stemming from the pragmatic method finds its place here. It is the differentiation, made possible by the metalogical method between the concept of essence and the concept of norm, which provides it with access to this element, in contrast to the critical method. For in consequence of the lack of dynamic tension in pure criticism, it provides no methodological basis for a concrete concept of norm. On the contrary, formal criticism reduces the whole of reality to pure form and thus deprives the concrete forms of their significance.

A difficulty that obtains for the critical and the metalogical

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method alike has to do with nomenclature. The problem is how one can justify introducing a concept of essence ( which has been developed only by means of the critical or the metalogical method) as the essence of particular phenomena that carry an already fixed name. How, for instance, can one methodologically justify giving the name "religion" [from ordinary usage] to a function of meaning independently established by the metalogical method? By force of the name given to it a function of meaning is presented as the essence of phenomena that through ordinary usage have been brought into a conceptual association. By means of the name given to them the concept of essence (which has been deduced through the critical method) and the universal concept in current usage are brought into connection with each other. The question now is, how is this relationship to be understood? For phenomenology, language provides access to the intuition of essences. To intuit the intention contained in a word is a basic demand of phenomenology. It is presupposed that the collectivity creating the language stands in intuitive unity with the essences, and that language therefore is an immediate revelation of essence. Metalogic can share this presupposition within certain limits. It can appreciate the claim that the creative spirit reveals itself in language. But by reason of its theory of individual creativity metalogic cannot admit that the "intentions" of language reveal essences as such. It can therefore concern itself with language in such a way that it not only understands the "intention" of the language but also alters it in the process. Metalogic stands in the living stream of meaning-realities, a stream that also includes the holy or religiously qualified realities. Only on the basis of the meaning-reality can metalogic accomplish its critical analysis; but it does not bind itself to fixed creations of this stream, not even to language. Rather, through a productive criticism of word and reality, it shapes new forms out of the stream.

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Finally, we should observe that the relation between philosophy of religion and the empirical science of religion is also defined by the preceding considerations. After all that has been said, it should be clear that philosophy of religion cannot derive the concept of the essence of religion from the science of religion, but rather that such a concept is presupposed in all religious-scientific work. Hence, the relation has not been adequately described in these definitions. In a double direction the relations between empirical science and normative science go beyond these definitions. The empirical scientific clarification of actual conditions can certainly not be of any methodological significance for the criticalmetalogical abstraction of the principles of meaning, and yet in actuality it is of great importance for it. On this account it has frequently become customary to place an empirical theory of the phenomena of religion ahead of the properly philosophical discussions. Against this procedure the following considerations must be taken into account. In every empirical science the empirical apprehension of religion is in ceaseless flux, and it is an almost impossible undertaking to develop from the provisional results of these empirical studies a systematic theory of the phenomena. At all events, it is impossible to base a philosophy of religion on such an omnium gatherum; on the contrary, this theory of the phenomena presupposes already a concealed or an openly operative concept of the essence of religion. And its development is neither methodologically nor even actually dependent upon the empirical science of religion. Empiricism can give much clarification, and thus it is possible that the religious principle of meaning can be derived from the immediately given, though not yet empirically analyzed, meaning-reality. Actually, the influence of the empirical science of religion is more direct upon the cultural history of religion than upon philosophy of religion. Although this is true, yet even in cultural history the empirical-historical problem as

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such is not touched: indeed, nonexistent "data" could also be taken up into the theory of the historical development of the concept of essence. In fact, however, history presents the great directions in which spiritual acts have actually developed; artificial constructions of these directions have no power to convince. Therefore empiricism provides the material for cultural history and prepares the ground upon which the creative concept of norm can be reared. Even here, however, the concept of essence whose comprehension is the first and basic task of philosophy of religion and the normative science of religion, is decisive.

PART ONE § THE ESSENCE OF RELIGION
—§§§—

1. The Derivation of the Concept of the Essence of Religion

a. The Elements of Meaning and Their Relations

Every spiritual act is an act of meaning; regardless of whether the realistic theory of knowledge speaks of a meaning-receiving act or the idealistic theory of knowledge speaks of a meaningbestowing act, or the metalogical method speaks of a meaningfulfilling act; regardless therefore of how the relation between subject and object are thought of in the spiritual act, spirit is always [the medium for] the actualization of meaning (Sinnvollzug), and the thing intended by the spirit is a systematic interconnection of meaning. Meaning is the common characteristic and the ultimate

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unity of the theoretical and the practical sphere of spirit, of scientific and aesthetic, of legal and social structures. The spiritual reality in which the spirit-bearing form (Gestalt) lives and creates, is a meaning-reality. Hence, the theory of the structure of meaningreality, i.e., philosophy, is the theory of the principles of meaning, and its first task is an analysis of meaning itself, a theory of the elements of meaning. Now it is of course a paradoxical enterprise to try to understand the meaning of meaning; one cannot trace back the concept of meaning to a higher concept, since every higher concept would itself be again a manifestation of meaning, but one can only try to develop metalogically the elements contained in, subordinate to, and ever present in every actualization of meaning. There are three elements in a~y awareness of meaning. First, an awareness of the interconnection of meaning in which every separate meaning stands and without which it would be meaningless. Second, an awareness of the ultimate meaningfulness of the interconnection of meaning and, through that, of every particular meaning, i.e., the consciousness of an unconditioned meaning which is present in every particular meaning. Third, an awareness of the demand under which every particular meaning stands, the demand to fulfill the unconditioned meaning. The first element of meaning therefore is the awareness given in every act of meaning, an awareness of the universal interconnection of meaning, an awareness of the totality, an awareness of the "world." In all awareness of meaning a world-awareness is contained. But worldawareness is itself not the ultimate. Even the totality of meaning need not be meaningful, but rather could disappear, like every particular meaning, in the abyss (Abgrund) of meaninglessness, if the presupposition of an unconditioned meaningfulness were not alive in every act of meaning. This unconditionality of meaning

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is itself, however, not a meaning, but rather is the ground of meaning. If we include in the term "forms of meaning" all particularities of individual meaning and of all separate connections of meaning and even the universal connection of meaning, then in relation to the universal connection the unconditioned meaning may be designated as the import of meaning. By the import of meaning we therefore do not mean the import attaching to the significance of a particular consummation of meaning, but rather the meaningfulness that gives to every particular meaning its reality, significance, and essentiality. In this context the individual import is identical with the form of meaning. Later on we shall be concerned particularly with the question of forms, and then the distinction between individual form and individual import, or better, "content" (lnhalt), will become important.

The import of meaning has for the form of meaning on the one hand the significance of the ground of meaningfulness; on the other hand it functions over against the form as the demand for an unconditioned fulfillment in meaning, a demand with which only the complete or perfect connection of all meaning could complythe unconditioned form. However, the unconditioned form of meaning is an idea contradictory to the relation of form and import. The meaningfulness of all meaning is the ground, but it is also the abyss of every meaning, even of an unconditioned form of meaning. The idea that in an unconditioned form of meaning all ground of meaning exhausts itself would abolish the inner infinity of meaning; it would not be able to get rid of the possibility that all meaning might sink into meaninglessness. The unconditioned meaningfulness of all meaning depends upon the awareness of the inexhaustibility of meaning in the ground of meaning. A complete unity, however, would be an exhaustion of the inner infinity of meaning. Nevertheless, the demand for this unity is present in

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every act of meaning; for only through the perfected unity of all meaning can meaning come to unconditioned realization, i.e., to form.

b. The General Definition of the Essence of Religion

In this view of the elements of meaning the fundamental principles of and of culture are given. They may be demonstrated in every particular sphere of meaning, in the theoretical as well as in the practical functions. However, one may also immediately recognize the way of grasping the elements which is at the basis of the religious and the cultural attitudes. If consciousness is directed toward the particular forms of meaning and their unity, we have to do with culture; if it is directed toward the unconditioned meaning, toward the import of meaning, we have religion. Religion is directedness toward the Unconditional, and culture is directedness toward the conditioned forms and their unity. These are the most general and formal definitions arrived at in philosophy of religion and philosophy of culture. But these definitions are inadequate. Form and import belong together; it is meaningless to posit the one without the other. Every cultural act contains the unconditioned meaning; it is based upon the ground of meaning; insofar as it is an act of meaning it is substantially religious. This becomes evident in the fact that it is directed toward the unity of form, that it must be subordinated to the unconditioned demand for unity of meaning. But it is not religious by intention. It is not toward the Unconditional as such that it is directed; and when it turns toward the unity of meaning it certainly does not do so with the consciousness that the unconditioned meaning surpasses even the totality of meaning, i.e., it does not do so with a consciously religious attitude. Culture as culture is therefore substantially, but not intentionally, religious. Con

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versely, the religious act cannot direct itself toward the unconditioned meaning except through the unity of the forms of meaning. For import without form cannot be the object of an act of meaning. From the point of view of its form every religious act is therefore a cultural act; it is directed toward the totality of meaning. But it is not by intention cultural; for it does not have in mind the totality of meaning, but rather the import of meaning, the unconditioned meaning. In the cultural act, therefore, the religious is substantial; in the religious act the cultural is formal. Culture is the sum total of all spiritual acts directed toward the fulfillment of particular forms of meaning and their unity. Religion is the sum total of all spiritual acts directed toward grasping the unconditioned import of meaning through the fulfillment of the unity of meaning. It is, therefore, characteristic of religion that the forms of meaning are for it something to be passed through, and this in the twofold sense of having both to penetrate and to leave behind at the same time. Culture, on the other hand, stops short in the particular units of meaning, and ultimately does not go beyond the unity of meaning in general.

The field in which culture and religion meet is the common directedness toward the unity of meaning. This is the critical point for philosophy of religion, the point where it is decided whether philosophy of religion penetrates through to religion at all, or whether it is content with equating a synthetic unification (Abschluss) of culture-consciousness with religion. The critical-dialectical method is especially endangered in this way. This danger appears in the fact that the more this method stresses the dialectical element, the more emphatically it is subject to the unconditioned demand and therefore pushes the dialectical process beyond every definite form. But it does not see that this whole process, like every particular form of meaning, stands under the No of the un

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conditioned meaning, and can only through this No receive at the same time a Yes of meaningfulness. For only that which is the abyss of meaning can at the same time be the ground of it. Everything else stands before the abyss of meaninglessness. Here we find the common defect of numerous forms of the speculative, the critical and the idealistic philosophies of religion. Even Hegel did not avoid it. In all these ways a mere unification of the philosophy of culture is achieved, a "synthesis of the world of spirits," and not that for which even the perfect synthesis must remain but a symbol, the absolute ground of meaning itself.

On the other hand, phenomenology and the supernatural method that has inner affinities with it overlook the fact that religion and culture come together in their directedness toward the synthesis of forms. They are consequently not able to clarify the relation between religion and culture. They oscillate between ranking the one above the other, putting the one over against the other, and refusing to define the relationship at all. The ranking of religion above culture makes religion into merely one of a series of meanings, and overlooks the fact that religion points to the ground and abyss of all meaning. The ranking of one against the other destroys the unity of meaning, and condemns religion or culture to meaninglessness. The refusal to define the relationship is impossible, since in every act of meaning the unity of all meaning is contained as an element, and the denial of unity of meaning must lead to ranking the one against the other and thus to meaninglessness. Even an original and extremely significant definition of the nature uf religion such as that of Rudolph Otto suffers from this refusal to make a systematic definition of the relation between religion and culture-and this was not accidental in Otto's case, but rather was due to the phenomenological character of the method he adopted.

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The metalogical method with its distinction between ground of meaning and unity of meaning is able to indicate at the same time the positive and the negative relations between religion and culture, and thus to present the religious function in its purity.

c. The Structure of the Functions of Meaning

Acts of meaning-fulfillment have a twofold character in that on the one hand they bring the immediately existing phenomenon to fulfillment through the spirit, and that on the other hand they themselves belong to the immediately existing things and accordingly are brought to fulfillment by other spiritual acts, for example, by historical interpretation. Spirit is always at the same time "material" for the fulfillment by meaning and the fulfillment itself. This twofoldness is manifest at the point where spiritual acts are rooted in being, namely, in the spirit-bearing Gestalt or in spiritual personality. This Gestalt on the one hand is the bearer of all meaning-fulfillment, and on the other its object. It is the place where what exists (das Seiende) achieves meaning. From this results a twofoldness in the functions of meaning: on the one hand those functions in which everything existing, even the spirit-bearing Gestalt itself, is taken up into fulfillment through meaning, and on the other those functions in which the spiritbearing Gestalt detaches itself from its existential immediacy and establishes itself as a spiritual Gestalt. The first range of functions is the theoretical, the second the practical. The logical prius belongs to the practical range; for only insofar as the spirit-bearing Gestalt has submitted itself in its own being to the validity of form, can it in itself bring what exists to fulfillment. Actually, however, the one cannot obtain without the other. For a practical act is spiritual only when it carries in itself a theoretical awareness of the meaning and of the interconnections of its activity. Other

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wise, it would remain an empty, futile act. Theoretical and practical acts therefore necessarily belong together; where either is missing, there can be no fulfillment in meaning. The theoretical act embraces reality in meaning; it is directed toward the form of things. For only in the interconnection of forms can the spiritbearing Gestalt embrace being without breaking into pieces. The practical act shapes the spirit-bearing Gestalt into a personality. It is therefore directed toward the interconnections of being (Seinszusammenhange) in which the spirit-bearing Gestalt stands. For through the meaningful shaping of the interconnections of b,-ing the spirit-bearing Gestalt becomes personality. The theoretical act is the meaning-fulfillment in that aspect of it which is directly related to form. The practical act is the meaning-fulfillment of reality, insofar as reality is formed into spirit-bearing reality, through breaking loose from immediacy. The practical act is therefore meaning-fulfillment in the primary sense, and the theoretical act is fulfillment in the secondary sense. But for this reason the practical is limited to reality fulfilling itself in the spirit-bearing Gestalt, while the theoretical universally fulfills all reality in the ideal sphere. The practical is a real, the theoretical an ideal fulfillment in meaning.

The opposition of real and ideal is based on the double relationship of the import to the form of meaning. Insofar as the import of meaning comes to fulfillment in no form of meaning, but yet is the ground of every form of meaning, it becomes the material, the "matter," of meaning. Matter is the expression for the import of meaning viewed as detached from its unconditionedness and making possible particular contents of meaning. "Matter" as an absolute datum is a concept that is as impossible as perfect unity of form. For a "matter" given and self-contained in itself would be only one form among others, but not the infinite possi

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bility of forms, as is demanded by the unconditionedness of the import of meaning. The genuine concept of "matter" has nothing to do with materiality in the sense of an objectification of the physical sphere of natural law; it expresses the basic originative, creative principle found in everything real, and reaches even into the sphere of the spirit-bearing Gestalten. A real meaning-fulfillment is one in which bestowal of meaning takes place in the sphere of individual reality bound to nature; an ideal fulfillment is one in which the giving of meaning involves no transformation in the material sphere, but rather a fulfillment of the existent thing in its immediate formation. The first, however, is possible only in the spiritual personality, the second only by means of it. Thus personality is the place of meaning-fulfillment, both real and ideal.

The indissoluble bond of ideal and real, of theoretical and practical, fulfillment in meaning has an effect in both directions of functioning through the influence of the one tendency upon the other, so that a duality arises in each of the functions. In the theoretical direction through the influence of the real sphere the artistic-aesthetic function establishes itself in distinction from the scientific-logical function. In ordinary linguistic usage the second of these has usurped the name "theoretical." As a matter of fact, both are theoretical, that is to say, intuiting or meaning-fulfilling in an ideal mode. The aesthetic is distinguished from the logical function only by the fact that in it a real meaning-fulfillment is given expression in the ideal sphere. The aesthetic shaping of things expresses that aspect of reality which is oriented to its import and which therefore makes possible a real connection with the spiritual personality. But this real connection remains only a possibjlity; it remains in the sphere of ideality, and from the logical point of view falls under the category of mere "appearance." This is the reason for the frequent but erroneous conception of the aesthetic

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as a synthesis of the theoretical and the practical; in truth, however, the aesthetic remains in the ideal, i.e., the theoretical sphere.

In an analogous way the thereotical operates in the practical order, and establishes the social sphere in distinction from the sphere of law. Whereas in the sphere of law the structured relations (Seinsbeziehungen) of spiritual personalities are interpreted in the light of the meaning-fulfilling form, in the sphere of community a fulfillment of these immediately developing structural relations takes place. Consequently, both the cognition and the apprehension ( or intuiting) of the import of life, elements that are cooperative in every act of community-formation, have always been evident, and have made it possible for love ( as the highest symbol of the social sphere) to become the all-embracing concept for the theoretical and the practical (as, for example, in the idea of mystical love). But the social is just as little a synthesis of the two spheres as the aesthetic. The fundamentally practical quality of the social remains primary.

With these details the structure of the spiritual realm has been presented insofar as it is absolutely necessary for the philosophy of religion. It is now possible to show how the same elements of meaning from which we have derived the basic concept of religion are also contained in the theoretical and practical functions. We turn now accordingly to set forth the religious dimension in the separate functions of the spirit.

d. The Religious Dimension in the Various Functions of Meaning

In every act of knowing is contained the knowing process and that which is known, the meaning-fulfilling directedness and the material of meaning-fulfillment-thought and being. In the act of knowing, both have become one by concealing an infinite inner

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tension, a tension that remains unresolved even in the completed act of knowledge. Thought aims to become one with being. But it can never completely absorb being into itself. Otherwise, thought would become empty and meaningless. It must recognize the infinite transcendence of all being over against thought. Precisely in this transcendence of being in face of thought rests the reality of every cognitive claim. Without this transcendence, being would be dissolvable in thought. At the same time the transcendence of being expresses itself in the in.finite demand contained in every act of thought to state truth, i.e., to be a necessary member in the totality of the logical claims through which thought apprehends being. We find therefore in any particular stance of the knowing act on the one hand an awareness of the infinite reality of all being, striving as it does against thought and at the same time providing a basis for thought, and on the other hand the demand for a universal knowledge of being, a demand driving out beyond the particular, the individual. It is now possible for the spirit to orient itself to the infinity of the particular claims to knowledge and their achieved unity, or to the unconditioned being that is the basis for everythng particular and yet transcends everything particular. The first directedness is the cultural one, the second the religious. In the sphere of knowledge culture is directedness toward the conditioned forms of existence and their unity. Religion in the sphere of knowledge is directedness toward the unconditionally existing (das unbedingt Seiende) as the ground and abyss of all particular claims and their unity.

In the aesthetic sphere the elements of meaning stand in the same relation to one another. In all aesthetic shaping an essential import (Wesensgehalt) is supposed to be brought to expression. The forms that are employed in aesthetic intuition have nothing to do with logical validity. They do not express apprehensions of

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being, but rather of what is significant. But every thing and every process has significance (Bedeutung) through its relation to the unconditioned ground of significance and through being part of a universal interconnection of significance. The significance of the real as apprehended in aesthetic feeling never remains attached to a particular significance and is never to be apprehended through empirical emotional states. The unconditioned significance pulsates in and through every aesthetic experience, and every aesthetic feeling is a transcendent feeling, that is, one in which the empirical emotional agitation includes a kernel of experience pointing to the Unconditional. Directedness toward particular significances and their interconnections in the uinversal work of art is the cultural-aesthetic act. Directedness toward the unconditioned import of significance and its presentation in the universal interconnection of significance is religion.

In the sphere of law (Recht) it is a question of creating such patterns of order that the relation of the spiritual personality to other personalities and to subpersonal reality corresponds to the nature of the spirit-bearing personal life. The relation of the personal, however, to every immediately existing reality ( and both the other personality and one's own psychophysical organization are existing realities) is the relation of freedom. All forms of law are forms through which the freedom of the person is made possible. The recognition of the free personality is inherent in every legal axiom as an unconditionally valid idea. The unconditionedness of the personal is the supporting ground of all consciousness of what is just. In every act of this consciousness is contained on the one hand the awareness of the unconditionally personal as the meaning-ground of all law. On the other hand, this consciousness implies the demand for an unconditioned actualizatior. of the right, i.e., for the universal unity of justice. Thus every act of the

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legal consciousness contains at one and the same time an awareness of the unconditioned meaning-ground of everything just and right, and the awareness of the unconditioned form of the right which sublates every particular right. The intention of the spirit toward a particular legal form and the ideal unity of forms, viewed apart from the meaning-ground of all right which transcends every particular right, is the cultural attitude of culture. The intention of the spirit toward the unconditionally personal as the ground of every right and the implementation of this intention in a kingdom of righteousness is the religious attitude.

In the pure sphere of law the relation of personalities to one another is defined by justice, i.e., by the acknowledgement of the other as being a free personality. This relation among personalities, however, is not the only one. The immediate community stands beside it as the living import of personality relationships, and love is the universal meaning-fulfilling form of that community. All immediate forms of community are forms of love. But like the aesthetic forms, these forms have the quality of significance (Bedeutung). They express an import, but apart from it they have no rational, in this case therefore no legal, meaning; they can only be understood by grasping the import attaching to · their significance but not by giving them a place in a legal framework. With respect to both the community function and law, however, it must be said that the presupposition of an unconditioned love is contained in every act of spiritual, hence of meaning-fulfilling, love. As the unconditioned import of significance pulsates in the aesthetic intuition of any one particular significance, so the unconditioned meaning of love, "the love of love," is present in all spiritual love. At the same time, however, the meaning-fulfilling act of community contains the unconditioned demand for a universal community of love from which nothing is excluded. The inner

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directedness toward the particular forms of the realization of love and their unity is the cultural attitude in the sphere of community; the inner directedness toward unconditioned love ( which at the same time is the ground as well as the abyss of any particular love) and toward the universal unity of love as its symbol, is the religious attitude.

Thus, corresponding to the universal apprehension of the religious within the very nature of meaning itself, it has become evident that religion is immanent in all the functions of meaning, theoretical as well as practical. The twofold method of derivation from both the theoretical and the practical is of decisive importance for the apprehension of the Unconditional. The merely theoretical way makes the Unconditional into an object which, like any other object, can be manipulated or disposed of by the personality. But as a consequence it loses the power of unconditionedness. It can retain this power only through the [ correction provided by the] practical side that makes the recognition of the unconditionally personal into an unconditionally personal demand. But conversely, the merely practical way loses the Unconditional in its quality of grounding and at the same time transcending everything real; it makes the Unconditional into a mere demand without presence. Thus, it also loses the character of unconditionedness and is changed into a product of unconditioned action. Only if it views the Unconditional as that which exists unconditionally in all of being can it preserve the element of unconditionedness. The two ways must supplement each other, and only together in their unity do they provide the living apprehension of the unconditioned meaning that constitutes the ground and abyss of all meaning.

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e. The Nature and Truth of Religion

It has become customary to subdivide into the double question concerning the nature and truth of religion. Where this division occurs, however, the method of the philosophy of religion has not yet been perfected. The distinction between the question as to the nature and the question as to the truth of religion depends upon a combination of empirical and speculative methods. First, the nature of religion is established empirically, and then its truth is established speculatively. This implies, however, on the one hand-apart from the methodological impossibility of the empirical method-the conception of religion as an act which would be equally possible whether or not its object existed. On the other hand-apart from the unfeasibility of the speculative proof-a religious object is sought after which is detached from the religious act. This tearing apart of the act and the object of the act is the basic defect of many philosophies of religion; thus the way is obstructed for the apprehension of religion as an independent function, that is, the way to the philosophy of religion. The metalogical method does not admit this dualism; for it the questions concerning the nature and truth of religion are identical. In the proof that the religious function is the grounding function of meaning, a proof of the nature and truth of religion and an indication of the act and the object of the act are immediately given. It is the superiority of the metalogical method that it apprehends the truth along with the nature of religion, and that it is not necessary for it to prove the truth of religion from outside religion, neither speculatively, nor morally, nor through the ethical evaluation of religious witnesses, nor pragmatically. The question concerning the truth of religion is answered by the metalogical apprehension of the nature of religion as directedness toward the

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unconditioned meaning. It is meaningless to ask beyond that whether the Unconditional "exists," hence whether the religious act is oriented to something real and in that respect is true or not. For the question whether the Unconditional exists presupposes already the unconditioned meaningfulness inherent in every act of knowing; it presupposes that which exists unconditionally. The certainty of the Unconditional is the grounding certainty from which all doubt can proceed, but it can never itself be the object of doubt. Therefore the object of religion is not only real, but is also the presupposition of every affirmation of reality. But it is not real in the sense of some particular affirmation. Moreover, the universal synthesis is not something "given," but rather a symbol. In the true symbol, reality is apprehended; but a symbol is an improper form of expression which is always necessary where a proper expression is in the nature of things impossible. The symbolic character of religious ideas in no way deprives them of their reality, but it lifts this reality out of the conditioned into the unconditioned, that is, into the religious, sphere. The intention to speak unsymbolically of religion is irreligious, for it deprives the Unconditional of its unconditionality and leads to a rightful rejection, as a creature of fantasy, of this Unconditional which has been thus transformed into an object.

In the metalogical apprehension of the nature of religion the question regarding the truth of religion also finds an answer: the sphere of meaning having to do with truth, like all spheres of meaning, finds its ground in the unconditioned meaning intended in religion. The question as to truth has in general first gained a meaning only on the ground of the religious. The questions as to the essence and the truth of religion converge. An objection against the merging of these two questions cannot be supported by claiming that the functions of meaning are the

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starting point for the analysis of essence, and that the objectivity o"f the intention is by no means demonstrated by the mere apprehension of the intention of meaning. The objection proceeds from a subjectively idealistic interpretation of the functions of meaning; but subjective idealism is precluded by the concept of meaningfulfillment. It is not the function as a function that is analyzed but rather the meaning coming to fulfillment in it, a meaning that lies beyond the opposition of function and object. Analyses of meaning are analyses of being, because meaning brings being to spiritual fulfillment. This comes to expression in the analyses themselves by virtue of the fact that every act of meaning is related to the unconditioned meaning viewed as an abyss of meaning. While the merely critical method, which adheres only to the forms of meaning, is exposed to the criticism directed against subjective idealism, it belongs to the nature of the metalogical method to break through every such subjectivity and [in the philosophy of religion] to resolve the problem of reality. From this point of view it should be stressed again that the analysis of the essence of the religious according to the metalogical method requires no supplementation by a proof of the truth of religion; indeed, it contains within itself the solution of "the problem of reality" for all the spheres of meaning.

2. The Essential Elements of Religion and Their Relations

a. Religion and Culture

Religion is directedness of the spirit toward the unconditioned meaning. Culture is directedness of the spirit toward conditioned forms. Both, however, meet in orientation to the completed unity of the forms of meaning. This unity is for culture the capstone, but for religion it is a symbol. From the point of view of the Uncondi

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tional this symbol is at the same time affirmed and negated; this is the general outcome of the metalogical analysis of meaning. Religion, therefore, is not one meaning-function alongside others. This follows immediately from its character as directedness toward the Unconditional. That which is the basis of all functions of meaning cannot itself be one of these functions. Rather, the relation is such that the meaning-functions come to fulfillment in meaning only in relatedness to the unconditioned meaning, and that therefore the religious intention is the presupposition for successful meaningfulfillment in all functions. An assertion of existence which is not directed toward that which exists unconditionally, an apprehension of significance not directed toward the ground of significance, a shaping of the personality not directed toward the unconditionally personal, a spiritual act of love not directed toward unconditioned love, cannot be recognized as a successful meaningfulfillment. Only in the "Holy Spirit" does the nature of spirit find its realization. It comes to realization, however, not in forms that stand alongside the cultural ones ( through which the unconditionedness of religion would be dissolved) but rather precisely in the cultural forms; culture is a form of expression of religion, and religion is the substance (Inhalt) of culture. With these sentences the provisional co-ordination of the initial derivation is again dissolved; we have gone a full circle through which the cultural element, the system of meaning-functions which was first in the derivation, has moved to second place.

It is only in a preliminary way, therefore, that the philosophy of religion takes as its starting point the functions of meaning. This procedure serves to show that the meaning-functions, in their being and their meaning, are grounded in the religious, that they are forms that become meaningless and without import as soon as they lose the intention toward the unconditioned import of mean

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ing. This outcome, however, corresponds to the demand of religion itself. It is the solution of the basic problem in the philosophy of religion: philosophical analysis is driven to the point where it apprehends itself together with all of culture as an expression of the religious.

The unity of religion and culture as a unity of unconditioned meaning-import and of conditioned meaning-form is the authentic relation of the two. We call this unity theonomy, and we understand by that word the fulfillment of all cultural forms with the import of the Unconditional. But now the question must be raised, under what presuppositions can there be a co-ordination (Nebenordnung) of culture and religion? And what consequences follow from this for both sides? does indeed begin from such a coordination, and it reveals the essential unity only through the metalogical analysis of meaning. Now, since we have recognized the preliminary character of this procedure, we must reverse our course, and start anew from the achieved goal of the theonomous unity, in order eventually to understand the situation out of which the problem of arises.

Culture is directedness toward the conditioned forms of meaning and their fulfillment. In this definition a separation of culture and religion is not yet indicated; for the fulfillment in meaning of all forms lies in the unconditioned meaning. Yet the possibility of a separation is indicated, the possibility that the spirit will relate itself to the conditioned forms and their unity without paying heed to the unconditioned meaning, and therefore without bringing to expression the critical judgment of the Unconditional against the unity of meaning. It is the absolutizing of the conditioned that gives rise to the separation of culture from religion. In contrast to theonomy, we call this autonomy. In every autonomy-that is, in every secular culture-a twofold element is implied: the

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"nomos," the law or structural form that is supposed to be carried out radically, corresponding to the unconditioned demand for meaning, and the "autos," the self-assertion of the conditioned, which in the process of achieving form loses the unconditioned import. Autonomy therefore is always at the same time obedience to and revolt against the Unconditional. It is obedience insofar as it subjects itself to the unconditioned demand for meaning; it is revolt insofar as it denies the unconditioned meaning itself. Autonomous culture is, as the myth puts it, always at the same time hybris and a gift of the god.

In face of autonomy religion takes refuge in particular symbols which it exempts from autonomous criticism and to which it ascribes unconditionedness and inviolability. The unconditioned meaning is supposed to be apprehended in certain particular forms, and is to reveal itself in a specifically religious sphere. The other forms remain left over to the autonomous culture, but only under the presupposition that the religious symbols are acknowledged as unconditionally authoritative. This counterattitude to autonomy is heteronomy. It rises against the hybris of autonomy, and submits itself to the unconditioned meaning; but it does not understand the divinely ordained character of autonomy, namely, the apprehension of the pure forms and their unity. It falls victim therefore to religious hybris, the counterpole of cultural hybris.

Autonomy and heteronomy live from theonomy and fall to pieces as soon as the theonomous synthesis has entirely disappeared. Autonomy without the import of the Unconditional becomes empty and without power of life and creativity. Likewise, heteronomy without autonomous consciousness of form is spiritually impossible; it loses its power of conviction and becomes a demonic means of power contrary to meaning, until it breaks down.

Autonomy and heteronomy are tensions within theonomy,

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which can lead to a breaking asunder and thus to the catastrophe of the spirit, for the essential relation of culture and religion is theonomy. Every philosophy of religion is to be reproached which proceeds from only one of the two poles, without coming to the synthesis and correcting the defect of the one-sided starting point.

b. Faith and "Unfaith"

Directedness toward the Unconditional, of which we have spoken in connection with the derivation of the concept of the nature of religion, we call faith. Faith is a turning toward the Unconditional, effective in all functons of the spirit. Faith, therefore, is not identical with any one of the other functions, neither with the theoretical, as a frequent misunderstanding supposes, nor with the practical, as the opposing conception contends. Faith is not the acceptance of uncertain objects as true; it has nothing to do with acceptance or probability. Nor is it merely the establishing of a community relationship, like confidence or obedience or the like; rather, it is the apprehension of the Unconditional as the ground of both the theoretical and the practical. But faith is also no special function alongside other functions. It comes to expression only in them, and is their root. There is a belief-fol theoretical and practical behavior, but there is no belief-fol behavior as such. Every act of faith is an embracing or shaping turn toward the Unconditional. Faith is neither mere assensus, nor mere fiducia. But in every belief-ful assensus there is fiducia, and in every belief-ful fiducia there is assensus.

Faith is directedness toward the Unconditional in the theoretical and the practical act. The Unconditional as such, however, can never be an object but only the symbol in which the Unconditional is intuited and intended. Faith is orientation to the Unconditional

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through symbols drawn from the conditioned order. Every act of faith therefore has a double meaning. It is directed immediately toward a holy object. It does not, however, intend this object, but rather the Unconditional which is symbolically expressed m the object. Faith reaches beyond the immediacy of all things to the ground and abyss upon which they depend.

In contrast to faith we have the unbelief-fol attitude. Its essence is not that it fails to recognize or to accomplish something or other that is objective; rather, its essence is that it stops with the actualities or objects in their immediacy, in their conditioned forms, and does not penetrate through to the grounding import. Unbelieffulness is therefore the mark of the typically autonomous attitude of culture; but it is that only by intention. Actually, every creative cultural act is also belief-fol; in it pulsates the meaning of the Unconditional. Otherwise, it would in the end be without meaning and without import. But the cultural intention as an intention is unbelief-fol. It is that even when it is directed toward religious symbols; for it does not intend the Unconditional that shatters every symbol, but rather it intends the unity of the conditioned. It remains preoccupied with the world even when it speaks of God. God is for it a synthesis of immanental forms, but not the abyss of the world. The dialectic of autonomous culture, therefore, is that it lives in faith so long as it is creative ( even if it fights against the religious symbols, for example, "the existence of God") while it nevertheless is unbelief-fol with respect to intention ( even though it accepts the religious symbols, for example, proves the "existence of God").

In contrast to autonomous unbelief-fulness, religion seeks to protect from autonomous criticism the particular forms that have attained symbolic significance. It gives to them a heteronomous validity and turns faith into a form-shattering act. Faith is no

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longer directedness toward the Unconditional through conditioned forms, rather it is directedness toward conditioned forms viewed as unconditioned. Heteronomous faith also stops with the conditioned form, only it does not interpret it as conditioned-as does autonomous "unfaith"--but rather as a bearer of the Unconditional. Heteronomous faith is faith, even though it is demonically distorted (see below), while autonomous "unfaith" is never demonic, but also never divine; rather, it is empty obedience to law (Gesetz).

With this insight into the essence of faith the problems of "faith and knowledge" and "faith and works" are solved. Both problems arise from the opposition of autonomy and heteronomy, and both are solved in theonomy. Faith is not a cognition or an action that may stand alongside autonomous cognition and action with heteronomous claim to absoluteness. Just as little is it a cognition or action that could be grounded in autonomous cognition or action. Rather it is directedness toward the unconditioned meaningimport, operative in both and grounding both. Faith is the prius of cognition and of meaning-fulfilled action. Cognition and action without faith are empty and without reality. A faith, however, which through the recognition of a definite form is supposed to be grounded in cognition and action, is a law that is incapable of fulfillment, which destroys truthfulness and love, and therefore leads to compromise or to despair. The Reformation emancipated man from the law of action in late-Catholic heteronomy; but in accord with the spiritual situation, it left the "law" of cognition untouched and inviolable. Modern Protestantism has freed man from the law of cognition, but has led into the emptiness of unbelief-fol autonomy. The meaning of a coming theonomy would be this: to be belief-fol in rand through] the autonomous form of knowledge and action.

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c. God and World

In the objective sphere the duality of religion and culture, of faith and "unfaith," finds a parallel in the duality of God and the world. In a metalogical philosophy of religion one can speak of God only insofar as he is intended in a religious act. An extrareligious speaking of God contradicts the methodological as well as the material presuppositions. God is the object intended in faith, and beyond that nothing. This, however, is not to say that the object is as it were to be made into a product of the subject, as though God were a creation of faith. Rather, faith as faith is determined by its directedness toward the Unconditional; and the reality of the Unconditional is the foundation of every assertion regarding reality. But the act of grasping the Unconditional is an act of faith; without faith the Unconditional is not apprehensible.

The act of faith realizes itself in theoretical and practical acts; both presuppose a concrete object to which they are directed. But the Unconditional is no concrete object. By means of objects it can only be symbolized, but not apprehended. The object of faith necessarily has a symbolic character; it intends more than it expresses. Whether a sacred stone or a personal omnipotent Spirit is believed in, the intention of faith always transcends the object of faith. In the abyss of the Unconditional the one as well as the other disappears. Not the unbeliever, but rather the believer [ the belief-fol person] is the real atheist, and in every genuine theism, in every affirmation of God as the Unconditional, an abyss of atheism is contained-the affirmation is again sublated. "God" is the symbol for the Unconditional; but it is a symbol, exactly as faith as an act is a symbolic act (here faith is not viewed as the ground and abyss of the act). God is not only his own ground but also his own abyss. Corresponding to the presence of the uncondi

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tional meaning-import in all of being, every existing thing can become a symbol of the Unconditional. But corresponding to the unconditioned demand of the form of meaning, a perfect symbol of the Unconditional is only the completed unity of· meaning: the synthesis of the existent and its significance in unity, together with the synthesis of the personal and its fullness. Logical and aesthetic, legal and social, in short, metaphysical and ethical intentions, come together in this symbol. It is to be grasped neither as a theoretical object nor as a practical idea, but rather only as a unity of both. This synthesis of syntheses is the highest, alwaysintended symbol of the Unconditional.

The absolute synthesis, however, is not necessarily a symbol of the Unconditional. Looked at in an immediate way it is the unity of the conditioned order; but as a unity of the conditioned order it is the world. The same idea can therefore have an immediate and a symbolic, a religious and a cultural, significance; it can be God and the world. A concept like the Hegelian "absolute Spirit" is in an immediate way the synthesis of world-forms, but it can symbolically signify God. It is now of decisive importance for philosophy of religion and theology, to grasp this difference in all its sharpness.

Unbelief-ful autonomy stops with the synthesis of world-forms and asserts its immediate identity with God. It dissolves the "abyss in God," the divine-creative in which also the demonic is contained, and does not see the negativities of the Unconditional in face of the synthesis of forms, the world. Unbelief-fol autonomy is idealism; and it is a necessary historical fate that a realism follows it in which the subterranean demonic elements of the world swallow up the synthesis of forms. The dissolution of God into the world has for its inevitable consequence the destruction of the consciousness of the world as mere world. For the synthesis of the

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world-forms depends upon the unconditioned ground and abyss of meaning. The consciousness of the world as world is a product of the consciousness of God, and in its permanency is dependent upon the latter.

Belief-ful heteronomy, on the other hand, makes the ground and abyss of reality into a reality of its own above the world. The truth that the Unconditional grounds being and significance, personality and love, is transformed and perverted into the untruth that the Unconditional is all this in an objective sense. God becomes a world alongside the world. He is not intended as a world, but he becomes that with dialectical necessity; and since the unity of form resides in the nature of the world, the autonomous worldconsciousness is shattered. On the other hand, the Unconditional receives the quality of the world, it becomes an object and a form of its own which stands beside the world, and it cannot be freed from this "beside" arrangement by any pious appeal to a "superworld," no matter how strenuous the attempt.

Theonomy uncovers and identifies the inwardly dialectical character of the concept of God. It reaches beyond the synthesis of world-forms to the ground and abyss of the world which is neither innerworldly nor otherworldly but rather breaks through the completed world-form and yet is never a form of its own alongside the world.

d. The Sacred and the Secular

A meaning-fulfilling act or an object of meaning is sacred insofar as it is a bearer of the unconditional meaning; it is secular insofar as it does not give expression to the unconditional meaning. In the ideal theonomy every meaning-reality and every act of meaning is sacred. But perfected theonomy is the perfected kingdom of God, that is, it is a symbol and not a reality. Reality is

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pervaded by the tensions between the sacred and the secular and by the ruptures of these tensions, that is, either by the disjunction of the sacred and the secular or by creative forms of adjustment which point toward a perfect theonomy. In reality there is a specifically sacred sphere that stands over against the sphere of the secular.

The relation of the unconditional to the conditioned meaning is the crucial criterion for the appearance of the sacred or the Holy, the relation that we have characterized by the double symbol "ground" and "abyss." From the vantage point of the Unconditional the affirmation and the negation of the existent [Seiende] are contained in every sacred reality [Sein]. There is an affirmation in the sense that the existent reality is supported in its depth by an import absolutely transcending all particular reality; from this import the finite, like all reality, acquires its true nature, meaning and significance. At the same time there is a negation in the sense that it is not its appearance as such that gives the existent reality this quality, but rather that its appearance, like the appearance of everything real, is absolutely negated from the perspective of the Holy. The sacred object is therefore never holy in itself but rather only through a negation of itself; and this negation of itself includes the negation of everything existent. Every sacred reality becomes the vessel of the duality of absolute fulfillment through meaning and the absolute abyss of meaning. Both, however, stand in absolute contrast to the immediate reality (Sein) of the thing, to its character as a particular form in the universal interconnection of forms. The Holy breaks through the immediate form of the existent; it possesses ecstatic qualities. Every holy reality (Sein) is an ecstatic reality, that is, one that bursts through its immediately given formation; it has an inner transcendence reaching beyond its formal, cultural givenness. This holds for the

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subjective sphere of every act of faith, whether the latter expresses itself in personal prayer or in the consciousness-dissolving transport of mystical ecstasy. It holds also in the objective sphere of every symbol of the divine, whether it be that of the personal God abiding upon his depths, or the horrifying figures of the gods of India.

There are three ways to interpret the inner ecstatic quality of the Holy. From the point of view of heteronomy the Holy is the supernatural; for autonomy it is the ideal; for theonomy it is the paradoxical. Supernaturalism asserts that the Holy has so far united itself with the sacred object or event that the latter is raised as a whole into a higher sphere and stands over against everything else (which is viewed as something secular). In this way the insight is lost, that the sacredness of the holy reality (Sein) issues from the negation of its immediate existence (Dasein) and that by this fact it is actually in the same situation with everything else secular. Idealism, on the other hand, aims to transcend the immediate givenness by means of the ideal demand. It makes ecstasy into enthusiasm for the ideal; it does not see that even the immediately existing thing has its ground in the Unconditional, nor does it see that even the ideal reality (Sein) is negated by the Unconditional. Idealism forgets the "ground" in considering the thing as it is and the "abyss" in considering the thing as it ought to be. Theonomy, which ideally sees the Holy in all forms, must reject supernaturalism because the latter sanctifies a particular form in and for itself, and thereby excludes all other forms; and it must reject idealism because it no longer places the ideal forms, theoretical or practical, under the No of the Unconditional, and thus improperly desecrates the real forms and sanctifies the ideal forms. Theonomy itself uncovers and identifies the paradoxical character of the Holy and of ecstasy, the inner transcending char

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acter, the quality of breaking through immediate forms and of interpreting them symbolically. As against both supernaturalism and idealism it thus achieves the insight that the state of holiness is grace, and not a supernatural sphere, but also not a merely natural ideal demand. Grace is always a paradox; it breaks through the immediate form but has no form of its own.

Things therefore do not themselves possess the ground of their sacredness. They are not holy in themselves. Yet there are things and persons, forms and events, that have a superior symbolic power whose meaning-fulfillment it is to become sacred things. Often this possibility does not depend upon the intrinsic quality of these phenomena but rather upon a fateful coincidence through which objects that in themselves are relatively lacking in symbolic power receive an extraordinary symbolic power from the subjective side. The universal mark of symbolic powerfulness is the ecstatic quality, the being imbued with the import of the Unconditional which a thing has or through subjective intention receives. This universal mark can make itself evident in a variety of ways. The symbolic power, however, always disappears as soon as a thing is entirely integrated into the framework of cultural forms, in short, as soon as it has been entirely secularized. Therefore the autonomous approach to things, which integrates them from the point of view of an ideal unity, leads to the secularization of the Holy, while heteronomy aims to preserve the holiness of the fatefully sanctified thing and exalts it supernaturally above the formal interconnection of meaning. Both, however, contradict the paradoxical character of the Holy.

By virtue of the fact that the Holy transcends positively and negatively all immediate forms of consciousness, it becomes for consciousness on the one hand the fulfillment toward which the latter strives, and on the other the abyss before which it recoils;

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and both of these are united. The first makes the Holy into something that blesses man, that is, into that wherein consciousness finds its unconditional fulfillment; the second makes the Holy into the Inviolable which the secular consciousness should not approach. The first comes to clearest expression in the hymns of blessedness of the mystics, the second in the "tabu," the plastic symbol of the negative unconditionedness of the Holy. From the first come all attempts within religion to achieve perfection within the Unconditional and the Holy through union with sacred things and through ecstatic states of consciousness. From the second come all ideas of purification and emptying, that is, of eliminating the secular elements of consciousness without whose negation it is not possible to become a vessel for the reception of grace.

e. The Divine and the Demonic

In the sphere of the Holy itself there arises the polarity of the divine and the demonic. The demonic is the Holy (or the sacred) with a minus sign before it, the sacred antidivine. The possibility of the demonic resides in the peculiar relation of form and import: the inexhaustibility of the import of meaning signifies on the one hand the meaningfulness of every form of meaning, and on the other it presupposes the endless resistance of matter to form. That which is meaning-supporting is through its inner infinity therefore at the same time hostile to meaning. In the sphere of the spiritual fulfillment through meaning the resistance of the material becomes a positive hostility to meaning; it becomes "sin." The spiritual involves a dialectic, on the one hand to become actualized in being and thereby to participate in the infinite resistance of the material, on the other to stand as spirit under the unconditional demand, that is, to be free. Thus the immediate resistance of matter to form becomes in the sphere of the spirit, guilt. The demonic is a meaning

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resistant thrust of matter which assumes the quality of the Holy. It can assume this quality, for it is an expression of the abyss of meaning; therefore it has also ecstatic qualities, as does the Holy of positive character. It is a breakthrough in the direction of the destructive, but a breakthrough that comes out of the same abyss as the breakthrough in the direction of grace. The difference, however, is this, that grace breaks through the form while both acknowledging the form and affirming the unconditional form, whereas the demonic does not submit to the unconditional form. The demonic has all the forms of expression that obtain for the sacred, but it has them with the mark of opposition to the unconditional form, and with the intention of destruction. The holy negativity of the abyss becomes demonic negativity through the loss of the unconditional form. The demonic, however, resides just as little as the divine in the intrinsic character of things in themselves. The supernaturalistic interpretation is to be rejected; likewise to be rejected is the idealistic interpretation, according to which the demonic is a falling short of the ideal form. Demonic possession, like blessedness or being possessed of grace, is a paradox; and, like the latter, it is evident in exceptionally symbolically powerful phenomena. It is no less decisive for a religious situation how it views the demonic than how it views the divine. Religion even creates a focal symbol of the demonic: the anti-god. In this symbol it unites the synthesis of the existent with the synthesis of the personal, as in the symbol of the divine, but here with a negative signature. Thus, to be sure, it runs into an inner contradiction insofar as every particular form that cannot be fitted into the universal form can be demonic; yet the universal form itself cannot be so, for it is what absolutely ought to be. Religiousmetaphysical dualism in religion is untenable, even in the moderate form of the theory of the devil; the demonic is a principle, but

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not an idea. It is possible only in contradiction to the universal idea, that is, only in the particular. But as a principle it has the reality of the Holy itself.

The consciousness of the demonic presupposes a split in the awareness of God, the reason for this split being the hidden operation of autonomous form. While in the undifferentiated religious consciousness the demonic and the divine, the negativity of the abyss and the unconditioned ground of meaning are identical, in the consciousness that has become split God the bearer of meaning struggles against God the bearer of hostility to meaning. Thus, for example, ecstatic human sacrifice, all the way from primitive cannibalism to the highest asceticism, has been forced step by step into consciousness of the demonic, and Moloch has been stamped as the symbol of the demonic. The affirmation of the personal and the social on the part of religion has revealed the sacred undifferentiated form in its character of hostility to meaning, and has designated it as demonic.

As a consequence of the polarity between the divine and the demonic in the sphere of the Holy, the concept of the Holy itself becomes dialectical. The Holy in the original conception does not distinguish between the divine and the demonic. As soon, however, as the cleavage in the religious consciousness identifies the demonic as demonic, the concept of the Holy is identified with the divine. By the same token, the Holy becomes the righteous, the demanded. This development is reflected most clearly in the concept of religious purity (the "clean"). The Holy in the sense of "tabu," of the inviolable, the dangerous, is at the same time the unclean, over against which the secular is pure. With the division of the Holy into the divine and the demonic the concept of the unclean remains attached to the demonic, while the divine appears now as the pure. The Holy in the sense of the divine and the secular are

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therefore simultaneously subsumed under the category of the pure. Divine and secular alike stand over against the demonic. In common they affirm form, in contrast to the demonic which shatters it.

3. The Cultural History and Normative Concept of Religion

a. The Basic Religious Tendencies

From the polarity between the divine and the demonic the basic religious tendencies can be derived, and also the cultural-historical "construction" of the history of religion. In general of course it is true that an element of the essence 0£ religion is present in every religious phenomenon. Therefore in every form of religion the unity of form and import must be found. This unity is not only the ideal goal but also the essential presupposition of religious development. The difference, however, is this, that the unity of form and import as a point of departure is indifferent to the division of the Holy into the divine and the demonic, while the unity of form and import as the end-point has eliminated the demonic, or rather has integrated it into the divine. The movement from the point of departure to the end-point is therefore propelled by the struggle of the divine against the demonic. Naturally, starting-point and endpoint are meant here only in an ideal sense and not chronologically. They are constructs and not realities. The reality lies between them, but in such a way that it is through their inner dialectic always pushed from one point to the other, in progress or regress.

Through the antidemonic influence of form the original undifferentiatedness bifurcates into the polarity of two basic attitudes, one of which we shall call the sacramental and the other the theocratic tendency. The sacramental attitude is laid hold of by criticism at the hands of form insofar as it is no longer able to

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intuit the Holy undifferentiatedly in everything real, but instead considers particular realities and forms as bearers of the holy import. These things and actions thereby receive a sacramental quality. Their significance depends upon the fact that in them, as finite, conditioned realities, the presence of the unconditioned import of meaning is experienced.

At the opposite pole from the sacramental is the theocratic tendency. It is the bearer of antidemonic criticism. We call it theocratic-in a slight deviation from ordinary usage-because it wishes to subject the forms of reality in action and knowledge to the unconditioned form, to obedience to the divine. In itself it has nothing to do with priestly domination, but it can be distorted into it. Theocracy turns against the deification of special sacramental realities. It demands obedience to the unconditioned form that critically negates every particular form. Theocracy is imbued with the struggle against all holy demonries connected with the sacramental. It wants to establish the sovereignty of God. But just as there is a theocratic element in the sacramental, so there is a sacramental element in the theocratic. The holy demand, if it is to be concrete, must issue from a sacred bearer, a mediator of revelation, who now on account of his theocratic power receives a sacramental consecration. From this sacramental element of theocracy new demonries can develop which lead to new theocratic reactions or to an autonomous dissolution.

On the soil of the basic sacramental attitude the dissolution of the sacramental can lead to a phenomenon that belongs among the most controversial elements in cultural history, namely, mysticism. Recently the attempt has been made to classify mysticism as a basic type of religion and to view it in contrast to prophetic religion. But this opposition is inadequately conceived. The prophetic is a much too narrow characterization of the theocratic,

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although it is true that the prophetic as a critical movement is to be associated with the theocratic. The great powerful theocratic movements are borne by prophetic personalities. But the essence of theocracy is by no means exhausted in this way.

On the other hand, mysticism is by no means a separate basic attitude. "Mysticism" means union with the unconditioned import of meaning as the ground and abyss of everything conditioned. In this sense mysticism is essential to all religion. For orientation to the unconditioned ground of meaning is an essential element of religion. Mysticism as a special religious phenomenon emerges when the desire to become one with the unconditional import of meaning detaches itself from the other element of religion, the affirmation of form. This happens when, on the soil of the basic sacramental attitude, the inner-religious dialectic has led to a destruction of particular sacramental forms and the theocratic will is lacking to actualize the unconditioned form. Mysticism is the radical ecstasy that seeks to grasp the import itself beyond all forms. In ecstasy, in the going beyond all forms of consciousness, or in submersion or absorption, in the sinking back into the ground of consciousness, mysticism finds its fulfillment. Mysticism is therefore like the undifferentiated sacramental spiritual situation, indifferent to conditioned forms. It does not participate in the theocratic struggle, even though it agrees in many ways with theocratic criticism. Consequently, it gives room to the demonic, and its own goal-the abolition of all forms, even of personality-is to be appraised as demonic as well as divine. Mysticism deliberately remains attached to the sacramental attitude. It does not want anything other than to grasp purely the import intended in the sacramental. It directs no criticism at myth and cultus; rather, it rises above both. Since, however, the apprehension of pure import without forms is impossible, even the radical mystic depends upon

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forms. He not only stands beyond the sacramental symbols but also uses them and gives them an ultimate deepening. Mysticism, then, is not a position of its own but rather the radical, critically conscious form of the sacramental attitude. Both are directed toward the Unconditional as present-sacramentalism in given, concrete forms, mysticism beyond all form.

In contrast to all this, theocracy is directed toward the demanded Unconditional, toward pure form. It is the reformatory movement in the historical development of religion. While the sacramental tendency provides the main stem and the enduring basis of the religious life, the theocratic tendency manifests itself in great reform movements: for example, in Jewish prophecy, primitive Christianity, Mohammedanism, Christian sects, Protestantism, and especially Calvinism. In all these instances the antidemonic struggle is taken up, and the demand is raised for a just social order, an ethical form of personality, a true knowledge of God. Immediate union with the Unconditional through participation in sacramental things and practices is rejected. Fellowship with the holy import takes place through validity of form. Purity in the ethical sense is a prerequisite for participation in the Holy. The divine is the infinite demand. But if theocracy were to affirm in the law only its form, it would cease to be religion and would become autonomous ethics or metaphysics. So long as it is still religion, it knows the God who is present even in the law, but his holiness is manifest in the unconditional demand. From this there arises in the perfected ethical theocracy the enormous tension between the unconditional demand and the conditioned, demonically dominated reality. This tension gives rise on the one hand to the phenomena of religious despair and on the other to the breakthrough to the religion of grace as a synthesis of theocratic and sacramental tendencies. The theocratic-reformatory principle

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is therefore the decisively moving element in the history of religion. From it come both the dissolution of sacramentalism and the breakthrough to the synthesis of the religion of grace. On the other hand, the sacramental spiritual situation, even in its mystical dissolution, provides the enduring basis from which all movements proceed, which can never be wholly abandoned, and to which all movements return in paradoxical synthesis.

The theocratic movement, however, is not simply the bearer of the inner-religious development. Upon it also depends the possibility of autonomous culture. For theocracy and autonomy have this in common, that they are directed toward form. They are to be distinguished only in the fact that theocracy seeks form as the bearer of unconditioned import whereas autonomy seeks it for its own sake.

b. The History of Religion and the Normative Concept of Religion

From these presuppositions the main tendencies of religious history can be presented as follows: the sacramental spiritual situation as the point of departure of all movements is indifferent to the distinction between the divine and the demonic. This stage has been characterized as the religion of nature. But this concept is misleading, for nowhere is nature worshiped as such. Nature provides the symbols, but what they signify is not nature. It is much more accurate to speak of a religion of indifference, keeping in mind, however, that in fact a pure indifference does not exist.

Against this sacramental lack of differentiation theocratic criticism arises, which can go so far as to bring about the autonomous expulsion of every sacramental import. But in its perfected religious form it must be characterized as a religion of infinite demand, a religion of law. Under the criticism of the religion of law sacra

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mental religion can firmly cling to certain definite symbols and become heteronomous, i.e., it can take up into itself the element of law. If, however, its concrete symbols are dissolved, it can be pushed forward into a radical mysticism. Insofar as mysticism aspires to go beyond everything given, it is also law, even though it be a law with the demand to abolish all law and all form within the conditioned order. It is possible, therefore, to sum up this whole situation created by theocratic criticism as the stage of law in religious development, in contrast to the previous stage of the immediately given sacramental attitude. The goal of the whole movement, however, is the union of the theocratic demand and mystical negativity with the sacramental sanctification of some one concrete thing. Now, since this unity of the present Holy and the demanded Holy cannot be deliberately brought about, but rather can be experienced only as a breakthrough, we describe it as "a religion of grace" or "a religion of paradox."

The synthesis of grace or of paradox is somehow actualized in every religion. It is actualized all the more purely and significantly, the more radical the theocratic element is, and the more difficult it thereby becomes for a relapse of the paradox into sacramental indifferentiation to take place. Where the theocratic spirit has not taken root, but where the sacramental attitude is destroyed, the result is the negation of every concrete presence of the Holy, i.e., the result is radical mysticism. But while grace can live in its paradox, mysticism must shatter in face of the contradiction of wishing to realize a form of consciousness in which consciousness together with all its forms is done away with. Yet mysticism, even in its radical form, is not without significance for the religion of paradox. In religious history it is the great, decisive criticism of empty, theocratic legalism, both autonomous and heteronomous. It is the most powerful symbol for directedness toward the holy

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import, and as such it is also the permanent background of the religion of paradox.

The above description of the basic tendencies of religious history and their normative synthesis is meant to provide the conceptual medium for the "construction" of the history of religion. The meaning of this construction does not lie in its schematic application to the particular religions. In reality, no tendency is to be found in an absolutely pure form. Every religion has elements of all tendencies in it; but the strength and kind vary in every instance and bring about the great varieties of religious history.

The attempt to set up a concept of religious norm as the synthesis of the different tendencies stands in contrast to two interpretations. One of these, in accord with the method of typological theory, views the tendencies alongside each other and as possessing equal value, while the other interpretation sees the ideal in a universal religion that includes all tendencies within itself in similar degree. Both are to be rejected. The typological interpretation does not at all belong to normative cultural science, whose nature it is to create concepts of norm. The opposite interpretation, however, leads to the ideal of a complex religion in which the different elements are not synthetically united but rather are brought together in merely external organization, i.e., legalistically.

These general definitions concerning the construction of the history of religion and concerning the concept of a religious norm are decisive for the concept of God and the concept of faith. The undifferentiated sacramental attitude symbolizes the Holy in manifold forms that have not found their synthesis in the unconditioned form, and therefore bear at the same time a divine and a demonic character. The nearer a religion stands to the undifferentiated attitude, the less it achieves authentic representations of God. Things in their immediate appearance are bearers of the

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Holy. The stronger the form establishes itself, the more concept and intuition separate from each other, and the more a genuine polytheism is the result, whose highest form is a monarchical polytheism, as for example in the manner of Greek mythology. Through the dissolution of polytheism, mystical monotheism arises. It elevates itself beyond all particular divinities, and symbolizes the pure import in paradoxical concepts, like Nirvana, the Beyond, and the Abyss. But this mystical monotheism retains within itself the polytheism from which it was abstracted, precisely as the mystical attitude remains bound to the sacramental. Consequently, mystical monotheism can allow polytheism to persist or it can even completely fall back into it. A special manifestation of the sacramental concept of God is mythical dualism, as represented especially by the Persian religion and by the religions deriving therefrom. Here theocratic criticism has led to a concentration of the divine on one side and the demonic on the other. Dualism is to a high degree antidemonic; but at the same time it is itself subjected to the demonic, for it splits the absolute unity of form into two independent unities of form. Yet, the demonic is no unity of form, it is rather a form-bursting principle.

Pure theocracy is exclusively monotheistic. It negates the many divinities from the point of view of one God who is the bearer of the unconditioned form, the jealous God who tolerates no demonic cleavages. But the more God is removed from his polytheistic basis, the more abstract, transcendent and formal he becomes. The perfected religion of grace passes through the stage of exclusive monotheism. It does not remain, however, in this sphere of law, but rather takes from sacramental polytheism a symbol that brings to full expression the religious paradox: the symbol of the divine mediator. The finite, the conditioned, which in a paradoxical way is the bearer of the Unconditional and for whose sake

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it surrenders itself as a finite, the vision of the figure of the incarnate, lowly and dying God: this constitutes the genuine religious mysterium. Scarcely any religion is entirely without it; it is placed at the center of the mystery religions and in Christianity is raised to a status decisive for the history of religion. Naturally, the symbol as such is not decisive for the majesty and power of a religion. Only where the radical theocratic criticism has overcome every demonic element in the divine mediator and made him into a bearer of the unconditioned form, is the synthesis of the tendencies of the history of religions achieved. Only there can exclusive monotheism incorporate a polytheistic element without danger of demonic splitting, and thus be transformed from the religion of law to the religion of grace. The elucidation of this symbol in concrete form is the central task of the normative theory of religion, or theology.

The same polarities and syntheses hold also for the concept of faith. In the undifferentiated sacramental situation faith is not distinguished from autonomous "unfaith." The apprehension of all things is belief-fol, for they are all mediators of the Unconditional. Under the influence of the criticism of form an element of unbelief, which at the same time is autonomous obedience to form, penetrates into the faith and characterizes a large number of forms of faith as superstition. Superstition is a faith forced into the demonic by theocracy and by autonomous form. In mysticism faith is dissolved. It is replaced by a unification with the unconditioned import that far surpasses faith. The particular forms of things do not become objects of faith in a paradoxical way, but rather they are disregarded. Nevertheless, the mystical attitude is also belief-fol. It cann~t dissolve the ultimate form, namely, being and consciousness; it can only break through. In radical theocracy the tension arises between unfaith in face of all finite forms and faith in the

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unconditioned form. A struggle of faith develops which ends either in a compromise between faith and unfaith or in faith in the paradox. Faith in the paradox, which in recognition of tlie unconditioned demand affirms the presence of the unconditioned import in a conditioned form, is the solution of the inner antinomy of faith.

It is not the task of philosophy of religion to decide what concrete symbol the religion of paradox can adopt, or better, what concrete symbol is fundamental for the normative concept of religion. That is the task of theology, which is necessarily confessional because it involves acknowledgment of a concrete symbol. But it does not therefore need to be less universally valid than philosophy of religion. If it has grasped the paradoxical, symbolic character of the content of faith, it must also place itself and its apprehension of the Unconditional under the No of the Unconditional. It will stand all the deeper in the religion of paradox, the more it succeeds in intuiting in its own symbol the No of the Unconditional against every symbol.

c. The Religious Tendencies in Autonomous Culture

The analysis of meaning has shown that culture in substance is religious, even though it is not so by intention. It must consequently be possible to encounter also in culture the same basic tendencies that we have observed in the inner-religious development. The difference is only this, that culture, because it is directed to the particular forms and their law, does not carry in itself the negativity of the Unconditional against every form. Accordingly, religious ecstasy disappears and with it the ecstatic, symbolic character of religious objects; in its place emerge enthusiasm and the subjectively creative quality that characterizes culture. There is certainly an ecstatic, form-bursting element in enthu

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siasm and in creativity. But it does not reach out beyond the form, and it dare not allow even the perfected form to disappear in the abyss of the Unconditional. The word "enthusiasm" (imbued with the divine) originates in the religious sphere. It has increasingly detached itself, however, from its basically religious meaning, and serves as a useful concept for the distinction between the religious and the cultural attitude.

In spite of this difference the opposition between the various tendencies we have observed in religion is also at work in culture. There can of course be no analogy in culture for the first of these tendencies, sacramental indifference. For it is precisely characteristic of the undifferentiated spiritual situation that a specifically holy form has not yet been indentified within it. But neither can there be a cultural analogy for the religion of paradox, for it is essential to it that a concrete form be the bearer of the unconditioned import. The religion of paradox thereby stands beyond the cultural sphere and represents a synthesis of the cultural and the religious. Only the opposition between the sacramental and the theocratic, an opposition that appears in the religious sphere after it has undergone the criticism of form, can become clearly evident in culture.

In analogy with the sacramental tendency in religion, culture creates the basic attitude of pantheism. In analogy with the theocratic tendency it creates critical rationalism. Just as religious history oscillates in the polarity between the sacramental and the theocratic, so cultural history, viewed in its ultimate intention, moves back and forth in the opposition between pantheism and critical rationalism. The question concerning the religious character of both tendencies is accordingly to be answered in this way: it is by no means permissible to assign one of these two forms-say pantheism-to religious history and to exclude the other from it.

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Critical rationalism, just like pantheism, is directed toward the absolute synthesis, that is to say, as demand. And pantheism is just as little directed toward the Unconditional as such as is ethical rationalism, for as little as the latter is it aware of the negativity of the Unconditional, the negativity directed against even the perfected synthesis of forms. Pantheism is no more religious than ethical rationalism. Both, however, live from religion. Yet there is a difference between the two insofar as autonomous culture as a whole stands on the ground of the theocratic criticism of form, and thus stands with theocratic criticism in common opposition to sacramentalism. Now when within culture the opposition between the sacramental and the theocratic appears as an opposition between pantheism and critical rationalism, the resultant cultural attitude is that of critical rationalism, for within it the infinite striving for form, the root of cultural autonomy, becomes clearly evident. Pantheism, on the other hand, the affirmation of the world as a perfected unity of meaning, gives to things a kind of sacramental consecration. It does this not in the mode of sacramental indifference (for pantheism has undergone the criticism of form), but yet in such a way that the infinite demonic contradiction of the unity of form is overlooked and the unconditioned abyss of meaning is forgotten. Pantheism is idealism. As idealism, however, it shatters on the reality of the demonic, and is naturally replaced by a pessimistic-demonic Weltanschauung. Pantheism is viable only so long as it is supported by the import of mystical monotheism. The more this import recedes-and it must recede as a result of the tendency toward form-the more idealistic and unreal pantheism becomes.

But critical rationalism is also not viable on its own. Out of concern for the infinite demand that can never become a reality it loses the sacramental import that lives in genuine theocracy. Its

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place is taken by the demonic in naturalistic form; it breaks culture apart, and after a period of anarchy it strives to establish new sacramental bonds. The tragedy of autonomous form in Greek cultural history is the great, unmatched example in the history of religion for the outcome of radical autonomy. Just as pantheism lives from the sacramental, so critical rationalism lives from the theocratic, and both disintegrate when they have fully forsaken these their foundations.

Autonomous culture, moreover, is destined to pass over into the religion of paradox. Through the concrete symbol culture is freed alike from the infinity of criticism that ends in emptiness and also from the unreality of an idealistic perfection. In the concrete symbol the immediate presence of the Unconditional is intuited and experienced, and the antidemonic struggle is concretely represented and actualized. Conversely, autonomy of culture is the decisive safeguard against the regression of the religion of grace to heteronomous sacramentalism. In both tendencies, in the sacramental as well as in the theocratic, autonomy provides this safeguard. The pantheistic tendency prevents the concrete symbol from producing a heteronomous constriction of interest. It effects a radiation of the sacramental from the central symbol to all reality. It creates a pansacramentalism that is tied to form and nevertheless does not remain idealistic but finds the realistic ground of its faith in the concrete symbol. The critical-rationalistic motive, on the other hand, prevents the influence of the theocratic formative power from being limited to an inner religious circle, and causes it instead to assume the task of subjecting reality in all spheres to rational form. Yet in this task it is supported by a concrete, meaning-giving symbol and as a result is not swallowed up by the emptiness of infinite, rational criticism.

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Thus all the essential elements of religion and culture Join together in the religion of paradox, and they create the theonomous spiritual situation that is the goal of all realization of meaning, a goal inherent in the very nature of meaning itself.

PART TWO § THE CATEGORIES OF RELIGION
—§§§—

1. The Religious Categories of the Theoretical Sphere

a. Myth

A decisive result of the theory of the essence of religion was the insight that religion is not one function alongside others but the turning of the spirit toward the Unconditional, a directedness that supports all the functions. A philosophical theory of the categories of religion must accordingly concern itself with the appearance of the religious element in the individual spheres of meaning. It must show which categories are constitutive for religious objects in the various spheres, how these categories change in face of the tendencies within the history of religion, how they are related to the secular-cultural categories, and how they come into a normative context through the normative concept of religion. In contrast to the first part of the philosophy of religion, which treats the essence of religion as equally operative in all areas of meaning and which consequently could also be called the general theory of the cate-

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gories of religion, we are now concerned with the special theory of categories which could also be characterized as a philosophical theory of phenomena. The special theory of the categories of religion is divided, in terms of the structure of the functions of meaning, into a theoretical and a practical part. The first concerns the categories of religious metaphysics, the second the categories of the religious ethos; for metaphysics is a theoretical, and ethos a practical, directedness toward the Unconditional.

In the theoretical sphere we distinguish between the philosophy of myth and the philosophy of revelation. Revelation is the form in which the religious object is given theoretically to religious faith. Myth is the form of expression for the content of revelation.

In myth the logical and the aesthetic apprehension of the Unconditional come together. The myth is not only aesthetic: it aims to give expression to the true and the real. And it is not only logical: it aims to apprehend intuitively the import of the Unconditional. The two are united in the original myth.

The nearer a religion stands to sacramental indifference, the more the intuition of everything has a mythical character, so that one is hesitant to speak of myth in connection with this spiritual situation generally. Indeed, for precisely that reason one does not, strictly speaking, find myth here, because everything real has immediate mythical qualities, because all of these immediately mythical realities, though later on to be secularized, are still sufficiently powerful symbolically to be an expression of the Holy, and finally because the opposition of holy and profane has not yet attained an essential significance. Only when the secularizing effect of theocratic criticism and autonomous form is evident, only when conceptualization subordinates the individual to the universal and devaluates it, and when the spiritual personality frees

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itself from mystical bondage to nature, does the myth take on more concrete forms. The Holy is concentrated upon over-arching figures (Gestalten) conceived as personal, that is, the gods, while holy men and things are reduced either to a divinely-hostile demonic estate or to mediators of revelation, and thus to bearers of a mediated holiness. This is the mythology of the great culture religions in which a sphere of highest holiness ( the world of the gods, usually with a monarch at the head), stands above a sphere of lower spirits and demons. This sphere in turn serves as a transition downward to hierarchically graded forms of holiness in the personal and material sphere.

Against this polytheistic mythology there emerge on the one hand an inner-religious process of disintegration which leads to the mystical emptying of the myth, and on the other hand theocratic criticism which tries to abolish the myth altogether. Both can make use of the monarchical tendencies of the myth. Mysticism does not really negate the myth, but rather empties it through its abstract symbols. For that reason it can associate itself with the myth (especially with the hierarchical, graduated form of it) and can present itself as the highest level of the ladder, as for example in Neoplatonism. On the other hand, theocracy combats the myth with such force that it rejects even the name of its own symbols. It views the mythical—which is a universal category of the religious as such—as a special attribute of the demonically sacramental. But even then it cannot get along without the mythical symbols so long as it is religion and not a mere proclamation of law, that is, so long as it speaks of God and his action. With particular emphasis theocracy fights against the lower spheres of the Holy, against half-gods and demons, and against holy persons and things. Where it nevertheless takes over such concepts, it divests them of their mythical, sacramental holiness; they become func

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tionaries in the theocratic shaping of the world. Their holiness is their obedience to pure form. Substantial holiness, however, is attributed to no finite thing.

In the religion of paradox the mythical element is again accepted, [only now] on the ground of the antimythical theocratic criticism. The intuition of an inner-divine tension and vitality overcomes the abstract legalistic character that God receives in pure theocracy. The religion of paradox struggles for a myth in which all demonic-mythical elements are eliminated and the unconditioned unity of the divine finds complete expression.

In autonomous culture the myth passes over into metaphysics. The formative powers of reason take possession of the holy symbols, now more in an aesthetic form, now more in a logical, and transform them into cultural creations. Metaphysics is alive so long as the holy import still inheres in its creations, so long as the sacramental element is preserved. Great metaphysics is full of mythical power, even though it is by intention directed no longer to the import, but rather to the form. But by reason of this formal intention its import is more and more lost, until rational science and art take its place. The criticism of rational metaphysics is the crisis in which it becomes evident that it is impossible to express the directedness toward the Unconditional through form alone. The metaphysics that is no longer a genuine myth, but also not a genuine science or art, shatters in face of rational criticism. And yet it is not possible to return to the myth that has been lost. The rational forms in science and art are too well established for that. But the more they have detached themselves from the unity expressed in the myth, the more they have been thrown into the empty infinity of the mere invention of forms, and the less possible it is for the spirit to live in them. Hence, there arises the longing for a new myth in which the rational forms will become symbols

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of the unconditioned import, that is, a longing for a theonomous metaphysics.

In the formulation of religious dogmas we encounter the. attempt to develop a theonomous metaphysics. The concept of "dogma," through historical and especially canonical development, has taken on a heteronomous character. Dogma is the central object of attack for autonomous culture. But this opposition does not reckon with the actual matter in hand. By virtue of the insight into the symbolic character of all myth and the possibility of incorporating the infinite autonomous invention of form into myth, the "will to dogma" can become free again. Dogmatics is a theory of theonomous metaphysics or of myth with autonomous symbols. It is a central synthetic task for every period.

Myth presents itself in a threefold tendency: as a myth of being, a myth of history, and a myth of the absolute idea, or in the language of myth itself, as creation, redemption, and fulfillment. In this triad both poles of all things real and their ideal unity are apprehended from the point of view of the Unconditional: the immediately existent on the one hand and the meaning-fulfilling spirit on the other, and finally the perfected unity of being and spirit. The absence of any one of these is a sign of declining mythical power. Only in their unity does the relation of the Unconditional to the conditioned come to complete expression, and only then is a true symbolism achieved.

b. Revelation

We speak of revelation wherever the unconditioned import of meaning breaks through the form of meaning. Faith is always based on revelation, for it is an apprehension of the unconditioned import through conditioned forms. Autonomous unbelief knows of no revelation, it knows only about the creation of forms. But

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behind every real creation stands revelation; for every creation lives from the import to which it gives form. Heteronomous faith does not see the breakthrough quality of revelation. It gives to the mediator of revelation the absoluteness of revelation itself and thereby destroys the autonomous creation of forms. The struggle between heteronomous interpretation and autonomous repudiation of revelation is only to be settled by insight into the paradoxical, symbolic character of revelation.

The undifferentiated sacramental attitude knows no difference between revelation and the creation of forms. Everything that has esctatic qualities-and there is scarcely anything that could not possess them-is a bearer of revelation. Everything real has the inner powerfulness and intrinsic significance to serve as a bearer of the unconditional import. Under the influence of the criticism of form things more and more lose their revelational quality. Revelation becomes a special activity of divine beings which comes about by means of a revelational miracle. In place of the everpresent manifestation of the divine appears the document of revelation which owes its origin to divine inspiration. The document of revelation wins decisive significance especially on strongly theocratic soil as an aftereffect of severe antidemonic struggles. It acquires the exclusiveness of theocratic monotheism and becomes a bearer of the revelational law. But faith longs for the immediate presence of the Holy. It takes the side of the spirit in opposition to the letter. But since it is now bound to the unconditioned authority of the revelational document, it creates a holy exegesis that aims to make present the import of revelation from the past, without negating the authority of revelation. Occasionally, to be sure, the bond with the past is broken, and an immediate revelational ecstasy appears which combats the letter and appeals to the inner word. But as

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soon as it disavows the theocratic struggle of the past (that is, the history of revelation), it sinks down into demonic subjectivism.

Mysticism rises above the sphere of particular revelations. It wants revelation in an absolute sense, a revelation that stands beyond all forms and every particular revelation. It also devaluates the records of revelation, but not in order to put its own revelations in their place; that is, it does not do this from the perspective of rational criticism but rather in order to find behind all particular revelations the eternal revelation itself. The religion of paradox intuits in a concrete revelational symbol the unity of theocratic exclusiveness and sacramental immediacy. The most significant example of this is the Pauline doctrine of the Spirit. The Spirit is an immediately present bearer of revelation, it has all the characteristics of genuine revelation, the ecstatic, the miraculous, the inspirational. At the same time, however, it is bound to the theocratically exclusive symbol of the Christ. Through this connection it is prevented from becoming a spirit of "disorder" and from sinking into the subjectively demonic. Its two works are Gnosis and Agape, the creation of theonomous knowledge and of theonomous community. Form and import are radically fused together; the ideal synthesis of revelation is clearly expressed.

All inner-religious conceptions of revelation are one in the fact that revelation is the unconditioned import breaking through form. The more these conceptions limit revelation to certain exclusive bearers of revelation, the more they are in danger of heteronomously perverting the concept of revelation. Miracle becomes a special event of nature destroying the natural form, inspiration becomes a supernatural communication shattering the form of consciousness, and the whole of revelation becomes a form of its own which contradicts the autonomous unity of form and rules

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out the autonomous criticism and creation of form. Here is the point where autonomy raises its sharpest opposition to religious heteronomy. It rejects miracle as a supernatural event, that is as a form-shattering event, and likewise rejects inspiration as the supernatural presentation of information, which splits the unity of consciousness; and it rejects the whole of revelation as a setting up of a form of its own above autonomous forms. But autonomy goes a step further. It sets autonomous creativity in the place of a breaking through of the unconditioned import. Revelation is replaced by the rational invention of forms, and the anticipatory presence of the Unconditional by an activity that wants to create something unconditioned. But the Unconditional cannot be created. The attempt of autonomy to dissolve revelation into spiritually autonomous fulfillment through meaning, to dissolve the history of revelation into cultural history, destroys revelation but is thereby also self-destructive. For the spirit is creative only insofar as the import of revelation is at work in it.

The opposition between an autonomous and a heteronomous doctrine of revelation is overcome by insight into the character of revelation as the manifestation of import breaking through form. Miracle is the ecstatic, symbolically powerful natural phenomenon, inspiration the ecstatic, symbolically powerful fulfillment of the spirit, the bearer of revelation the ecstatic, symbolically powerful personality. But ecstasy and symbolic power break through rather than shatter form. Rational autonomous criticism, even of the most holy bearers and documents of revelation, cannot be prevented by appeal to their revelational character. On the other hand, no criticism of the character of revelation can deprive a bearer of revelation of this quality, for it rests upon faith and symbolic Power. Only the inner-religious, antidemonic criticism can destroy symbolic power and faith.

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The paradoxical concept of revelation makes the intellectualistic misinterpretation of revelation impossible. Revelation is in no way a communication of objective information. This view is necessarily connected with the objectification of the concept of God, and is overcome by the insight into the symbolic character of all concepts that apprehend and interpret the Unconditional. The paradoxical concept of revelation opens the way for the theonomous faith issuing from revelation.

The question concerning the certainty of revelation is also answered thereby. In every act of revelational faith two things are involved: on the one hand directedness toward the unconditional import and on the other the symbolic form through which the Unconditional is revealed. Directedness toward the unconditional import has unconditional certainty; the certainty of faith is the absolutely fundamental certainty. Since this certainty is in no way directed toward an objective reality, it cannot be brought into doubt by means of the criticism of forms. On the contrary, it grounds the possibility of every certainty of form and of every criticism of form. The certainty of faith is consciously or unconsciously operative in every autonomous act, even in doubt; indeed, it usually is especially powerful there. It is quite different with the symbols in which revelation is intuited. They stand entirely under the criticism of form, and their certainty is the certainty of conviction that belongs to every creative, spiritual act. But it is the depth of religious certainty that it places even the certainty of its own symbols under the No, in order to avoid attributing the dignity of the Unconditional to any conditioned thing.

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2. The Religious Categories of the Practical Sphere

a. The Cultus

Cultus is the sum total of those act1v1t1es through which the Unconditional is to be realized in the practical sphere. All religious activity is cultic. Religious activity, however, is belief-ful activity. All belief-ful activity is therefore cultic. This general concept of cultus is able to do justice to all forms of religious activity, and provides the clear parallel to the form of belief-ful cognition, i.e., to myth.

The relation of myth and cultus is such that every cultic act has a mythical content, and every mythical object has a cultic realization. This complementarity of the two is based upon the faith character of both functions. For faith there can be no practical act that would not be directed toward the Unconditional through and beyond a symbol. And for faith there can be no symbol of the Unconditional toward which no practical act is directed. The act without symbolic content remains caught within the subjectivity of feeling. The symbol without a practical act remains in the objectivity of things. In neither case is there yet an attitude of faith, i.e., a presence of the Unconditional, a presence that breaks through all form. The one is an unbelief-fol subjectivizing, the other an unbelief-fol objectivizing, of the Holy.

In the indifferently sacramental spiritual situation the cultic act is undifferentiated from the secular act. Every active relation to things and men has sacramental qualities, and is supported by the presence of the Holy. Since all things possess a symbolic character, the relation to them is belief-ful even if the things in question are things of technical use. The goal of belief-ful activity is union with the holy ground of things, whether it be in dedication or in

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appropriation, in giving or in receiving. In this way the actions of daily life in nature and in community and also in inner psychic acts acquire a sacred significance. The secular and holy purposes are not yet differentiated. It is, therefore, not as if the Holy were put in the service of secular purposes, as rationalistic psychology supposes. Rather, the secular as secular has not yet appe;ued. Daily actions have a cultic religious quality in unity with their utility value. The latter is not the primary element, with the former something added to it and derived from it; rather, both are originally one. Naturally, the possibility exists of an unbelief-fol manipulation of the Holy; but it is not the essence of the original cultus, only its distortion.

The two fundamental acts of the cultus, the union with the Holy in dedication and in appropriation, come together in the act of sacrifice, the central cultic symbol. Sacrifice is the dedication of the conditioned to the Unconditional. A presupposition of union with the Unconditional is self-renunciation of the conditioned, the sublation of conditioned forms and of conditioned relations. Where this happens it makes possible the becoming imbued with the powers of the Unconditional which prove to be at work even in the conditioned relationships: blessing rests upon sacrifice. Even here one encounters the rationalistic misinterpretation of sacrifice, and it makes the misuse into a norm. It interprets sacrifice as a rational bargain in accord with the formula: do ut des. But genuine sacrifice is a tmion with the Unconditional that is present in everything real. The Holy is always at the same time that which is destructive and demanding of sacrifice and that which is fulfilling and life-bestowing.

The union of the sacrificer with the Holy depends upon the presence of the Holy in the object of sacrifice and upon its communicating itself to him. This happens with a special intuitive

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power in the sacrificial meal which signifies an immediate reception of the sacramental powers. The more in later polytheism the complex of social ideas is absorbed into the cultus, the more th,'. sacrificial gift and the recipient of the sacrifice become separated from each other. In the religion of grace the original meaning of sacrifice is again taken up in a paradoxical way.

Sacrifice by nature has an ecstatic character that breaks through the secular concern for utility. The ecstatic attitude of mind of the sacrificer corresponds to this. In every cultus, ecstatic states that break through the consciousness are striven for and achieved through a holy means of transport. The naturally secular, formbound consciousness cannot receive the Holy. All things connected with the cultus express this ecstatic character, the holy word, the holy song, the sacred vestments, the sacred place, etc.

A prerequisite for participation in the cultus is purity, that is, the renunciation of all qualities that obstruct ecstasy. From this arise the rites of purification preparatory to the cultus, through the completion of which a union with the Holy is alone possible.

The more the cultus is bound up with definite cultic myths, sacrificial forms and rites of purification, the more impossible it is for all and sundry individuals to perform the cultic act rightly. A separate, cultically pure caste emerges which at the same time possesses the knowledge of the cultus and performs the cultic functions for others-the priesthood.

With the increasing personalization and transcendence of the Holy in the polytheistic culture religions, the personal and the social categories in the cultus gain predominance. The union with the Holy becomes a personal relation to God, sacrifice becomes personal devotion, ecstasy becomes a state of being imbued with the concrete God. God as the bearer of forms becomes Lord and Ruler, the cultus becomes divine service (Gottesdienst). The ec

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static word becomes personal prayer. The old sacrifices and rites of purification lose their immediately sacramental character and become acts of devotion. In pure theocracy they lose their significance altogether. In their place appears the realization of the pure form: obedience is better than sacrifice. Divine service is the establishment of the sovereignty of God, sacrifice is the renunciation of one's own will. The priest becomes the teacher of the Law. Purity is a moral quality. Ecstasy is suppressed, and the demonry of transport is overcome. The cultus has in principle passed over into ethos. Of course, this does not actually happen within the religious sphere; the personal relation to God remains. Prayer acquires decisive significance. It becomes the plea for a pure heart, that is, for fulfillment through the qualities of moral holiness. This prayer is interpreted at the same time as the perfect sacrifice, because in it dedication of the will is accomplished. Even here we still find cultus and all its characteristics. Within religion, cultus can no more be dissolved than myth. But it is a cultus that, in its abstract unconditionedness, must either lead to despair of any union with the holy God or move into the secular dissolution of the cultus, unless it breaks through this tension to the religion of paradox.

Pure mysticism penetrates and identifies the symbolic character of cultus and goes beyond it through an ecstasy that no longer employs concrete forms. Rather, it rises above every sacrificial form, rite of purification, and priesthood, and achieves cultic union in the absolute sacrifice of all forms of reality. But this ecstasy also requires preparation, indeed the whole life is :i process of purification. Mystical askesis is the absolute form of the cultic idea of purification, and from this point of view the other cultic forms are ranked in value. The cultus is not criticized but transcended.

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The religion of paradox breaks out of the indissoluble tension into which radical theocracy has driven the cultus. The cultus has reality only insofar as it is supported by the "gracious" presence of the Unconditional. The presupposition of the cultus is grace. Grace is the correlate of revelation in the practical sphere. It is the presence of the Unconditional in conditioned forms, apprehended through action. It is the divine activity to which human activity responds. In the sacramental spiritual situation grace is identical with fullness of life in general. In polytheism it is focused upon definite acts of divine giving and helping. In theocratic criticism it is identical with the gift of the Law. But just by that fact it is as grace sublated and transformed into pure demand. Like myth and revelation, cultus and grace approach the boundary of their selfdissolution within radical theocracy. But dissolution does not really take place; instead, we find the tension between form and import, between demand and gift, which leads to the breakthrough of the religion of paradox, of the true religion of grace. The cultus in the religion of paradox unites the two elements in which the sacramental and the theocratic cultus culminate, prayer and sacrifice. Prayer, however, is not primarily prayer for a pure heart but rather for forgiveness of sins, that is, for that form of grace which is given immediately with the theocratic relation to the Unconditional. Under the aegis of the paradoxical concept of "justification by faith" this form of grace becomes the center of the Pauline and Protestant doctrine of grace. Simultaneously, however, the presence of God is intuited in sacramental fashion in the concrete symbol of the divine, self-sacrificing mediator; to participate in his self-dedication is redemption and fulfillment. And both elements, the theocratic and the sacramental, are one. The divine sacrifice is the forgiveness of sins, and vice versa. The grace of God is the divine sacrifice. In this way a cultus is made possible into which

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all forms of the original cultus can enter, though purified through antidemonic criticism and perceived in their symbolic character. The cultic is nothing other than the most highly concentrated form of belief-fol activity. But all activity ought in essence to be beliefful activity. The union with the Unconditional, the apprehension of its gracious presence, which is ecstatic fulfillment in sacramentalism and personal obedience in theocracy, becomes in the religion of paradox spiritual love, the synthesis of ecstasy and obedience.

In autonomous culture belief-fol activity is replaced by unbeliefful activity bound to form. Autonomous ethos takes the place of cultus. And ethos is directedness toward the Unconditional in the realm of action. Autonomous ethos, therefore, carries within itself the contradiction that it aims to realize the Unconditional through conditioned forms. It is thus similar to autonomous metaphysics, which wishes to do the same thing in the theoretical sphere. And just as autonomous metaphysics lacks revelation, so autonomous ethos lacks grace. And like the former, it collapses by reason -of its inner contradiction and breaks down into the two spheres that are united in cultus, i.e., the personal function (oriented to law) and the social function. The relationship of personality to things is no longer determined by the concern for cultic union but rather by the subjugation of the thing to law and by its rational utility. Social relations are determined by formal justice, which appears in place of cultic righteousness and purity. In the social sphere directedness toward the unconditional Love is replaced by the ethos of the cultivated personality and the community that promotes culture. In place of cultic ecstacy we now find "culture" (Bildung) and form. Of course, it is also true here that so long as the autonomous ethos still bears a living power, it unconsciously retains a quality of grace and a cultic character. In the demand for righteousness we see an enthusiasm oriented to the future, in the

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idea of the spiritually disciplined personality and community we see enthusiasm oriented to intuition.

Here, too, in the autonomous ethos we find the opposition between the sacramental and the theocratic. But, as everywhere in culture, the theocratic attitude oriented to form is the more consistent of the two. As a critical rationalism it reveals the unreal, idealistic character of any pantheistic, intuitive ethos. It itself, however, leads to the emptiness of pure autonomous form, a condition that is inadequate in the practical as well as in the theoretical sphere, and thus it has to drive on toward a theonomous ethos.

In the autonomous sphere the central act that takes the place of sacrifice is unbiased dedication to form. The more unconsciously cultic it is, the more it is real sacrifice, and the more it bears a real fulfillment. But the more unbelief-fol, empty and formal it is, the more it becomes a loss without a gain. This can also be seen from the point of view of the object: the richer and more creative the forms are, all the more is the import present in them, all the more are they the bearers of grace, and all the more can they be a source of cultic experience. The more empty the forms have become, the more secular and meaningless is their effect; no communio is possible with this rationally abstract world, this graceless law.

In autonomy the bearer of the creation of form, the shaper, the seer, and the leader, takes the place of the priesthood, in the theoretical as well as in the practical sphere. Devotion becomes :esthetic intuition of the forms of reality, prayer becomes the integration and exaltation of the personal life. But in all these relations the same things hold which we have said in general about autonomy: the sacramental intuitive attitude is idealism, and critical rationalism reveals the emptiness of mere form, and under the

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impact of severe social-ethical shocks, forces a turning toward theonomous ethos.

The union of ethos with cultus in theonomy, however, is of decisive significance not only for culture but also for religion. It prevents cultic activity from heteronomously "violating" and perverting cultural activity. It compels the recognition that all cultus is symbolic, that the special cultic forms are not forms in the proper sense but rather are representations of the living import inherent in all activity. This, however, does not mean that cultus as such is merely representational activity. Where cultus is so understood it is assigned to the aesthetic sphere and loses its essence. Cultus is a real activity, for all belief-fol activity, and that means all meaning-fulfilling activity in a theonomous spirit, is cultus. Only the special cultic forms are symbolic. Not their inherent value but their symbolic power is stronger than that of other activity. But even these cultic forms-prayer for the forgiveness of sins as well as devotional union with the God who gives himself graciously-stand like all activity and all cognition and everything real under the No of the Unconditional.

b. The Cult Fellowship

The bearer of the cultus is the cult fellowship. Like everything spiritual, religion is supported by a community. The religious consciousness would remain without the element of unconditioned demand if in the community the law of what is right and moral did not acquire unconditional validity. And the presence of the Holy would not have the character of revelation and grace if the individual could at will establish it by works instead of having to participate in the Holy as it is presented in history and community. Therefore the individualism of religious feeling is as irreligious as is the naturalism of a religionless education or the

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rationalism of a new religion. Community and tradition are rooted in the character of the Holy as that which is valid and is a gift of grace. Even the mystical and monastic hermits live from the import of the community. In their lives they represent cultically and symbolically the community-negating element of this community.

In the sacramentally undifferentiated spiritual situation the cult fellowship is identical with the totality of sacramentally sacred communities of social and legal character. Family, race, nation, state, and locus with their different communal and power relations are bearers of the cultus. The individual has value only in terms of his significance in the context of the whole. He does not possess any cultic quality of his own.

Through theocratic criticism the sacred fellowship increasingly separates itself from its connection with the demonically permeated sacramental communities. The unconditional demand for righteousness and love is directed toward the individual and draws him apart into the "communion of the saints." In sacramentalism personal piety expresses itself as a power of ecstasy within the established forms; but in theocracy it becomes the supporting power of the sacred community. This gives rise to the voluntary fellowship and to religious personalism. A radical criticism is directed against the sacramental consecration of natural communities and sacramental-aristocratic personalities. All sacred immediacies, from the love of the child to the bonds of national community, must break down before the unconditioned demand. The sacred community transcends all particular communities. Thus the missionary world-churches come into existence. The more radically theocratic these movements are, the more they attempt, in the light of the sacred demand, to regulate all forms of public and private life and of state and law, and to extirpate the irrational demonic powers. This explains the rise of powerful

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eschatological movements that aim to prepare for the coming kingdom of God and like all radical theocracy either break through to the religion of grace or end in compromise. The most remarkable example of this is English Puritanism.

The mystic isolates himself from all community, nevertheless without criticizing it. He shatters the traditional forms of personality and thus also of community, and in absolute ecstasy he stands forth as "the alone with the alone" (Plotinus). And yet even he draws the strength of his life from the sacramental import of the cult community and from the mystical traditions that cultically elevate him to the absolute cultic act, namely, self-dissolution.

In the religion of paradox the cult fellowship is not identical with the immediately given communities, nor does it stand over against these communities as a critically dissolving demand. Rather, from the point of view of its concrete symbol it gives to all immediate forms of community a paradoxical-sacramental consecration, that is, a consecration that has undergone theocratic criticism and which has internalized the critical, negative element for all aspects of life. The kingdom of God is not a pure form but rather the paradoxically present and yet ever demanded holy fellowship. The perfect realization of this synthesis is an ideal. In the historical religions the tension does not cease between the sacramental and the theocratic, a tension that comes to expression in the opposition between the sacramental Volkskirchen on the one hand and the theocratic sects and communal-movements on the other.

In autonomous culture the cult fellowship is replaced by the autonomous community of law and the secular association. The decisive thing is concern for form. Even here, however, much of the cultic quality is preserved (aufgehoben). Through every creative ac

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tivity in state and society, through every struggle for personal fulfillment, something of the directedness toward the unconditioned community and unconditioned personality continues to pulsate. Also the autonomous communities like the cult community, draw their vitality from the grace in which they wish to participate and through which alone they can be creative. Accordingly, we find here also the two basic tendencies, the sacramental on the one hand which gives an ethical sanctification to the ideally intuited, given forms of community, and the theocratic on the other which strives for the universal human community of law and fights for it with enthusiasm. Here again the critical, rational tendency is more consistent. It makes evident the impossibility of holding to a pantheistic social idealism. But it leads to the "pure" form of society and personality whose emptiness in all areas of economics, law, pedagogy, and social order forces a turn toward a religiously sacramental meaning-fulfillment.

In the religion of paradox the autonomous forms of law, community, and personality are incorporated into the cult community. They prevent the heteronomous petrification of the cult community and its forms in opposition to the other rational forms of community. The struggle between church and state, canonical and secular law, religious and humanistic communal life, cultic and cultural personality, comes to an end as soon as the holy fellowship and the holy personality have grasped their own symbolic character. Their forms are not forms in the proper sense and therefore do not stand beside or above the other proper, that is, autonomous forms. Rather, they are paradoxical, that is, they express in particular symbolic forms the intention toward the Unconditional contained in all social and secular activity. The demand for theonomy is thereby fulfilled.

The fundamental problem of philosophy of religion is solved in

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terms of the basic principles of the religion of paradox outlined above, adumbrated first in their general features and then in specific reference to the theoretical and the practical spheres. We have set forth a philosophy of religion which in method and elaboration has incorporated within itself the autonomy of religion and culture and has also pointed the way to a theonomous synthesis. We have attempted to provide a theonomous philosophy of religion which overcomes the conflict between theology and philosophy of religion, and to which a theology can be joined as a concrete elaboration and fulfillment.

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"What do you think an artist is? A fool who, if he is a painter, has only eyes, if he is a musician, only ears, if he is a poet, only a lyre for all the chords of the heart, or even, if he is a boxer, only muscle? On the contrary, he is at the same time a social creature, always wide-awake in the face of heart-rending bitter or sweet events of the world and wholly fashioned himself according to their image. How could he fail to take an interest in other people and by virtue of what ivory-tower indifference could he detach himself from the pulsating life they bring near him? No, painting is not made to decorate houses. It is a weapon of offensive and defensive war against the enemy."
These words of Pablo Picasso are eminently pertinent at the beginning of this Introduction to a volume containing three essays by Paul Tillich on the philosophy of religion, essays that first appeared around fifty years ago. The leading essay in this volume was first published in an erudite Handbook of Philosophy (1925), a massive work on the academic disciplines. When it was reprinted a decade ago in the first volume of Tillich's collected writings, he spoke of it as "the first outline" of his philosophy of religion, now "recovered from the grave in which it was hidden."
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The other two essays of the present volume were presented in 1919 and 1922 at meetings of a learned society, the Kant-Gesellschaft. Accordingly, the style of these essays is compact and abstract, and much of the language is technical. This style and this language could give the reader the false impression that the essays reflect an "ivory-tower indifference," a distance and detachment from "pulsating life." Actually, however, these essays cannot be properly understood or appreciated if one does not bear in mind that they were composed in the turbulent years in Germany which followed World War I, a period in which cynicism, despair, radical reconception, revolutionary impulse and heady utopianism vied with each other in appeal for public favor. During these years Tillich was engaged in dialogue with a prodigious variety of people and movements. He was writing on the economic and political crisis, on socialism as a question for the church, on religion and class struggle, on "the masses and religion," on religion and art, on the youth movement, on the methods of the sciences, on nonecclesiastical religions, on special theological problems in debate, on nationalism, on the demonic in religion and culture, on the religious crisis, and on Kairos as a summons to new decision. Already in 1919 Karl Barth in the publication of his commentary on The Epistle to the Romans had rung loud bells from the belfry. In proclaiming the absolute and unique revelation of the Word of God he had insisted that Christianity should not be called a religion. At the same time Ernst Troeltsch was presenting the view that all religions, including Christianity, are relativized by reason of their historicity. With a narrower perspective psychologists of religion were promoting scientific experiments, for example, to determine the psychophysical effects of organ music and scriptural readings. In other quarters religion was pilloried as the opiate of the masses, the enemy
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of humanity, and a new day of emancipation from it was being proclaimed with banners and confrontations. In broad circles one could encounter the claim that an old era had come to an end. The dominant philosophies and religious tendencies of the nineteenth century were believed to be at best dead.
The turn in new directions was to be observed in the arts, especially in Expressionism. For a few months I was myself in Germany at about this time, just after Tillich's The Religious Situation (1926) had become a best seller. I recall the intense conversations struck up repeatedly, and quite unavoidably, with students in the youth movement whom I encountered at exhibitions of contemporary art. It is not at all surprising that Tillich with his devotion to the plastic arts tells us that in his preparation of his Philosophy of Religion he was influenced by contemporary painting, a concern that finds explicit reference in the third essay in the present volume.
Evidence abounds that Tillich was every much "engaged" in the midst of this ferment. In short, the essays of this volume came from the pen of a man who was what Picasso calls "a social creature, always wide-awake in the face of heart-rending bitter or sweet events of the world." In the midst of these events he was aware of both the sense of the irrelevance and the sense of urgency of the question, "What is religion?"
The reference to the Picasso passage cited above possesses still further pertinence for approaching Tillich's philosophy of religion. Tillich was wont to speak of Picasso's Guernica as "a great Protestant painting"-not that he found here "the Protestant answer, but rather the radicalism of the Protestant question." This radical quality is especially evident in the closing words of the Picasso passage: "Painting is not made to decorate houses. It is a weapon of offensive and defensive war against the enemy." A basic
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premise of Tillich's thought is the axiom that authentic religion is not something that can be added as decoration merely to embellish human existence, like a painting "made to decorate houses." It is part and parcel of a struggle.
The essays in the present volume give Tillich's conception of the enemy and also of the power that works against this enemy. False religion represents an important battalion of the enemy, particularly the religion that is only an adjunct of man's existence. The authentic religion is by no means detached from "pulsating life." In Tillich's phrase, it expresses the "pulse beat" of all meaningful existence. But the identification of the enemy is by no means easy. It can be found in what calls itself religion; at the same time the struggle against the enemy can appear in a concealed way where religion appears to be scorned and rejected.
In Tillich's view, then, there is a sense in which religion and even the word "religion" must be rejected as spurious. In considering this meaning of the word he goes so far as to demand the overcoming or "the conquest of the concept of religion."
The essay of this title (1922) has been included in the volume, because it serves as a necessary prol_ogue to his Philosophy of Religion. The concept of religion which must be overcome is a concept that in effect destroys the reality to which it is supposed to point. The word "religion" should therefore be taken as a "derogatory term." Tillich gives a number of reasons to justify this pejorative use of the word. For example, what calls itself religion is often simply the appeal to divine sanctions for one or another form of cultural arrogance. This kind of religion "brings no healing." The disastrous consequences are not far to seek. This spurious quality of "religion" is related to another feature, the tendency to interpret religion as simply "a province within the spiritual life." Thus one can hear it said that "just as a person is ethical,
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scientific, aesthetic or political, so he is at the same time also religious."
But in Tillich's view, authentic religion "does not allow a person to be also 'religious.' " It does not allow religion to be one concern alongside others. One way in which this spatialization of religion appears is in the effort to assign the religious function to some other function of the human spirit, for example, to the practical ( ethical) function, or to feeling, or to intellect (Kant, Schleiermacher [misinterpreted], Hegel). Corresponding to these forms of spatialization is the spatialization of the divine itself: God is understood to be one being alongside other beings, "the Unconditional standing alongside the conditioned."
In all of these ways religion is blunted in its thrust, or it is even perverted; and it cannot be taken with absolute seriousness. Religion and also the object of faith fall into the enclosure and relativity of transient cultural phenomena or of this or that function of the human spirit. God is no longer a consuming fire before these phenomena or functions. Or to use Tillich's fundamental formulation: "The Unconditional is based upon the conditioned, that is, it is destroyed." Men worship a "God under God."
Nevertheless, the concept of religion is unavoidable. It is the purpose of this essay on "the conquest of the concept" to overcome the false concept, that is, to "eliminate" the latter's "destructive force through its subordination to a higher concept, the concept of the Unconditional.'' In pursuing this purpose Tillich uses the term "religion" to refer to both the authentic and the false, leaving it to the reader to determine by reference to the context which sense of the word is intended.
The reference to the "Unconditional" in this context brings us immediately to one of the characteristic qualities of Tillich's philosophy of religion ( as well as of his theology), his desire to avoid
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traditional language in speaking of religion. Indeed, by reason of his conviction that much of the old language is dead or misleading, he seems to have defined his vocation to be that of framer of a new, or at least of an unfamiliar, language, particularly in order to "overcome" the spurious concepts of religion.
There is an additional characteristically Tillichian feature here in the reference to the "higher concept," the Unconditional. As against a number of the philosophers of idealism Tillich, as we have seen, will not base religion upon any one human function.
This would be a false beginning, and would lead to a false concept. Already in a "thesis" he defended in a 1912 academic disputation he had asserted that "the concept of religion must be derived from the concept of God, not the reverse." A philosophy of religion which does not begin with something unconditional never reaches God. In Tillich's philosophy of religion the concept of religion is derived from the concept of the Unconditional. Here Tillich shows himself to represent a special type of philosophy of religion, the type that relies upon intuitional immediacy.
The concept of the Unconditional has "turned off'' many a reader. Karl Barth, who for the most part preferred Biblical language, spoke of the term as a "frozen monstrosity." Apparently Tillich chose it not for its positive symbolic Power but because it can give rise to freshly minted connotation. The word may be traced at least as far back as Plato, who used it in a different sense; and it bears a one-sided affinity to Anaximander's term "the boundless."
For Tillich the term aims to express the source of the unconditional claim expressed in the demand, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind." It also points beyond the realm of finite differentiations, beyond the cleavage of subject and object, beyond all culture and
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religion, beyond the human functions; and yet 1t impinges upon them all. It refers to "a quality but not to a being." In the present volume it is called a symbol for God, though in later writings Tillich speaks of it as "our ultimate, unconditional concern, whether we call it 'God' or 'Being as such' or 'the Good as such' or 'the True as such,' or whether we give it any other name." None of these formulations, however, is entirely adequate, for Tillich's concept of the Unconditional is paradoxical; the Unconditional is related to all finite things, yet it is not one among them or all of them taken together. Moreover, it "stands over against" all things of the finite world (including the concept of God) and at the same time is the dynamic ground of existence and meaning. Besides this, it is the abyss of all meaning, dynamically breaking down encrusted meanings and bursting through to new forms. It is present even in distorted, though partially creative, form in demonic forces, for nothing can exist which is entirely separated from it. Thus the Unconditional in various ways is both affirming and negating. For this reason one may say that it is infinitely apprehensible, yet never entirely comprehensible. Taking all of these ingredients into account, Tillich speaks of the relation between the Unconditional and the conditioned as "the paradoxical immanence of the transcendent." By reason of the paradoxical and dynamic character of the Unconditional Tillich holds that the philosophical method for approaching it is metalogical, a term previously used by Troeltsch.
These ideas are familiar to readers of Tillich, as are a number of the other ideas and terms that appear in his Philosophy of Religion. After these necessary preliminary explanations we should turn now to consider the presuppositions and formulations that are to be found in this work as they are presented under the rubric of philosophy of religion.
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First let it be said that Tillich in his conceotion of philosoohv of religion has deviated from a generally familiar, conventional conception. According to a conventional conception, philosophy of religion has been defined as a detached systematic study of the concepts or categories of religion toward the end of achieving clarity regarding the character, the structure, and dynamics of the phenomena of religion. Tillich does not adopt this definition. He stems from the tradition of German classical philosophy and also from Existentialism. In this classical tradition philosophy of religion promoted a constructive task, namely, that of presenting a rationale as well as a definition of religion, and of course without ostensible dependence on special revelation. Existentialism for its part has stressed the recognition of the human condition as immediately experienced in its anxiety, its meaninglessness, and its loneliness. With these two outlooks, that of classical German philosophy and that of Existentialism, in his background Tillich sees a more intimate connection between religion and philosophy of religion than has been presupposed in conventional philosophy of religion insofar as it has aimed simply to promote systematic reflection about the phenomenon of religion.
But how is this intimate relation between religion and philosophy of religion to be effected? Viewing the history of the relationship, Tillich recognizes that there has been an antithesis between the two. At certain periods, for example in the early Middle Ages and in the Enlightenment, either theology or philosophy of religion claimed sole sovereignty, in the early Middle Ages the former, in the Enlightenment the latter. In the late Middle Ages, British empiricism, and theological Kantianism, the two disciplines flourished in more or less peaceful coexistence. In the high Middle Ages and in romanticism and philosophical idealism attempts were made in the direction of mediation or of synthesis,
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in the earlier period from the side of theology and in the later from the side of philosophy. In a special sense Tillich adopts this stance of mediation, asserting that the other types of relationship make for a kind of spiritual schizophrenia.
Tillich approaches the effort to overcome this split ( which is only one form of separation in our fragmented world) by defining philosophy of religion as a normative cultural science-what the Germans since Dilthey have called Geisteswissenschaft. In his view, philosophy of religion not only studies religion and its categories but it attempts also to achieve a norm regarding authentic religion (here resuming what we have noticed already in the attempt to distinguish authentic from false religion). In contrast to the aim of detached, systematic reflection about religion, Tillich declares that philosophy of religion deals not only with what is but also with what ought to be.
This view of the task of philosophy of religion might seem to be tantamount to equating philosophy of religion and theology. But Tillich rejects this interpretation. In his conception of it philosophy of religion is concerned to delineate the nature of a religion that is valid, yet it relies upon religion or theology to present a concrete articulation of authentic religion. In other words, philosophy of religion is concerned with the criteria of authentic religion but not directly with its realization. In carrying out its task, however, philosophy of religion can make a special contribution by delineating the principal phenomena in terms of basic polarities and alternatives, and also in terms of the relations between religion and culture. Thus philosophy of religion must deal with the categories of religion in both the theoretical and the practical sphere.
But it is not enough to say that philosophy of religion for Tillich is a normative cultural science. Its task is also to overcome
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the split represented in the antithesis between philosophy of religion and revelational religion. Its aim is to find "the point in the doctrine of revelation and philosophy of religion at which the two are one," and from there "to construct a synthetic solution" of the antithesis. In face of the tension, he says that "the way of synthesis is alone genuine and legitimate."
Tillich repeatedly refers to this synthesis as the goal of his philosophy of religion. It is surprising, however, that this overarching purpose in this work has received extremely little attention. This fact is all the more surprising if we recall that the concept of synthesis was a leitmotiv in the writings of his major predecessors and mentors in philosophy of religion, the German classical philosophers, beginning with Kant and Fichte, and continuing through Hegel, Schelling, Schleiermacher down to Troeltsch. "Synthesis" was the watchword of every philosophy of being and of history devised by the idealists. We should therefore turn our attention to Tillich's conception of synthesis.

• • •

In developing his constructive philosophy of religion Tillich presupposes that an inner unity belongs to all meaningful spiritual life, and that this spiritual life as a whole and in its parts has its root in the divine. The goal of life is the achievement of synthesis, a living unity within a multiplicity. Here Tillich in a general way is in agreement with the idealists. But he cannot accept what he deems to be empty formalism in the Kantian epistemology and ethics, empty primarily because it is cut off from dynamic religious roots. Nor can he accept the optimistic, nontragic synthesis of the rlegelian dialectic or the abstract essentialism of phenomenology, though he appreciates each of these philosophies for certain speci
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fied and indispensable contributions to philosophical method. For his part, however, he adopts, or rather adapts, the existential dialectic of Schelling. In doing so, he aims to avoid reductionist intellectualism or rationalism in face of the contradictions of human~ existence and of reality. He aims also to understand meaninglessness and destructiveness not only as real but also as related to the ground and abyss of the Unconditional. Consequently, he rejects the Hegelian idea of synthesis as sublation, the cancellation and preservation of contrasting elements. The meaningless as complacent or resolute fragmentation, as cynicism, despair, and emptiness, cannot be glossed over. These are the enemy, and they will threaten every meaningful synthesis.
Tillich's philosophy of religion, then, is a philosophy of meaning, and of relatedness to the Unconditional in terms of meaning. The appearance of the concept of meaning immediately suggests , the name of Dilthey, for whom it meant the relation of the part t01; the whole. But Dilthey attempted to interpret meaning without(, reference to metaphysics. In Tillich's view, the human spirit strives to fulfill the possibilities of being, a meaning-reality that is inescapable and which is never subject to manipulation with impunity. In face of this meaning-reality man's spirit is aware of an interconnection of meaning, indeed of a presence that offers unity of meaning. This unity resides dynamically in the divine ground (and abyss) of meaning, an unconditional meaning. This unconditionality of meaning is alive in every spiritual act, whether theoretical, aesthetic, or practical. It is alive even in doubt. Meaning, then, is threefold. It is an awareness of a universal interconnection of meaning, an awareness of the ultimate meaningfulness of the interconnection of meaning, and an awareness of a demand to fulfill, to be obedient to, the ultimate, unconditional meaningreality. But the ground of meaning not only makes demand, it is
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also the source of power that informs every act of meaning, making possible the movement toward fulfillment or synthesis.
Meaning finds expression in forms that have a particular content, but form and content as such do not require more than relatedness to the interconnection of meaning. The second and third elements of meaning just mentioned point to a more foundational element. This element Tillich calls the import of meaning, a term (we might add) which Hegel employed in his Lectures on Aesthetics. This import of meaning Tillich believed is most readily observable in a painting when· it is suffused by a quality that breaks through the form and content.
Authentic religion is directedness toward this import, directedness toward the Unconditional. The awareness of form, content, and import bespeaks a double-directedness of the religious consciousness, that toward the conditioned forms of meaning and their interrelation, and that toward the unconditional meaningreality which is the ground of the import. Culture is defined as lacking this double-relatedness: it is oriented only to the conditioned forms and the interrelation of meaning. Yet culture is substantially, if not intentionally, religious, for every meaning is supported by the unconditioned meaning-reality.
Now synthesis takes place when the spiritual act is informed by intentional relatedness to this meaning-reality. In cultural creativity, theoretical or practical, synthesis occurs when form and import are conjoined. In this kind of cultural creativity, in this synthesis, the human spirit is engaged in the process of fulfilling beipg through meaning. Here the interconnection of meaning participates in the depth dimension of the meaning-reality, a ground and an abyss, a support and a negation. This kind of synthesis is an unconditional demand, and if this unity is denied, the path toward meaninglessness is taken.
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Synthesis as here understood finds provisional expression in all fully meaningful activity. Tillich's philosophy of religion aims to point to the manifestations of synthesis in all aspects and realms of spiritual life, but also to its frustrations and distortions. Theonomy is the synthesis of autonomy and heteronomy. Authentic religion is the synthesis of its cultural manifestations and relatedness to the Unconditional. Or, in broader terms, "religion and culture come together in their directedness toward the synthesis of forms."
But Tillich's philosophy of religion aims to point not only to the . manifestations of synthesis in all aspects and realms of life but also to its frustrations and distortions. The Unconditional is not only support, it is also negation; it is both ground and abyss, grace and judgment. This means that every synthesis must be provisional. Where it is not so considered, we encounter the demonic, a bloated, dynamic self-sufficiency, an aggressive, driving power that is the manifestation of the opposite of grace, "possession." A mortal god is pitted against God.
The whole history of culture and religion can be mapped out in terms of the polarity of the divine and the demonic, of grace and possession. Tillich illustrates the variations on this polarity in an elaborate presentation of the separations and affinities that appear in conceptions of the relations between God and the world, faith and unfaith, religion and culture, the sacred and the secular, autonomy and heteronomy, and even between theocratic (worldshaping) and sacramental motifs. The third essay in the present volume is significant not only because of its striking formulations but also because of its application of his perspectives to the field of the arts as well as to other areas.
In all cases synthesis appears only in the direction toward theonomy, the religion of grace and judgment, the religion of para
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dox. Since all syntheses are provisional, the absolute synthesis, the universal synthesis, is not something "given." It is a symbol of the plumb line by which all are measured and found wanting; it is the plumb line that symbolizes authentic fulfillment of meaning. Or we may say that it is an eschatological symbol. Yet Tillich believes that it was impressively approached in the high Middle Ages.
In principle, if it were generally respected in a society, that society would be moving in the direction of a theonomous cultural synthesis. In this fashion Tillich's philosophy of religion aims to fulfill its task of achieving a synthesis between religion and philosophy of religion. In complete separation from each other, or in the attempt to function merely alongside each other, they deny unity, they deny the sovereignty of God over all. The synthesis that he affirms for philosophy of religion is a synthesis he would ask also of theology, the discovery of "the point where the two are one," the point at which both of them share the directedness toward the Unconditional, the point at which both of them are theonomous, and have transcended both autonomy and heteronomy. From this point on theology has its own vocation, to articulate its doctrine of revelation (which belongs to a historical community). We should add here, however, that Tillich the theologian later on changed somewhat his conception of the role of philosophy by assimilating it to his method of correlation wherein it asks questions for theology to answer.
Presumably, philosophy of religion ( as presented in this volume) would be able to perform its task of delineating a philosophy of meaning in dialogue with any historical religion. But one
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must raise the question whether that philosophy of meaning would turn out to be the same as in its present form, for example, if the dialogue were with Buddhism. We raise this question because so many of its present formulations appear to depend upon the Jewish and Christian background, indeed upon a Protestant, and especially Lutheran, background. The religion of paradox set forth appears, for example, to be a restatement of Luther's understanding of God in terms of contrasts as is also the idea about the support and the threat, the Yes and the No, of the Unconditional; the simultaneous Yes and No of grace reflects Luther's doctrine of justification; the contrast between form and import corresponds to that between law and gospel; the fundamentally positive evaluation of the created order wherein "the paradoxical immanence of the transcendence" obtains, presupposes the Biblical doctrine of creation.
To be sure, Tillich in several of his writings has himself insisted that philosophy never exists on a pedestal outside history: it always reflects insights derived ultimately from the confessional religious traditions. For just this reason, one may assume that the philosophy of meaning set forth here would have been different in important ways if the author, even as Westerner and Christian, had taken seriously into account the religious and cultural traditions of the Orient, or if he were a scion of one of these traditions.
Another observation of similar character should be mentioned here. Tillich's philosophy of religion, he would say, stems from the Augustinian-Franciscan tradition wherein the ontological solution of the problem of philosophy of religion obtains. Here, as he has put it, "God is the presupposition of the question of God." This immediate approach is to be contrasted with the mediated approach, the cosmological solution of the problem of philosophy of religion. In the present volume the second approach is not given
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attention. Thus certain types of problem are evaded. One must look to other writings by Tillich to find them dealt with, though not favorably.
In any event, two things must be said very positively about Tillich's philosophy of religion. First, by his explication of this philosophy of religion he has shown the value, especially for the understanding of the relations between religion and culture, of the concept of meaning. It would be difficult to calculate the number of people (including theological scholars) who under the aegis of the concept of meaning have been led to a new understanding of religion, particularly in its relation to culture. The concept of meaning is here to stay for a long time, even in apologetic literature.
Second, Tillich's elucidation of the different types and dimensions of religion, his description of the dynamics that drive perspectives to their fulfillment or their perversion or their exhaustion, his analysis and criticism of methods for the study of religion, and also his exemplification of a constructive philosophy of religion, exhibit rare skill and insight. For the careful reader they offer substantial assistance to become "wide-awake in the face of heartrending bitter or sweet events of the world" of religion and culture.
The first two essays translated here are to be found in Paul Tillich, Gesammelte Werke, I, the third essay, in GW IX (Stuttgart: Evangelisches V erlagswerk). The editor wishes to express here warm gratitude to Professor Charles W. Fox for substantial assistance in the translation of these essays, particularly in the effort to achieve_ consistency in the rendering of technical terms.
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The Cosmological Argument for the existence of God begins with our awareness of the contingency of things within our world; from this it tries to reason philosophically, not scientifically, to the necessary existence of God. In Process Theism, God's Primordial Nature has necessary existence. Classical and Process Theologians agree that God exists necessarily. The Cosmological Argument expresses a widely shared deep cosmological intuition to the effect that the existence of any contingent thing-anything that might or might not be, ultimately implies the existence of a Necessary Being-one that could not not be. The concept of Necessary Being that applies to God in the Cosmological Argument is the same as the one that applies in the Ontological Argument (which is not here discussed in any detail). Kant maintained, correctly, that the Cosmological Argument depends on the Ontological Argument in one important respect-both employ an a priori concept of God, that is, one that is not derived from sense experience. Thus, if the Cosmological Argument is valid, so is the Ontological; for the Necessary God on whom all actual and possible worlds depends is an everlasting, uncreated, indestructible Reality who could not not exist and whose existence cannot be denied without self-contradiction.
As indicated in Chapter Ten, by definition, contingent beings might or might not exist; if they do exist, they have causes, can be created or destroyed, and normally come into being in or with time. A Necessary Being could not not exist and has no cause, exists self-sufficiently, and is everlasting, uncreated, and indestructible. St. Thomas Aquinas reasoned from the contingency of perceived motion and change, and from contingency itself, to the necessary existence of God. Contingency involves possible or actual nonexistence. Descartes reasoned cosmologically from the contingent existence ofhis idea of God to the necessity of its referent as its adequate cause; he also reasoned ontologically from the very meaning of this idea of God to the necessity of its referent. If the Cosmological Argument is any good at all, it should be possible to start with any experience of anything that exists contingently, including the whole contingent universe, and infer the reality of God. Formulating and defending an argument that gives adequate expression to this cosmological intuition is difficult. Since Plato, philosophers and theologians have tried and generally failed for a variety ofreasons. This chapter will proceed directly to a contemporary formulation of the Cosmological Argument that has a decent chance to succeed, partly because it avoids suspicious premises of traditional formulations like "There is a Great Chain of Being that leads from the earth at the center of the universe to God above," or "An infinite regress of causes either in time or in the Great Chain of Being is impossible."¹ Saint Bonaventure argued for the impossibility of an actualized temporal infinity. A more influential St. Thomas Aquinas thought

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that the finitude of the past is disclosed only by revelation, not proved by reason. He insisted that the impossibility of an actualized infinity applies only to causes that simultaneously coexist and act within the Great Chain of Being, not to causes that could exist and act successively in an infinite cosmic past.²
The following Cosmological Argument from Contingency makes no appeal to these antiquated and highly suspect elements of Thomistic metaphysics. It is perfectly compatible with and builds upon the empirical discoveries and well tested theories of contemporary scientific cosmology; but it goes beyond them. It is philosophy, not natural science.

1. A Cosmological Argument from Contingency

The basic premises of a plausible contemporary Cosmological Argument from the Contingency of the world to the existence of God are:
Premise 1: If each of the parts of any whole has contingent existence, then the whole itself has contingent existence.
Premise 2: Each of the parts of nature or the universe as a whole has contingent existence.
Deduction and Premise 3: Therefore. nature or the universe as a whole has contingent existence.
Premise 4: Definition: If something exists contingently, it is causally derived from or dependent on something other than itself.
Deduction and Premise 5: Therefore, nature or the universe as a whole is causally derived from or dependent on something other than itself.
Premise 6: The something on which nature or the universe depends is either the Principle of Plenitude, which requires infinitely many worlds in time and/or space; or it is God.
Premise 7: The something on which nature or the universe depends is not the Principle of Plenitude or infinitely many worlds.
Final Conclusion: The something on which nature or the universe depends is God.
A sound deductive argument actually proves its conclusion if it has both a valid form and all true premises. The above argument is deductively valid. Foil owing discussions will argue that its premises are all true. Thus, the conclusion is true: The something on which nature or the universe depends is God.

A. Naturalistic Metaphysical Options

If Naturalists wish to attack this argument and establish their own metaphysics, they must prove the truth of at least one of the following propositions that contradict one or more of the premises of this Cosmological Argument from

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Contingency. Not knowing whether one or more of these premises is true or false makes us agnostics, not Naturalists. Lack of knowledge does not establish naturalistic metaphysics or anything else. Naturalists themselves must prove something if their own metaphysics is rationally justified. The burden of proof in philosophy is on anyone who has anything to say, so Naturalists must establish the truth of their own alternatives to Theism. Naturalists could disprove the premises of our Cosmological Argument from Contingency only by showing that any one, perhaps all, of the following propositions are true; but they cannot do so. All of these Naturalistic metaphysical claims are false, as demonstrated in what precedes and in what follows.
1. Each of the parts of some whole has contingent existence, but the whole itself has necessary existence.
2.Some part (or parts) of nature or the universe as a whole has (or have) necessary existence.
3. Nature, the universe as a whole, has necessary existence.
4. Something may exist contingently without being causally derivative.
5. Nature, the universe, is not causally derived from or dependent on anything other than itself; it was caused by nothing.
6. Our system of nature, our universe, ultimately depends on either infinitely many diverse worlds in Supertime and/or Superspace, as required by the Principle of Plenitude, or on God.
7. Nature, the universe, ultimately depends on the Principle of Plenitude's infinitely many worlds.
Therefore, the universe does not depend on God.
Which cosmological claims are best justified, those of Theism, or those of Naturalism? What is the evidence?
The case against naturalistic alternatives to theistic cosmological premises 4 through 7 above has already been made and does not need to be repeated. With respect to 4 and 5, we already know from earlier discussions that if something exists contingently, specifically our system of nature, it is causally dependent on something other than itself, and that no plausible case can be made for the Big Accident contention that contingent beings can come to exist without a cause, specifically, that our universe just popped into being from absolute nothingness without a cause. With respect to 6 and 7, we know from Chapters Four through Eight and Chapter Eleven that variations on many worlds metaphysics cannot be defended, and neither can the Principle of Plenitude, so the best explanation for the existence of our world is that God created it. If the Big Accident, the Principle of Plenitude, infinitely many worlds in time and/or space, and so on, are indefensible, as previously established, the God hypothesis remains as the most plausible account of the supreme transcendent, ultimate reality on which our universe depends.

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Only the first two premises of our Cosmological Argument from Contingency need further defense. The third premise is but an intermediate conclusion from these that functions as an additional premise in the wider argument. We must now dispose of the naturalistic options that some necessary wholes are composed entirely of contingent parts, and that some parts of our universe exist necessarily. The remainder of this chapter first develops and defends this part of the Argument, then explores some common objections.

B. Contingent Parts and Wholes

That all wholes exist contingently if they are composed entirely of contingent parts is universally verified in experience. This is the best reason we could possibly have for thinking that the first premise of our Cosmological Argument from Contingency is true. In absolutely no circumstances do we find wholes having necessary existence when they are composed entirely of contingently existing parts. In fact, we experience no necessary wholes at all.
The notion of a "whole" in this argument is not necessarily limited to well integrated organic wholes; any collection or totality, integrated or not, would probably do; but we will assume hereafter that relevant wholes are integrated in the sense that all their parts have a common ultimate origin and all these parts have causal relations with some other parts of the whole. All the parts of a unitary universe have a common ultimate cause and somehow hang together in linked causal cones. Everything in our universe has a common origin in the Big Bang and, despite relativity and the mutual independence of contemporaries, all existing entities have linked spatiotemporal and cause/effect relations with at least some other members of our universe.
The empirical first premise of our Cosmological Argument is an inductive generalization from observed wholes to all wholes. Like all inductive empirical claims, it might prove false in some as-yet-undetected situation. Admittedly, we have not empirically tested absolutely all existing wholes. Cosmological arguments that contain empirical premises are infected by the same sort of uncertainty that plagues all inductive inferences. Nevertheless, our first premise is just as well established as any and all other scientific generalizations like Einstein's "E = mc² ,"or Hubble's "The whole universe is expanding," or thermodynamics' "Disorder always increases in closed systems." After all, we have not empirically tested all the mass/energy in the universe, or its universal expansion, or the entropy of all closed systems; but as far as experience takes us, these generalizations are universally confirmed, without exception. Hubble's law of uniform expansion is found to be true one hundred percent of the time because, excluding galaxies that are gravitationally bound to our Milky Way or to other galactic systems, all galaxies are moving away from us and from one another at speeds proportional to their distance.

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Surface appearances may suggest that the contingency of all wholes composed entirely of contingent parts is even better verified than Einstein's energy/mass equation. Some astrophysicists affirm that photons, which carry the energy of light, have no mass; and this may be true of some other strange particles as well.³ If photons have energy but no mass (even if only in an idealized rest state), then it is not universally the case that E = mc², for E cannot equal mc² where there is no m. Actually, photons have zero mass only in a purely hypothetical state of rest; and in that ideal state of masslessness, they are energy less as well. This purely hypothetical state must be expressed by a zero on both sides of Einstein's equation, but real photons are never purely at rest. All real photons have both mass and energy; so no anomaly here challenges E = mc².
Similarly, one hundred percent of the time, as far as experience takes us, if each of the parts of any integrated whole has contingent existence, then the whole itself has contingent existence. This empirical truth could actually count as a scientific truth except that scientists traditionally have not been interested in it. Wolthart Pannenberg points out that scientists ignore contingency and concentrate instead upon formulating natural Jaws or uniformities.⁴ As Aristotle indicated, the sciences carve out limited domains of being as their subject matter, while philosophy is concerned with truths that apply universally to everything. The contingency of all wholes with completely contingent parts is true of all empirical subject matter; it applies to all the parts of and to the whole of contingent existence. In my "Philosophy of Religion" courses, I regularly offered to give students an "A" on the spot if they could identify a directly or inductively verified instance of an integrated whole that exists necessarily even though all of its parts exist contingently. I never gave the "A."
Critics may object that our first premise applies only to finite wholes but not to the universe as an infinite whole. All finite wholes composed entirely of contingent parts are themselves contingent, but this may not be true of infinite wholes. We cannot reason inductively from the finite to the infinite. Thus, if the universe is an integrated infinite whole, it could have necessary existence even though composed entirely of contingent parts.
That the universe is an infinite whole is logically possible, but this could never be verified either directly or inductively, and the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. Remember the Big Bang! Verification and falsification move far beyond toying around with possibilities. Possibilities are not actualities, and they should not be confused with probabilities. We definitely do not know that the universe is an infinite whole. Even if it is, we could never know or verify the claim, and Big Bang Cosmology provides convincing evidence that the universe is not an infinite whole. Temporally, the universe is only fifteen billion or so years old; spatially, though astronomically immense, it is finite but expanding-finite in actuality, even if infinite in potentiality. Mathematicians tell us that any line has an infinite number of parts (Euclidean points); and each sub-section of a line contains just as many parts as the

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whole. Since lines depend for their existence upon the causes that draw them, or on the mathematicians that imagine them, we know that theoretically infinite wholes, those composed of an infinite number of parts, exist contingently. Yet, according to quantum discreteness, mass/energy cannot actually be sub-divided below the spatiotemporal minimals of Planck dimensions. Particles exists and energy is transmitted in minimal quanta or not at all; even space has an irreducibly granular quality. Thus, no actual line drawn in the objective world is an infinite physical continuum. Observed quantum-atomized lines are not infinite as wholes actually having an infinite number of parts; but this is not incompatible with our first premise.
Conceptually constructed imaginary lines are only potentially infinite wholes with potentially infinite parts; but they depend for their existence upon conscious thinkers or imaginers. Since infinite wholes with potentially infinite parts exist contingently, and we know of no instances to the contrary, the universe as a whole should be contingent if it has an infinite number of parts only potentially. We cannot generalize from potentiality to actuality, and the thought of infinity, dependent on the mind of the thinker, is not an actual infinity. The actual thought of "infinity" is not an actual infinity of thoughts; it is only one thought, just as the actual thought of "blue" is not a blue thought.
Note carefully that our Cosmological Argument from Contingency makes no appeal to the contingency of actually infinite wholes, for our universe is definitely finite. It is not actually infinite in any respect. According to Big Bang Cosmology, our universe is vast; but it is finite in expanse, past duration, mass, and in all other denumerable ways. The Planck-dimension minimals of quantum physics prohibit this finite mass from being actually divisible into an infinite number of real parts. Naturalists can identify no necessary infinite wholes composed entirely of contingent parts. Our universe is certainly not such an infinite whole, and it does not have an infinite number of parts. All experienced finite wholes composed of contingent parts are themselves contingent. This empirical truth can be generalized inductively to include our universe. Protests will be explored later.
The Cosmological Argument from Contingency may be defective just because it reasons from parts to the whole of nature. Logic texts say that reasoning from parts to wholes commits the informal logical Fallacy of Composition, according to which inferring that a whole possesses a certain property merely because each of its parts possesses that property is erroneous. Despite what introductory logic texts say, it is not always fallacious to conclude that a whole possesses a property because all of its parts have that property. Sometimes so to reason really is a mistake, but sometimes not. How can we tell the difference? Arguments from parts to wholes can be formulated, or reformulated, as deductive arguments. Unjustified conclusions can be drawn from deductive arguments in at least two ways. First, the argument form or pattern may be invalid; second, one or more of the premises may be false or not known to be

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true. The first three of the following arguments are obviously erroneous; but what kind of a mistake do they make?
Argument I.
(1) If all the microscopic parts of a machine are invisible to the naked eye, the whole machine is invisible to the naked eye.
(2) All the microscopic parts (atoms) of this car are invisible to the naked eye. Therefore, this whole car is invisible to the naked eye.
Argument II.
(1) I fall the microscopic parts of a body (the cells, molecules, atoms, and so on) are devoid of consciousness, the whole body is devoid of consciousness.
(2) All the microscopic parts of my body (the cells, molecules, atoms, and so on) are devoid of consciousness.
Therefore, my whole body is devoid of consciousness.⁵
Argument III.
(1) If each of the elemental parts of a chemical compound is a gas, the whole compound is a gas.
(2) Each of the elemental parts of water (hydrogen, oxygen) is a gas. Therefore, water is a gas.
These three arguments from parts to whole obviously fail to prove their
conclusions. The next two arguments also move from parts to wholes, but they are not faulty. They commit no fallacy; they involve no falsehoods or uncertainties; and they show that we can reason successfully, deductively, and correctly from parts to wholes.
Argument IV.
(1) If all the macroscopic parts of a machine are made of metal, the whole machine is made of metal.
(2) All the macroscopic parts of this water pump are made of metal. Therefore, this whole water pump is made of metal.
Argument V.
(1) If each island in a group is in the Pacific Ocean, the whole island group is in the Pacific Ocean.
(2) Each island in the Hawaiian group is in the Pacific Ocean.
Therefore, the whole group of Hawaiian Islands is in the Pacific Ocean.
No fallacious pattern of reasoning is involved in any of the above arguments. They all involve an instantiation with respect to particulars and manifest the valid pattern of modus ponens: If p, then q; and p; therefore, q. What then is the

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error in arguments I, II, and III that is absent in IV and V? The first three do not contain any ambiguous concepts, though logic textbooks regularly but mistakenly classify the Fallacy of Composition as a Fallacy of Ambiguity. The only difference is that the first premises of l, II, and III are false, as shown by experience; but experience confirms the first premises of arguments IV and V. Our Cosmological Argument from Contingency is a valid deductive argument that commits no informal logical fallacy. Its first premise resembles the first premises of IV and V, not those of I, II, and III.
Some reasoning from parts to wholes is illegitimate, some not, depending on the formal pattern of reasoning and/or the truth or falsity of the premises. We cannot correctly infer that a whole machine is invisible because each of its atomic parts is invisible, or that a whole body lacks consciousness because each of its cells lacks consciousness, or that a compound is a gas because each of its elemental parts is a gas, or that a whole machine weighs one pound because each of its ten parts weighs one pound, or that a whole painting is beautiful because each of its parts is beautiful. Yet, we can infer correctly that a whole macroscopic machine is made of metal because each of its macroscopic parts is made of metal, that an island group is in the Pacific because each island is in the Pacific, and that a whole chair is painted green because each of its visible parts is painted green. With a valid argument form, these inferences commit no logical fallacy. The only legitimate question is whether the premises are true. In IV and V, experience shows that the premises are true; and because the forms are also valid, the conclusion is proved.⁶
Some properties like being metal, being in a geographical area, and being a certain color can be inductively extended or extrapolated from parts to wholes; and others, like being invisible, being conscious, weighing a pound, and being beautiful, cannot. Experience tells us which is which.
Contingent existence is an extrapolatory property, as experience also invariably shows. If each of the parts of any whole has contingent existence, we know from experience that the whole itself has contingent existence. We know that its non-existence is logically conceivable, that its mode of being is not selfsufficient but depends on some cause or causes, that it has not existed forever, and that it is destructible and will probably cease to exist at some point in the future. This includes wholes that are combined into even larger wholes up to infinity, and perhaps including infinity (though infinity is irrelevant to our finite cosmos). Verifying experiences support the first premise of our Cosmological Argument from Contingency one hundred percent of the time; and the form of the argument is perfectly valid. This is as good as philosophical arguments ever get! Our intermediate conclusion-nature, the universe, has a contingent form of existence-will follow if the second premise is true, that is, if there are no necessary parts of the universe. Naturalistic metaphysics from the time of the Greek atomists has been based partly upon the possibility of finding some necessary part(s) of nature; but the enterprise is futile!

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C. No Necessary Parts of the Universe

The second premise of the Cosmological Argument from Contingency affirms that all parts of nature are contingent. Is this false or at least not known to be true? The universe would not be a whole composed entirely of contingent parts if some of its parts exist necessarily. Naturalists often make this claim, but they must do much more than just proclaim it. They must actually show that some parts of the universe exist necessarily. The burden of philosophical proof is not always on the Theist. It is on anyone who has anything to say.
Naturalists agree with everyone else that all macroscopic bodies like stars, planets, and human bodies are contingent. They locate the necessary parts of nature in its microscopic innards. The naturalistic presumption that the necessity of the universe is situated in the subject matter of particle physics was never effectively challenged before the twentieth century. The Greek Atomists and naturalistic Materialists through the centuries believed that spacetime itself and its most primitive contents, the atoms, exist necessarily; the atoms and the infinite void are self-sufficient, everlasting, uncreated, and indestructible. Atomists once called the smallest particles of matter "atoms" and pronounced them necessary beings, but we now know that they are not. Exactly which parts of matter get classified as "smallest" changes as our knowledge of sub-atomic physics advances; but nothing at atomic or sub-atomic levels exists necessarily.
Particle physics gave naturalistic metaphysics an enormous shock in the twentieth century. Traditionally, naturalistic confidence in the eternity and necessity of the world presumed that the most primitive particles of matter are self-sufficient, everlasting, uncreated, indivisible, and indestructible. Physics today finds no physical particles or sub-particles that have such attributes, not those now called "atoms," and not their more primitive sub-atomic components. All physical particles exist only derivatively or contingently. Some endure only for only thousandths or millionths of a second. Nucleosynthesis and nuclear fusion bring all atoms and all their sub-atomic parts into being, so they haven't been around forever; and nuclear fission can destroy them all and convert them into energy or other particles or forms of radiant energy.
The Greek Atomists were totally wrong in thinking that the smallest physical particles have always existed unchanged and uncreated. We now know that even the smallest parts of atomic nuclei, the quarks, exist contingently, and so do the electrons that orbit atomic nuclei. Quarks always come in pairs (in mesons) or three at a time (in protons and neutrons). Pairs or triplets of quarks cannot be separated, but they can be created and destroyed. Bombarding them with larger particles in accelerators to try to separate them merely creates additional pairs or triplets of quarks out of the exchange of kinetic energy. Quarks can thus be created in the laboratory out of energy; and anything that is or can be created in the laboratory or elsewhere has a merely contingent form of existence. Quarks are not necessary beings, and neither are electrons, which can

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also be produced and destroyed by the same processes. One type of quark is called the "Higgs particle," or "Higgs boson." In defending Naturalism, specifically its claim that our universe is eternal, Kai Nielsen wrote,

Even if the big bang theory is true, it does not show that the fundamental particles were brought into explosive existence by the big bang. The Higgs particle need not be thought to have so come into existence, or to have come into existence at all, and it stands as a candidate for a necessary being and a more plausible one than God.⁷

On the contrary, innumerable articles in the literature of physics describe the production of Higgs particles in cyclotrons under many different conditions.⁸ No kind of entity that is or can be produced by something else is an eternal, selfsufficient, and necessary being. Also, Big Bang and Grand Unification Theories say that in the beginning all existing particles emerged from a more primitive state of unified pure energy, which in turn had its own cause.
The most stable and enduring sub-atomic particle is the proton. Once created, protons last for billions of years. The protons in the nuclei of most atoms existing in the material world today were created within the first three minutes after the Big Bang, but they were created. Most physicists believe that protons eventually decay; but elaborate experiments designed to detect proton decay have failed thus far. Nevertheless, protons are not eternal and necessary beings. They are composed of quarks, and quarks are not eternal and uncreated. Protons may naturally decay very slowly, but they can be destroyed in proton/antiproton collisions and in nuclear reactions. In fact, any kind of particle can be destroyed by its antiparticle; and all particles and antiparticles were created after the onset of the Big Bang by the primordial grandly-unified matterless, particle-less energy that preceded them. The same is true of the four basic forces of nature that once were one, says Grand Unification Theory. No created and destructible entity or force is a necessary being.
Though all particular physical entities exist contingently, perhaps spacetime and/or pure physical energy exist necessarily. No, spacetime and physical energy also exist contingently if the Big Bang originated in a singularity of nothingness totally devoid of spacetime and energy, or if the Big Bang and all its contents were created at some point in the past by anything whatsoever. So what caused the Big Bang?
In contemporary physics, space, time, and physical energy are inseparable; but the emphasis is on time. Time has not been spatialized; rather, space has been temporalized. Neither space nor time are merely empty forms into which actual events and particles are infused. Space is not vacuous nothingness; it has its own energy density; it is an elastic physical reality that may be warped, stretched, condensed, straightened, curved, expanded, and contracted to nothingness (almost?). All physical particles and configurations of energy are

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constituted by both time and space. Particles, waves, and all microscopic entities are warped, knotted, or stringed concentrations of spacetime. In contemporary physics, neither atoms nor any sub-atomic particles, waves, fields, or other entities are basic necessary beings.
As Werner Heisenberg indicated, in contemporary science, energy is "The primary substance of the world.''⁹ Is energy the necessary being? No. According to the Standard Model of Big Bang Cosmology, space/time/mass/energy was created in the beginning out of what was empirically nothing-often called an initial singularity. No alternative cosmology actually proves otherwise. If our universe emerged from an initial singularity, neither spacetime nor physical energy exist necessarily. Yet, other possibilities remain to be examined. Perhaps pure energy as such exists necessarily, though all particular forms of energy exist contingently (as suggested by the quotations from Corliss Lamont with endnote numbers 15 and 16 in Chapter Two). Electrical energy is derived from dynamos; atomic energy is derived from nuclear reactions; solar energy is derived from the sun. Every empirically observable manifestation of energy is derived from some energy source other than itself. Having a derivative existence is precisely what existing contingently means.
Does pure (non-empirical) energy as such exists necessarily? If so, it is too pure to count as something empirical or observable! All observable forms of energy exist contingently, being derived causally from something else, from other forms of energy. Furthermore, all of these emerged initially from, were caused by, the Big Bang. So we are back to our original problem, What caused the Big Bang? It was something transcendent, something outside our spacetime system, something beyond nature! Naturalists, like Theists, resort finally to explaining things visible (natural) in terms of things invisible (non-natural). Not all natural effects have natural causes. Naturalist and theists have their backs to the same wall.
One hundred percent of the time, verifying experiences confirm that all parts of the universe exist contingently. True, we have not tested every last part of the universe, just as we have not tested every last speck of energy to verify that E = mc². Neither proposition is absolutely certain, but both are as well confirmed as anything that we know.
Indisputably, if space/time/mass/energy originated at some point in the finite past either from nothing or from extra-natural antecedents, our whole universe and all its parts exists contingently. This is exactly what Big Bang Cosmology proclaims. Neither any parts of nature nor nature as a whole are necessary, self-sufficient, uncreated, everlasting, and indestructible. Even a reified infinitely transcendent Superspacetime/mass/energy would exist contingently if it were wholly comprised of contingent parts. An infinite whole composed of an infinity of contingent parts is an infinitely contingent whole, not a necessary being, but this can be disputed. Let's try to imagine how.

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Assume for the sake of the argument that Oscillation Cosmology's claim that later universes are caused by antecedent universes at least makes sense, even if unverifiable. Even so, "Any whole is contingent when composed entirely of contingent parts," applies to all combinations of contingent antecedent universes linked by a common thread of causation. Let our world of nature, our universe, be Ul; and let it be our first whole, WI. Let UI be caused by an antecedent universe, U2, which is our second whole, W2. Together they will form a Third whole, W3. If both universes are themselves contingent, W3 will also be a contingent whole. This process can be repeated any number of times, perhaps even an infinite number of times, and all repetitions will be swallowed up by the premise: if any whole is composed entirely of contingent parts, the whole itself is contingent. We will return to this later in replying to objections to the Cosmological Argument.
Our universe as a whole does not have a necessary mode of existence. The first two premises of our Cosmological Argument from Contingency are true, and its logical form is valid. Our universe does not exist necessarily, and Naturalists are wrong in believing otherwise. All wholes, including our universe, composed entirely of contingent parts are contingent wholes; and our universe is composed entirely of contingent parts. Therefore, our whole universe exists only contingently. Once established, this deduction is used as an additional premise in our more extended Cosmological Argument from Contingency.
Theology is not tied inextricably to creation ex nihilo, even if it now seems to be a very reasonable position. A theology for rational persons must be compatible with the most firmly established conclusions of the natural sciences, but theology should proceed with caution in binding itself too tightly to particular scientific theories, concepts, and discoveries. Sometimes, a healthy agnosticism, an open mind, is the most reasonable theological response. Still, the preponderance of evidence as we see it cannot be ignored. All philosophical knowledge falls short of certainty; but we want the most reasonable belief about what caused the Big Bang that we can find; and our best informed guess is that creation ex nihilo by God is it.
Two basic options, (1) creation out of nothing and (2) out of spatiotemporal antecedents, are now both available to Process Theologians, who traditionally presupposed something like theistic oscillationism. Whitehead said that God does not exist before the world but always with the world-some world.
Yet, creation ex nihilo is a viable process option, as explained in Chapter Ten. From the perspective of Superspacetime, God could create all worlds either out of nothing, out of his own Superspatiotemporality, or out of the ashes of antecedent universes. No matter which, we could expect God to choose laws and initial conditions that would make each world interesting and worthwhile. But our own world is our most immediate problem. Do we know enough at this point to draw any conclusions about it? Is it a necessary being? A contingent being? Did it have a cause? What really caused the Big Bang?

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C. No Necessary Parts of the Universe

The second premise of the Cosmological Argument from Contingency affirms that all parts of nature are contingent. Is this false or at least not known to be true? The universe would not be a whole composed entirely of contingent parts if some of its parts exist necessarily. Naturalists often make this claim, but they must do much more than just proclaim it. They must actually show that some parts of the universe exist necessarily. The burden of philosophical proof is not always on the Theist. It is on anyone who has anything to say.
Naturalists agree with everyone else that all macroscopic bodies like stars, planets, and human bodies are contingent. They locate the necessary parts of nature in its microscopic innards. The naturalistic presumption that the necessity of the universe is situated in the subject matter of particle physics was never effectively challenged before the twentieth century. The Greek Atomists and naturalistic Materialists through the centuries believed that spacetime itself and its most primitive contents, the atoms, exist necessarily; the atoms and the infinite void are self-sufficient, everlasting, uncreated, and indestructible. Atomists once called the smallest particles of matter "atoms" and pronounced them necessary beings, but we now know that they are not. Exactly which parts of matter get classified as "smallest" changes as our knowledge of sub-atomic physics advances; but nothing at atomic or sub-atomic levels exists necessarily. Particle physics gave naturalistic metaphysics an enormous shock in the twentieth century. Traditionally, naturalistic confidence in the eternity and necessity of the world presumed that the most primitive particles of matter are self-sufficient, everlasting, uncreated, indivisible, and indestructible. Physics today finds no physical particles or sub-particles that have such attributes, not those now called "atoms," and not their more primitive sub-atomic components. All physical particles exist only derivatively or contingently. Some endure only for only thousandths or millionths of a second. Nucleosynthesis and nuclear fusion bring all atoms and all their sub-atomic parts into being, so they haven't been around forever; and nuclear fission can destroy them all and convert them into energy or other particles or forms of radiant energy.
The Greek Atomists were totally wrong in thinking that the smallest physical particles have always existed unchanged and uncreated. We now know that even the smallest parts of atomic nuclei, the quarks, exist contingently, and so do the electrons that orbit atomic nuclei. Quarks always come in pairs (in mesons) or three at a time (in protons and neutrons). Pairs or triplets of quarks cannot be separated, but they can be created and destroyed. Bombarding them with larger particles in accelerators to try to separate them merely creates additional pairs or triplets of quarks out of the exchange of kinetic energy. Quarks can thus be created in the laboratory out of energy; and anything that is or can be created in the laboratory or elsewhere has a merely contingent form of existence. Quarks are not necessary beings, and neither are electrons, which can

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also be produced and destroyed by the same processes. One type of quark is called the "Higgs particle," or "Higgs boson." In defending Naturalism, specifically its claim that our universe is eternal, Kai Nielsen wrote, Even if the big bang theory is true, it does not show that the fundamental particles were brought into explosive existence by the big bang. The Higgs particle need not be thought to have so come into existence, or to have come into existence at all, and it stands as a candidate for a necessary being and a more plausible one than God. ⁷
On the contrary, innumerable articles in the literature of physics describe the production of Higgs particles in cyclotrons under many different conditions. 8 No kind of entity that is or can be produced by something else is an eternal, selfsufficient, and necessary being. Also, Big Bang and Grand Unification Theories say that in the beginning all existing particles emerged from a more primitive state of unified pure energy, which in turn had its own cause.
The most stable and enduring sub-atomic particle is the proton. Once created, protons last for billions of years. The protons in the nuclei of most atoms existing in the material world today were created within the first three minutes after the Big Bang, but they were created. Most physicists believe that protons eventually decay; but elaborate experiments designed to detect proton decay have failed thus far. Nevertheless, protons are not eternal and necessary beings. They are composed of quarks, and quarks are not eternal and uncreated. Protons may naturally decay very slowly, but they can be destroyed in proton/antiproton collisions and in nuclear reactions. In fact, any kind of particle can be destroyed by its antiparticle; and all particles and antiparticles were created after the onset of the Big Bang by the primordial grandly-unified matterless, particle-less energy that preceded them. The same is true of the four basic forces of nature that once were one, says Grand Unification Theory. No created and destructible entity or force is a necessary being.
Though all particular physical entities exist contingently, perhaps spacetime and/or pure physical energy exist necessarily. No, spacetime and physical energy also exist contingently if the Big Bang originated in a singularity of nothingness totally devoid of spacetime and energy, or if the Big Bang and all its contents were created at some point in the past by anything whatsoever. So what caused the Big Bang?
In contemporary physics, space, time, and physical energy are inseparable; but the emphasis is on time. Time has not been spatialized; rather, space has been temporalized. Neither space nor time are merely empty forms into which actual events and particles are infused. Space is not vacuous nothingness; it has its own energy density; it is an elastic physical reality that may be warped, stretched, condensed, straightened, curved, expanded, and contracted to nothingness (almost?). All physical particles and configurations of energy are

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constituted by both time and space. Particles, waves, and all microscopic entities are warped, knotted, or stringed concentrations of spacetime. In contemporary physics, neither atoms nor any sub-atomic particles, waves, fields, or other entities are basic necessary beings.
As Werner Heisenberg indicated, in contemporary science, energy is "The primary substance of the world.''⁹ Is energy the necessary being? No. According to the Standard Model of Big Bang Cosmology, space/time/mass/energy was created in the beginning out of what was empirically nothing-often called an initial singularity. No alternative cosmology actually proves otherwise. If our universe emerged from an initial singularity, neither spacetime nor physical energy exist necessarily. Yet, other possibilities remain to be examined. Perhaps pure energy as such exists necessarily, though all particular forms of energy exist contingently (as suggested by the quotations from Corliss Lamont with endnote numbers 15 and 16 in Chapter Two). Electrical energy is derived from dynamos; atomic energy is derived from nuclear reactions; solar energy is derived from the sun. Every empirically observable manifestation of energy is derived from some energy source other than itself. Having a derivative existence is precisely what existing contingently means.
Does pure (non-empirical) energy as such exists necessarily? If so, it is too pure to count as something empirical or observable! All observable forms of energy exist contingently, being derived causally from something else, from other forms of energy. Furthermore, all of these emerged initially from, were caused by, the Big Bang. So we are back to our original problem, What caused the Big Bang? It was something transcendent, something outside our spacetime system, something beyond nature! Naturalists, like Theists, resort finally to explaining things visible (natural) in terms of things invisible (non-natural). Not all natural effects have natural causes. Naturalist and theists have their backs to the same wall.
One hundred percent of the time, verifying experiences confirm that all parts of the universe exist contingently. True, we have not tested every last part of the universe, just as we have not tested every last speck of energy to verify that E = mc² . Neither proposition is absolutely certain, but both are as well confirmed as anything that we know.
Indisputably, if space/time/mass/energy originated at some point in the finite past either from nothing or from extra-natural antecedents, our whole universe and all its parts exists contingently. This is exactly what Big Bang Cosmology proclaims. Neither any parts of nature nor nature as a whole are necessary, self-sufficient, uncreated, everlasting, and indestructible. Even a reified infinitely transcendent Superspacetime/mass/energy would exist contingently if it were wholly comprised of contingent parts. An infinite whole composed of an infinity of contingent parts is an infinitely contingent whole, not a necessary being, but this can be disputed. Let's try to imagine how.

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Assume for the sake of the argument that Oscillation Cosmology's claim that later universes are caused by antecedent universes at least makes sense, even if unverifiable. Even so, "Any whole is contingent when composed entirely of contingent parts," applies to all combinations of contingent antecedent universes linked by a common thread of causation. Let our world of nature, our universe, be Ul; and let it be our first whole, WI. Let UI be caused by an antecedent universe, U2, which is our second whole, W2. Together they will form a Third whole, W3. If both universes are themselves contingent, W3 will also be a contingent whole. This process can be repeated any number of times, perhaps even an infinite number of times, and all repetitions will be swallowed up by the premise: if any whole is composed entirely of contingent parts, the whole itself is contingent. We will return to this later in replying to objections to the Cosmological Argument.
Our universe as a whole does not have a necessary mode of existence. The first two premises of our Cosmological Argument from Contingency are true, and its logical form is valid. Our universe does not exist necessarily, and Naturalists are wrong in believing otherwise. All wholes, including our universe, composed entirely of contingent parts are contingent wholes; and our universe is composed entirely of contingent parts. Therefore, our whole universe exists only contingently. Once established, this deduction is used as an additional premise in our more extended Cosmological Argument from Contingency.
Theology is not tied inextricably to creation ex nihilo, even if it now seems to be a very reasonable position. A theology for rational persons must be compatible with the most firmly established conclusions of the natural sciences, but theology should proceed with caution in binding itself too tightly to particular scientific theories, concepts, and discoveries. Sometimes, a healthy agnosticism, an open mind, is the most reasonable theological response. Still, the preponderance of evidence as we see it cannot be ignored. All philosophical knowledge falls short of certainty; but we want the most reasonable belief about what caused the Big Bang that we can find; and our best informed guess is that creation ex nihilo by God is it.
Two basic options, (1) creation out of nothing and (2) out of spatiotemporal antecedents, are now both available to Process Theologians, who traditionally presupposed something like theistic oscillationism. Whitehead said that
God does not exist before the world but always with the world-some world. Yet, creation ex nihilo is a viable process option, as explained in Chapter Ten. From the perspective ofSuperspacetime, God could create all worlds either out of nothing, out of his own Superspatiotemporality, or out of the ashes of antecedent universes. No matter which, we could expect God to choose laws and initial conditions that would make each world interesting and worthwhile.
But our own world is our most immediate problem. Do we know enough at this point to draw any conclusions about it? Is it a necessary being? A contingent being? Did it have a cause? What really caused the Big Bang?

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D. Conclusion: The Dependence of the Universe on God

Our Cosmological Argument from Contingency concludes that nature, the universe, our system of spacetime, ultimately depends on God. St. Thomas Aquinas said that the ultimate cause and designer of the universe is what "all men call God"; but this is really not true according to Naturalists. They don't call it God! St. Thomas also said that the Cosmological Argument can tell us that God exists but not what God is like, nothing about God's essence. If so, it generates very little useful or valuable infonnation about God. Actually, taken with the Teleological Argument, it does tell us some religiously significant things about God. Together these arguments infonn us that our contingent world of nature requires a cause that is (1) transcendent, (2) immensely powerful, (3) creative, (4) necessary, (5) infinite, (6) intelligent, (7) purposive, and (8) benevolent. All arguments for the existence of God must work together to give us this much information. The Cosmological Argument gives us (1), (2), (3), (4), and (5); and the Teleological Argument gives us (6), (7), and (8). Only the Ontological Argument (not explored in depth in this book) ¹⁰ can give us all divine perfections, including (9) perfect virtue or optimal righteousness, (10) supreme holiness, and so on. All three of these arguments taken together bring us to an ultimate Divine reality in whom all our questions about why there is something rather than nothing finally come to rest. On rational grounds, they bring us to God as the supremely worshipful, creative, everlasting, uncreated, and indestructible Ultimate Reality who could not possibly not be.

2. Critique of the Cosmological Argument from Contingency

Replies to several important objections to the Cosmological Argument were implicit in many earlier discussions. We now know that our universe is not a Big Accident having no cause at all, that it is not a chance occurrence within infinitely many worlds, and that cosmological reasoning from the world to God does not commit the informal logical Fallacy of Composition. The following additional charges must now be confronted. A. An everlasting universe needs no God. B. Contingent wholes imply only contingent causes. C. God must have a cause if everything has a cause. D. The concept of the universe as a whole, and thus of God's creating it, is meaningless. E. Transcendent reality is unknowable. Can plausible replies be given?

A. The Universe Needs No God

If creation ex nihilo is true, the universe as a whole and all its parts depend on God for their very existence since God created all the primoridal spacetime/ mass/energy of our universe from nothing. Many atheistic oscillationists assume that the universe, some universe, has always existed, and that an everlasting set

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of successive universes is itself a necessary being that needs no God. As we saw in Chapter Four, Oscillation Cosmology is often adopted mainly to avoid God, but it may not be true that an everlasting universe or set of universes would not be contingent upon God in any respects, and it is definitely not true that ours is an everlasting universe or that it belongs to an everlasting set of sequential universes.
The evidence already given is overwhelming that our universe is finite but expanding spatiotemporally, and it is not divided into an infinite number of tiny but real parts, some of which exist necessarily. The contingency or derivative existence of the universe might not depend totally upon its finitude in time or space. Naturalists suppose that the universe (or some universe) has infinite temporal duration. This means, they conclude, that our universe exists necessarily; but they are mistaken. Unlike ours, an eternal universe might resemble necessary existence in being uncreated and everlasting, yet it would still be causally contingent if it depends everlastingly in some way on something transcendent. Traditional theism says that God both created the world and continues to preserve or sustain its existence. The world depends on God originally and at every moment. Either (or both) implies that the universe has a contingent or dependent form of existence and that God is the world's ultimate necessary condition. Theism is not inescapably tied to creation out of nothing in the finite past or to Big Bang Cosmology. The universe would have a derivative or causally dependent mode of being if either of the following propositions is true:
(1) The whole universe came into being at some point in the finite past; and/or
(2) The universe, or other universe(s) to which ours is connected, depend somehow on God at some or all moments throughout an infinite past and/or an endless spatial expanse.
If all contingent wholes in a finite or an infinite series depend on God either originally, continuously, or historically in any way at all, the claim that "All wholes within the universe are caused by contingent beings" is only part of the truth. The whole truth adds, "and by a necessarily existing God." St. Thomas Aquinas believed on the basis of divine revelation (as he interpreted it) that (I) is true; but, he contended, the Cosmological Argument for God hangs on the second type of contingency, not the first. Aquinas thought that Aristotle, for whom the world co-existed eternally with God, set the definitive standard for what reason could or could not accomplish. In deference to Aristotle, Aquinas held that reason cannot prove that the world has a beginning or disprove its everlasting co-existence with God. Revelation may say otherwise, but not reason. A world co-existing with God throughout an infinite past would nevertheless depend infinitely on God for its order and being, just as rays from the sun would depend infinitely on the sun if the two co-existed forever. Though Aquinas did not say so, a spatially infinite universe would also be

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contingent if it somehow depends on God at any or at every real unit of spatial extension. An infinitely prolonged or extended set of contingencies does not add up to necessity, especially where causal dependence exists at spatial and/or temporal units along the way. An infinite spatially and/or temporally contingent world is not a necessary being; it is an infinitely contingent being. For many good reasons, now we know that we do not live in an infinite world.
St. Thomas Aquinas anticipated neither contemporary Biblical criticism nor Big Bang Cosmology. Perhaps he was wrong in thinking that revelation teaches creation ex nihilo in the finite past, and that reason cannot show that the universe originated at some point in the finite past. Modem Biblical scholarship affirms that creation ex nihilo is not clearly taught in Genesis or elsewhere in the Protestant Bible; and Big Bang Cosmology shows that the universe, the whole shebang, was created in the finite past-about fifteen billion years ago.
St. Thomas was convinced that creation ex nihilo is a clear deliverance of Christian revelation,¹¹ but this is far from certain. Modem Biblical scholars generally agree that the first chapter of Genesis does not clearly affirm creation out of nothing. In the King James translation of the Bible, the first verses of Genesis read, "In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the earth; and the earth was without form and void." Biblical scholarship in the twentieth century concludes that these verses may, with perfect faithfulness, be translated to read, "When God began to create the Heavens and the earth in the beginning, the world was without form and void." In margins or notes, current translations of Genesis give this as a perfectly legitimate rendition of Genesis 1:1. Genesis declares that God created the universe, not ex nihilo, but out of the formless chaos that already existed "when God began to create." Creation itself was initiated only when God said "Let there be light." In Genesis, at the beginning, God brings order to the world but does not bring it into being absolutely. God is a world-designer but not a world-creator.
Although not clearly taught anywhere in what Protestants recognize as the Bible, creation ex nihilo is taught perhaps in the intertestamental literature that Protestants do not regard as scriptural, though Catholics do. Specifically, the idea seems to occur for the first time in II. Maccabees, Ch. 7, verse 28, which reads, "I beg you, child, look at the sky and the earth; see all that is in them and realize that God made them out of nothing, and that man comes into being in the same way." ¹² This was written perhaps as early as 125 B.C., but scholars debate its date. St. Thomas Aquinas regarded //. Maccabees as scriptural, but the authors of the "Westminster Confession," along with most Protestants, did not and do not so regard it. In any event, Eric Lerner's assertion that creation ex nihilo originated with Tertullian in the third century A.D. is incorrect. ¹³ As far as biblical religion is concerned, God ordered the universe from pre-existing chaos, which may have co-existed everlastingly with God. The God of Genesis, like Plato's Deimurge in the Timaeus, ordered the world out of pre-existent

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materials. Neither created the universe out of nothing. Still, creation ex nihilo might be true in spite of Genesis.

i. Creating and Sustaining

To return to philosophy again, how might a created or a continuously existing universe or everlasting set of universes depend on God, and how much of it makes sense within the framework of Process Theology?
(1) The first and most obvious way in which the universe depends on God is with respect to its creation, its existence. If God created our universe out of nothing, Process Theologians must join with Classical Christian Theologians in recognizing the most obvious way in which our universe depends upon God. God produced from nothing the very stuff of physical existence, all the space/ time/mass/energy of creation. Except for God's creative activity, there would be no space/time/ mass/energy, no chain of secondary causes within the world, no world to sustain. Creation out of nothing does not explain how God sustains all creation, but it is the most conspicuous way in which the world depends on God.
Traditionally, Process Theologians repudiated the claim that God creates our world out of nothing; but from the revised process perspective developed in Chapter Ten, Process Theology can incorporate creation ex nihilo. Thereby it can further emich its understanding of how the world depends on God. Creation out of nothing and ongoing providential directing were emphasized traditionally by Classical Theologians, but Process Theologians can also make a prominent place for them.
(2) Closely related to depending on God for its existence is dependence on God for its form, its life-supporting law and order or structure. Some important features of original creation are ongoing. Our teleological inquiries show that our universe depends on the intelligent and purposive foresight of a being of divine proportions for its life-producing and preserving law and order, its lifefavoring natural laws or habits. If natural laws are only statistical abstractions from the collective habits of massive numbers of kinds of things like electrons, protons, photons, paramecia, and people, then claiming, as Charles Hartshorne did, ¹⁴ that God chooses natural laws for our universe or cosmic epoch is just a roundabout way affirming that God created a plurality of creatures having certain natures which, on average, behave in certain calculable ways. Hartshorne was well aware that natural laws are formal, statistical, and changeable; but he might not have appreciated fully the very concrete causal efficaciousness involved in this claim. This means that God selects and produces not the lawful forms as such, but the basic kinds of entities that exist. God gives them the natures that their habits express statistically. The basic structures and habits of existing things can evolve, along with the laws that express these changes. Today's "scientific" cosmologists agree that no laws for physical particles

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existed before particles separated from the grand initial unification; and no laws of human psychology existed before human beings evolved. Still, the "hand"- the anticipations, intentions, and influences-of God is in all of this. In formatively influencing the natures of things that act lawfully in nature, God acts as an efficient cause of particular kinds of entities, not just as the final cause of the abstract lawlike patterns that describe their activities.
Our universe depends on God for its basic life-supporting structural features, its original life-assuring initial conditions, including its initial low entropy, the kinds and strengths of its basic physical forces, its asymmetry of matter over antimatter, and many other initial conditions previously discussed. If ours belongs to an extended set of oscillating universes (as seems unlikely), there might be a place after for a God of the Gaps, especially if the gaps fall between or at the beginning of universes. Science can know only our own cosmic epoch. Existing originally only in the Primordial mind of God, beneficent life-favoring natural laws (general patterns) and initial conditions could vary in and need to be chosen anew for each cosmic epoch. As we know and discover them, the formal patterns of the enduring habits of primitive physical entities in our universe are expressed in the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and the other natural and social sciences. The earliest emergent laws of nature and the original conditions of the universe belong more to initial creation than to continuous sustenance, but they or their effects persist even today. Here the Cosmological Argument (dependence) merges with the Teleological Argument (purposefulness). The beneficent order of nature is both ongoing and evolving.
(3) Theologians have held that God sustains the world in being whether created or everlasting. If the universe in some form existed infinitely into the past, might it still depend on God? Many cosmologist seem to believe that this would be a way avoiding God. Not so! St. Thomas Aquinas, the most influential classical theologian, strongly believed that if our world existed throughout an infinite past and depended on God for something through it all, it would definitely be contingent upon God, just as rays coming from the sun would depend infinitely upon the sun if they co-existed throughout an infinite past. This analogy would also hold for a modem process theistic oscillation cosmology in which each member of an infinite set of successively existing worlds somehow depends on God. But how could an infinite past actuality or chain of past actualities depend on God in the absence of original creation from nothing?
The classical answer that God constantly sustains or preserves the world in existence might do the job if we really understood what "sustains" means and were sure that an infinite series of contingencies lacks the ability to sustain itself, or that physical mass/energy, once created, lacks the intrinsic self-existence attributed to it by the First Law of Thermodynamics. The meaning of "God preserves" has been difficult to specify. We definitely cannot argue

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without circularity that the world cannot sustain itself because it depends on God, for that is precisely what is at issue. That is what must be clarified. Most attempts to explain the meaning of"God sustains the world" get no further than identifying sustaining with continuous creation, preservation, or dependence, all of which are then defined as sustaining. Getting beyond this conceptual circularity is extremely difficult.
Consider briefly some implausible analyses of what it means to say that "God sustains the existence of all creation." Since sustaining applies to everything in the universe, an account of how it works must have universal significance and application. Because they have only local significance and application, particular miracles (if any) and acts of providence (which are not necessarily miraculous) do not count as sustaining. Sustenance belongs to general providence, not to particular providence.
Some explications of how God sustains the universe are clearly implausible. (A) Perhaps new matter/energy is constantly being created everywhere, as suggested by Fred Hoyle, except God rather than matter is its cause. Yet, little or no evidence supports such ongoing violations of the principle of the conservation of energy. This may or may not happen occasionally at that fuzzy borderline between potentiality and actuality that the physicists call the space/time "vacuum" where the world merges with God. If it happens constantly, the pace of it is too slow to account for the entire mass of our universe within finite Big Bang time.
(B) Perhaps, as Bishop Berkeley and Quantum Observer Theorists maintain, an actual world exists only as something being perceived either by ourselves, by other finite minds, or by God, who is always around to keep things going when no one else is looking. The universe would cease to exist if God quit thinking or perceiving it if Idealists are right. For Idealists, God's sustaining the world just consists in his continuing to think it. Yet, this book opts for and defends a critically realistic theory of knowledge and a corresponding realistic metaphysics.
(C) Perhaps sustaining is just constant recreation every instant, as Descartes and a few others maintained. Jonathan Edwards, who held this view, argued that no real causal relations obtain at all between events within the world; the world continues to exist because God recreates the whole of it from nothing at every moment. ¹⁵ Edwards anticipated David Hume's empirical reduction of causation to mere temporal succession and spatial contiguity devoid of "secondary" causal efficacy. Yet, despite Edwards and Hume, things within the universe do seem to have real causal relations and connections. Existing entities really do transmit their energy, structured patterns, and purposes to other things; and constant recreation just seems like a lot of unnecessary repetitive work for God. So does creating a world that is not self-sustaining once created.
(D) Traditional theology simply decreed that created things in themselves lack the power to continue to exist and that God alone supplies that power.

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Naturalists regard this as question-begging; and Theists who say this must explain how God supplies things with the power to exist, which is not accomplished simply by declaring that he does. Theists might hold that God made the universe to be self-sustaining, once created, that God himself is behind the first law of thermodynamics. Once created, the world's mass/energy cannot be destroyed. Perhaps making it so from the outset is one of God's ways of sustaining creation. "Sustaining" is a difficult concept to make intelligible. Process Theology's distinctive accounts of how the world depends on God can be construed as ways in which God constantly sustains creation. According to process thought, God does not act on the world merely at the beginning. Rather, God continuously interacts with it, and it constantly depends on God in a variety of ways. God's influence on the world is ongoing. How so?

ii. Influencing and Saving

How else might a universe or many universes depend on God? Are other accounts of "sustaining" more plausible? Some forms of dependence belong to initial creation, some to ongoing preservation. Perhaps ongoing preservation is ongoing creativity. The several ways in which the world depends upon God according to Process Theism may help to make sense of the vague notion of "sustaining the world." As mainstream Process Theologians contend, God continues to influence creatively and include within himself the course of events within the world, so sustaining is ongoing creation and preservation. But how does this happen?
(1) Temporal entities within the world rely on God to supply them with an "initial aim," consisting of an awareness of novel possibilities for creative activity and self-development. Efficient causation within the world is mixed with final causation, purposiveness, or teleology derived from God.
(2) Temporal entities depend on God to lure them gently toward goodness, without overwhelming their ability to choose otherwise. Alluring visions or intuitions of the true, the beautiful, the right, and the good within the world ultimately come from God. Higher or more complex organisms like us clearly have them, but their pervasiveness is open to debate. In our awareness of and sensitivity to values that transcend time and place, God's presence is ongoing. (3) All individual events depend on God's memory for the preservation of their concrete being and value once they perish in time to themselves. Every universe, if others exist, depends on God to preserve all intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic worth achieved within it. Without God, contingent goodness perishes altogether with the passage of time. Divine value-conserving activities are ongoing, universal, and count as "sustaining." By remembering them flawlessly, God sustains and conserves within himself all values actually achieved in

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ongoing creation. Plausibly, sustaining is God's remembering. This way of sustaining the world is its eternal salvation.
(4) Finally, once the mass/energy of existence is created, God voluntarily shares creativity itself. Newtonian universes devoid of creativity are logically possible, but God grants freedom and co-creativity to his creatures. The transition, transmission, and transformation of mass/energy belongs to the subject matter of physics; the internal self-creation of actual entities belongs to psychology, axiology, metaphysics, and theology. Self-creation and final causation or persuasion may not apply everywhere, but they are widely distributed. In originating universes, in creating the intensely concentrated stuff out of which partly self-creative actual occasions emerge, God acts only as an efficient cause without imparting final causation to existing subjects, without giving initial aims to pre-existing individuated occasions, for none exist at the initial moment of grand unification and perhaps for some time thereafter. Non-existence and nonindividuation cannot be co-creators with God; but very near the outset of a Big Bang, individuated entities in a newly created ex nihilo universe could be. God caused and designed the Big Bang, and the Big Bang produced both freedom and order.
(5) Plausible versions of both Classical or Process Theology may make a place for special acts of divine providence and self-disclosure to particular individuals in the course of history. Special acts of God and Divine self-disclosures have huge moral and religious significance and make momentous differences in the course of human events; but this type of dependence is particular, not universal.
Acts of God and Divine self-disclosures involve interactions between God and created individuals in specific situations and lack the universality required to count as sustaining the universe; since they occur within an established universe, they do not count as world-creation; but they are instances of ongoing Divine creativity and the world's contingency upon God. Some critics suggest that Process Theology cannot allow for personal historical interactions between God and human individuals, 16 but this is not true. The world may depend in special ways on God for what it knows about how God has related himself to particular people in particular times and places. As Charles Hartshorne explained:

With Crisis Theology ... our theory can agree that God is personal and selfrelated to the creatures, and that his acts of self-relationship are not rationally deducible, but require to be "encountered." However, as Barth and Brunner seem not to see, this is compatible with there being an essence of God which is philosophically explicable and knowable. The concrete volitions of God may be contingent ... For each man-religion is a matter of the actions of God as self-related to him, that is, to a wholly contingent being, or to humanity, likewise contingent. Relations whose terms are

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contingent can only be contingent. Philosophy seeks that general principle or essence of the divine being of which such concrete actions of God are mere contingent illustrations. But from a religious point of view, it is the illustrations that count. Thus the religious and the philosophical attitudes are complementary, not conflicting. Our doctrine appears, then to effect a peculiarly comprehensive synthesis of past and present thought concerning theism. ¹⁷

The success or failure of any act of divine self-disclosure depends upon the openness of human receivers to God. Some Christian Process Theologians hold that Jesus was both fully man and fully God in the sense that he was the one man in all of human history who was most fully open and sensitive to God's nature, thoughts, values, sensitivities, emotions, desires, and decisions. The historically limited and conditioned intellectual, aesthetic, moral, and religious capacities, predispositions, and perceptivity of human receivers and interpreters always color and may even distort divine disclosures. Sinners who may distort the message are always on the receiving end of divine communications.
To return to the objection that an everlasting universe would be a necessary being, recall that if a thing exists contingently, this means that (I) its nonexistence is possible or conceivable without contradiction; (2) it is caused to exist or created in some or all respects by something other than itself; (3) it is corruptible and destructible; and, normally, it (4) comes into being in time and (5) perishes or is capable of perishing in time. A necessary being has just the opposite properties. A temporally infinite set of contingent things, for example, contingent but successive universes, would not be a necessary being because (1) its non-existence is possible or logically conceivable; and thus (2) its existence is not fully self-explanatory. It is (3) destructible in principle unless some Necessary Being sustains it, or causes it to be self-sustaining once created. If a temporal setofuniverses is infinite, (4) (a) each part (each epoch) would come into being in time, albeit infinite time; (b) no part of it would be absolutely uncreated and persist through all time. (5) Still, the whole of it would embrace an everlasting past; and it would in this respect resemble the everlastingness of a single necessary being. If ( 6) it continues infinitely into the future, the whole would not perish in time, even though each of its parts does, so in that respect also it would also be everlasting. Still, it fails in many important respects-(1) through (4)-to be a fully necessary being.
Most importantly, ours is not a temporally infinite universe. Remember the Big Bang! The most crucial cosmological fact about our universe is (2) above. The one and only universe that we know to exist was caused to exist by something other than itself. The first premise of our cosmological argument applies to it. If any whole is composed entirely of contingent parts, that whole is itself contingent. Many ways in which our universe depends on God have now been identified.

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Would an infinite string of universes depend on God the way ours does? No available evidence supports the claim there is or was an infinite string of universes in either space or time. Infinity is not a real problem for our spatiotemporally finite universe, the only one we know to exist. Epistemologically, infinite universes are just postulates proffered to avoid God by atheists, or to imagine how God could be infinitely creative in space as well as time by Process Theists. Our problem is, What caused our Big Bang?

B. Contingent Wholes Do Not Imply Necessary Causes

At least one difficulty with applying "If the parts are contingent, the whole is contingent" premise to our universe is serious. Applying the Principle of Contingent Wholes to the universe as a whole enables us to conclude that it, too, is a contingent whole that has a cause. Yet, one way of applying it-as an inductive generalization-seems highly problematic
Recall that inductive logic allows us to generalize to more of the same, but it does not allow us to infer something different. The Principle of Contingent Wholes is an empirical truth derived inductively from what is "evident to our senses" about relations between parts and wholes within our own world of spacetime. When we extend it to apply to the universe as a whole, we are still reasoning from parts to wholes, so what is the problem?
The difficulty is with respect to the nature of that cause. Here, even if so-far-so-good with respect to reasoning from parts to wholes, other inductive generalizations seem to count against a Necessary Cause. Empirically, all experienced wholes derive their existence from other contingent beings, not from a necessary being. Thus, it seems, we are warranted inductively to generalize only that all contingent empirical wholes are caused by other contingent entities. Applied to the universe itself, this means that even if our contingent universe had a cause, we are warranted inductively to infer only that a contingent being (or beings) brought our world into existence. If this is all we are entitled to infer, the first premise of our Cosmological Argument from Contingency cannot generate the conclusion that a set of contingent beings or wholes, whether finite or infinite, depends ultimately upon a necessary being that transcends that set. So, how does omnipresent contingency entail the reality of a transcendent necessary being? Inductive logic will take us from wholes to their causes, but will it take us from contingency to necessity? If not, Naturalism is in the same boat; it can't get the necessity of Nature by inductive reasoning either. Recall Naturalism's claim that "Nature as a whole exists necessarily."
In response, the existence of a necessary Divine Being is not an inductive inference. Even though it cannot be inferred inductively, it is still the most plausible explanatory hypothesis available to us. From contingency and finitude alone, neither Theists nor Naturalists can derive the infinity and necessity of

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God or Nature by direct observation or inductive inference. Still, they might get them as the most plausible explanatory hypothesis, that is, by abduction. Who has the best case?
Some analogies between nature and its parts seem to hold, for example, if any whole is composed entirely of contingent parts, the whole itself is contingent. Many other analogies cannot hold between intra-universe and extrauniverse causation. Not counting miracles, if there are any to count, experience shows that all empirical contingent wholes are caused by other empirical contingencies; but we have good reasons for not applying this very different generalization to the ultimate cause of the universe as a whole.
Many valid inductive generalizations cannot be applied to the ultimate cause of our total universe. Experience shows that all wholes within our universe are caused by other beings inside the universe. Yet, the universe as a whole cannot be caused by something within itself. The universe as a whole could not be caused to exist by another being (or beings) inside the universe because they are effects of the universe's existence, not its cause. Even cosmological Naturalists do not resort to that. Before Big Bang theory, they said ithas always been around in some form, which isn't true. Now, they say, something transcendent like Superspacetime or an Antecedent Universe caused our Big Bang about fifteen billion years ago, but they do not claim that something within it caused it to be. Even Big Accident Theorist do not claim that something within our universe caused it to be; rather, it had no cause at all.
Another inductive generalization that applies to all wholes within our universe could not hold true of the ultimate cause of the universe itself. All wholes within our universe are caused by a finite set of natural events that go back no further than the Big Bang, but naturalistic oscillationists and all other infinitely many worlds metaphysicians postulate an infinite set of antecedent conditions as the ultimate cause of our universe. Naturalists deny both that nature as a whole is caused either by a finite set of causal conditions or by conditions that are parts of our own natural system of spacetime. They think that as whole it just isn't caused at all; it is itself the Necessary Being; like God, nature is "self-caused." But this is where the first premise of our Cosmological Argument from Contingency shows them to be wrong: all contingent wholes, nature included, have causes.
Many other inductive analogies of causation do not hold when dealing with the origin of the universe as a whole. All causes within nature are spatiotemporal; but singularities are not spatiotemporal. All causes within nature obey the laws of quantum physics; but antecedent and contemporary "many worlds" may have their own very different laws. The truth is, characterizations of the very nature of the ultimate cause (an infinite set of crunching antecedent universes, perhaps correlated with an infinite set of initial singularities, infinitely many co-existing worlds, an infinite and self-sufficient Nature, or what have you) are explanatory hypotheses, not inductive generalizations.

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The same is true of God as the ultimate Necessary Being. So the question is, which explanation is best? Preceding chapters demonstrated that non-theistic explanations just do not work.
That our universe as a whole had a cause is denied by Big Accident Cosmologists, who say that it just popped into being without a cause, and in a peculiar way, by Naturalists, who say that it is itself the self-sufficient Necessary Being. Both have been refuted in earlier discussions. Our reasoning about nature as a whole cannot be entirely nature bound. The cause of our universe was not the universe or some part of itself, not some finite set of causal conditions, and not a contingent set of conditions because no such entities are ultimately self-explanatory.
In one respect, Process Theology can easily accept contingency as an element of that which created our universe. As indicated earlier, most Process Theists affirm the reality of infinitely many temporally successive worlds or cosmic epochs on theological (but not empirical) grounds. It is reasonable to expect that an infinitely loving, social, and creative God would be infinitely creative of creatures to love and with whom to socialize. In a very important sense, "All contingent wholes have contingent causes" applies even to God; but this is not embarrassing to Process Theology as long as it is not the whole truth-as next explained.
An element of contingency pertains to God's creating all particulars. God's decisions to create particular actualities belong to God's contingent Consequent Nature, not to God's necessary Primordial Nature. God's decisions to create particular worlds are freely and contingently made. Particular manifestations of God's causal efficacy are contingent, not necessary. That the Divine cause of our universe is contingent, in part is compatible with the dominant process view that God creates new contingent worlds out of old contingent worlds, as well as with the oscillationist position that contingent old worlds enter into the creation of new worlds. In fact, most Process Theists have been implicit if not explicit oscillationists who think that God had important contingent roles to play in an infinite string of previously existing contingent universes or cosmic epochs.
The element of contingency in the God who created our finite and contingent world cannot be pushed too far. Not everything about God is contingent, or God himself would fall prey to the first premise of our Cosmological Argument from Contingency: God would also be a totally contingent being if everything about God is contingent; but there is an important disanalogy between Divine and mundane causation. If a totally contingently God caused our universe, then the world plus God would constitute another contingent whole requiring a higher order God as its cause. This higher order God is either contingent or necessary. If contingent, the Principle of Contingent Wholes applies again. No matter how many totally contingent Gods exist, the principle continues to apply until we come at last to a necessarily existent God. All contingen-

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cies, no matter how many, are swallowed up by the Principle of Contingent Wholes; and the process comes to rest only in a Necessary Being. No contingent wholes are self-existent or self-explanatory. If our finite universe as a whole depends on God either originally, continuously, or historically in any way, the claim that "All contingent wholes are caused by contingent beings" is only part of the truth. The whole truth requires us to add, "And by a necessarily existing God." The most plausible explanation is that our universe depends for its existence and order on the reality of a transcendent Divinity who could not not exist, who knew what it was doing, did it intentionally, and did it well.

C. "Cause" Cannot Apply to the Universe as a Whole

With no necessary natural wholes or parts, our world is doubtless derived causally from something other than itself; but another small problem remains. Perhaps the very notion of causation makes sense only when applied within the universe and cannot be applied to the universe as a whole. Experienced causes are always associated with space, time, and natural laws; but all of these disappear at T = 0 if the universe as a whole is created by a Divine transcendent reality out of absolutely nothing or the empirical nothingness of a singularity.
An analogy between God and an initial singularity as the cause of the universe may help us to understand how God can be its cause. Recall that some versions of "scientific" Oscillation Cosmology affirm that an antecedent universe collapsed into a singularity and then caused our universe on the rebound. The existence of neither a single antecedent universe nor a self-sufficient infinite totality of prior universes can be established scientifically. Everything to which science appeals in tracing causal connections just plays out at an initial singularity. A singularity is spaceless, timeless, and lawless; and without space and time, the concepts of physical energy, causation, and natural laws are meaningless. Thus, even in this "scientific" account, our system of spacetime erupts from something nonspatiotemporal, nonphysical, and nonnatural.
Given an initial singularity, our space and time begin just this side of T = O; and it makes no sense to say that the initial singularity was earlier than the onset of the primordial fireball itself. Nothing can be temporally earlier than the first moment of time, neither a singularity, nor an antecedent universe, nor an atemporal God. According to George Mavrodes, an initial singularity must have the same relation to creation that God has in Augustinian/Thomistic Classical Theism. ¹⁸ It is a logical, theoretical, hypothetical, metaphysical-but not a temporal-prerequisite for all space, time, and physical energy and causation. Natural or physical causation also plays out at an initial singularity. Being the effect of something natural, of spatiotemporal energy, can be traced back no further than the very first "products" of an initial singularity. Scientific or empirical knowledge of natural, that is, spatiotemporal causes tenninates

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abruptly at that point; no spatiotemporal or natural causes exist where no spacetime exists at all. Looking backward, all scientific knowledge based upon natural causal relations ends where natural causes begin. A singularity is a nonphysical, non-spatially extended cause or ground of everything physical. If, as many scientific cosmologists hold, the habits and laws of nature are themselves products of a colossal cataclysmic explosion that emerged from we know not what, there can be no natural law for-or underlying-creation itself. Natural laws themselves are (very abstract) creatures, no matter whether God, an initial singularity, or an antecedent universe produced them. As John Wheeler cautioned, "There never has been a law of physics that did not demand 'space' and 'time' for its statement.. .. With the collapse of space and time the framework falls down for everything one ever called a law of physics."¹⁹
If we extrapolate mathematically from observationally confirmed laws of Hubble expansion. the redshift of the galaxies, and cosmic entropy, then make proper allowances for an increasing (once thought to be declining) pace of expansion as the explosion winds down (or up!), and finally calculate retroactively the past natural history of the cosmos, we arrive at zero space and time somewhere close to fifteen billion years ago. Natural laws take us back that far, but they can carry us back no further than the point at which they themselves originate. Thus, we cannot extrapolate scientifically back to even one antecedent universe, much less an infinite number of them. Scientific knowledge ends at T = 0, or just this side of it. From our perspective within this world, an initial singularity, antecedent universes, and a transcendent Superspacetime are supernatural, atemporal, non-natural-causal entities,just as God is in Classical Theology. They may be just two ways of thinking about the same thing-an initial nonphysical cause or pre-condition of the universe. Nothing remains of the notion of physical or natural causation once space, time, physical energy, physical causation, and natural laws are eliminated; but this is no embarrassment to Theologians, for whom the creation of the universe ex nihilo had a transcendent Divine cause. not a natural cause. If cosmological reflection comes to this, the theologians can say: "I told you so." Natural laws can not "govern" or enable us to predict something that happens only once. The unique creation of a unique universe is more like the expression of choice or will than an effect of lawful physical regularities; but a puzzle lingers. Does any meaning remain for "cause" after its natural associates-space, time, physical energy, and natural laws-are altogether expunged? Can "cause" still have metaphysical meaning when stripped of all natural or physical meaning? Some critics think not. A Classical Theist might reply: "Well, I hope so; but if it doesn't, the singularity of Antecedent Universe Cosmology is in the same boat. God, who caused the Big Bang, is somehow a necessary condition for the existence of our universe." Yet, just what this "somehow" means is less than clear.

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Process Theism, or some form of temporalistic theism. has a much easier time with such puzzles of causation and creation. George Mavrodes concedes, perhaps somewhat grudgingly,

If God Himself is a temporal being, sustaining temporal relations, then indeed there can be time outside of the singularity. And God, the cause of the existence of the world, can temporally precede the existence of the world.²⁰

Divine spatiality could also exist literally outside our world as all-embracing Divine Superspacetime; the temporal God of process theology is everlastingly embodied. Our finite universe may be and likely is only one part of God's body. Divine causation could be non-physical or "incorporeal" as Classical Theology maintained; but if efficient causation is unintelligible without space, time, and embodied energy, then Process Theism attributes all of them everlastingly to God and thus can make theoretical sense of initial Divine transcendent but still spatiotemporal causation or creation from God's Superspacetime to our spacetime.
But our inquiry is not quite complete. Until both Divine and non-divine transcendent but contingent causes are ruled out, our Cosmological Argument from Contingency does not come to rest in God as a Necessary Being who always was and ever will be.

D. God Also Must Have Had a Cause

If everything has a cause, then God has a cause. So, who or what caused God? Naturalistic cosmologists really seem to savor this common objection to Theism. Carl Sagan expressed it nicely in his Cosmos.

In many cultures it is customary to answer that God created the universe out of nothing. But this is mere temporizing. lf we wish courageously to pursue the question, we must of course ask next where God comes from. If we say that God has always existed, why not save a step and conclude that the universe has always existed?²¹

Sagan's question ignores several important things. First, we know from Big Bang theory that the universe has not always existed. It is only fifteen billion or so years old. Just pronouncing that our universe is eternal cannot overcome that. Next, even if the universe were infinitely old, it would still be contingent because it depends on God in various ways at every moment, as previously explained. Sagan's premise-Everything (even God) has a cause-is inconsistent with his conclusion-The universe has no cause ("has always existed," as Sagan put it). If everything has a cause, then the universe has a cause.

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Even Sagan does not really want to say that everything has a cause. Sagan's atheistic Naturalism supposes that our necessarily existing universe had no cause; but this is false. That our universe is an everlasting necessary being is decisively falsified by all the evidence supporting Big Bang Cosmology. Finally, Sagan misunderstands the concept of God. Nothing falsifies God's existence. God, unlike the universe, has always existed because God is that being who could not not exist. As St. Anselm discerned, if it were possible for God not to exist, God would not be God, the supremely worshipful reality than whom none greater can be conceived. Sagan's analogy between contingent and necessary being does not work!
The desire to "save a step" cannot change a world that every human experience shows to be contingent, temporal, finite, and capable of non-existence into an everlasting world that could not not exist. The very idea is self-contradictory. By contrast, neither experience nor logic conflicts with the concept of God as the one reality who could not not exist and who is causally self-sufficient, uncreated, everlasting, and indestructible. Experience clearly discloses that the world does not resemble God's everlasting and self-sufficient Primordial Nature in any of these ways. Nature does not manifest these divine attributes, and we cannot make an unworkable analogy go through merely to "save a step." Experience and inductive extrapolation show that our universe is a contingent entity, and no ingenious conceptual gerrymandering can alter that brute fact. Poor philosophical reasoning is repeated interminably in cosmology. In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins argues that it is futile to appeal to God to explain features of the world like DNA and proteins because this

leaves unexplained the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like 'God was always there,' and if you allow yourself that kind of lazy way out, you might as well just say 'DNA was always there,' or 'Life was always there,' and be done with it.²²

But we know for a fact that DNA and life were not always there, and saying so does not make it so. They are contingent wholes that require causes beyond themselves. Similarly, when Paul Davies considers the Theistic claim that God is the necessary being who has within himself the explanation of his own existence, he asks, "Why can't we use the same argument to explain the universe?"²³ The answer is, the fifteen billion-year-old universe is composed entirely of contingent beings; and any whole composed entirely of contingent beings is a contingent whole, as experience clearly shows. We know that our world's existence is not everlasting, self-sufficient, or self-explanatory: and that is why we cannot use the same concepts to explain the universe that we use to explain God, whose Primordial Nature exists necessarily.
Stephen Hawking grew increasingly agnostic if not decisively atheistic over the years.²⁴ Hawking suggested in A Brief History of Time that there is

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really nothing for God to do if his "no boundary" proposal for cosmology is correct.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?²⁵

We should now understand why Sagan, Dawkins, Davies, and Hawking are philosophically confused. A universe unlike ours with no beginning or end nevertheless would exist contingently if, like ours, it were composed entirely of contingently existing parts. The contingency of any universe like ours that had a beginning should be patently obvious. Our universe also contains no parts that exist necessarily-without any causal dependence of any kind on anything. A contingent universe with or without a beginning still needs God; and our universe had a beginning.

E. Atheism Is Simpler than Theism

Philosophers and scientists alike appeal to the Principle of Parsimony or Simplicity as a significant norm of rational explanation. Ockham's razor, as it is often called, says that we should not multiply explanatory entities unnecessarily, that our explanations should be as simple as possible. The lure of simplicity is as much aesthetic as rational. It is where the true and the beautiful come together. Yet, the ideal of simplicity must always be balanced by the norm of comprehensiveness, for we should not oversimplify. As Whitehead suggested, we should "Seek simplicity and distrust it. "²⁶
Naturalists may want to argue that the hypothesis of an infinite and selfsufficient nature or cosmos is simpler than the hypothesis of a contingent universe plus God. Pierre Simon Laplace, who believed in a self-sufficient and everlasting system of natural causes, told Napoleon that he had no need of the God hypothesis. Unfortunately, the naturalistic hypothesis is not scientifically verified or verifiable; in fact, it is falsified by Big Bang Cosmology. And neither an infinite single world nor infinitely many worlds is simpler than one infinite God. To avoid God, atheists have to resort to infinity-to something just as complex as God!
Simplicity is determined by counting either the number or the complexity of explanatory entities, or both. A theory with fewer or with less complex explanatory entities is simpler than one with more. Naturalist may reject theism on the grounds that one world alone is simpler than one world plus one God. Obviously, one is simpler than two. But things are not so simple. The universe of Naturalism is either one infinitely complex world, or infinitely many finite worlds. Is this really simpler than Theism's minimal postulate of one world and

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one God? The answer is complicated by the fact that this one God is said to be infinitely complex in Process Theism and infinitely simple in Classical Theism. In arguing that Theism is not as simple as Naturalism, Naturalists may have in mind either the number of explanatory entities or their internal complexity. Complexity is a function of the number, kinds, and order of inner parts.
In number, one (finite) world plus one (finite) God is less simple than one (finite) world; so at this simplistic level, Naturalism wins the battle of simplicity; but, as already shown, Naturalists really do not believe in a finite world. The viable options for both Naturalism and Theism are much more complicated. Expressed in terms of contemporary cosmology, Naturalists are committed to either one infinite world (ours) or infinitely many finite worlds in a Superworld beyond and/or before ours. These options are very different; but which is the simplest? At the same order of infinity, a whole comprised of an infinite number of finite entities is just as complex as, indeed is numerically identical with, a single infinitely rich entity. Dennis Sciama argues that an infinite worlds metaphysics is simpler than a Theism in which God decides to create only one world because the it places as few constraints on reality as is compatible with observation.²⁷ Sciama obviously confuses simplicity with plenitude and observation with concoction. Victor J. Stenger remarks,

Several commentators have argued that a cosmology of many universes violates Ockham's razor. I beg to differ. The entities that the law of parsimony forbids us from multiplying beyond necessity are theoretical hypotheses, not universes. The cosmology of many universes is more economical if it provides an explanation for the origin of our universe that does not require the highly nonparsimonious introduction of a supernatural element that has not heretofore been required to explain any observations.²⁸

In reply, other universes are supernatural elements. And the standard objections are that theism multiplies the number of entities, not the number of hypotheses, and that it explains the existence of our world by appeal to an otherworldly being or beings. In both respects, however, there is no difference at all between God and infinitely many other worlds, except that God is numerically one, and the many worlds are numerically infinite. Stenger elsewhere characterizes the innumerable other worlds of many worlds metaphysics as "bizarre," "untestable,"²⁹ and a matter of"uneconomical speculation."³⁰ The Other Worlds of Quantum Cosmology are just as transcendent, supernatural, and inaccessible to direct sensory verification and warranted inductive inference as a transcendent God; and they outnumber God by infinity to one! So which hypothesis is the most "nonparsimonious"?
lf we shift focus from extensional referents (things) to intensional meanings (hypothetical constructs), exactly the same point applies to hypotheses as to entities. Epistemologically, as explanations of the origin of our universe, God

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and infinitely many worlds are both theoretical hypotheses; and the claim that only the God-theory is really a theory is question-begging nonsense. Stenger's argument against God-as-a-theory is like dismissing evolution because it is just a theory.
The strongest and most appealing forms of Theism really do not conceive of God as infinite in every conceivable or verbalizable respect. God is infinite only in every logically consistent respect compatible with supreme goodness and worshipfulness. In number of explanatory entities, one infinite world alone seems at first to be simpler than one or more infinite worlds plus one infinite God, for one is simpler than two. We are habituated to finitistic thinking, but we are now dealing with infinities that do not sum up like finites. Infinity added to infinity just equals infinity. In complexity, it is not at all obvious that one infinite world is simpler than one infinite world plus one infinite God. Richard Dawkins also failed to consider infinities when he argued that God is more complex, thus less simple, than the world. In his words,

Any God capable of intelligently designing something as complex as the DNA/protein replicating machinery must have been at least as complex and organized as that machine itself. Far more so if we suppose him additionally capable of such advanced functions as listening to prayers and forgiving sins.³¹

Where infinities are involved, determining simplicity and multiplicity or complexity requires the use of transfinite mathematics. Most critics of theism fail to consider this, which is why Naturalists often seem to win the simplicity contest. In transfinite mathematics one infinity plus another (or plus any finite number) is equal to one infinity, assuming that the infinities are of the same order; so one infinite God plus an infinite world has no more members than an infinite world alone, or an infinite God alone. If God's infinity is of a higher order than the world's, then God plus one or more infinite worlds is equal to God's more complex order of infinity. The sum is still just one infinity. When infinities are totaled, no matter how many, they always sum up to one infinity, and one is the paradigm of numerical simplicity. All the foregoing options seem to be equally simple.
A further complication with respect to the complexity of explanatory entities must be considered. Classical Theists insist that God is absolutely simple in himself; only our thoughts about God are complex. In himself, God is somehow pure undifferentiated unity of being, and that constitutes God's simplicity. So what could be simpler than that? Well, we hardly know how to assess the meaning or the simplicity of such double-talk. By contrast, Process Theism drives no absolute wedge between God and our thoughts about God. We think of God as infinitely complex because God really is infinitely richer in properties than all lesser beings. God is more complex than an infinite world,

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for God's infinity is of a higher order than the world's. Theological comprehensiveness, explanatory power, and correctness sometimes demand complexity at the expense of inordinate simplicity.
So, is a naturalistic infinite-world-ensemble metaphysics really simpler than Theism? Where the order of infinity is the same, in number of explanatory entities, Naturalism's infinitely many worlds without Divinity are certainly no simpler than Creation ex nihilo Theism's one infinite God plus one finite world because God's infinity plus a finite unit (one finite world) just equals God's infinity.
Considering only the number of worlds involved, naturalistic infinite worlds metaphysics, not Theistic creation of our one world ex nihilo, egregiously violates Ockham's razor. One-world monotheism clearly wins the simplicity contest. One finite world is infinitely simpler (less numerous) than an infinity of worlds.
Process Theists postulate a loving God's creative involvement with an infinite number of worlds to love. This gives us an infinite God plus an infinity of worlds, but these sum up to one infinity, God's. In complexity of ultimate explanatory entities, infinitely many finite worlds considered as a totality would not rival God's own infinite complexity if God's richness belongs to a higher order of infinity. If their order is the same, they are equally complex.
No matter what, that Naturalism is simpler than Theism is by no means evident. To avoid God, non-theists must appeal to something almost if not entirely as rich and complex as God.
The most simple-minded naturalistic atheistic metaphysics would affirm the existence of a single completely self-contained, self-sufficient, and everlasting but totally finite world without Divinity; but this metaphysics is incoherent because infinite time, required for everlasting self-sufficiency, is incompatible with total finitude. Older Naturalists postulated the infinite duration of our one world, but the Big Bang came along. Naturalists are now driven to postulate infinitely many transcendent worlds-while still complaining about traditional religion's other worlds! The actualized infinity of infinite worlds metaphysics is not verified, not verifiable, lacks an Agent of Diversification and Selection, and fails to account for the remarkable fine-tuning of our universe for the production of complex valuable life. Creation ex nihilo Theism is the simplest theory that can account for our well-ordered world and satisfy rational explanatory norms of both simplicity and comprehensiveness, but even it must come to terms with the concept of God as infinitely creative.

F. There Is No Universe as a Whole

Kai Nielsen contends that the very notion of the universe as a whole is unintelligible. If true, this implies that the idea that anything, including God, created or caused the universe is also unintelligible. If he is right, the whole project of this

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book, the search for the cause of the origin of our universe in the Big Bang, is totally misguided; and its conclusion, that God did it, is utterly unintelligible. As Nielsen expresses the argument:

It is only by thinking of the universe as some kind of gigantic thing or some kind of entity or totality that we can have a shot at intelligibly speaking of the universe as a whole. But "universe" may be just an umbrella term for the various things, events and processes there are. We cannot intelligibly speak of the sum of things so that we could intelligibly speak of them as a whole and ask if, and, if so, how, this universe was created and is sustained. Moreover, since the universe is not an object, event, process-not any kind of entity at all-there is no such thing as the universe for "universe" to stand for. Rather the term "universe" is an umbrella term standing for the objects, events, and processes there are. But there is no sense to trying to count the universe as a whole. "Universe" does not stand for some mysterious entity, but indifferently for those various discrete things. Things of which, since "object" is not a count word, we cannot count the sum. There is, that is, no way of summing them up and fixing the number of them that there are. This being so, we cannot coherently speak of the universe itself-that totality-being caused, created, sustained, and the like. To ask for the cause of the universe is to make what in the good old Ryleian days would have been called a category mistake. ³²

This argument suffers from many defects. First, Nielsen assumes that the only way to give meaning to the notion of the unity of nature, the universe as a whole, is to be able to count the number of its ingredients. This is itself a significant departure from the views of traditional Naturalists, who consistently identified nature or the universe with our system of space/time and all of its ingredients, no matter how many, and no matter whether they are practically countable. Naturalists traditionally claimed that this system of nature infinitely or eternally predated our existence. Traditional Naturalists would grant that we probably cannot count all natural things, events, and processes, even in principle (except perhaps by using transfinite mathematics, which really is a way of counting); but this would not persuade them that the concept of nature as a whole is unintelligible. Nielsen disagrees. Perhaps he thinks that the entities within the universe are not countable because they are infinite in number and cannot be counted finitistically, even in principle. Or he may think the rich natural order of things, whether finite or infinite, is so lacking in unity that thinking of it as "a whole" makes no sense. Either way, he is mistaken. Infinity is also a way of counting; but our universe is finite; and it has much more unity than Nielsen allows.

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Our universe is not infinite in time, space, or number of real parts; and strategies are available for making the unity of the concept of the universe as a whole perfectly intelligible. Nielsen seems to ignore contemporary Big Bang Cosmology completely. It has developed and explicated these strategies for us in great detail, as by now we well know. We need not be capable in practice of counting the number of things in the universe in order to know many things that make the concept of"the universe as a whole" intelligible. (1) Everything within our system of spacetime had a common, intensely concentrated, and totally unified origin. (2) All cones of causation within our contemporary universe are derived from an original grandly unified Big Bang. (3) By extrapolating from pervasive laws of nature, we can trace the common evolutionary physical history of everything within our system of spacetime back to highly unified Big Bang origins. (4) This history goes back for approximately fifteen billion years and no further. For details, read again Chapter One of this book and subsequent discussions! Nielsen finds unintelligible what contemporary astrophysicists find exceedingly intelligible! And they show us exactly how to conceive meaningfully of our universe as a unified whole. Nielsen has not learned an important lesson from contemporary "scientific" astrophysics and cosmology: asking about the duration of the totality of what he calls "the objects, events, and processes there are" makes perfectly good sense. Without being able in practice to count each of them individually, traditional Naturalists gave this answer: Their collective duration is infinite; our universe has existed throughout an infinite past. Nielsen may presuppose this without making his commitment explicit; perhaps he half-consciously hopes that no one will pry too deeply into the topic. Contemporary cosmologists both ask and effectively answer the question. The totality of "The objects, events, and processes there are" has endured for only fifteen billion years or so, no longer, and certainly not forever. All of the overwhelming evidence for the Big Bang given in Chapter One of this book attests to this conclusion.
Since the notion of our universe as a whole really does make sense, and since traditional Naturalists were clearly wrong in insisting upon its infinite duration, the question of a transcendent cause or creation of the universe is intelligible after all. Even atheistic Oscillationists and Quantum Cosmologists think so. Even cosmological atheists affirm a transcendent causes or causes of our universe, as previously explained. But was it God? That is the viable issue. Consider one of Nielsen's principle arguments against the supernatural.
"It isn't that we do not have to go beyond nature, but that we do not understand what such talk comes to. We have no idea of what it would be like to go beyond nature."³³ To find out what it would be like, all Nielsen has to do is ask any Oscillationist or Quantum Cosmologist. Atheistic supernaturalism is rampant in contemporary astrophysical cosmology. For Theism, transcendence is no problem because even a scientifically well informed Naturalism is unintelligible without it.

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G. Transcendent Reality Is Unknowable

Immanuel Kant contended that all arguments for the existence of God fail because they apply conceptual categories of the understanding-like causation, purpose, and necessity, which legitimately pertain only to appearances-to real things in themselves. For Kant, all reality is experientially, causally, spatially, and temporally transcendent and theoretically unknowable; only appearances are knowable, spatial, causal, and temporal. Kant believed that appearance and reality in no way resemble one another with respect to spatial, temporal, causal, and all other metaphysical properties and relations.
The problem is, if all spatiotemporal and causal properties and relations are removed from our concept of reality, or from reality in itself, nothing is left. Since "being" is also a Kantian category of the understanding that applies only to appearances, not even being is left! Kant rejected all cosmological attempts to know the real world of nature, along with critically realistic theories of perception according to which appearances are like realities at least in being spatiotemporal and in being caused by the realities they resemble. Kant rejected philosophical and scientific realism in epistemology, cosmology, and theology largely because they apply the concept of"cause" to realities; but when ask why he must introduce real things in themselves at all, his answer was that they have to be there to cause us to have the perceptions or "appearances" that we have.
Critical Realism applied to cosmology does not conceive of transcendent reality as something merely beyond or before our sensory perceptions. Instead, transcendent reality is "beyond" and "before" our objectively existing world of nature, our universe, our cosmos, our very real system of space/time/mass/ energy. This is what "transcendent" meant traditionally in both theistic and naturalistic metaphysics. Nature is our public, objective system of spacetime, as opposed to the private spacetimes of dreams and hallucinations and the inaccessible spacetimes of transcendent Other Worlds. Nature includes all things that exist within and have causal relations with at least some other entities within our public world; and anything that transcends this world is supernatural. Even if it has causal relations with it, transcendent reality either logically or temporally antedates our system of spacetime and has no fixed or ascertainable limited position within it. In Process Theism, the eternal Primordial Nature of God is always embodied in some concrete, contingent, spatiotemporal Consequent Nature; it is a necessary condition for every particular contingency in our world; yet it both transcends and is immanent in all actual worlds-if God, who alone knows for sure, has created more than one.
Scientific Cosmological Agnosticism, we saw in Chapter One, indicates that we can really know many features of our objective spacetime system scientifically, but we cannot have scientific knowledge of transcendent realities like Other Worlds, whether the otherness be supertemporal, superspatial, or both. Can we then have no rational or philosophical knowledge at all of the transcen-

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dent? If not, Teleological and Cosmological Arguments fail, for the God who allegedly caused our Big Bang and ordered our universe is a transcendent reality. Most contemporary "scientific" cosmology also fails if transcendence is beyond all human knowledge. Like God, antecedent or co-existent universes are transcendent realities, if real at all. The God hypothesis is a philosophical, not a scientific, explanation of our universe. So is any version of infinitely many Other Worlds. The world disclosed to us in natural science leads to the very edge of scientific knowledge and demands a rational philosophical explanation that natural science cannot give.
What caused the Big Bang itself to erupt? What caused a life-supporting universe instead of chaos or lifelessness to issue from the Big Bang? Physical science poses the questions, but it cannot answer them. Science periodically answers previously unanswered questions, but "What caused the loaded-for-life Big Bang?" is unanswerable in principle by natural science; its methodologies just do not extend that far. Can philosophical reflection do any better? Theistic meta-physics (after-physics) replies that some transcendent-imminent Ultimate Reality who knew what it was doing was responsible. Neither the God hypothesis nor that of infinitely many worlds is directly or inductively verified empirically; both postulate unseen transcendent or supernatural realities to explain the origin of our universe. But, all things considered, (as we have done!), the God hypothesis is the best explanation.
A life-supporting universe might happen by pure accident, given an infinite number of diversified universes. But we have no good reasons for giving that, and mere infinity requires an Agent of Diversification to yield a life-supporting universe. Logical possibility as such says nothing whatsoever about empirical probability. Mere infinity contains no Agent of Selection and Diversification. Infinitely many worlds metaphysics cannot explain why our ordered-for-life world exists or why lifeless universes are not repeated infinitely many times; it cannot guarantee an infinite diversity of individuals, their qualities, and their relational combinations. The Plenitudist notion of realizing all possibilities is not logically coherent. Pure infinity requires no diversity at all, much less the kind that selects for life. Plenitude is merely a ghost without a machine. A teleological explanation of the life-supporting cosmic coincidences of our finite but well-ordered universe is needed; a personal, intelligent, benevolent, and life-loving Agent of Diversification and Selection best explains the origin and structure of our exquisitely designed contingent universe. That our world was designed for life-flourishing by a Divine, supercosmic, supercalculating, life-loving intellect is the most plausible hypothesis, the explanation best supported by a preponderance of the anthropic, cosmological, and philosophical evidence. Without a supercalculating God, our life-supporting universe would be infinitely improbable; and reason rejects infinite improbabilities. Reasonable persons certainly may, and perhaps must, come to this conclusion: God caused the Big Bang.

[Notes]

1. See William L. Craig and Quentin Smith, Theism, Atheism, and Big Bang Cosmology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), Chs. 1-3. By permission of Oxford University Press.
2. For the texts from Bonaventure and Aquinas, and from Siger of Brabant's On the Eternity of the World, see Medieval Philosophical Texts in Translation, No. 16, eds. Cyril Vollert, Lottie H. Kendierski, and Paul M. Byrne (Milwaukee: Markette University Press, 1964).
3. See, e.g., Heinz R. Pagels, Perfect Symmetry: The Search for the Beginning of Time (New York: Bantam Books, 1985), pp. 183, 224; Chris Isham, "Quantum Gravity," in Paul Davies, ed. The New Physics (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 83; John Gribbin, In the Beginning: After Cabe and Before the Big Bang (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1993), p. 247. Stephen Hawking, Black Holes and Baby Universes and Other Essays (New York: Bantam Books, 1993), p. 56.
4. Wolfuart Pannenberg, "The Doctrine of Creation in Modem Science," in Cosmos as Creation: Theology and Science in Consonance, ed. Ted Peters (Nashville: Abingdon Press: 1989), p. 161.
5. For arguments I. and II. I am indebted to my student, John R. Fitzpatrick.
6. See Rem B. Edwards, Reason and Religion: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1972 and Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979), pp. 264-267.
7. Kai Nielsen, Naturalism without Foundations (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996), p. 108.
8. See A. Mishra, et al., "Higgs-Particle Production through Vacuum Excitations," Physical Review, D, 44:1(1 July 1991 ); John W. Norbury, "Higgs-Boson Production in Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions," Physical Review. D, 42: 11 (1 December 1990); and A. Dobrovolskaya and V. Novikov, "On Heavy Higgs Boson Production," Zeitschriftfiir Physik., C, 52:3 (1991).
9. Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science (New York: Harper & Row, 1958), p. 71. See also pp. 70 ff. and 117 ff.
10. See Ch. 9 of Edwards, Reason and Religion.
11. See Ian G. Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science (New York: Harper & Row, 1990), pp. 129-135.
12. John R. Bartlett, The First and Second Book of the Maccabees (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1973 ), p. 274.
13. From THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED by Eric Lerner, p. 79. Copyright © 1991 by Eric J. Lerner. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a Division of Random House Inc.
14. Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), pp. 18, 118.
15. Charles Hartshorne, Man's Vision of God (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964), pp. 263, 278.
16. Holmes Rolston, III, Science and Religion (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 321-322.
17. Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. xi-xii.
18. George Mavrodes. "Comments on Rem Edwards' 'Antecedent Universe Cosmologies."' presented at a meeting of The Society for Philosophy of Religion in Savannah, Ga. (25 February 1994).
19. J. A. Wheeler, "Genesis and Observership", in Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences, eds. Robert E. Butts and Jaakko Hintikka (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1975) p. 15.
20. Ibid.
21. Carl Sagan, Cosmos (New York: Random House, 1980), p. 212.
22. Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1987), p. 141.
23. Paul Davies, God & the New Physics (New York: Simon & Schuster. 1983), p. 47.
24. Michael White and John Gribbin, Stephen Hawking: A Life in Science (New York: Penguin Books, 1992), pp. 165-171.
25. From A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, by Stephen W. Hawking, copyright© 1988, 1996 by Stephen W. Hawking, pp. 140--141. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. and Writers House LLC.
26. Alfred North Whitehead. The Concept of Nature (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1971 ), p. 163.
27. Dennis W. Sciama, "The Anthropic Principle and the Non-Uniqueness of the Universe," in The Anthropic Principle: Proceedings of the Second Venice Conference on Cosmology and Philosophy, eds. F. Bertola and U. Curi (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1993 ), p. 108.
28. Victor J. Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. 236.
29. Ibid., p. 198.
30 Ibid., p. 144.
31. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, p. 141.
32. Nielsen, Naturalism without Foundations, p. 518.
33. Ibid., p. 49.

No appeal to infinitely many worlds, either antecedent or contemporary, can explain the existence and order of our life-supporting world unless infinitely many worlds actually exist. Likewise, God cannot explain our life-supporting world unless there actually is a God. Theistic Cosmology affirms that God caused the Big Bang, that God is THE necessary condition for its occurrence; but this claim is true only if God exists. What reasons support the belief that God exists?
Rational evidence for God was expressed traditionally in philosophical arguments for God's existence. Two traditional arguments for God, the Teleological and the Cosmological, are of special interest to us because they directly invoke what we know about the cosmos.
When he considered evidences for God drawn from our knowledge of the world, the philosophical theologian John Hick concluded that "The universe, as presently accessible to us, is religiously ambiguous in that it is capable of being interpreted intellectually and experientially in both religious and naturalistic ways."¹ Since all phenomena can be interpreted in both Theistic and Naturalistic terms, neither position can win a clear victory over the other, Hick contends. Yet, the crucial issue is not whether all observations can be interpreted in a certain way. Rather, it is whether one interpretation is more defensible rationally than another. Hick is too generous and kind toward Naturalism. We saw in Chapter Two that no strong case can be made for Naturalism, especially when measured by its own appeal to scientific method alone; and in the ensuing chapters we saw that contemporary atheistic cosmologists fail to explain adequately the origin, order, and existence of our universe without God. Can a good case be made for God's existence based partly on the order or design of the universe disclosed to and through contemporary Anthropic or Biopic Cosmology? Granted that they will not be absolutely certain, can our inquiry produce theistic results that are rationally warranted and compelling?

1. God's Purpose for the Universe and Cosmic Teleology

The Teleological Argument or Argument from Design affirms that the observed order of the world provides powerful evidence both for the existence of God and for divine attributes like power, intelligence, and benevolence or good intentions. A well-designed cosmos implies not only that God exists but also something about what God is like. The Argument from Design expresses the deep religious intuition that the ultimate cause of the universe knew what it was doing and did it well from commendable motives. Perhaps no one ever really believes in God without that intuition, but reflection may make it plausible.

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From the time of Plato, innumerable versions of the Argument from Design have been offered, criticized, defended, and attacked. Today's Anthropic Cosmology presents us with dazzling indications that our world was deliberately designed by an intelligent and benevolent being of Divine proportions.
Amazingly, most Anthropic Cosmologists reject a theistic explanation of the data and favor some version of an infinite world-ensemble metaphysics, according to which a Iife-supporting world Iike ours occasionally happens accidentally in a infinite number of tries. Barrow and Tipler acknowledge the possibility of a Theistic Anthropic Cosmology, but they and most other Anthropic Cosmologists reject it. Should we follow their lead? A Biopic Teleological Argument for God contends that all of life, not just intelligent life, requires God. Is the Biopic Teleological Argument for God's existence defensible? Consider the following premises of a strong Biopic Teleological Argument for God.
Premise 1: Our universe is exceptionally fine-tuned for the production of an immense variety of intrinsically valuable complex forms of life.
Premise 2: This fine-tuning was caused by either by the existence of: A. infinitely many universes, or B. the Principle of Plenitude, or C. nothingness, or D. God-a transcendent, benevolent, Supercosmic Intellect.
Premise 3: It was not caused by the existence of: A. infinitely many universes, or B. the Principle of Plenitude, or C. nothingness.
Premise 4: Probabilities favor God.
Therefore: Our universe's fine-tuning for life was caused by an existing God, a transcendent, benevolent, Supercosmic Intellect.
Both Teleological and Cosmological Arguments for God reason from something that is known to be true of the world through sense experience to the existence of a transcendent Ultimate Reality who best accounts for that something. The Teleological Argument reasons from the presence of order, design, and purpose in the universe to the existence of a supreme, intelligent, skillful orderer or designer, and benevolent purposer-God. The Cosmological Argument, examined in Chapter Twelve, reasons from contingency or dependence in and of the world to the existence of a Divine ground for all contingency. Teleological and Cosmological Arguments for God contain some empirical premises that are known to be true on the basis of observation and inductive inference; but scientists are usually not interested in these kinds of experiential truths. Other premises in the arguments are philosophical and must be defended philosophically, with no pretense of doing natural science. Philosophy can operate at a level of generality that goes beyond the natural sciences, even though the line separating them is not exact. Although not done in the Teleological Argument, philosophy can even appeal to other types of experience-intuitive, introspective, religious, mystical-to which natural science, confined to

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sense experience, cannot appeal. Philosophy's repertoire of arguments, concepts, and analysis transcends the natural sciences. Absolute certainty is not available to us anywhere, especially in philosophy and natural science. A fallibilistic approach to philosophy concedes from the outset that absolute certainties are unreachable, but it also eschews absolute skepticism. Without giving us absolute certainty, philosophy can at least give us rationally warranted assertions and an enlightened faith-something far superior to blind faith. Now let us examine and defend the premises of our Biopic Teleological Argument more carefully.

A. Extraordinary Cosmic Coincidences that Favor Life

The first premise of the Biopic Teleological Argument points out that our universe is exceptionally well-designed for the production of an immense variety of intrinsically valuable complex forms of life, human and otherwise. Atheistic versions of the Anthropic Principle, discussed previously, agree that scientific cosmology has discovered impressive empirical evidence that our universe is extraordinarily fine-tuned to engender and sustain our existence. If it were not, we would not be here. But we are here! Why must we regard our universe as fine-tuned for life, and what best explains that?
Our universe is exceptionally suitable for the production of complex intrinsically valuable life during certain prolonged cosmic periods like the one in which we exist. Exceedingly small changes in the most basic physical features of our universe would make complex and valuable life impossible. About that, very little disagreement exists. Tiny changes, usually much less than one percent, in the numerical values of fundamental physical features of nature like gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak force, would have resulted in a lifeless universe. So would minute changes in initial conditions, natural laws, and many other primary components of the cosmos. All the fundamental components of our cosmos, as well as their harmonious interrelationships, must be calibrated with incredible exactitude to produce a life-sustaining universe. In what follows, most of the numbers are omitted; but physicists attach precise numbers to all the incredible life-supporting "coincidences" that make up the basic physics and chemistry of a life-supporting universe like our own. To the finite range of every numerical value essential for the production of a life-sustaining universe corresponds an infinity of numerical values that would insure lifelessness. For example, the speed of light at roughly 186,000 miles per second is a very fundamental constant in a relativity universe; but, as with all numerical values essential for life, a World-designer could get it wrong in an infinite number of ways. If the speed of light were 184,000, 188,000, or 189,000 miles per second, life would probably be impossible. An infinite number of ways to go wrong correlate with the very small range of permissible numbers

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for every physical condition that supports life. An infinite number of whole numbers above 186,000 miles per second, and an infinity of fractions between all these whole numbers, would yield lifeless universes.
Every possible lifeless universe would be an actual universe if all possible universes are actualized, as dictated by the Principle of Plenitude. This includes infinite variations on the numbers for all physical conditions that could enter into the constitution of possible universes. According to Stephen Hawking,

It seems clear that there are relatively few ranges of values for the numbers that would allow the development of any fonn of intelligent life. Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty. ²

Getting all the numbers right for life is a task for Infinite Intelligence. All the physical fundamentals of our universe and their collective hannony were precision-tuned for life production, and this is overwhelming evidence that our universe was deliberately contrived for life by a Divine Being who loves life. Consider just a few cosmic fundamentals that are specially designed for life.

i. Matter/ Antimatter Asymmetry

Either broken matter/antimatter symmetry, or primordial asymmetry, is necessary for the emergence of valuable life. We really do not know whether symmetry prevailed in the beginning, or whether asymmetry was an original feature of our universe. Assuming broken symmetry, as do most cosmologists, the processes that upset the balance of matter and antimatter in the earliest universe are very mysterious; but if symmetry had not been broken, the universe would not have evolved beyond a primordial fireball fueled by endless matter-antimatter collisions and explosions. Astrophysicists believe that when symmetry was broken, only one material particle survived for every billion matter-antimatter pairs that were annihilated. Without these exceptionally rare survivors, there would be no stable baryonic matter (protons and neutrons) and leptonic matter (electrons and neutrinos). No stable physical world would exist at all, and if no stable physics, then no life. A universe of stable antimatter would serve just as well for life, but it too would require either broken symmetry or primordial asymmetry.
Symmetry might have snapped in an infinite variety of ways, very few of which would be life-supporting. It looks as if the symmetry/asymmetry deck was stacked deliberately; so also were all the other most basic features of our cosmos. Of course, for all we really know, the universe was created from the outset with a great preponderance of matter over antimatter as an initial condition; but this primordial asymmetry would also be a stacked deck. For us to exist, our universe must contain just the right amount of free matter.

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ii. A Weaker or Stronger Force of Gravity

If the force of gravity were slightly weaker, the universe would have expanded too rapidly for galaxies, stars, and planets to form. Gravity would have been too weak to pull local clouds of gaseous mass/energy together into heterogeneous clumps. With weaker gravity, the universe would have undergone a rapid heat death. Mass/energy would have dissipated too fast for life to form. The evolution of valuable life is impossible without just the right tug from gravity to form planets with suitable physical and chemical conditions for life's emergence and development. To be life-supporting, hospitable planets also must have stars (suns) produced by gravity over billions of years of time that furnish them with just enough sustained energy, not too little, not too much.
If the force of gravity had been slightly greater, suns would suck in their planets or fail to release enough energy to sustain life. On planets with slightly increased gravity, living things would have to be extremely small and light in weight to avoid breaking apart when they fall. If gravity had been somewhat more powerful, no suns and planets at all would have formed; all regions of the universe in which they actually formed would have undergone rapid gravitational collapse. More powerful gravity would yield a universe full of black holes but no galaxies, stars, and planets. If a universe with greater gravity were to begin with a Big Bang, it would end shortly in total gravitational collapse.

iii. More or Less Mass/Energy

If the force of gravity were unchanged, but the initial quantity or density of mass/energy or physical particles in the universe were slightly greater or less, the results would resemble those from variations in the force of gravity. With either too much mass/energy or too much gravity, a universe would not expand rapidly enough. It would be too hot for life, and its total duration would be too short for life to evolve. With too little mass/energy or gravity, the universe would expand too rapidly and quickly become too cold for life. Stephen Hawking points out that "If the rate of expansion one second after the Big Bang had been smaller by even one part in a hundred thousand million million it would have recollapsed before it reached its present size. "³

iv. The Size and Age of the Universe

Both the size and the age of the universe are closely related to its mass/energy; and as B. J. Carr and M. J. Rees put it, "The Universe must be as big and diffuse as it is to last long enough to give rise to life."⁴ A closed universe no bigger than our Milky Way would pass through its entire expansion/contraction cycle in about a year of our time; and valuable life could not evolve. In a small universe of short duration, nucleosynthesis could not produce heavy elements

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like carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen, so essential to life as we know it. Even noncarbonaceous life forms, if there are any, would require some heavy elements, though we do not know exactly which ones or in what proportions. No enduring life forms could exist within universes consisting solely of volatile hydrogen and/or helium gasses-not even in infinite quantities and configurations. Life requires a diversity of cohesive chemical elements; it cannot be composed solely of hydrogen and helium. No heavy elements were produced in the Big Bang. They require billions of years of cooking time in stellar furnaces. The earliest stars contained no chemical elements heavier than hydrogen, helium, and traces of deuterium and lithium. No life evolved until after the first generation of stars synthesized heavy elements and then exploded as supernovas to scatter their contents through spacetime. Afterwards, gravity slowly reassembled this heavy stardust into later generations of stars with planets. At our stage of cosmic development, this has happened many times; but if it never happened, no life would exist. Anthropic Cosmologists firmly believe that life could not have evolved much faster anywhere than it actually did on earth. Barrow and Tipler recognize that their arguments "use evolutionary timescales as a crucial step."⁵ This assumption seems fair enough.

v. Variations in the Electromagnetic Force

If the electromagnetic force that binds electrons to atomic nuclei were much weaker, no atoms would form, not even hydrogen, much less the heavier elements. If it were only slightly weaker, all stars would be inhospitable blue giants. If it were slightly stronger, no long-lasting hydrogen-burning stars would exist. All stars would be red dwarfs that could not explode as supernovas to distribute heavy elements throughout the universe. Whether slightly weaker or stronger, no long-lasting main sequence stars like our sun would exist to provide the duration and stability of life-supporting conditions essential for the evolution of life.

vi. Alterations of the Strong Force in Atomic Nuclei

If the strongforce that binds protons and neutrons in atomic nuclei were slightly greater, there would be no atomic nuclei, no protons, and thus no atoms at all. If atoms were to form, all hydrogen would burn quickly into helium. The physics is complex, but if the relative strengths of the electromagnetic and strong nuclear forces had been ever so slightly different, either three helium atoms would not have fused to form carbon, or carbon would have been so unstable that it would have fused quickly with a fourth helium atom to form oxygen.⁶ Either way, the cosmos would contain no stable carbon. The very existence of carbon in the universe for the construction of carbon-based life is a striking cosmic coincidence. If the strong force had been slightly weaker than it is, the

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universe would be composed entirely of hydrogen gas, with no heavy elements and no living things. No deuterium, heavy hydrogen composed of one proton and one neutron in its nucleus, would have formed because the nucleus of deuterium is too easily tom apart. No hot stars would exist in an all-hydrogen universe, for even if proto-stars had formed, nuclear fusion could never commence without deuterium to ignite it.

vii. Variations in the Weak Force Controlling Nuclear Decay

The weakness of the weak force that controls nuclear decay must be very precise to produce biochemical life. A precisely calibrated weak force is essential for fusing protons into elements heavier than hydrogen. If the weak force were slightly weaker, all the hydrogen in the universe would fuse quickly into helium; and there would be no slow-hydrogen-burning main-line stars like our sun. Heavier elements like carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, and the chemical compounds upon which life depends would not exist. No supernovas could explode to distribute heavy elements through the cosmos if the weak force were any stronger. If the weak force had been only slightly stronger than it is, everything would have turned immediately into iron. What a dead universe that would be!

viii. Different Spatial Dimensions

Innumerable features of our world are exceedingly fine-tuned for the production of intrinsically valuable lives. With only two instead of three spatial dimensions, no life could exist. Without three spatial dimensions, there would be no sub-atomic particles, no atoms, no molecules, and no organic chemistry to form biochemical life. Edwin A. Abbott's two dimensional "Flatlanders"⁷ exist only in fiction, not in fact. Stephen Hawking explains how awkward, indeed how impossible, two-dimensional life would be. Two dimensional animals "would have to climb over each other to get past each other," and a digestive tract passing all the way through them would cut them in half!⁸ More than three spatial dimensions would also be incompatible with life; so, Hawking concludes, "Life, at least as we know it, can exist only in regions of space-time in which one time and three space dimensions are not curled up small."⁹

ix. Additional Fine-Tuned Features

Contemporary astrophysicists have uncovered a vast array of additional finetuned physical features of the universe like large number coincidences and exacting initial conditions that are necessary for the appearance and development of all life, especially complex valuable life. Very detailed and thorough discussion of the incredibly fine-tuned cosmic coincidences presupposed by the existence of life were published in 1989 by John Leslie, who interprets the data

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Platonically,¹⁰ and in 1993 by M.A. Corey, who interprets the data theistically.¹¹ For more details, read their books!
We have seen enough at this point to understand why Anthropic Cosmologists accept the Anthropic Principle, which affirms that the production of valuable lives is the purpose of our universe. For very good reasons, Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists accept the Anthropic Principle, the first premise of our Biopic Teleological Argument for the existence of God. Our universe is indeed exceptionally fine-tuned for the production of an immense variety of intrinsically valuable complex forms of life. But they reject the second premise, that God did it; so we must scrutinize their reasons for doing so.

B. Inadequate Non-Theistic Explanations

No matter how impressive the cosmic coincidences are that sustain our existence, the Biopic Teleological Argument for the existence of God does not succeed if it can be shown that our universe's fine-tuning for life results from something other than a divine transcendent benevolent Supercosmic Intellect; but this cannot be done.
In earlier chapters, we saw that most Anthropic Cosmologists reject the theistic solution and try to account for the life-sustaining order of our world with the hypotheses that it was caused by: i. Infinitely Many Universes, or ii. the Principle of Plenitude, or iii. Nothingness. All these non-theistic solutions presuppose that our favorably ordered world was produced by blind chance. Earlier chapters demonstrated that none of these alternatives can be defended. This does not show with absolute certainty that God is the best explanation because other unanticipated explanations might arise (always a problem with disjunctive arguments); but these will just have to be confronted if and when they appear. Without repeating every detail, consider these reminders of why atheistic explanations of cosmic teleology fail.

i. Infinitely Many Worlds

Most Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists think that a divine Supercosmic Intellect can be avoided by appealing to the unverified and unverifiable existence of infinitely many worlds. They claim that there are or have been an infinite number of transcendent antecedent and/or contemporary universes, that this infinity of universes in Supertime or Superspace actualizes all possible individuals, universal properties, and relations, and that it occasionally includes a life-supporting universe like ours purely by accident. If these metaphysical assumptions are indefensible, infinite worlds metaphysics fails to provide a plausible alternative to a Divine Supercosmic Intellect. Earlier, we determined that these assumptions do fail-for the following reasons.

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No good scientific or empirical reasons or evidences show that infinitely many worlds exist, even if prominent scientists say so. No infinitely transcendent Supertime or Superspace containing an infinite number of particular spacetime systems or universes can be verified directly or inferred inductively or indirectly from available evidence. The creation of our world by an infinity of antecedent worlds, by infinite Mother Spacetime, or by infinite world divisions is not an empirically confirmed belief. "Scientifically" postulating infinitely many universes flagrantly, infinitely, violates Ockham's razor. No antecedent oscillating universes can end in singularities because, by definition, time, space, and physical causation are non-existent in singularities. Singularities provide no spatiotemporal or causal corridors for linking universes. Yet, without singularities, increasing entropy would carry through an infinity of antecedent oscillating universes and make our world infinitely chaotic-anything but life-supporting. But here we are!
Roger Penrose maintains that although singularities are infinitely small, dense, and curved, they can nevertheless be structured with low entropy. The initial singularity that originated our universe was structured with low entropy or disorder, and it has been losing it ever since. Recall that since singularities are not empirical entities, any claims about them can be translated without loss of empirical content into the language of creation ex nihilo. Thus, Penrose's claim about the low-entropy singularity that initiated our universe is empirically indistinguishable from the theistic claim that the original stuff that God created from nothing (or from a "singularity") at the beginning was divinely ordered with low entropy.
That God created the low-entropy grandly-unified mass of energy that began our universe is much more plausible than that it was caused by an antecedent universe's Big Crunch. Most cosmologists today agree that an antecedent universe's final singularity, culminating its Big Crunch, would contain extremely high entropy or disorder. ¹² Even if the initial singularity of our universe were really nothing, as in "created out of nothing," our cosmic epoch was ordered from the outset with low entropy. No high entropy Big Crunches could ever produce the low entropy Big Rebounds required by Oscillation Cosmology because great chaos is never the direct and immediate cause of great orderanother well confirmed empirical truth. More technically, no state of affairs being torn apart by rippling Wey! curvature is ever followed immediately by its total elimination.
Atheistic Anthropic Cosmology's other worlds are just as transcendent, non-empirical, and Other Worldly as Heaven and Hell in traditional Christian theology. Atheists may believe in them by a heroic leap of faith, but no rationally defensible evidence supports their existence. Naturalists should reject all cosmological other-world-ensembles for the same reasons that they repudiate religiously based Other Worlds. Yet, Naturalism can be defended only by

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appeal to Other Worlds! We know, because of the Big Bang, that our world has not always existed.
Even if infinitely many worlds were actual, they would not explain the existence of our life-supporting world. An infinity of universes in time or space will not actualize all possible individuals, universal properties, and relations. Infinity cannot be "used up," not even by infinity. Infinity minus infinity equals infinity. Numerical spatiotemporal infinity alone does not guarantee that a lifesupporting universe will come along after a sufficient number of lifeless ones have been used up. Lifeless universes could easily be repeated inexhaustibly in time and/or space, either by causal necessity, or by accidental quantum fluctuations. Atheistic explanations commit the inverse gambler's fallacy. David Hume maintained that all possible configurations of matter would be actualized in an infinite amount of time, but the very idea is incoherent, for many configurations are incompatible with others. It is logically possible that a monkey typing the letter "a" would type only that one letter from infinity to infinity, to the exclusion of all other possible worlds. Nothing in the concept of infinity requires any diversification at all. A monkey banging on a typewriter could just hit one key forever-in Eternal Recurrence. The assumption that our life-supporting universe is made more probable by the prior existence of an infinite number of lifeless worlds commits the inverse gambler's fallacy.
A numerical spatiotemporal infinity should not be confused with infinite individual, qualitative, and relational diversity. Bare infinity lacks a mechanism for insuring any diversity, much less the right kind of physical diversity for life. Unless some Divine Agent of Limitation and Selection chooses diversity, neither spatial nor temporal infinity as such is compelled to manifest any diversity at all among actual universes, much less infinite diversity. Some diversity among bubble universes, if any others exist, may happen accidentally through quantum fluctuations; but an infinite number of accidental universes cannot use up an inexhaustible class oflifeless universes to guarantee the actual appearance of a life-supporting one like ours. Given an infinite number of shoes, it is possible that no shoe fits! Trash universes could easily be repeated endlessly, even if caused by quantum fluctuations. Without God, they probably would be. Mere infinity gives no assurance of any diversity at all; inane sameness can be reiterated forever. Either the Principle of Plenitude or God might account for diversification among universes, but God alone really explains it because plenitude will not work. Why not?

ii. The Principle of Plenitude

The Principle of Plenitude affirms that all possible worlds are actual. It is a theological principle, not an empirical or scientific fact. It is empirically unverified and unverifiable; and it violates the principle of parsimony, Ockham's razor, in every conceivable way.

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The Principle of Plenitude is derived from Platonic Theism, where it defines the Greek ideal of divine perfection. There are other arguments for its truth, but none that can really be defended philosophically. ¹³ Theists need not accept it unless they agree that Divine perfection necessitates the actualization of every possibility-including horrible as well as beneficent possible worlds; but actualizing all possibilities is not possible; the very idea is incoherent; and infinity cannot be exhausted. World-ensemble metaphysics is not natural science. Blind faith may postulate infinitely many diversified worlds; but that is all it is-blind faith. With or without singularities, no evidence available to us indicates that infinitely many worlds exist, diversified or not. Consider the following argument.

If infinitely many diversified worlds exist, a life-supporting world like ours will come along occasionally purely by accident. Therefore, our life-supporting world came along purely by accident.

Deductively, this conclusion does not follow. From "If p, then q" alone, we cannot conclude "q". Only if we also know "p"-that infinitely many diversified worlds exist-can we conclude "q"-that a life-supporting world like ours will come along occasionally purely by accident. We do not know that "p" is true, and we have many good reasons for thinking that it is false. The existence of an infinity of diversified worlds-plenitude of creation-may be advanced as an explanatory hypothesis, but it does not explain a life-supporting world, and it cannot be successfully defended.
Admitting that other worlds are logically possible concedes absolutely nothing about their actuality. For every contingent "possibly so," there is a "possibly not." Possibly, many other worlds exist; possibly, no other worlds exist. These possibilities are mutually exclusive. Possibly, you are extremely wealthy; but that puts no money into your bank account. We should not confuse abstruse possibility with high probability, credibility, actuality, or reality. Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists regularly make such confusions. Plenitude, the actualization of all possible worlds, is logically incoherent. The non-existence of every possible world is also a possible world. Mutually exclusive whole universes and sets of universes are logically possible, and so are mutually exclusive alternatives or variations within any one universe. Our own world (or all worlds) could have been either life-supporting or non-life-supporting, quantum or non-quantum, oscillating or non-oscillating, Divinely created or not so.
Plenitude's requirement that all possibilities be actualized in an infinite number of universes is not logically coherent. As Leibniz knew, there are logically incompatible, mutually exclusive, or "incompossible" possibilities. It is logically possible that an infinite number of worlds are all life-supporting, and that none of them are; but these possibilities are incompossible, that is, they are

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possible separately but not possible together. Possibly, nothing exists; possibly, something exists; but these possibilities cannot both be realized. Possibly, every strand of past oscillating universes ended in nothingness, in which case there would be nothing now; possibly they all ended in openness, in which case they could not explain our Big Bang. The realization of all possibilities implies that nothing now exists, which is obviously false! It also implies that everything now exists, which is equally false! Possibly, a single lifeless universe recurs eternally in every tiny detail; but this would rule out all possible life-supporting universes, including our own. The very idea of realizing all possibilities makes no sense. We cannot infer from an incoherent concept that our kind of universe is bound to occur accidentally from time to time. It is logically impossible, logically false, that everything possible is actual. Incompossibles are possible separately but not together. Choices between possible worlds have to be made; actual existence is competitive and selective. Who chose our life-supporting cosmos? Not plenitude!
Plenitude is an abstract, disembodied, normative principle. At best it can only be a formal cause. Nothing totally abstract, disembodied, and normative can make actual choices or be the efficient cause of anything. Abstract, disembodied, normative principles bring about results only when contained within and intentionally acted upon by concretely existing individuals who understand them. God is required for the causal efficacy of plenitude, or more selective creation. A good God would not act upon it, would not create every possible evil or trivial world.
Atheistic appeals to plenitude to avoid God are self defeating. If all possibilities are actual, then a God who selects among possible worlds exists since such a God is possible! Indeed, all conceivable gods exist, assuming that the idea of such is coherent. And no God exists, since that too is possible.

iii. Nothingness

Nothing is ever caused by pure nothingness. Out of nothing, nothing comes. All experience and theory grounded in experience, including quantum physics, is against the Big Accident hypothesis that nothing causes something. Quantum physics does not abandon causality altogether; it always retains necessary causal conditions and relinquishes only sufficient causal conditions. Abstract disembodied physical principles like quantum laws cannot exist and act within nothingness, for then nothing would be something after all. No good empirical scientific evidence shows that infinitely transcendent Superspacetime exists beyond or before our spacetime, or that it has a quantum bubbly structure that produces spontaneous fluctuations. Theology may require Superspacetime, but not science. Non-quantum worlds devoid of quantum perturbations are logically possible in infinite numbers. Pure nothingness cannot guarantee anything, especially that endless universes are governed by quantum laws, or that an

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occasional quantum universe is accidentally life-supporting. Since non-quantum worlds are possible, universes capable of quantum fluctuations require their own explanation and do not ultimately explain anything. What selects for quantum instead of for non-quantum worlds? Nothingness selects nothing.

B. Probabilities Favor Divinity

The best explanation for our universe's fine-tuning for life is that an existing God, a wise and benevolent being of supercosmic proportions, chose and created it knowingly and intentionally. Various strategies tend to show that this conclusion is true. Up to this point my strategy has been to demonstrate that alternative explanations of the cause of the Big Bang are indefensible. Nontheistic explanations really do not work. Often, the winner of a contest is the last one left standing on the field.
Yet, it would be nice to have more positive or constructive evidence for thinking that God chose the life-supporting features of our world. Probabilities positively favor Divinity, but this needs some explaining.
In one sense, we cannot determine the probability of the occurrence of a life-supporting universe. Probabilities are normally assessed statistically by comparing an actual instance with other actual members of a known class; but no existential probabilities are available for unique entities that belong to classes having only one member. Charles Sanders Peirce remarked that universes are not as plentiful as blackberries. As far as we really know, our¹⁵ billion-yearold universe is unique, the only one of its kind. We have access to no other actual universes with which we can compare it.
Recognizing that we experience only one world, David Hume argued that we are entitled to proclaim the truth of our theory of the origin of the universe only if innumerable universes have been formed before our eyes. Obviously, this has not happened. Neither theists nor atheists have ever seen worlds formed before their eyes, so they are both in the same boat in this respect. Atheistic world-ensemble metaphysicians seem to be unacquainted with David Hume, or they read him very selectively! Hume's own supposition of innumerable worlds existing in infinite time is inconsistent with his own skepticism!
In another sense, however, probabilities about ordered universes can be determined. A unique actual entity can be placed within a class of possible entities, and its absolute probability can be calculated. To determine the probability of a life-supporting world order, our actual ordered-for-life universe can be compared with all possible members of the class of universes that might exist. Appeal to absolute probability is commonplace in quantum mechanics, where determining the probability of a quantum event involves summing over all logical possibilities for that event.
Recall that physicists can assign numbers to every basic physical dimension of the universe-its density, expansion rate, entropy, the force of gravity, the

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strong nuclear force, the weak and electromagnetic forces, the speed of light, Hubble's constant, Planck's constant, and so on. For life-supporting universes, permissible numbers for each such basic component oflife-supporting physical reality fall within a very limited range. This leaves an infinite range ofnumbers for each component that would result in lifeless universes, all of which are possible worlds. For every measurable component of life-supporting universes, the range of right numbers is finite; the range of wrong numbers is infinite. This is also true of the way in which all the relevant numbers must be integrated harmoniously in order to make a life-supporting universe.
Each wrong number correlates with a possible lifeless universe. Within the class of possible designs for universes, life-supporting ones are infinitely improbable. Recall Stephen Hawking's comment that

There are relatively few ranges of values for the numbers that would allow the development of any form of intelligent life. Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty. ¹⁴

Steven Weinberg conjectures that "The existence of some form of life will turn out not to require any very impressive fine-tuning of the laws of nature,"¹⁵ and he doubts that we will find "any sign of the workings of an interested God, in a final theory. " ¹⁶ Yet, even if conditions favoring the existence of life are fairly broad and do not require extensive fine-tuning, the range of permissible physical numbers is still very finite, and the range of impermissible numbers is infinite. Our own world order is very impressive because the number of ways to go wrong with any two basic physical components is infinity multiplied by infinity-which is still just infinity, but putting it this way makes the point more impressive! If all possibilities are actual, no life-supporting universe exists now anyway, since it is possible that no life-supporting universes exist at all. An infinity of life-defeating aberrations corresponds to every finite range of cosmic conditions that would support life. Incomprehensible (to us) intelligence and skill are necessary to get single as well as conjoint conditions right for a life-supporting cosmos. The order of our universe most resembles the intricate order of the most complex products of purposive human intelligence, not the order of chaos or chance. Anthropic Cosmologists are well aware of this. Roger Penrose, for example, points out that a life-supporting universe must begin in a state of extremely low entropy or disorder, and that the possibilities and probabilities for high entropy universes are immensely greater than for low entropy universes. To understand how enormous the odds are against getting a low entropy universe, Penrose suggests, we should picture the Creator poised before a system of space as voluminous as our physical universe, each point of which represents a distinctive universe. The Creator's task is to stick a pin into this vast system

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of space at exactly the one right point that will produce an initially low entropy life-supporting world. The rest of the volume corresponds to lifeless high entropy universes, so they would be exceptionally easy to hit; but the chances of hitting the tiny volume that represents a life-supporting low entropy universe are exceedingly minute. ¹⁷ The Creator's aim must be precise to an accuracy of "one part in 10^10¹²³" if the intended target is a low entropy life-supporting universe. This number is so enormous, says Penrose, that we could not write it down in ordinary mathematical notation even if we wrote a "0" on every particle of matter in the universe! ¹⁸
Penrose actually underestimates the odds because his huge number is still finite; and the odds against life are really infinite. The number of non-life points on the Creator's target is infinite; life-points are finite indeed! Arranging a universe for life is no task for mere chance. The probability is overwhelming, indeed infinite, that a numerical infinity of universes in space and/or time would be wrong for life. Only a Divine Supercosmic Intellect could successfully select for and create a low entropy universe.
In 1980, Fred Hoyle, traditionally no friend of Theism, was overwhelmed by the realization that the chances are astronomically small that any universe would accidentally produce two things essential for life, enzymes and carbon. Hoyle says he was "plagued by the thought that the number of ways in which even a single enzyme could be wrongly constructed was greater than the number of all the atoms in the universe," and he found the conclusion irresistible that enzymes are produced

by thought, not by random processes. Rather than accept the fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act. By "better" I mean less likely to be wrong.¹⁹

In 1953, Hoyle was the first to discover how nearly impossible it is to get stable carbon and oxygen from stellar nucleosynthesis. In 1980, he reflected on the odds against getting carbon, with properties so essential to life as we know it, by pure chance. He concluded that "Some supercalculating intellect must have designed the properties of the carbon atom." and that "The carbon atom is a fix."²⁰ Considering the chances of getting roughly equal quantities of carbon and nitrogen by stellar nucleosynthesis. we must again conclude that this is "another put-up, artificial job." Hoyle continued,
A common sense interpretation of the facts suggest that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.²¹

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Theism is more probable than Atheism because it provides the most reasonable and thus the best justified explanation for the existence of our kind of universe. Saying that one philosophical position is "more probable" than another is just a shorthand way of saying that the philosophical case for the one is stronger than for the other. In that sense the Teleological Argument in modern biopic dress affirms that the existence of God is more probable than God's nonexistence. The Teleological Argument tells us something important that the Cosmological Argument does not disclose, namely, that the ultimate cause of the universe is intelligent and well-intentioned or benevolent. The beneficial order of the world, especially its capacity for producing an immense variety of intrinsically valuable forms of life, including human life, reflects the stupendous knowledge, skill, and generosity of a benevolent, transcendent, personal, causal agent-God.
The central question raised by the Biopic Teleological Argument is simple. Did the ultimate cause of the universe know and care about what it was doing, or not? Did our life-supporting universe originate by intelligent choice or by blind chance? Naturalistic, atheistic, infinite worlds metaphysics says, "By dumb chance." Theism says, "By brilliant choice."

Conclusion: God Ordered Our World

Our Biopic Teleological Argument concludes that an existing God, a benevolent Supercosmic Intellect, intentionally and knowingly selected and brought about the life-supporting order of our universe; but this conclusion does not follow simply from the authority of preeminent cosmologists like Penrose and Hoyle. The evidence to which they call attention is crucial, and it strongly supports all the premises of our Biopic Teleological Argument. Thus, most likely, a universe ordered for the production of an immense variety of complex and intrinsically valuable forms of life was caused or created intentionally by a transcendent benevolent Supercosmic Intellect.
Alternative accounts fail to explain the stupendous cosmic coincidences that conspire to produce life in our world. The only reasonable hypothesis is that an Ultimate Cause, namely God, who knew and cared about what it was doing, is responsible.
Eliminating the competition is a perfectly respectable way to argue in philosophy. Often, the best available proof is a disproof of the alternatives; the solution that best withstands the process of critical examination is the winner. At this point in the battle, only one plausible explanation remains: God did it. God knowingly and intentionally designed our universe for life. Many objections may be raised to the teleological argument. Atheists do not give up without a good fight, so let us turn now to some commonplace misgivings.

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2. Critique and Defense of the Biopic Teleological Argument

The Teleological Argument, though very popular with religious believers, has been under assault almost from its inception in ancient Greece. Most professional philosophers today mistakenly assume that critiques by Hume and Kant made it utterly indefensible. The most serious contemporary objection to the Teleological Argument is that an infinite worlds metaphysics makes God unnecessary; but we have already disposed of that alternative, along with the difficulty that probabilities cannot be calculated for life-supporting universes. Other objections remain, and to these we must now tum.

A. Natural Creation of Order

If the universe naturally creates order, no external Divine Designer is required, some critics insist. Victor J.Stenger maintains that the life-supporting order of the universe occurred by chance, Not by Design, as the title of one of his books indicates.²² In both Not by Design and The Unconscious Quantum, Stenger stresses matter's capacity to organize itself into meaningful patterns and contends that this obviates the need to resort to a divine designer to explain the order of the universe and the origin of life and mind. Eric Lerner also claims that, not divine guidance, but a "natural tendency of all matter, both animate and inanimate, to evolve toward higher rates of energy flow, toward the capture of greater currents of energy," adequately explains humanity's origin and development.²³ Both Stenger and Lerner take the creatively self-organizing capacity of the physical world as a given that needs no explanation; but it does. Why is our physical world capable of self-organization when infinitely many alternative worlds would have no such capacity? Explaining that is imperative!
According to Stenger's Not by Design, the natural order of things permits chance occurrences; and chance occurrences eventually add up to an ordered world in an infinite amount of time. However, an infinite amount of time is not available if the Big Bang is right; and even if time were infinite, we could not know it scientifically. Also, random or chance events presuppose order and can be recognized as such only against a background of order. Given all the laws of physics, a deck of cards can be randomly shuffled; but with no laws of physics at all, there can be no random shuffle. Randomness presupposes orderliness Stenger has the effect before the cause, the cart before the horse. The basic natural order of things permits chance occurrences that further increase order; but without a very special basic initial order, no increase would occur. Certain types of minimal order produce more order, but absolute chance or chaos produces nothing. That a very minimally ordered universe would not be creatively self-organizing is infinitely probable. Even if absolute chance could produce well ordered universes, which it doesn't, the probability is overwhelming that they would be lifeless. Why do we

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live in a quantum universe where chance is real instead of an old-fashioned Newtonian universe devoid of unpredictable spontaneity? Why do we live in a universe in which law and chance together contrive to produce intrinsically valuable forms of life instead of desolation? Given a minimal degree of order, why does chance (or creativity) produce more order, life-supporting order in particular, when it could produce infinite chaos or an infinite number of complexly ordered hostile-to-life environments? These questions require answers. Skeptics and naturalists like Stenger and Lerner have no good answers.
According to Lerner, there exists a "natural tendency" toward order. Yet, this natural tendency depends upon a deep structure of order in nature, which is exactly what the Biopic Teleological Argument is all about. Why is the basic order of the universe so constructed that it produces more order rather than less? In particular, why does it regularly produce beings who capture higher and higher energy flows, as Lerner puts it, when there are infinitely many other ways to order, or to disorder, a universe, some of them very complex? Why does our universe exhibit what Holmes Rolston, III calls an "upslope" to the long-range curve of evolutionary development, when neither survival nor adaptation to environment require it?24 Why does the most basic physical order of the universe permit life to occur at all when there are infinitely many ways to fail? Natural tendencies are existing patterns of order, but any primal creative order that produces more order requires its own explanation; it cannot just be taken for granted. Why does our universe have a life-supporting order when life-defeating orders are overwhelmingly more probable? The best explanation, according to the Biopic Teleological Argument, is that our world was designed by Divine premeditation to have a deep level of life-promoting, partly selfcreative, partly self-organizing order. Atheists do not and cannot explain adequately why fundamental self-organizing propensities exist within our universe. They just take them for granted.

B. The Insignificance of Life in a Vast Universe

In a preceding chapter, we confronted the unsubstantiated view that life as we know it is insignificant because it is so small and short in relation to the vastness of spacetime. This fallacy-smallness equals insignificance-frequently resurfaces as an explicit objection to the Teleological Argument. The problem is, how can God's purpose for the universe be the creation of intrinsically valuable life when complex life exists only on earth, and merely for a few hundred thousand or million years at most? Intelligent life-fonns belonging to the species Homo sapiens have existed for less than five hundred thousand years or so in a fifteen to twenty billion year old cosmos. Putting time scales for cosmic and biological evolution into perspective, Philip Hefuer wrote,

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If we were to plot this sequence of events on a calendar with one day equaling 14 million years and one hour equaling a half million years, our natural history would look like this: on January I the earth's crust congealed; dinosaurs appeared on December 21 ; Neanderthal man arrives only at 11:50 p.m. on New Year's Eve. Relative to the overall history of the natural cosmos, the role of the human species is staggering in its minuteness. ²⁵

By now we know that and why the intrinsic value of our lives does not depend on vastness of size or duration, or on our utility in contributing toward some Enduring Grand Objective. God does not treasure us for these reasons, and we should not disvalue ourselves and one another for such spurious deficiencies. Our lives as they are exist for themselves, for other creatures, and for God. The value of life is located in the process of living and enriching it. All living things are beloved by God, and God's interests in creation are biopic, not merely anthropic, if Process Theologians are right.
Though presently unverified, that living creatures exist on numerous planets in innumerable galaxies scattered throughout the cosmos is highly likely. 26 Life in some of these places is probably far older and much more advanced than on earth. As Robert Jastrow speculated in 1980,

If life is common in the cosmos, which is possible, then most of that life has advanced billions of years beyond us in evolution. And what does a billion years mean in evolution? A hundred years means nothing; that is only a few generations. A thousand years is not much more. A million years is the time it takes a new species to develop. What does a billion years mean? A billion years ago the fossil records show that the highest form of life on earth was the worm. So, if there are intelligent entities in space, out there, they are as far beyond us as we are beyond the worm. They may know the answer to the cosmic mysteries. They may know the meaning of the big bang. ²⁷

In 1997, Jastrow warned that if we ever make contact with extraterrestrial civilizations far older and more advanced scientifically than our own, our civilization might be destroyed. This seems to be the fate of all "primitive" societies that come into contact with technically advanced cultures separated by only a few thousand years of cultural evolution. Jastrow observes that "On this planet, contact between scientifically advanced civilizations and a primitive society ... typically results in the destruction of the less-developed culture"; and he asks, "What may be expected of a meeting between civilizations separated by a billion years? Will we survive the encounter? I see no grounds for optimism. "²⁸

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Perhaps we should hope that long-distance space-travel is not possible, that Star Trek and its sequels are only pipedreams (which they are), that the basic physics of the universe forbids long distance space travel even for scientifically advanced societies. Perhaps we should be thankful that stars with inhabitable planets are separated by such vast distances, and that no living beings can get from there to here. Perhaps God in his wisdom made it so!
Or perhaps we should hope that, unlike here on earth, ethical development has matched pace with technological progress in advanced civilizations beyond our corner of the Milky Way. Usually, the most ethical thing to do in relation to lesser forms of life is just to leave them alone. Far, far away, some alien civilization with a "prime directive" of noninterference may be doing just that for us. Maybe so; maybe not.
At any rate, cosmic life is probably of much greater duration and extent than earth life. If so, God knew, loved, and interacted with intrinsically valuable living things for billions of years before he had the dinosaurs or us to love. Extraterrestrial conscious beings would also be ends in themselves. So were and are members of more "primitive" human cultures and humanoid species. So were the dinosaurs. So were and are all sentient living things, including ourselves. If and when our species is sufficiently advanced, our ethical ideals and practices will reflect this ecological theology.
Life is scarce in our universe in the sense that vast regions of spacetime are unoccupied by any forms of life. No other planets in our solar system support life as far as we can tell, though Mars may have done so in the distant past. In 1996, two meteorites from Mars discovered in Antarctica were determined to contain organic compounds, best explained, some said, by bacteria-size organisms that lived on the red planet billions of years ago. In December 1996, NASA scientists announced that a large lake of frozen water has been located on the dark side of our moon. Since then, water has been found on Jupiter's moon, Europa, and in vast regions of "empty" space. Do traces of primitive aquatic life exist in some of these places? Continued space exploration may soon give us the answer.
All stars are directly inhospitable to life and many have no planets at all, much less inhabitable planets. In 1994, astronomers discovered the first solid evidence-orbital deviations of stars-for the existence of a planet in another solar system, and many others have since been identified. ²⁹ Skeptics originally suggested that in some instances astronomers were seeing only earthquake-like vibrations on the surface of these stars, not wobbles caused by orbiting planets, but defenders justifiably did not concede defeat. In 1999, a large extra-solar planet was actually photographed as it crossed its star. Sky and Telescope exclaimed, "For the first time a planet of another star has been seen crossing the star's face, allowing astronomers to measure directly the planet's size, mass, and density."³⁰ Despite their relative scarcity, billions of sun/planet systems probably exist, and many of these may teem with life. If, on average, only one life-sup

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porting planet is located in every galaxy in the universe, at least one hundred twenty-five billion life-supporting planets would exist!
If most of the universe is uninhabited, this does not mean that it is a wasteland. God could, and probably does, take keen aesthetic interest and delight in non-living nature, just as we do. Astronomers have discovered that the universe is much more active and violent than once thought. Perhaps God enjoys celestial fireworks as well as sunsets, grand canyons, frozen wastelands, and scorched deserts. Just because God created the universe primarily for life, it does not follow that God can have no other interests. Since God's time is limitless, God never has to rush anything. God has plenty of time for everything, including appreciating the sublime beauty of vast expanses of lifeless nature. We find great beauty and sublimity in the non-living parts of nature, including the starry heavens above, so why can't God? God's reality includes all reality, both living and non-living; but the starry heavens above would be no less magnificent if they were starry heavens within, as they are for God.

C. The Big Mess: Evil and The Religious Ambiguity of Order in Nature

Must every detail of ordered reality result from a Divine plan or design if God is as intelligent, powerful, and morally good or benevolent as the monotheistic religions profess? David Hume suggested that our evil-infested universe could have been ordered only by a stupid, weak, or demonic divinity. Perhaps it was designed and created by a Malicious Demon who formed it for the purpose of torturing its inhabitants. From the observable order of nature, can we really tell that its transcendent Divine cause is intelligent enough to know what it is doing, and that God's enduring character and intentions are morally good or benevolent? Skeptics have serious and legitimate doubts. The world is such a big mess that it really might not have been designed by an intelligent, powerful, and benevolent God. Can we conceive of a better way to introduce and organize the initial conditions of and conditions within the universe for producing life and for avoiding evil?
The reality of evil is particularly perilous to the Teleological Argument. The God of Classical Theism foreknows, causes, and plans every minuscule detail of creation. Both the general design of and every particular feature of the universe expresses God's Grand Plan. This is implausible for many reasons in addition to the problem of evil. Defenders of absolute grand design have actually claimed that God deliberately created fleas and bedbugs to be black so that people could detect them more easily on white sheets, that God intentionally created dogs multicolored so that we can distinguish them more easily from the furniture,³¹ that God purposefully created more human males than females so that surplus males can be expended in war, and that absolutely every horrible thing that happens expresses God's will and God's deep but mysterious plans and purposes for creation. In the final analysis, God created the best of all

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possible worlds. Leibniz said so explicitly, but Voltaire vanquished the idea in his Candide.
Why wouldn't an omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent deity create only the best of all possible worlds-one in which every particular evil contributes necessarily, directly, and decisively to some great good? Why would God ever settle for a merely good world-one in which, on the whole good prevails, or at least has an opportunity to prevail, over evil?
The "best of all possible worlds," traditionally understood, was a universe for which God foreknew, preordained, and selected every detail of existence to achieve an absolute concord in which every distinct evil, whether apparent or real, contributes in perfect measure to the achievement of some greater good, some ultimate harmony of all things. In this best of all possible worlds, a flawless, eternal, and changeless divine plan is played out in every spatiotemporal event; and God is the ultimate decision-maker who decides and determines everything, including what we will decide. In it, absolutely everything that happens directly expresses "the will of God" and God's Grand Plan for all of creation. This feature of Classical Theology often infects popular religion. The trouble with the best of all possible worlds, thus conceived, is that it is not the best of all possible worlds! It contains no creaturely initiative, freedom, creativity, or originative decision-making. God makes all the decisions and is responsible for absolutely everything. However, an even better world is conceivable-one in which every complex individual knowingly, freely, creatively, and responsibly chooses what is good or best and acts rightly. But this is precisely the kind of world that God alone could not create because, in this really best of all possible worlds, God is not the sole originative decision maker. In it, creativity is distributed to many if not to all creatures; and they are cocreators with God. God always has to settle for a merely good, not an absolutely perfect, world because in the truly best of all possible worlds, God is not and could not be absolutely in control of everything. Absolutely controlling free creatures is logically impossible and morally repugnant.
Creating a universe containing co-creative creatures is always risky business, for free creatures must, by definition, be able to choose without encumbrance both for and against the right and the good. The overwhelming probability is that at times they will choose against, and then there will be no perfect, calculated, and preordained harmony in which every evil achieves some particular good, in addition to the goodness of creativity and freedom themselves. Process Theism denies that God absolutely controls and plans everything from eternity, especially particular evils. God's eternal Primordial Nature has general aims and objectives-like creating richly populated worlds in which desirable feelings and other goods are actualized in many species of living creatures; but God did and could not plan every detail of existence from eternity because the creatures are partly self-creative, are co-creative with God, and thus have some say-so themselves about what will come to be.

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God did not timelessly calibrate and predestine that any individual person will exist, that he or she will have specific parents, marry a specific soul-mate, have a specific character, suffer particular ills, make very specific right or wrong moral and religious choices, and end up in Heaven or Hell. In his Consequent Nature, God makes and remakes plans to fit contingencies and choices as they arise in the created world. God responds appropriately to decisions made freely by spatiotemporal creatures and wills the best possible outcome for every undesirable spatiotemporal impasse, both within his own experience and within the world itself; but even this Divine will can be thwarted by co-creative decision-making creatures. God deals with unpredictable free choices and contingencies within the universe as they arise, not from eternity. God envisions
alternatives for future realization while not knowing in advance which path will be chosen by co-creative creatures. No matter what the creatures decide, God wills to bring the best out of every bad situation, to assimilate evil into his own experience in the best way possible, and to bring as much good as possible into the world out of the evil within it. Even here, God's will can be frustrated and impeded by creaturely freedom.
The existence of evil is an insuperable obstacle to believing, not that a good and powerful God exists, but that God has an absolute, detailed, and eternal Grand Plan for everyone and everything, that God is a doting parent who will not let his children go and grow on their own.
When innocent persons, especially children, suffer pointlessly and die prematurely, as they so often do, could these particular events express the foreknowledge, causation, and inscrutable but still benevolent purposes of God? Classical Theism answers affirmatively, but always with the qualification that we cannot always understand how. When horrible natural catastrophes and moral atrocities occur, popular religion, perverted by Classical Theism, often assigns them to "the will of God." If this is right, however, we should conclude that God is really our enemy, not our friend, that God and the Devil are identical, that God really is a Malicious Demon after all. With an ultimate friend like such a vicious God, who needs a supreme enemy like the Devil?
If God, the transcendent cause of all creation, is timelessly omniscient as Classical Theists believe, he surely knows from eternity that horrors happen; if he is the omnipotent and sole originative or first cause of all that transpires, he surely causes all particular horrors; and if everything that occurs expresses God's purposes, he surely purposes or intends such horrors in every instance. From a world deliberately ordered to produce innumerable unthinkable harms to innocent creatures, how can we infer the existence of a divine Benevolent Superintellect? The task of theodicy is to reconcile the obvious presence of enormous evil in the world with belief in an all-powerful, all-knowing, allbenevolent, and all-compassionate God. Can this be done? The eternally predetermined best of all possible worlds of Classical Theology is not acceptable. A plausible theodicy requires Process Theology's world

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in which good predominates over evil, or at least has a decent chance to do so, and where freedom and creativity are among the greatest goods of all. A credible theodicy must show that more good than evil exists on the whole within the universe, or at least that the universe is ordered to allow for this possibility. Some attempts to show this are clearly implausible.

i. Solutions that Don't Work

Classical Theists often argue that all evil is really good in disguise; but this makes us wonder if all apparent good isn't really evil in disguise. If we cannot identify and distinguish between good and evil when we see them, all our value judgments are suspect. If seemingly bad things can be good on the whole, then seemingly good things can be bad on the whole; and we cannot tell which is which. Theodicy tries to show that God is really good, despite all the evil in the world; but this conclusion is completely unwarranted if what we construe as goodness can be evil in disguise, and vice versa. Consider the fate of the rooster who concludes that its human feeder is a benevolent provider; but then the fatal day comes when it loses its head!
Classical Theologians often contend that evil in parts of creation is necessary for the perfection of the whole, but our finitude and ignorance prevent us from seeing how. As the dark areas of a painting contribute to the beauty of the whole painting, or as the bass notes of a musical composition contribute to its overall harmony so evil in the world attributes to its comprehensive perfection, even if only God knows how, Despite appearances, they say, we live in the best of all possible worlds. 
Unfortunately, neither dark colors nor bass notes are evil, so the aesthetic analogy is inappropriate from the start. We can understand how they contribute to the goodness of aesthetic wholes, but this cannot be said for many familiar situations containing great evil. The aesthetic analogy supposedly shows that the whole of creation is perfect in every detail, even though we cannot comprehend how. Only our ignorance can make it work. "Inscrutable" is an attribute of God in Classical Theology, including the "Westminster Confession."
Jonathan Edwards argued that sending the great bulk of mankind to eternal perdition is necessary for the perfection of creation as a whole; but, he admitted, we may not see exactly how, especially if we happen to be one of the damned! His God clearly violates Kant's Categorical Imperative and treats damned persons and all victims of tragedy merely as means to the perfection of the whole of creation, not as ends in themselves. The aesthetic analogy fails to tell us whether the transcendent Creator is benevolent or malicious in intent. If the totality is beautiful to God but inscrutable or horrible to us, this does not solve the problem of evil for us! Saying that God knows the answer does not provide us with an answer! We are the ones who need a solution to the problem of theodicy, especially if the Teleological Argument works.

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So how can a powerful transcendent Creator be a Benevolent Superintellect, despite the presence of evil in the world? No single, simple magic bullet neatly solves the problem of theodicy. Its solution, if one is available at all, results from the cumulative weight of many considerations. The success or failure of theodicy is a matter of fallible and variable judgment. Thoughtful persons can honestly disagree about it. Massive evil in the world really is the greatest obstacle of all to belief that a good God designed the universe for benevolent purposes. Without a theodicy that is intelligible and plausible to us, God deserves our contempt, not our devotion; and the Argument from Design fails to show that a good and worshipful God designed our universe.

ii. A Process Theodicy that Works

Its handling of the problem of evil is one of the greatest strengths of Process Theism; and we will next explore the key elements in its highly credible theodicy. No one consideration can solve the problem of theodicy all by itself, so the cumulative weight of all of the following pieces of the puzzle must be considered. A credible theodicy must incorporate a. The Free Will Defense, b. The Soul-Making Defense, c. The Utility of Law and Order, d. The Conflict of Good with Good, e. Consolation, and perhaps f. Compensation.

a. The Free Will Defense

If evil decisions originate with free creatures within the world rather than with God, then God is not responsible for them. Being responsible for a choice and its consequences means originating that choice knowingly. A free and responsible choice originates with the intelligent moral agent who makes it. If, as Classical Theism affirms, God, the sole originative cause of all things, predetermined all choices ever made by created moral agents, then God is responsible for them. Human moral agents who deliberately inflict unspeakable harms on others do not originate their own malicious decisions if God programs and predestines every human choice from eternity.
Jonathan Edwards argued that all human choices are determined by our strongest desires or sets of cooperating desires, which, in turn, are ultimately caused by God. Being responsible and blameworthy, he said, means merely that a choice is evil and that the desire to do evil predominates; but the origin of the choice is irrelevant, he contended. Other Classical Theists appealed, inconsistently, to the free will defense, while clinging to the belief that God plans, foreknows, and foreordains everything.
Believers in free will, including Process Theologians, think that the question of the origin of our choices is highly relevant. Moral agents are responsible only for choices that they originate. Because our choices are originative or creative, the free will defense partly solves the problem of theodicy. Our choices

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would not originate with us if they originate with a God who programs them into us from eternity. What greater evil could a Malevolent Demon inflict upon us than to make us incapable of choosing to be virtuous or to do what is right, and then to punish us with Hell's infinite agonies for being and doing exactly as he created us? How better could we conceive of a Malicious Demon?
Process Theology says that finite agents are responsible co-creators with God. We originate our own free decisions. God is not the only existing creative or originative agent. When we freely choose to inflict evil on others, we are responsible, not God. Events in the world, including the human psyche, are influenced but not completely determined by the past. As free agents, we are partly created, partly self-creative. God makes relevant possibilities for choice available to us; but we freely select among them. Efficient causation consists of necessary but not sufficient conditions that partly structure present moments of partial self-creativity at the quantum level and in human and animal consciousness. All relatively complex created individuals are co-creative with God. But why did God not predestine all creatures always to choose and do what is right, never what is wrong? Why did God not create the Kingdom of God in all its glory from day one? The free will defense answers that freedom is worth the price of its potential and actual abuse, and that without the potential to choose either good or evil we would not be free. Free creatures, by definition, may choose to do wrong as well as right; creating or originating our own choices between right and wrong is the paradigm instance of freedom.
Well, if freedom is so valuable that its availability outweighs the potential for its misuse, why did God not create us so that we always freely choose the right and the good? The answer is that this very notion is incoherent, like the idea of a round square. A Divine Reality who originates all choices must originate and pre-determine all creaturely choices to do what is right (or wrong). Creatures would not have a free and unconstrained choice between right or wrong if they are utterly constrained from eternity always to choose rightly and could not choose otherwise. The claim that God could cause free and originative creatures always to choose what is right just makes no sense. All free choices could have been otherwise.
Mainstream Process Theologians, we saw earlier, claim that God could not create unfree creatures who necessarily do what is right because being any kind of a concrete individual at all involves creative freedom. Creativity is a universal metaphysical category. Just as quantum events cannot exist at all at less than Planck dimensions, so it is impossible for any concrete events to exist at all unless their becoming is partly indeterminate and self-creative, says traditional Process Theism. The Divine self-limitation view, by contrast, affirms the widespread prevalence of creativity, even if it is not absolutely universal, because of the value of creativity itself, not because of its metaphysical necessity. Indeterminations, if not creativity, at lower levels of physical and biophysical organization is a necessary condition for freedom at higher levels. At the very lowest

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level of quantum events, creativity is minimal if not non-existent much of the time; but from the lowest to the highest level of physical reality, quantum physics is radically incompatible with rigid determinism. Quantum indeterminacy makes room for creative freedom at higher or more valuable and complex levels of biological and psychological organization. Even at the level of the most primitive individuals, the universe is always slightly out of control, including Divine control. Quantum level realities behave spontaneously and unpredictably occasionally. At higher levels of integration, absolute Divine control is completely out of the question. Creation is risky business, even for God.
Even the course of evolution always was and will always be slightly out of Divine control. Free decisions made by God and by living creatures, and indeterminateness in subatomic and atomic level quantum flukes, influenced the flourishing, survival, and evolution of all living things, including human beings. God was not the only decisionmaker directing and contributing to human evolution. We were created in part by God and in part by the free decisions made by all our pre-human ancestors throughout billions of years. If some of our progenitors had made different decisions, some species resembling us or our hominid ancestors, but not necessarily homo sapiens, might have resulted and prevailed. Given the power that modem medicine has given us to control and reorder genetic blueprints transmitted to future generations, we can now significantly influence the future course of evolution. Will we use this knowledge and power wisely? Not even God knows the answer!
The free will defense is possible only in a slightly wild and unpredictable universe. If the world is slightly untamed, out of control, and unpredictable at every level of actuality, the free will defense has some bearing upon the problem of natural evil as well as moral evil. The free will defense is usually applied only to evils caused by moral agents, not to evils caused by natural processes. Process Theologians repudiate this limitation. If creativity or at least indetenninacy belongs to every actual entity, then God cannot and does not absolutely control everything, including those natural processes that are hostile to living beings and their projects. Natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, and diseases result partly from the operation of natural laws and partly from the inherently unpredictable and uncontrollable-by-others selfcreativity and/or indeterminacy of all physical and biological events, including those at quantum levels of physical reality.
Quantum physics definitely rules out Classical Theology's concepts of both Divine omnipotence as absolute control, and Divine omniscience as knowledge of every minute detail of the entire past, present, and future of the universe all at once, for such definiteness about the self-creating present and the uncreated future is just not there to be known. God does not have the knowledge and will not use his power to prevent all evils, natural or otherwise, because God, by voluntary self-limitation, is not the sole originative agent functioning in the universe.

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b. The Soul-Making Defense

Many desirable human traits of character would never develop in a world without evil. John Hick stresses the soul-making defense, according to which evil is necessary as a means to moral and spiritual development. ³² Process Theology can easily incorporate this as an important element in a workable theodicy, but not the sole element.
All human beings start very low (a single fertilized ovum) on the scale of intellectual, moral, spiritual, and personal development. Newborn infants begin their lives in relative ignorance, innocence, and impotence, as Adam did in the Genesis creation myth. Because evolution is true, the biblical Adam and Eve never really existed; but we all begin our lives as little Adams or Eves. Initially, as infants, we do not know the difference between good and evil, right and wrong, even if a predisposition is there. Our intellectual, moral, spiritual, and personal potentials develop and mature only within supportive social and physical environments. Their development also requires individual creative effort in response to real and dangerous challenges.
Adversity really is a necessary condition for the development of many highly desirable traits of character and moral and spiritual virtues. Without real evils, real dangers, we could never develop courage. Without scarcity, hardship, and suffering, we could never become generous, self-sacrificing, patient, kind, and compassionate. Without real and constant threats to happiness, security, and those we love, including ourselves, we would never develop moral conscientiousness and responsibility. Without frailty and death, we would never be able to appreciate strength, health, and life itself. The existence of evil is a necessary condition for the realization of many soul-making goods.
The soul-making defense may be carried too far; its scope is definitely limited. It solves part of the problem of evil but not all of it by a long shot. John Hick, its principal patron in our time, is well aware of this. Some attempts to make it work are very implausible.
Some theologians argue that without evil, there could be no good at all; correspondingly, without goodness, there would be no evil at all. If this were true, Heaven, lacking all evil, could not be good; and Hell, lacking all goodness, could not be evil. Even Heaven might be a challenging place to live! Unless good and evil co-exist in a complementary relationship, it is often said, we would not be able to recognize either one, for contrast is essential for recognition. Without evil, the argument goes, we could not recognize goodness; without pain, we could not recognize pleasure, a significant ingredient in human happiness. But this is not true. There are degrees of pleasure; and contrasts between high and low degrees of it would be quite sufficient for recognition purposes; so would the contrast between any given degree of pleasure and a neutral state of consciousness that is neither pleasurable nor painful. Pleasure definitely could be recognized and appreciated in a world without pain, so the

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reality of pain cannot be justified merely because it is essential for the recognition of pleasure or happiness. However, pain has other constructive uses. Pain has tremendous survival value. By alerting organisms to danger, it often prevents much greater injury or harm. Its presence in the world has considerable justification. Thomas H. Huxley, following Alfred Lord Tennyson, characterized the world of nature as "red in tooth and claw;" but many of the horrors of the "struggle for existence" may be greatly exaggerated. In the wild world of non-human animals, much less pain and struggle, and much more joy, empathy, and cooperation, exist than we often suppose. Many of the cooperative and self-sacrificial features of human morality may be found also in the non-human animal world;³³ but non-human animals can foresee relatively little of what is to come and do not suffer greatly from the anxieties about the future that trouble members of our species with more foresight. Most living species and individuals are plants, and so are most things that are killed and eaten for food. As Mary Midgley indicates, "In fact, nature is green long before she is red, and must be green on a very large scale indeed to provide a context for redness."³⁴ Most animals, both individuals and species, including the dinosaurs, were and are plant-eating herbivores, not carnivores or omnivores who consume the flesh of other living creatures. Carnivores, dinosaurs included, have a vital role in maintaining ecological balance and the vigor and zest of individuals and species, as does death itself. Much of the animal pain that we imagine to be involved in being killed and eaten by predacious carnivores is actually suppressed by endorphins and other natural analgesics secreted during the chase and attack, especially when predators kill quickly. Unfortunately, they do not always kill quickly; and we do not know how long a dying animal can benefit from "stress induced analgesia. " ³⁵
Pain is genuinely troublesome for theodicy because all too often its intensity and duration are way out of proportion to its usefulness for soul-making or any other rational purposes. Agonizing bodily pain and mental anguish suffered while dying from cancer and many other diseases and injuries often do not correlate with valuable practical or spiritual lessons learned from suffering or with virtues developed by enduring anguish. All too often, both human and subhuman animals are simply and speedily crushed by overwhelming adversity, and they neither learn from it nor grow in moral and spiritual character as a consequence of it. God cannot and does not always bring from evil the sort of good that we would like to see. Tragedy and loss are very real in our universe. Clearly, despite its importance, the soul-making defense alone does not resolve all the problems of theodicy. Too many individuals suffer and perish with little or no opportunity for soul-making, even if on the whole the worldsystem tends toward the best. In many instances, soul-making is a good brought forth from evil; but all too often it does not happen. If the God who designed and made our world-system is to be regarded as worthy of worship, the soulmaking defense must be bolstered by further considerations.

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c. The Utility of Law and Order

Many very real evils cannot be explained and justified by the free will and soul making defenses. Premature deaths, grave incapacitations, and grievous sufferings that serve no legitimate purposes of the sufferer appear to be pointless evils; but are they entirely pointless in the great scheme of things? Some great good other than soul-making might justify the existence of many seemingly pointless evils.
The immense usefulness and practical value of natural law and order resolves many of the remaining difficulties. Laws of physics, chemistry, biology, sociology, history, and psychology are neutral to good and evil in the sense that they are necessary conditions for both. Beneficial sunshine and rain fall upon the just and the unjust alike; so do harmful diseases and other natural adversities. The same natural laws are in effect no matter what.
A category mistake is made when moral categories like "unjust" or "unfair" are applied to the undesirable effects of the workings of natural laws and processes. When bad things happen naturally to good people, only non-moral categories like "tragedy" or "misfortune" are appropriate. Tragedies do not call the moral goodness of God into question. Ours would be a strange world, indeed an impossible world, ifone set of physical ornatural laws were operative for righteous people and another set for the wicked.
On the whole, natural laws and all the initial components of our lifesupporting universe are more beneficial than harmful. Without them, we would not be here at all. Individuals who master the laws of nature and learn how to use them can, within broad limits, control their own destinies and greatly improve their chances for having a good life relatively free from suffering, incapacitation, deformity, and premature death. Informed individuals may use the laws of nature to enrich their lives by cultivating happiness, adventure, beauty, virtue, and other consciousness-enriching goods in effective ways.
Many life, health, and happiness enhancing behaviors are wired into nonhuman animals as instinctive responses to environmental conditions; and, to our great benefit, we human beings can learn the laws of nature and adjust our activities accordingly. Laws of nature can and do work for us rather than against us most of the time, but not always.
Steven Weinberg complains that we will find no evidence of a God who cares for life, intelligence, morality and beauty in the laws of nature because "The God of the birds and trees would have to be also the God of birth defects and cancer."³⁶ But what else would one expect from a wise and benevolent Deity? How otherwise should God have created the world? How could and should the order ofnature be different? Be specific! If the laws of nature were changed very much, no life would be possible. It is very doubtful that either we or God could create a significantly better world if we tried. Birds, trees, birth defects, and cancers all exemplify the same basic laws of nature.

Should an intelligent, powerful, and benevolent Deity suspend the laws of nature to prevent harm to beloved creatures when natural laws work against them? Some Theists believe that God occasionally works miracles for such purposes. Miracles result, by definition, from an influx of transcendent energy or efficient causation that temporarily interrupts, suspends, or redirects existing laws of physics and chemistry. For the sake of the argument, let us assume that miracles can happen, sometimes, perhaps, in response to prayer. Why then does God not work many, many, more miracles to prevent much more pointless suffering, incapacitation, deformity, and premature death? Loving parents would protect their children from these ills if they had the knowledge and power; so why does a God who is supposed to be much more loving, powerful, and knowledgeable not do as much? The answer, in part, is that a lawful and orderly environment, one that loving human parents are in no position to change, is itself a very great instrumental good; and the dependability of nature is worth the price of most if not all evils that result from the orderly workings and habituated activities of concrete entities. We abstract and generalize these regularities into natural laws. The advantages of natural laws or regularities clearly outweigh their disadvantages most of the time, but not always. So why aren't they occasionally suspended? If we knew that we could expect God to solve all our problems for us and save us miraculously every time we get into a jam, we would never develop into conscientious and responsible persons. People who expect too many miracles are usually not very responsible individuals! Soul making reenters the picture unexpectedly at this point. The laws of nature enable and promote it. Even nonhuman animals who learn and generalize from experience, as most do, would not learn and grow in their own more limited yet significant ways if miracles were commonplace.
To announce God's presence and concern, miracles may happen occasionally. Another process heresy! If they do they are exceedingly rare; and we cannot count on them. If miracles were so frequent that we could predict and rely upon them to deliver us from all evils, then they would be the laws of nature, and we would assume that they had natural causes! Natural laws just are the regularities that we can count on and predict. But little or no soul-making would exist in a world where miracles were laws of nature.

d. The Conflict of Good with Good

Process Theologians point out that much seemingly pointless evil actually results from the conflict of good with good in a pluralistic universe, one that contains a significant number and variety of living beings, where legitimate interests are bound to conflict. No moral evil is involved when legitimate interests are pursued at the expense of others, but tragic non-moral evils may result.

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Our world manifests many examples of the conflict of good with good. When two people apply for the same job, both cannot have it; but the winner normally does nothing immoral in taking it at the loser's expense. A violent death for a wildebeest or gazelle provides food for lions, cheetahs, wild dogs, and their young. They would otherwise die painfully of starvation. Seeming inefficiency, waste, and death for some means vibrant life for others. All individuals must die eventually to allow room and resources for others to live. Organic matter is never wasted; in the struggle for life, evil is transformed into redeeming, sacramental goodness.
Holmes Rolston, III³⁷ and M. A. Corey³⁸ forcefully developed the thesis that the apparent randomness, wastefulness, and inefficiency of the evolutionary process is actually God's deliberate rational strategy for assuring species survival, adaptability, and complexity under environmental conditions that are likely to change drastically over the course of time. A creator God who cherishes biodiversity must consider the design and well-being of vast unfolding ecosystems within which individuals and species exist and interrelate, as well as the design and well-being of the individuals and species themselves. At a systems level, earth's ecosystems, where one individual's loss is always another's gain and nothing is ever wasted, are remarkably efficient and well-ordered. They are models of rational foresight and planning.
Still, individual losers in the conflict of good with good can be greatly frustrated and disturbed; some suffer unbearably; and many perish prematurely. Grief is commonplace over losses in love, athletics, business, the struggle for life, and every legitimate competitive interest. Painful conflicts, serious frustrations, deep disappointments, unbearable sufferings, irrevocable losses, and premature deaths are inevitable in an orderly world containing a great diversity of consciously active and creative individuals. This is the price that must be paid for richness, diversity, freedom, and creativity.
Conflicts of good with good may also evoke positive virtues like wisdom, patience, resoluteness, inventiveness, heroism, and sacrifice. The immense worth and extent of both human and non-human cooperation, ingenuity, fortitude, and voluntary self-sacrifice should not be underestimated. Fortunately, shared interests do not always conflict; and innovative strategies for minimizing conflict are often available.
Could God, should God, do anything to prevent evils resulting from the conflict of good with good? Not if the price is too high. What exactly would God have to do? Eliminating all or most conflict of good with good would necessitate either abolishing or preventing the existence of great numbers of active individuals, or else significantly diminishing their creative power or freedom. If the existence of many and diverse individual centers of conscious experience, creative activity, and valuation has sufficiently great worth, lesser evils resulting from the conflict of good with good are justified.

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God does not deliberately cause every bad thing that happens to good people; in this sense, evils are no part of God's grand plan. But God always aspires and tries to bring as much good out of evil as possible, so there is this much truth to the common belief that everything is a part of God's plan. God always plans to bring good out of evil! For example, mad cow disease is a horrible thing for its animal and human victims; but great good may come from it in the long run. It may be one of the best things that ever happened to further vegetarianism! God may use this horrible disease to inspire us rethink the exploitative destructiveness of our relations with other living things and our environment as a whole, when otherwise we would be oblivious.
Theodicy requires an ideal balance between divine and creaturely power. A loss of desirable creaturely power correlates with every increase in desirable divine power and control; and every increase in creaturely power must be accompanied by diminished divine power and control. To empower his creatures, God voluntarily limits his own power by divine choice. Every desirable reduction in conflicts between individuals would require undesirable decreases in the number, variety, intensity, zest, vigor, virtue, and creativity of creatures, as well as radical and inefficient modifications of the inclusive ecosystems that support them. All good things have their price. If we were God choosing a design for a good world as complex as our own, could we do any better? That we could is very doubtful.

e. Consolation

In Process Theology, God is "The great companion-the fellow-sufferer who understands," as Whitehead put it.³⁹ The profound conviction that an all-compassionate God genuinely understands and suffers with all creaturely suffering and loss gives great consolation in times of sorrow and woe. The God of Process Theology literally suffers with all who suffer; and Jesus on the cross is the supreme historical symbol of this. All evils inflicted upon all sentient creatures are ultimately inflicted upon God, who endlessly bears all suffering, loss, and every creature's cross so that an orderly world can be rich in intrinsically valuable, creative, responsive, and responsible individuals. In Classical Theism, all forms of feeling are judged to be unworthy of God, even the highly desirable feelings necessarily involved in love, mercy, empathy, and compassion. God loves without feeling, is merciful without passion, and has compassion without pity, said the Classical Theologians. Kant considered any love composed even partly of feelings to be "pathological." To the contrary, total affective insensitivity robs love, mercy, empathy, and compassion of most of their meaning and significance. Yes, cognitive elements are present in love, mercy, empathy, and compassion; but mere cognition is not enough. Divine attributes of immutability and impassivity betoken emotional insensitivity and moral impoverishment; but God truly bears our burdens.

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Classical Theism actually affords no deep religious consolation for evils suffered because in himself God is really not compassionate, as St. Anselm forthrightly acknowledged. God's works make it appear that he is compassionate, but he really isn't! For Classical Theism, the discrepancy between divine appearance and divine reality is absolute. In Process Theism, by contrast, desirable kinds of feeling are perfections; stony immobility is an imperfection; and God quite literally suffers with all who suffer. God cares deeply, fully understands, empathizes with, and is all compassion, pure unbounded love. God bears all our sorrows and griefs. In that insight is deep comfort and consolation.

f. Compensation

Do the elements of theodicy presented thus far really succeed in reconciling belief in an immensely knowledgeable, powerful, caring, and worshipful God with the hard facts of evil in the world? There is still room for honest doubt. Many individuals, human and non-human, are crushed by the evil of overwhelming suffering. Others are profoundly retarded or irreversibly comatose from birth. Others are gravely incapacitated or struck down as infants, children, or in the prime of life. Many die so prematurely that they have little or no chance for a worthwhile life or for any soul-making experiences, efforts, and adventures. If a sadistic maniac entertains himself by shooting a tiny baby to death before the eyes of its mother, the poor infant has little or no opportunity for happiness, spontaneous creativity, self-development. and soul-making. How could a good, powerful, and benevolent God allow such things to happen? How could everything that happens be a direct expression of the will of God, as Classical Theists claim? Do we never fail to do God's will, not even when we perpetrate unthinkable atrocities like the Holocaust?
In this world, evils suffered pointlessly are sometimes compensated. Theologians like John Hick hold that God will eventually compensate unfortunate individuals for their tragic sufferings and losses in a better life to come. Heaven will make all things right in the sweet by and by. Hick's book, Death and Eternal Life,⁴⁰ defends this theological perspective in depth and effectively replies to philosophical charges that the idea of survival after death is empirically meaningless or nonsensical. Hick shows that the idea of compensation after death for evils suffered in this world makes sense, at least to the extent that we can imagine experiences that would verify survival after death, but not in the sense that we now have experiential access to other worlds. Hick argues convincingly that compensation in a life after this life would go very far toward solving all the residual problems of theodicy. However, sensitive rebels like Dostoyevsky's Ivan Karamazov may want no part of such an "eternal harmony." By the time we reach the end of Hick's book, we discover that he provides no evidence whatsoever that other

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worlds exist or that we survive within them after death. Intelligibility is not equivalent to knowledge and truth, even if it is a first requisite. Actual evidence for survival after death in another world is indecisive but not totally nonexistent. The transcendent spacetime of Heaven is vulnerable to the same objections previously raised against world-ensemble cosmologies. We have neither direct observational nor indirect inductive evidence for other worlds, including Heaven, antecedent universes, or contemporary bubble universes. If Heaven exists, we could never know it rationally in this life. Yes, a compensatory Heaven is logically possible; but this concedes only that the concept is intelligible and free from logical self-contradiction.
Compensation theodicy resolves residual problems of evil in this world by appealing to worlds about which we now know nothing; but a successful Teleological Argument requires that an adequate solution to the problem of evil be based upon the observed order of this world alone. It contends that the order of our world implies an intelligent and beneficent world designer. If the problem of theodicy cannot be solved by reference only to the discerned design of our universe, the Teleological Argument fails, for it aspires to infer God's existence from the observed order of our world. Uncompensated evils permitted by the observed order of this world may (or many not) be incompatible with the existence of a supercosmic, benevolent, and intelligent God. We do not know with certainty.
This author believes that elements a. through e. in the preceding discussion are sufficient to resolve the problem of theodicy; but if they fail, the Teleological Argument is not successful. Whether any theodicy succeeds or fails depends on fallible and variable human judgments that weigh existing goods against existing evils. People who sincerely want to be rational about such immense complexities and uncertainties must often just agree to disagree without questioning one another's integrity. We have no knowledge of or control over what happens to us after death. At that point, everything is in the hands of God. We have no legitimate claim to anything more, but God's love may give us more than we deserve. There may or may not be compensatory survival after death, just as Quantum Cosmology' s many worlds may or may not exist in Divine Superspacetime. We cannot know such things now, even if they are so. Theistic religions usually teach compensatory survival after death; faith often affirms it; but rational evidence for individual survival after death is presently inconclusive. If God chooses to give it, there could be ultimate compensatory justice; but about this we now have no sufficient rational knowledge. Evil in the world menaces the Teleological Argument for the existence of God; but even without postmortem compensation, the threat is significantly abated by the collective weight of the free will defense, the soul-making defense, the usefulness of natural law and order, the inevitability of the conflict of good with good in a pluralistic universe, and the consolation of Divine

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compassion. Compensation for evils suffered may or may not be operative in some Other World. About that we really do not know; but we can hope.

[Notes]

1. John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 129.
2. From A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, by Stephen W. Hawking, copyright © 1988, 1996 by Stephen W. Hawking, p. 125. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. and Writers House LLC.
3. lbid., p. 121.
4. B. J. Carr and M. J. Rees, "The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World," Nature, 278 (1979), p. 609.
5. John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 124. By permission of Oxford University Press.
6. See P. C. W. Davies, The Accidental Universe (New York: Cambridge University Press), pp. 117-118. See also Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, pp. 250--255.
7. Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (New York: Dover Publications, 1952).
8. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 164.
9. lbid., p. 165.
10. John Leslie, Universes (London: Routledge, 1989).
11. M.A. Corey, God and the New Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), esp. Chapter 4.
12. See Roger Penrose, "Big Bangs, Black Holes and 'Times Arrow'," in The Nature of Time, eds. Raymond Flood and Michael Lockwood (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, I 986), esp. pp. 49 ff.
13. See Jaakko Hintikka, "Gaps in the Great Chain of Being," Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association, 49 (November 1976), pp. 22-38.
14. Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 125.
15. Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), p. 223.
16. Ibid., p. 245.
17. Roger Penrose, The Emperor's New Mind (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), p. 340.
18. Ibid., p. 344.
19. Fred Hoyle, "The Universe: Past and Present Reflections," Engineering and Science, 45:2 (November 1981 ), p. 12.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Victor J. Stenger, Not by Design: The Origin of the Universe (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988), Ch. 1.
23. From THE BIG BANG NEVER HAPPENED by Eric Lerner, p. 400. Copyright © 1991 by Eric J. Lerner. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf. a Division of Random House Inc.
24. Holmes Rolston, III, Science and Religion: A Critical Survey (New York: Random House, 1987), pp. 104-109, 115-119. See also M. A. Corey, Back to Darwin: The Scientific Case for Deistic Evolution (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield. 1994 ); M.A. Corey, The Natural History of Creation: Biblical Evolutionism and the Return of Natural Theology (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995); and David R. Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 2000), Ch. 8.
25. Philip Hefner, "The Evolution of the Created Co-Creator," in Cosmos as Creation, ed. Ted Peters (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989), p. 213.
26. See Steven J. Dick, The Biological Universe (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1996) and other references in Chapter Eight above, note 13.
27. Robert Jastrow, "Science and the Creation," in Creation, ed. Thomas H. Schattauer (New Haven: Yale Divinity School, 1980), p. 35.
28. Robert Jastrow, "What Are the Chances for Life?" Sky & Telescope, 93:6 (June 1997), p. 63.
29. Alan M. MacRobert, "A Tour of Extrasolar Planets," Sky & Telescope, 96:3 (March 1997), pp. 80--81; Geoffrey Marcy and R. Paul Butler, "The Diversity of Planetary Systems," Sky & Telescope, 97:3 (March 1998), pp. 30--37; "Extrasolar Planets Aplenty," Sky & Telescope, 100:4 (November 2000), pp. 24-25. See Chapter Three above, note 81.
30. "Extrasolar Planet Seen Transiting Its Star," Sky & Telescope, 99:2 (February 2000), p. 16.
31. Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, p. 92.
32. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1966 ), parts 3 and 4.
33. See Frans de Waal, Good Natured: The Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and Other Animals (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).
34. Mary Midgley, Evolution as a Religion (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 120.
35. See Richard Restak, The Brain (New York: Bantam Books, 1984), pp. 156, 162.
36. Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory: The Search for the Fundamental Laws of Nature (New York: Pantheon Books), p. 250.
37. See Rolston, Science and Religion, Ch. 3.
38. See M.A. Corey, Back to Darwin, 1994, and The Natural History of Creation, 1995.
39. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, corrected ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1978), p. 351.
40. John Hick, Death and Eternal Life (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).

Theism is belief in God. Theistic Cosmology says that God caused the Big Bang, that God created the world. To understand and evaluate Theistic Cosmology, many questions must be considered: What does "God" mean? What does it mean to say that God caused the Big Bang? What evidences support Theistic Cosmology? Can Theism be defended against profound objections to it? Does order and design in the universe as disclosed by Anthropic Astrophysics indicate that God exists. Does cosmic contingency or dependence provide strong evidence for the reality of God?
Before examining the evidence, we must first consider the concept of God. Debating the existence or non-existence of flying warthogs would be inane until we first know what "flying warthogs" means. (They are the US Air Force's AIO fighter-bombers.) Debating the existence or non-existence of God is equally foolish unless we first know what "God" means. Most theists are also atheists; they are convinced that God, in many meanings of the term, does not exist. Early Christians, for example, were branded as atheists and persecuted by the Romans because they denied the existence of the finite, fickle, immoral, anthropomorphic gods of the Greco-Roman pantheon.

1. Two Concepts of God's Nature: Classical and Process Theology

"God" has innumerable meanings. We cannot discuss them all, but we will consider at least two very different but cosmologically relevant concepts of the nature of God-Classical Supernaturalism and a modified version of Process Theism. These concepts presently contend for acceptance by thoughtful theistic believers, and we must choose between them as intelligently as possible. All Theists believe that God exists, but not all Theists believe in the same God. Who is God? What is God like? How is God related to the world? Classical Theism offers one answer and Process Theism another. Prior to the twentieth century, Classical Theism was the dominant view of God among professional theologians in traditional Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Islamic monotheism. Process Theism was anticipated by earlier thinkers, but it was developed primarily in the twentieth century by Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Henri Bergson also made important contributions. Numerous philosophers and theologians such as Robert L. Calhoun, Nels F. S. Ferre, John B. Cobb, Jr., Daniel Day Williams, Schubert M. Ogden, David R. Griffin, John A. T. Robinson, Robert C. Neville, Marjorie H. Suchocki, Lewis S. Ford, Bowman L. Clarke, Sally McFague, Holmes Rolston, III, Arthur Peacocke, John Polkinghorn, Ian Barbour, Rem B. Edwards, and many others were deeply

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influenced by Whitehead and Hartshorne and made, or are still making, their own significant contributions to this theological perspective, even when they disagree with or about some of its features. Many contemporary religious thinkers who accept the essential point that God is in process do not consider themselves to be Process Theologians because they reject certain emphases of mainstream process thinkers like Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, John B. Cobb, Jr., and David R. Griffin. In this book, "Process Theology" is broadly understood to include all who ascribe to God a temporalistic or processing nature, and much room is allowed for honest disagreement on details among Process Theologians themselves. The version of Process Theism defended here is significantly modified to allow for God's ability to create our universe out of nothing, God's voluntary self-limitation in creating co-creative creatures, God's ability to experience passively the present self-creativity of temporal occasions, and God ability to influence events as they occur in time.
Process Theology is a rational or philosophical theology. As such, it aspires to satisfy credible criteria for a plausible rational theology. (1) It must be logically consistent, a chronic shortcoming of Classical Theology, say Process Theologians; and it must satisfy other criteria of rational explanatory adequacy like coherence, simplicity, comprehensiveness, clarity, and conformity with experience. The concept of "experience" is broadly construed; it includes sensory experience as well as religious experience, aesthetic experience, and moral, logical, religious, and mathematical intuitive experience.
(2) It must explicate the ideal of perfect excellence or supreme worshipfulness expressed in St. Anselm's concept of"that being than whom none greater can be conceived." "Divine perfection" is a valuational or axiological concept as well as a metaphysical notion. Developing a concept of God as a perfect being is not an empirical project. Rational theology allows plenty ofroom for honest intellectual doubt, disagreement, and growth; but a start must be made somewhere. Until thoughtful religious people reach agreement about what is ultimately admirable, they must simply agree to disagree about some, but not all, attributes of divine perfection. Faithfulness to the originators of Process Theology like Whitehead and Hartshorne must often yield to our most profound sensitivities about supreme worshipfulness.
(3) A rational theology must also be compatible with, that is, it must not be falsified 6y, the structure and contents of the world that natural science discloses. Science does not dictate rational theology, but it rules out many familiar religious beliefs, especially cosmological convictions, as unviable and untenable. For example, rational persons cannot accept a literal six days of creation in the face of astronomy and paleontology, cannot reject evolution in the face of biology, and cannot affirm rigid and universal determinism in the face of quantum physics. A rational theology cannot affirm that Adam and Eve once existed in an idyllic Garden of Eden, or that anything of any theological importance depends upon their having so existed. It cannot affirm that death originated as a consequence of human misbehavior, since organisms were dying for eons of

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time before human beings evolved. Being compatible with natural science is not the same as being proved by natural science. Philosophical theology aspires to proof by reason or philosophy in a very broad sense, but not by empirical or sensory inquiry alone.
(4) A rational theology must also provide a plausible and coherent account of the immediate and the ultimate meaning and value of human life, indeed of all life. This account also must be firmly grounded in and compatible with scientific knowledge and critical rational reflection, as well as with our most profound religious, moral, and aesthetic sensitivities.
Classical and Process Theologians usually agree that they are trying their best to conceive of divine perfection and to answer the question of the meaning of human existence. Let us begin with divine perfection. What would God have to be like to be supremely worthy of human worship, love, service, and devotion? St. Anselm characterized God as "That Being than whom none greater can be conceived." By "greater" he meant "better." This understanding of divine perfection is at the heart of the Ontological Argument, through which Anselm hoped to persuade all rational persons of God's existence. Anselm argued that if we truly understand the meaning of the concept of God, we cannot deny God's existence without contradicting ourselves, that is, without affirming that a Divine Being who could not not exist might nevertheless not exist.¹ Both Classical and Process Theologians try to conceive of a God who exemplifies all desirable attributes or perfections, including necessary existence, and who is truly worthy of being loved with all our hearts, souls, minds and strength. To show that this can be done, we must do it; and doing it shows that it can be done!
Classical Theism began with Philo, a Jewish theologian living in Alexandria, Egypt in the first century A.O. The second through fifth-century Christian church fathers were profoundly influenced by Philo's project of combining the Greek philosophers' ideal of divine perfection with that of Biblical authors. From the time of the Eleatics, Greek philosophers conceived of God as simple, undifferentiated, unitary, passionless, and timeless Being. The attribute of rationality was often thrown into the bargain. Biblical writers, by contrast, conceived of God as both transcendent and immanent, as unitary but complex, as having real feelings and volitions as well as rationality, knowledge, or wisdom, as acting temporally and historically upon and within the world and its inhabitants, and as responding in time to events within nature and human history. Classical Theists fused Hellenic with Hebraic ideals of Divine perfection, thereby producing an unstable theological synthesis riddled with paradox and unintelligibility.
The Classical synthesis of incompatible ideals of Divine perfection lasted for almost two thousand years and is still going strong. Classical Theism is not identical with popular Judaism or Christianity, which are usually much closer to Biblical religion than to "big name" Classical Theologians like Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Moses Maimonides, Martin Luther, and John Calvin.²

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The Classical understanding of God dominated early Christian and Medieval theology, and it still prevails in Roman Catholicism. It has been almost as influential among Protestants. To illustrate, consider the following contrast between Process Theology and Classical Theism as it was expressed by reformed Protestants in the highly influential "Westminster Confession" of 1647.³ Though it is rational rather than revealed theology, Process Theism is actually much closer in many respects to Biblical and popular religion than is Classical Theism. "The Westminster Confession of Faith" identified the following central metaphysical attributes of God.

There is but one only living and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions, immutable, immense, eternal, ... almighty .... ⁴

Let us reflect upon this lists of divine attributes, though not exactly in this order.

A. Infinite in Being and Perfection

Plato's Principle of Plenitude dominated Classical Theology's ideal of divine perfection, but the fullness was in God, not in creation, as previously noted. God's perfection consists in infinite being, in knowing, but not necessarily in creating or actualizing all possibilities, an infinite number of them. In himself, God is pure being, pure actuality, an actus purus, in whom there is no becoming, and no unactualized potentialities. Just why this did not translate into the belief that God has actually created all possible worlds is unclear. Plenitude of Divine Being merged with plenitude of creation would imply that everything that God could possibly create was actually created from eternity, including all possible universes. Classical Theologians believed only that every mutually compatible niche in the great chain of being was filled in God's one universe. God's fullness and self-sufficiency in himself, not in creation, makes God perfect and supremely worthy of worship, service, and devotion, according to Classical Theology.
For many good reasons, Process Theology does not accept the Principle of Plenitude, either in God's Being or in God's Creating. The process understanding of divine perfection includes both Divine Being and Divine Becoming. It recognizes that choices must be made between things that could be created separately but not together, that infinity cannot be exhausted, used up, or fully actualized either timelessly all at once, or successively, and that divine creativity is interminable. It acknowledges that some possible worlds are too horrible, trivial, or boring to be created by a loving, morally upstanding, and aesthetically sensitive God. All Divine attributes in their integrated wholeness and togetherness are integral to God's perfection.

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Process Theology completely rethinks all the old problems of theology in light of the hypothesis that aspects of both process or change and permanence or constancy are in God. Divinity includes both an unchanging timeless dimension, God's Primordial Nature, and a changing temporal dimension, God's Consequent Nature. In Classical Theology, God is only being; but in Process Theology, God is both being and becoming.
God's everlasting and changeless Primordial Nature includes God's necessary existence and God's eternal vision of possibilities for creation. Plato's ideal forms are relocated in the mind of God. Whitehead called them "eternal objects." Possibilities as such are empty systemic abstractions that have no definiteness and significance to and for themselves and are deficient in definiteness even for others. Eternal objects are not the ultimate, independently existing, causally productive, concrete realities that Plato thought them to be. They lack the definiteness, concreteness, and power of existing actualities in physical space and time; and they are devoid of intrinsic subjectivity-the immediacy of self-awareness, self-creation, and self-enjoyment possessed by concretely existing individual centers of conscious experience, activity, and valuation like God, ourselves, and most if not all non-human animals and living things. Process thinkers disagree about the full extent of God's knowledge of possibilities; but we need not settle that question here.
Whitehead probably included little more than God's envisionment of possibilities, eternal objects, and their relevance to possible worlds, in God's Primordial Nature; but for many good reasons other process thinkers, Hartshorne and Cobb especially, have considerably enriched the notion. The Primordial Nature also includes God's necessary existence, necessary creativity, and God's enduring and essential general capacities for knowing everything that actually exists and that might possibly exist (omniscience), for loving all concrete actualities ( omniloving), and for creatively influencing (omnipotence) and being influenced by (omnipresence and omnisensitivity) every actual entity. God's unchanging and ever dependable love, compassion, and all-around moral virtue or righteousness belong to the Primordial Nature. The abstract essence of God, the Primordial Nature, is deficient in actuality; but the fullness of God includes both a Primordial and a Consequent nature. The two are separable in thought, but not in reality.
The Primordial Nature of God transcends every particular cosmic epoch or created universe while existing necessarily in relation to all particular epochs and universes and what transpires within them. Critics of Process Theology like Mark W. Worthing⁵ who regard the God of Process Theology as completely immanent in our finite cosmos totally ignore the everlasting, necessary, and transcendent Primordial Nature of God. Without a Primordial Nature, a contingent and purely immanent God would die either the heat death or the Big Crunch death of our universe;⁶ but Process Theology affirms that God's Primordial essence transcends and endures before, through, and after all created

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worlds. So does God's Consequent Nature as such if God has been infinitely creative in innumerable worlds.
In the Consequent Nature, God's transcendent and everlasting abstract capacities are concretized in relation to actual worlds. The Consequent Nature is God's actual creation of and interaction with individuals in space, time, and history. God comes to know, love, influence, and be influenced by all actual entities as they concretely exist and become within spacetime. God's experiences of successive events in time are themselves successive and thus temporal. God's experience of value is enriched by every concrete value realized in all actual worlds; all values created by and within all creatures are taken into God's Consequent Nature and saved there forever. God is the supreme valuer of every intrinsic value actualized within every world, including our own. God experiences all values (and disvalues) realized by concretely existing spatiotemporal individuals; and after they have perished to themselves, God remembers and profoundly cherishes (or deplores) them forever. Existing events possess their own present moment of relative independence and immediacy of self-enjoyment and self-creativity. As temporal occasions perish to themselves, they achieve permanent being or "objective immortality" in God's infallible memory. God's Consequent Nature continuously assimilates and treasures the ongoing order and concreteness of all spatiotemporal actualities.
God is constantly being created, says Process Theology, but not the necessary existence or the abstract essence of God, both of which belong to the Primordial Nature. The Consequent Nature consists of the full actuality of God's decisions about, experiences of, interactions with, and responses to concretely existing creatures as they are constantly being created. God exists necessarily, but the full actuality of Divinity is contingent, depending in part upon God's own freely creative acts and in part upon free decisions made by God's creatures. God affects the world, but the world also affects God, for better or for worse. God is affected by values and disvalues realized in all of creation. An unsolved problem remains after we realize that our lives are intrinsic ends and that their significance does not depend upon their contributions to some far distant future Grand Enduring Objective. The problem is that all temporal goods, including those that are intrinsic, are transient, fleeting, and ephemeral. We ourselves, and the very best moments of our lives, perish in time. Through memory, we can recover traces of our most precious moments; but eventually we die, and our memories die with us. Traces of the concrete values realized in our lives may remain in the memories and even in the genes of others; but eventually they also die with their memories and their genetic endowment. Some day the human race will perish-after thousands of years perhaps if we are lucky and are good stewards of the earth, which we do not seem to be. Will no trace of our worth ultimately remain? Bertrand Russell thought not, and the idea filled him with profound pessimism. In "A Free Man's Worship," he wrote:

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All the labor of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius is destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man's achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins-all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.⁷

Process Theology offers an attractive solution to the problem of the transience of all created goods-the Doctrine of Contributionism. All created values are ultimately contributed to God, who remembers and cherishes them everlastingly. All created events and values become objectively immortal in God.⁸ Some, but not all, Process Theologians also affirm subjective immortality-the survival after death of individual subjects in the alternate spacetime system of Heaven.
Many theologians assume otherwise, but a traditional Christian Heaven does not solve the problem of the transience of created values. As my friend Tom Dicken indicates, "Immortality offers a continuing creation of value, not a conservation of value. "9 We can make little or no sense of an utterly space less and timeless Heaven where everyone is disembodied and nothing ever happens; but if spatiotemporal events transpire in Heaven, they too perish to themselves. Time, whether Heavenly or worldly, is indeed a perpetual creation and rebirth of events; but it is also a "perpetual perishing," as John Locke put it. Unless the concrete values realized in both worldly and Heavenly events are known fully and preserved forever by God, ultimately they are lost forever; but in God's Consequent Nature there is no ultimate loss. God gives the intrinsic worth of all creatures objective immortality and intrinsically valuates them without end. God is the supreme intrinsic valuer of all intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic values in all actual worlds.
The objective immortality of all creatures and created values in God are not just additional remote Enduring Grand Objectives. Enduring Grand Objectives are ends in themselves and have intrinsic worth, supposedly; but the means to them do not; and we are the intrinsically worthless means! But, says Process Theology, God values creatures like us as ends, not merely as means. According to the Final Anthropic Principle, the Omega Point has intrinsic worth; and we are significant only as means to that terminal condition. In traditional Christian theology, this life is but a miserable pilgrimage to what is truly worthwhile-pie in the sky by and by. Enduring Grand Objective theories degrade our lives here and now into extrinsic or systemic goods; but Process Theology affirms that the intrinsic worth of our lives here and now is ultimately contributed to God, who cherishes us and every living creature forever.
God's love is not limited to humanity; it extends to every experiencing subject that ever exists. All animals, not just human ones, and not just members of contemporary species, are included. Panexperientialism or panpsychism, to

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which some process thinkers subscribe, says that all existing individuals including sub-atomic particles (but not aggregates like rocks) are experiencing subjects having some degree of intrinsic worth. We do not have to decide that issue here. The essential thing is that intrinsic values actualized in all presently living creatures, in our hominid ancestors, and in every extinct individual and species that ever lived, are not lost. They exist forever in God. Past values are lost to themselves and to our present selves for the most part, but no achieved goodness is ever lost to God. God does not timelessly actualize all possibilities, that is, all possible individuals, their qualities, and relations, according to Process Theology. God alone could know it, but an infinite number of possibilities may have been actualized in an infinite number of universes within God's supercosmic past or present if God is infinitely creative. Superspacetime may be an attribute of God! Yet, infinite possibilities for further creativity always remain for the supercosmic future of an infinitely creative God. Neither God nor man can use up infinity, not even in an infinite amount of time.

B. A Most Pure Spirit, Invisible, Without Body Erroneously, Classical

Theologians often identified the biblical notion of "spirit" with the Platonic/Neoplatonic/Cartesian notion of an immaterial and potentially disembodied mind or soul. According to Plato, immaterial, nonspatial human minds are temporary prisoners in their spatially extended bodies. Platonic immortality encompassed both existence before birth and survival after death for disembodied, nonspatial, immaterial souls.
By contrast, in the Biblical tradition, body and spirit are inseparably unified; and survival after death takes the form of the resurrection of a dramatically transformed body, relocated ultimately in an alternate spacetime system, but never completely non-spatial or immaterial. In the earliest centuries of the Christian era, Platonic mind/matter dualism spilled over into Classical Theology. God himself was understood to be incorporeal or "without body" as the "Westminster Confession" put it. Since incorporeal things are imperceptible, God's invisibility indicated incorporeality to Classical Theologians.
In Biblical, creedal, and popular religion, God, the invisible spirit, is embodied, at least metaphorically. God has hands, feet, a face, right and left sides, a backside, and such. God is pictured as a large, humanoid, white or tawny skinned, blue-eyed, gray-bearded male who sits on a white throne, wears a jeweled crown, and has a string of lieutenants on each hand, the right hand (where Jesus sits) being most favored.
Neither Classical Theology nor Process Theology takes this physical humanoid imagery literally, however, and even this has a Biblical basis. The Second Commandment in the Old Testament prohibits making graven images or likenesses for religious purposes of anything (including humankind) that is

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in heaven above, the earth beneath, or the water under the earth (Exodus 20:4). Implicit in the Second Commandment is a profound metaphysical insight: God's form, whether physical or not, cannot be represented by any familiar finite physical forms. God is infinite being, not physically finite and humanoid being. Judaism and Islam allow no representative art as aids to worship and thus generally take the Second Commandment much more seriously than Christianity, except for the early Christian iconoclasts. For Classical Theologians, human beings are made in the spiritual, not the physical, image of God because an incorporeal being has no physical image. Process Theologians repudiate mind/matter dualism and insist that the mental and spiritual aspects of all actual "entities, including God, are always embodied. God does not literally have humanoid hands, feet, eyes, face, and so forth; but, contrary to Classical Theology, Process Theologians think that God has a body and is not totally incorporeal. Goad's body is the universe, or at least some world or worlds, perhaps even infinite Superspacetime itself. God may be embodied in infinitely many actual worlds for all we know. God's body or bodies belong to the Consequent Nature; but God's Primordial Nature transcends and persists through all embodiments in all spatiotemporal phases of all the worlds God's "hands" have made.
God's spirituality and mentality are related to the world as our own spiritual and mental dimensions are related to our bodies. If we really understood that, the analogy would be much more illuminating! In our universe, organic wholes have both an internal and an external unity plus properties that are influenced by but not reducible to the sums of their component parts. Protons are influenced by but not reducible to their constituent quarks; and the same is true of atoms in relation to their protons, neutrons, and electrons, of molecules in relation to their component atoms, of living cells in relation to their molecules, of brain-consciousness as related to brain cells, and of Divine consciousness as related to the whole of creation. In some mysterious way, our cells, organs, and bodily processes affect our conscious experiences and activities. Our conscious experiences and activities as embodied in our brains also affect our other bodily processes, organs, and eel Is without violating any natural Jaws. We are to God as our cells are to us, and God is to the world as our consciousness is to our bodies, but with important differences as well as similarities. The well-or-ill-being of our cells, especially our brain cells and brain waves, affect and are affected buy our consciousness;¹⁰ and God affects and is affected by the well or ill being off our conscious experiences and activities. The important differences are: (1) human consciousness has only a limited sensitivity to bodily events, but God is completely attuned and responsive to all worldly events, and (2) we are largely unaware of events external to ourselves, but everything is internal to God, who misses nothing. Both we and God are embodied; and just as our stream of consciousness, the dominant society of events in our bodies, can affect the rest of your bodies without violating any natural laws,

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so can God affect the world. No actual beings are purely spiritual, invisible, incorporeal, and disembodied. God is literally the all-inclusive spatiotemporal reality in whom we live and move and have our being-and our becoming. Religiously, God's ability to affect the world, to influence and communicate with us creatures without overwhelming our freedom, is just as important as God's ability to be affected by the world. Just how, in technical metaphysical terms, this is possible may be and is debated extensively;¹¹ but that it is so is indispensable to our concept of that being than whom none greater can be conceived. The details of just how this is possible need not be resolved here.

C. Immense

To have a body is to be spatially extended. As Descartes noted, all bodies are extended; this is what being a body or being physical means. Spatiality is the defining characteristic of embodiment. Paradoxically, despite its claim that God is without body, Classical Theology affirmed that God is immense or omnipresent. These words intimate spatiality in a Being who supposedly exemplifies no spatiality or corporeality at all. "The Westminster Confession" affirms the immensity of God based on I. Kings 8:27, which says that Heaven and the highest Heaven cannot hold God, and on Jeremiah 23:23-24, which says that God is not far off but fills Heaven and earth. Other Biblical passages also affirm the omnipresence of God. Psalms 139:7-10 presents God as an inescapable presence who cannot be evaded in Heaven, Hell, or the uttermost parts of the sea; and St. Paul affirmed, according to Acts 17:28, that God is the being in whom we live and move and have our being.
Classical Theology embraced the paradox of God's spatiality with one breath (immense, omnipresent) and denied it with the next (pure spirit, incorporeal); but how can a being who is nowhere be everywhere? How can a being who is everywhere be nowhere? With no evasiveness, Process Theology attributes both spatiality and temporality to God. God's Consequent Nature is that most inclusive spatiotemporal reality within which or whom we live and move and have our becoming. Localized moral agents like ourselves are only finite parts of our local spacetime system; but God is the all-inclusive ultimate reality. A temporally ordered looseness of fit obtains between God, the whole of all inclusive Superspacetime, and our spacetime. This looseness allows room for creaturely freedom and creativity. Individual events within the whole of God's reality, for example, those composing human streams of consciousness, enjoy a fleeting moment of relative independence, originality, and creative self-synthesis (to which God is passively sensitive) before they perish to themselves and gain objective immortality within God. This slight departure from process orthodoxy will be better explained in what follows.
God always and necessarily has a body, some body, because God is always and necessarily a creative, loving, social being who creates others to love.

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If God is embodied, can we see God? Yes, in a sense; but we cannot see all of God's body, the whole of our spacetime, or the whole of God's Superspacetime; and we cannot see the transcendent Divine Primordial Nature or the privacy of God's own consciousness. But every time we look into another persons eyes, or behold the good earth, or gaze at the wondrous starry Heavens above, we see some of the components of God's immanent Consequent Nature. All things are divine, even the mundane, though most ofus do not realize this. Appropriately qualified, as in the preceding discussion, God is all in all.

D. Without...Parts

Classical Theology affirms that in himself God is pure, undifferentiated unity and simplicity, or ''without...parts," as the "Westminster Confession" put it. In our thinking about God there is complexity, says the classical theory; but no counterpart for this complexity exists in God himself. We think of God as having a plurality of desirable attributes or predicates; and we have many names for God's diverse parts-omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, omnicompassion, and so on; but in God's own nature, these multiple attributes are so thoroughly integrated that the many are simply one. We think that God performs many acts, knows many things, is present with many individuals, causes many events, loves and is compassionate toward many creatures; but in God's own reality, all this apparent diversity exists as pure and undifferentiated Parmenidean unity and simplicity of Being. God is the simplest of all beings, Being Itself, though we think of God as the most complex.
By contrast, Process Theology rejects the classical unbridgeable gap between the way we think about God and the way God really is. As the simplest possible being, God could only be that being than whom none poorer in properties can be conceived. Process Theology conceives of God as the supreme, selfconscious, unitary individual who is richest, not poorest, in good-making properties, and who is capable of endless further enrichment through infinite creativity. No other being surpasses God in complexity or any other desirable attribute, but an endlessly creative God is constantly self-surpassing. God's experience of value is enriched continuously through ongoing interactions with created worlds. Instead of being without parts, an infinite number of real parts exist, not just in our thoughts, but in God's own concrete actuality. In the final chapter of this book, we will return to the topic of God's simplicity and complexity.

E. Without...Passions

The most dramatic difference is that Classical Theology refuses to attribute any feelings to God; whereas Process Theology sees feelings as the very essence of God's love, mercy, and compassion. Most Greek philosophers depreciated the affective, appetitive parts of the human soul; feelings and desires were deemed

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greatly inferior to rationality, thus altogether unworthy of Divinity. Aristotle's Unmoved Mover was "impassible," meaning "without any feelings whatsoever-totally devoid of all affections and desires." His God is emotionally as well as physically unmoved and thinks only about thinking, never about our world and its denizens. Neither omniscient nor omnicompassionate, Aristotle's Unmoved Mover knows and values only logic, thinks without feeling about thinking-nothing else, and does not know or care about us or anything in our world.
Regrettably, the earliest Christian theologians accepted Greek philosophical prejudices against feelings. The lavish emotional, affective, and appetitive language applied to God in Biblical religion was then regularly dismissed as woefully inadequate metaphorical speech; and all spatial and temporal imagery was branded as totally misleading and impious metaphor. In Classical Theology, human beings were made in the rational, not the affective, emotional, or physical image of God, who is literally impassive, empty of all feelings whatsoever, thus not literally loving, merciful, or compassionate.
The God of Classical Theology is not literally or physically male because he has no body at all; yet, psychologically and behaviorally, this God is stereotypically masculine. Like big boys who don't cry, the classical God has absolutely no feelings, emotions, or desires whatsoever about anything. Reflecting a tradition that dates back at least to St. Athanasius, St. Anselm emphatically denied that the Divine part of Jesus suffered on the cross; only his human nature suffered because "The Divine nature is beyond doubt impassible."¹² In Classical Theology, God entirely lacks not just undesirable feelings but all feelings whatsoever. St. Themas Aquinas said that God "loves without passion" and that "Mercy is especially to be attributed to God, provided it be considered in its effect, but not as an affection of passion. To sorrow, therefore, over the misery of others does not belong to God."¹³
Anselm, Aquinas, and other Classical Theologians held that we experience God as ifhe has feelings, but in God himself no feelings exist. This appalling compromise came about when Classical Theologians, led by Philo in the first century A.D., combined two fundamentally incompatible ideals of divine perfection-that of the Greek philosophers, and that of Biblical religion. When forced to choose which religious language to take literally and which to construe metaphorically, the Greek philosophers always won. Their outlook was literal truth, so most of the language of the Bible and of ordinary believers was dismissed as impious and misleading metaphor. Nowhere is the conflict between these two incompatible ideals of divine perfection more obvious than in St. Anselm's description of God as compassionate in terms of our experience, but not in His own being and experience.

Truly thou art so in terms of our experience, but thou art not so in terms of thine own. For, when thou beholdest us in our wretchedness, we experi-

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ence the effect of compassion, but thou dost not experience the feeling. Therefore, thou art both compassionate, because thou dost save the wretched, and spare those who sin against thee; and not compassionate because thou art affected by no sympathy for wretchedness.¹⁴

Thus, in Classical Theology, God is literally impassive, only metaphorically and inaccurately compassionate; and Greek ideals of Divine perfection always trump Biblical values and ideals.
Ministers dare not talk like that to their congregations! They could not get away with it! Ordinary believers;; are led, or misled, to believe that God is in himself all the good things that "We experience him to be. The "Westminster Confession" says that God is "most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering ..."¹⁵ then takes it all away with the qualification "without passions." Classical Theologians drive an infinite wedge between the reality and the appearance of God. God is really not loving but appears to be, not compassionate but appears to be, not merciful but appears to be. Divine appearance corresponds in no way with divine reality!
Process Theologians reject such duplicity and hold that God is quite literally all of these immensely good things. They think that the Greeks were totally wrong in devaluing all feelings and affections and in regarding them as greatly inferior to reason if not completely worthless. Yes, love, mercy, and compassion always involve cognitive elements; but without their affective components, their intrinsic significance is lost. Yes, many desires and emotions are bad and unworthy of God; but, Process Theology insists, many feelings and desires are exceptionally good and very worthy of Divinity. The good ones belong to God.
Impassivity, total incapacitation for every feeling, is an imperfection, not a perfection. Feelings are stereotypically feminine not masculine attributes, but having just the right feelings and desires is one of the most majestic features of both human and Divine persons, male or female. God literally suffers with us in our sufferings and rejoices with us in our joys. God literally preserves and cherishes forever the goodness of our unique lives, activities, experiences, and values. The created goodness of the world is ultimately contributed to God, who does not respond to it ''without passion."
The authors of the "Westminster Confession" asserted that the chief end of"man" is to "Glorify God and enjoy him forever," ¹⁶ but the classical notion of divine impassivity implies that nothing in the universe contributes anything whatsoever to God. What then is;; the point of loving and glorifying God, asks Charles Hartshorne, if God's experience and happiness are not enriched one tiny bit by our glorification, love, adoration, and devotion? We benefit from religious devotion, we are told; but we and our world mean nothing to God.¹⁷ In Classical Theology, since there is no passivity or receptivity in God, nothing that happens within the world ever affects God. God is pure act, pure

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causation; the world is totally passive, pure effect. God is in no way passive, sensitive, or receptive in relation to the world; in no way is the world active in relation to God. In no conceivable way is God the effect of anything that happens in our spacetime. The "Westminster Confession" affirms,

God hath all life, glory, goodness, blessedness, in and of himself; and is alone in and unto himself all-sufficient, not standing in need of any creatures which he hath made, nor deriving any glory from them, but only manifesting his own glory in, by, unto, and upon them: he is the alone fountain of all being, of whom, through whom, and to whom, are all things .... ¹⁸

Process Theology replaces divine impassivity with the Doctrine of Contributionism, according to which all created value is ultimately contributed to God, who is enriched by it. feels deeply about it, and preserves and cherishes it forever. God's happiness is enhanced by our happiness, and God's sadness is increased by our sadness and woe. All the good we create is ultimately created for God; all the evil we inflict on any sentient creature is also ultimately inflicted on God. God literally rejoices with all who rejoice, and suffers with all who suffer.

F. Immutable ... Eternal

Negatively, "eternity" means "having no beginning or end." The biblical God exists from everlasting to everlasting. When Classical Theologians accommodated biblical everlastingness to Greek ideas of timelessness, they redefined "eternity" positively (without a negation) to mean "all time all at once." In Classical Theology, eternity is the simultaneity in God of the past, present, and future of all creation-a totum simul. For God, everything happens timelessly, all at once. God comprehends all change and mutability in a changeless and immutable way. In no conceivable respect does God change. God is so "perfect" that any change would be for the worse, as Plato and Aristotle, but not the Bible, decreed.
In Process Theology, God has both an immutable Primordial Nature and a changing or developing Consequent Nature. Change with respect to God's necessary existence or desirable ethical attributes like love, compassion, and moral goodness would indeed be for the worse and would make God unworthy of supreme devotion, service, and adoration. But many kinds of change and many feelings are extremely desirable and valuable, despite what the Greek philosophers believed. Not every change is for the worse; not every change alters fundamental goodness. Some types of change are undesirable but others are desirable. God's experiences and choices change as the Divine Individual constantly creates and interacts with living creatures in spacetime; and this type

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of change is not undesirable at all. In fact, it is just what we would expect of a perfect being if our religious ideals and intuitions have not been perverted by Greek philosophers!
Introducing temporality into the concept of God requires a small modification of the classical notion of divine omniscience. Classically, God knows absolutely everything, the past, present, and future of the entire universe, changelessly, immutably, simultaneously, and infallibly. In Process Theology, God infallibly knows the past and present of any actual universe, plus all general tendencies toward the future. But God can not know future free decisions that have not yet been made because they simply are not there to be known. Both theologies agree that God knows everything that is there to be known. Unlike Classical Theologians, Process Theologians deny that future free decisions already exist somehow to be known before they are made. God may (or may not) know all possible decisions as possibilities, depending on just how detailed a knowledge of possibilities can be; but God learns which free and creative decisions the creatures actually make only when they are made, not timelessly in advance. God cannot know things as actual until they become actual. God knows all things according to their appropriate modes of beingactualities as actualities, and possibilities as possibilities. All ofhistory-natural, human, and Divine-is a partly unpredictable adventure in creativity for both God and God's creatures.

G. Almighty

Classical Theology followed Plato's suggestion that God could not be changed or affected either by himself or by anything other than himself, and it regarded causal relations between God and the world as completely one-sided. God is almighty or omnipotent, the sole originative causal agent in all of reality, who determines everything. Indeed, in thinking that anything might exist, God thereby creates its existence; so all possibilities are actual if God knows all possibilities. Through programmed or predestined chains of secondary or worldly causation as we experience them, God ultimately causes everything that happens within the universe; but nothing that occurs within the world affects God or brings about effects within God.
Divine omnipotence, understood classically as ultimate and total causality, implies that no freedom or originative causality exists within the universe or even in God, if all Divine decisions follow inevitably from the Divine Nature. Clearly, creatures have no free will and are not co-creators with God. Christendom accepted predestination with relatively little protest up to the twentieth century, and those who dissented were condemned as Pelagian heretics. Many Christians now realize that Biblical predestination can be interpreted as applying only to classes of individuals (for example, all who come to believe or to love) that were chosen by God from eternity, but not to specific individuals

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elected eternally. Each individual must freely decide whether to become a member of such classes. In our era, free will is popular in the churches, including those that once championed predestination. Many religious people now acknowledge the obvious-that without free and genuinely creative creatures, God is responsible just as much for all sin and evil as for all righteousness and goodness within the world. Something essential to human dignity would be lacking if we merely act out a pre-existing script and contribute nothing original and personal to the drama of creation. Classical Theologians squirmed and double-talked endlessly but unsuccessfully to avoid these implications.
In Process Theology, God influences all worldly events, including all occasions of human consciousness; but God does not absolutely determine them. God presents us with possibilities for creative self-development and endeavors gently to persuade us to make the right choices; but there is no compelling, no omni-causation. We are co-creators with God. We originate our own free and creative choices for better or for worse. We are responsible, not God, for our choices of good or evil. Hitler and his cronies and collaborators, not God, caused the Holocaust. Process Theologians refuse to "pass the buck." With Harry Truman, they affirm that "The buck stops here!"
In many ways, Process Theology is much more intelligible and attractive than Classical Theology, so we will hereafter construe the question of God's existence in process terms. The Primordial Nature of God is the locus of transcendence, of necessary existence, and of all other desirable general Divine attributes; so we really want to know if we can and do have good reasons for thinking that God's Primordial Nature and the full actuality of God's consciousness are real. The content of God's Consequent Nature is the world, which undoubtedly exists, so its reality is not in question. What we want to know is this: Is the observable world all that there is, or does it have an enduring holy mind of its own? Does a Divine, Holy World-Soul really exist?

2. Conceiving of God's Existence

Does God exist? What do we want to know when we ask? Aristotle said that "There are many senses in which a thing may be said to be," or as President Bill Clinton might put it, "It all depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." For Aristotle, possibilities do not exist in the same way as actualities; forms do not exist in the same way as matter; substances do not exist in the same way as attributes. Does God exist in the same way that things ordinarily exist?

A. Ordinary Existence

Theologians usually insist that the being of God is very different from the being of ordinary everyday things. How does Divine existence differ from ordinary

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existence? Ordinarily, we think that something exists if it (1) is entirely located within our familiar public world of spacetime, as opposed to the spacetime of dreams or hallucinations, (2) occupies a finite region of the everyday public world of spacetime, (3) can be publicly detected in spacetime through sensory perception (directly, or with the aid of magnifying instruments), (4) is the effect of perceptible causes located in common spacetime, (5) is the efficient cause of perceptible effects that exist in common spacetime, and (6) the denial of its existence is not logically self-contradictory. This list applies in past, present, and future tenses. To this list, Charles Hartshorne would add that (7) contingent existence is always competitive and excludes other contingent existence. Degenerate or marginal senses of "exist" also function in ordinary language. Ideas and fictional entities may be said to exist in our minds, thoughts, imaginations, dreams, or in myths or stories, even though they fulfill only the 6th criterion: Denying their existence is not self-contradictory. Santa Claus, elves, fairies, the present King of France, numbers, logical self-contradictions, and Captains James Kirk, Jean Luc Picard, Kathryn Janeway, and Benjamin Sisko exist only in this degenerate "intramental" or "intrafictional" sense. Fictional roles exclude no other actual beings from the domain of existence, even though the actors playing the roles do. If pressed to say whether they "really" exist, our usual answer is appropriately negative. They are too far removed from our paradigms of ordinary existence. Of course, we can always change our minds if and when convinced that some suspect item really fulfills our most essential criteria.
Many entities in the annals of contemporary science-minded cosmology exist only marginally by ordinary standards. Did an initial singularity exist? Obviously not by the first four criteria. It was not located within our spacetime and did not occupy a finite region of it. Because it was infinitely small, it was not perceivable; and its cause (a collapsing antecedent universe?) was not located within our system of spacetime. Perhaps it did not exist by the fifth criterion: if it is only a theoretical fiction or construct, it had no effects within common spacetime; but if it actually initiated our universe, everything observable is its effect. No self-contradiction results from denying its existence; but since it occupied no spacetime, it is difficult to see how it could exclude the existence of anything else.
Do antecedent, co-existent, or parallel universes exist? Not by the first five criteria, so far as we really know: they are not located within our spacetime, do not occupy a finite region of it, cannot be perceived, are not effects of perceptible (to us) causes, and have no perceptible effects as far as we really know. Perhaps they exist in an expanded, marginal, or metaphorical sense: although they are not in ours, they and their components may exist in some system of spacetime or Superspacetime, as may also the Heaven and Hell of traditional theology, or the many worlds of Big Fizz Cosmology. Denying their existence is logically possible (criterion 6), but mere possibilities are not actualities or

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even probabilities. They do not compete for existence with anything else that we really know to exist, but they may compete for locus in Superspacetime with other worlds.
Does our universe as a whole exist? Not by criteria one, two, four, and five, and only partly by three. It is not located within itself, not a mere part of itself, can be perceived only in part, and is not the effect of causes within itself. Naturalists, who contend that the universe as a whole is eternal. uncreated, and uncaused, deny that it exists in sense four. Because it is not the effect of anything, the whole universe did not result from causes within itself, even if all of its parts are effects of perceptible causes in common spacetime. Theists, Oscillationists, and Big Fizz and Big Divide plenitudists deny the application of criterion four to our universe as a whole because its cause is not a perceptible object within our system of spacetime. Can we deny its existence without selfcontradiction? This may be something like denying our own existence without self-contradiction. At any rate, since it includes everything whose existence we could ever verify, it does not compete for existence with anything verifiable. Did inflation exist? We do not know, but its partisans affirm that it somehow "in principle" existed in senses four, five, and six: its in principle perceptible causes were there in the earliest fractions of a second of our spacetime system; cosmic isotropy and the distribution of galaxies and stars are its perceptible effects; but denying inflation is not self-contradictory. Inflation would compete with a more leisurely pace of cosmic expansion during the fraction of a second that it supposedly existed.
Do the infinitely condensed singularities at the cores of black holes exist? Perhaps, at least in senses one and three through six. These singularities have a position in our spacetime, but since they have no magnitude (like Cartesian minds) they do not occupy a finite region ofit. With powerful telescopes we can look toward their black cores, determine that they are caused by gravitational collapse, and see some of the stuff they consume. Their effects are perceptible, even though they are not. We can think consistently about their possible nonexistence; and since they have a definite locus, their existence might exclude the presence of other black holes in that locus.
Did the Big Bang exist? Probably, at least in senses five and six. Its effects surround us and are us; thoughts about its non-existence are logically coherent. It does not seem to satisfy the first, second, third, and fourth criteria. It was not located within our system of spacetime because it is our system of spacetime in its earliest stages; for the same reason, it does not occupy a finite part of familiar spacetime because it encompasses all such regions; its very early stages may have been in principle perceptible but were definitely not so in practice. Its cause was neither perceptible nor natural, but its existence excludes the existence of other universes that might have been created instead. Do non-extended Euclidean points exist? When conceived of as mere points, ¹⁹ do particles like quarks, photons, electrons, and monopoles exist?

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Some physicists regard this as just a careless way of speaking about "point-like" entities that are very, very small;²⁰ others suggest that the notion "has reached its limits of validity and usefulness."²¹ By criterion one, if they are anything more than purely conceptual constructs, they have position but no magnitude or volume within real spacetime. By criteria two and three, they clearly do not exist: they are too small to be regional; and they are in principle imperceptible. They do not exist in any obvious way by criteria four and five: if they have perceptible causes or effects, the process by which this happens is very mysterious indeed; only entities with magnitude or spatial extension are perceptible and have perceptible effects. Incidentally, most philosophers today reject Cartesian dualism with its non-extended minds and extended matter mainly because no one can figure out how non-extended entities can act on extended entities; but if real matter is also non-extended, the mind/matter problem is a whole new ball game! So, too, if real minds are extended! By criterion six, non-extended points are not logically necessary beings. In no clear sense could their existence be competitive, unless one point excludes another; but since they are all in some sense identical, counting them might be difficult.
Do non-extended Cartesian minds exist? Here philosophers disagree about the answer but not about the meaning of the question. Dualistic mind/matter interactionists think that non-extended minds exist only in senses four and five: they are affected by bodily events, and they cause and are affected by bodily events. By criterion six, the existence of other minds can be denied without selfcontradiction, but not our own. I contradict myself if I deny that I exist. Descartes was right about one thing; unless I exist I cannot deny that I exist. Materialists affirm that minds exist as brains in public spacetime, and they can be perceived if our skulls are cracked open; but Dualists and Idealists deny that minds exist in senses one through three. Clearly, our direct access to our own conscious awareness is introspective, not sensory. Since minds have their own unique identity, they exclude other minds.
Now for the really important question: Does God exist? Popular religion conceives of God as an old, gray bearded, white skinned, blue eyed, male humanoid, dressed in a white robe, sitting on a throne. So conceived, God would exist in something remotely resembling the first three and the fifth and sixth criteria, except that the relevant spacetime system is that of Heaven, or both Heaven and earth, but not this world alone. If these criteria are strictly applied only to their natural home-the everyday spacetime of this worldnaturalists are correct: God no more exists than fairies, elves, unicorns, and winged horses. Clearly God does not exist in the ordinary way, but then neither do most if not all of the other things or realities just discussed. Does God exist in some extraordinary way? Is God's existence at all intelligible?
Paul Tillich insisted that it is atheistic to say that God exists, meaning in part that thinking that God's being is like the being of ordinary things is totally wrong-headed. ²² Amazingly, Naturalists, Classical Theists, and Process Theolo-

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gians fully agree that God does not exist-by most ordinary criteria. They agree that God does not fulfill any of the first four criteria. Neither does the universe as a whole, for that matter. God is not a finite physical, perceptible object or being located within a finite region of our system of spacetime. We could never literally see God sitting in a chair, standing by a waterfall, or walking through a garden.
Naturalists insist that God does not exist by any of the seven criteria, and this settles the question. Theologians, both classical and process, think that God fulfills the fifth criterion by being the efficient cause of the Big Bang that created our universe, and perhaps by causing miraculous events within the universe. Process thinkers, who view the universe as the body of God, think that God fulfills criterion 3 in principle, though in practice we cannot perceive the whole universe, the whole Consequent Nature of God. Classical Theologians would not agree because they think that God is completely incorporeal or disembodied, that God occupies no space, includes no space, and has no position in space; for that reason an immaterial God could not be perceived. Naturalists contend that God's existence is a contingent matter and thus fulfills criterion 6, but many theologians in both camps think not, agreeing with St. Anselm that necessary existence is an essential divine perfection and that it is logically self-contradictory to deny the existence of a perfect Being whose non-existence is not possible. Theologians also insist that nothing could compete with God's existence, and in that sense God's existence is not falsifiable. Unlike Naturalists, theologians in both camps insist that the question of God's existence or reality is not definitively resolved just because God does not fulfill the first four criteria. The same must be said for singularities, as well as for the universe as a whole, for non-extended Euclidean points, quarks, electrons, and for Cartesian minds. This means only that God's existence is radically different from that of ordinary everyday things and that having a unique mode of being is integral to Divine perfection. Not fulfilling criteria four, six, and seven means that God exists necessarily; and, since every other ordinarily existing thing fulfills criteria four, six, and seven, ordinary existence is contingent existence. We must now give more attention to this distinction between necessary and contingent existence.
The Teleological Argument for God developed in the next chapter reasons from the observed order or design of the world to the existence of an intelligent and benevolent Designer. The Cosmological Argument developed in the final chapter reasons from our experience of the contingent existence of the world to the necessary existence of God. Whether this reasoning is sound must be and will be considered in these later chapters. For now, we must try to comprehend the difference between contingent and necessary existence, as understood in philosophical theology. Much that is theologically significant hangs upon this distinction.

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B. Necessary and Contingent Existence

Formal (or modal) as well as factual (or ontological) dimensions of meaning belong to both necessary and contingent existence. Both logic and ontology inform us about their differences and similarities.

Necessary Existence

Formal meaning: Existence that could not not be; non-existence is not possible. Denial of necessary existence in this formal sense is logically selfcontradictory.

Factual meaning: Existence that is self-sufficient, eternal or everlasting, uncreated, and indestructible. Denial of necessary existence in this factual sense is not self-contradictory.

Contingent Existence

Formal meaning: Existence that might or might not be; non-existence is possible. Possible or actual non-existence.
Factual meaning: Existence that is causally derived from or dependent on something other than itself; if something exists contingently, it has a cause. Contingent existence is created and destructible. Denial of contingent existence in either the above formal or the present factual sense is not self-contradictory, though it may be factually false when contingent entities really do exist. Usually, contingent existence both comes into being and perishes in time; but it is logically possible for an existing thing, for example, an everlasting universe that does not come into being and perish in time, to be causally dependent on God in some ways throughout endless time. Big Bang Cosmology shows that our world is not like this, however, for it came into being within the finite past.
In Classical Theology, necessary and contingent existence mark the difference between a supernatural God and the natural world. In Process Theology, they mark the difference between the Primordial Nature or general abstract essence of God and the contents (some world or other) of the Consequent Nature. World-events come into being and perish to themselves in time; then they are assimilated into God and never perish in, to, and for God's contingent Consequent Nature. God remembers, preserves, and cherishes created actualities everlastingly. They are ultimately integrated into the contingencies of his Consequent Nature, where they are never lost. (Masculine pronouns are applied to God only as a last resort in Process Theology for simplicity of expression and should not be taken literally.)
Classical Theology treated every general aspect and every particular detail of God's reality as necessary; yet it insisted, inconsistently, upon the contin

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gency of creation itself and of God's will or choice to create. Process Theology assigns necessity only to the abstract essence or Primordial Nature of God that persists unchanged through all other changes. The Primordial Nature includes not only God's envisionment of possibilities for creation, but also God's necessary existence, necessary creativeness, and necessary and flawless capacities to know, love, influence, and be influenced by all creation. God's Necessary Primordial Nature cannot possibly not exist; and it is self-sufficient, everlasting, uncreated, and indestructible. The Primordial and Consequent Natures are logically or conceptually distinct, but they are never separated ontologically. They are not two different Gods, but are inseparable ontological aspects of the full reality of one God who exists necessarily but creates and interacts contingently with particulars.

3. Critique of Process Theology

On many issues, Process Theologians disagree among themselves and not just with atheists and Classical Theologians. To fully understand and appreciate disagreement within the process camp, read Lewis Ford's Transforming Process Theism, where Ford even disagrees with himself! ²³ Almost all Process Theologians agree that Whitehead's original formulation of Process Theology requires many additions and revisions. Many objections to this novel temporalistic way of thinking about God are raised by those who have no stomach for theology at all. These will be faced in the following chapters. Other objections are raised by those who are greatly attracted to many features of process thought but who believe that a few amendments are needed to bring it in line with certain religious and rational requirements. We will next look at a few ways in which I and other sympathetic critics think that Process Theology needs to be amended.

A. God's Influencing and Being Influenced by the World

Mainstream Process Theology has serious problems about God's ability to know, value, and retain the values inherent in the subjective immediacy of moments of created time, and about God's ability to influence individuals within the world. Its fine-grained analysis of "time," taken from Whitehead, seems to be incompatible with its religiously appealing claims that all created values are ultimately contributed to God and that God's responsiveness to individuals and occurrences within the world adds value and direction to them. Except for the data and subjective aims that nascent occasions receive initially from their predecessors, the free and self-creative moments of subjective immediacy that make up our ongoing streams of consciousness are understood by most process thinkers to be closed to all other happenings. They can neither influence nor be influenced by, neither experience nor be experienced by, other entities during their own brief "duration" or "specious present" of

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self-creative independence. Supposedly, this causal shut-up-ness prevents the independence, freedom, and self-creativity of temporal occasions from being overwhelmed by the presence and power of God or by past events within the world. Once they get underway, temporal occasions are closed even to God, Whitehead thought, Most process thinkers agree. This implies that God can know and value temporal occasions only after they achieve their final "satisfaction" or unified definiteness, but not in or during their self-creative subjective immediacy. About that, God can know nothing whatsoever. Except at the very beginning and end of their becoming, God can neither experience and influence nor be experienced and influenced by created actual occasions.
For preserving creaturely freedom, the standard process fine-grained analysis of temporality may be overkill. From a deep religious perspective (about which there is ample room for honest disagreement), the God of Process Theology may be deficient or less than perfect because he cannot be omnipresent to, omniloving of, or omniscient with respect to all actualities, specifically, those that are still becoming. That they can be present to God is also doubtful because God is also still becoming. At best, the standard process God can be present with, love, and know our subjective immediacy only as it was, perhaps as we would know it through very short term memory, but never as it is in its vibrant subjective immediacy of becoming where its primary value resides.
Robert C. Neville, whose own concept of God is very weak, argued effectively that the most important values of existence are located in the immediacy of subjectivity and that the God of mainstream process thought is gravely defective in being unable to know, love, and evaluate the immediate subjectivity of entities in becoming. In being unable to know immediate subjectivity directly, God also cannot remember it and thus cannot give it objective immortality. ²⁴ The chief culprit here is the prevailing process analysis of the fine-grained features of temporal becoming, which for many reasons needs to be modified or abandoned, as explained later. Process thought's greatest contribution to theology is its emphasis on God's temporality and on God's sensitive and receptive responsiveness to events in the world, but not its fine-grained analysis of the nature of time itself as it applies to God and to us.
Contributionism, the view that all created values are ultimately contributed to God, requires a deeper understanding of divine time and causation. The selfcreative independence of creaturely events would still be intact if God's own temporally ordered subjectivity is reconceived to be continuously but passively present to, sensitive to, and receptive and appreciative of, developing occasions within the world in their immediacy of becoming. As Neville suggests, God might even be able actively to influence the internal concrescence of created events, ²⁵ but this would have to be through very modest spiritual promptings that do not overwhelm our freedom.

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Traditional Whiteheadian thought distinguishes two kinds of time or process, the transitional succession of two or more atomized actual occasions, and their singular internal self-development or concrescence. Human consciousness and all other enduring realities within the world are composed of pro longed societies of successive momentary occasions. Charles Hartshorne modeled God after this pattern; God is an infinitely prolonged society of divine actual occasions. Whitehead, by contrast, thought that God is a single, continuous, everlasting concrescence; and many process thinkers side with Whitehead on this issue, as do I. My view is that all of time. God's and ours, is much more like concrescence (properly reconceived) than like atomized actual occasions. Concrescence occurs continuously; atomization occurs discretely. Discrete actual occasions supposedly reach a stage of final unified definiteness or "satisfaction" when their internal processing is completed. This achieved definiteness is then hurled at or infused into succeeding occasions as "data" to be assimilated, then further processed by them in light of their own emerging objectives, aims, feelings, and choices.
Most process thinkers accept the theory of discrete or atomized actual occasions within the world, even if not for God; but I, for one, just cannot find any totally discrete atoms of time anywhere; and I am convinced that the conventional process account of the very nature of time must be challenged. We experience becoming, I believe, as continuously (that is, without sharp atomization) exhibiting degrees of unified definiteness, receiving and transmitting data, manifesting ongoing and usually extended-range purposiveness, exercising selection periodically, interweaving and refining feelings, being receptive to novelty and open possibilities, and perishing at some indefinite point. Past moments flow into present moments more like streams than like squirts. Yes, there is perpetual perishing; but past moments penetrate into present moments, and present moments penetrate into future moments, without abrupt atomization. At a very fine-grained level (tenths of a second or less), our conceptual distinctions between past and present, and present and future, are arbitrary. At no absolutely precise experiential point does the past lapse into the present, which then in tum becomes abruptly past to its successor. Receptivity, definiteness, continuity, duration, purposiveness, synthesis, unification, achievement, self-enjoyment, and self-creativity are ongoing features of temporal becoming, the stuff we and God are made of; but time is nowhere sharply atomized into discrete epochs that endure only for a jiffy.
Except for never forgetting the past, God's experience of becoming is not radically different from ours, I believe, with respect to continuous concrescence, persisting creativity, ongoing receptivity and synthesis, constant unity and definiteness, and enduring responsiveness. God constantly assimilates data and value from the world's past and present (God's Consequent Nature) and gives relevant novelty, purpose, and direction back to developing events within the world (God's Superjective Nature). We lose much of the past because our

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capacity for memory is very imperfect; but God's memory, by contrast, is flawless. God assimilates the achieved value of the world without losing the value of its subjective immediacy because God directly experiences our subjective immediacy-something else that orthodox process thought cannot affirm. Our subjective immediacy perishes to us but not to God, who knows it forever as directly as we do fleetingly, and who cherishes it everlastingly. ²⁶ Things become settled and definite for God as they do for us, not abruptly but continuously. At some indefinite point, experiences become definite and past for God, as they do for us. Neither God's nor our own temporality is sharply atomized into completely discrete occasions. God continuously experiences and grows in value-satisfaction in being acted upon by and in acting upon the world; but neither God nor we experience the terminal technical "satisfaction" of the abrupt termination of temporal occasions accepted by most process thinkers. Time just isn't that atomized or abrupt.
As Lewis Ford heavily emphasizes,²⁷ Whitehead's position, widely held, was that God is a single, present, everlasting, active experience (or concrescence, to use the technical word for it) that never reaches final completion, unification, and definiteness (or technically, "satisfaction"). This implies that God's consequent nature cannot influence particulars in the world in any way, for only entities that have achieved final definiteness can exert efficient causal influence on ("objectify" themselves within) other entities. God cannot be prehended or experienced. Ford's latest position, proclaimed in his Transforming Process Theism, retains God's influencing the world primarily ifnot entirely by persuasion, but Ford drops divine influencing through efficient causation from past definiteness into present becoming. Ford's God, like Whitehead's, never achieves "satisfaction" and thus can never be prehended or experienced by us or anything else. Religiously, this is a fatal flaw.
Ford recognizes that the traditional process account of temporal concrescence must be revised; and he proposes that "concrescence" be extended to cover the future. In some mysterious way, God exists in, concresces in, acts in, and dispenses creativity from the future. God provides initial aims and creativity to worldly events through some spooky form of causation from the future. I am convinced that process philosophy's unresolved problems can be best remedied by drastically revising the very notion of temporal concrescence, not in Ford's way, but much more radically than he proposes. Process thinkers, I believe, must go back to square one, reinterpret the very nature of time itself, and give it a radically non-Whiteheadian analysis. The outcome must not deny that process is metaphysically fundamental, and it should save all that can be saved of Whitehead and Hartshorne. Here are some preliminary and admittedly incomplete suggestions about how to do it.
Time is clearly the stuff that reality is made of, but what is time made of? Following Whitehead, most process thinkers identify two distinct types of temporality: (1) transition, the succession of atomized temporal occasions after

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the self-creative becoming of each one ends, its subjective immediacy ceases, it achieves the unity, definiteness, and permanence of being called "satisfaction," and it objectifies what it can of itself for its successor(s) as it perishes; and (2) concrescence, the internal process of becoming of each single atomized occasion, its subjective immediacy, self-creativity, and self-enjoyment in the present moment. Once initiated, the becoming of an immediately present occasion cannot be influenced or experienced by anything outside itself, said Whitehead. Becoming, this second mode of temporality, also involves temporal elements-both duration or temporal thickness and succession. Human level occasions or concrescences endure from a twentieth to a tenth of a second; gluon concrescences that hold quarks together endure for only a trillion trillionth of a second;²⁸ but no occasions are infinitesimally thin.
The elements of concrescence that endure briefly but successively together in their internal becoming are so organically interrelated that they cannot be separated or sub-divided into distinct atomized units like those involved in transition. They are not separate occasions, only components of a single occasion. These inseparable elements, most of which are classified as successive "phases" of becoming or concrescence, can be differentiated conceptually; but they cannot be sub-divided physically or metaphysically.
The successive phases were analyzed "genetically" by Whitehead in slightly different ways in different writings,²⁹ but they involve at least (a) an initial phase in which a nascent occasion both derives data from (prehends) its predecessor(s) and derives its initial aim from God. The received initial aim consists of an awareness of the possibilities or "eternal objects," some quite novel, that it might actualize, as well as a slightly weighted aim, purposiveness, or lure towards the best of these possibilities; (b) an intermediate phase of self-creativity in which it decides for itself what it will be, what real or immediately relevant possibilities it will actualize, best or not; and ( c) a final phase, called the "satisfaction," in which its definiteness and unity are finalized, after which it perishes and infuses what it can of itself into its successors; ( d) the whole becoming of concrescence is characterized by a "subjective form," which is how the occasion feels, processes, integrates, and values its constitutive elements and by (e) creativity, the presumably ubiquitous category by which every occasion is partly self-creative.
The subjective form persisting throughout each occasion provides it with a kind of unity from the outset to the end, but how an occasion reacts to its components gradually develops, grows, and becomes more unified and definite. Subjective forms are thus odd mixtures of unity in variety, of beauty as classically understood. Note carefully that all the elements that define present becoming are modeled on psychology-experiencing data (receiving information), having aims, purposes, attractions, revulsions, feelings, and values, awareness of indefiniteness, alternatives, and choosing among them, as well as discerned duration, unity, and definiteness. In most occasions, Whitehead thought, these

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psychological constituents of time itself merely exist unconsciously; only rarely do they rise to consciousness.
This Whiteheadian model of temporality is wrought with perplexities. For one thing, although the elements composing becoming are drawn from psychological self-awareness, the theory, which pays lip service to faithfulness to experience, does not order these elements accordingly. In lived experience all these elements are like subjective forms-they occur throughout becoming, not sequentially. They pervade our present moments of becoming; they do not follow one another successively in experience.
Another serious difficulty springs from Whitehead's insistence that only at its outset can an actual occasion experience anything outside itself, and only after it perishes can anything outside itself, and including itself, experience it. Only after it achieves the fully unified definiteness of terminal "satisfaction" can anything outside of itself prehend it. Applied to God, a serious theological quandary results. If God is a single everlasting concrescence with no beginning and no end (no satisfaction), it follows logically that God never experiences anything, and nothing else ever experiences God. God never has either an aboriginal beginning or temporal beginnings where data can be received; God also never has endings or "satisfactions" where he can objectify himself for others. Thus, God cannot know us and we cannot know God! What an embarrassment for a theology that revels in God's availability to us and our availability to God! Something has to give.
The Hartshorne/Cobb view that God is an infinitely prolonged society of actual occasions rather than a single everlasting concrescence is initially attractive because from this perspective God has temporal beginnings and endings (satisfactions); thus God can receive data from creation and provide feedback to it. Before you embrace this view, please consider just one of many difficulties with the society of occasions theology. How many divine occasions must occur per second for God to be present at the outset and terminus of a succession of gluon occasions, each of which endures for a trillion trillionth of a second or less? Like most other enduring entities composed of societies of successive occasions, gluon occasions do not all occur in sync; they are not like those rare fireflies that flash simultaneously in perfect harmony. So how densely packed would God's occasions have to be just to cope with all the out-of-sync gluons in existence? How densely packed per second must God's occasions be just to cope with gluons? Now consider all other kinds, durations, and unsynchronized varieties of occasions composing our incredibly complex universe. How dense must a Divine society of actual occasions be in order to be there at the beginning and end of each occasion in the world? The obvious answer is that God's occasions would have to be infinitely dense! God always has to be there doing his job; God can't just flash in and out of existence; God must exist continuously; God has to be an infinitely dense continuum just to cope; God has to be an everlasting concrescence continuously interacting with all creation. God must

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be an infinitely prolonged, infinitely dense continuum; no matter where we cut, God is there. But if God is an everlasting continuous concrescence who acts upon and is acted upon by the world, the very notion of concrescence must be drastically revised.
Applied to ourselves, the requirement that only terminal satisfactions can be experienced means that, despite the vaunted value of subjective immediacy, we can never experience or know ourselves directly and immediately. That is, the occasions that constitute our stream of consciousness cannot know themselves directly and immediately. Process thinkers generally accept Hartshome's view that all introspection is really retrospection on immediately past selfoccasions. This means that we never really know or experience ourselves in the full subjective enjoyment and self-creation of the present moment. We know how we were, but never how we are. Self-enjoyment and self-creativity are gone by the time they are experienced, so these vital values are never really known as such. This is another very good reason for revising the process analysis of the becoming of the present moment. How can anything be remembered (retrospected) if it was never experienced or known in the first place? "Satisfaction" is the most vicious culprit in the standard process analysis of temporal concrescence. As it terminates, every occasion supposedly resolves all its indefiniteness and achieves absolute unity and definiteness. This presumably happens every fraction of a second in human experience, but this is totally at odds both with quantum physics and with our own immediate experiences of temporal becoming.
Quantum physics says that real indefiniteness is a persisting feature of quantum-level physical occurrences, and quantum non-locality involves immediate perceiving and knowing, not temporally ordered retrospection. Indefiniteness of position or locus and velocity are only occasionally and never simultaneously resolved. Wavicles, which cannot be rigidly atomized, may persist through extended periods of time as unresolved sets or superpositions of pure potentialities until their wave functions collapse, according to some quantum physicists. Instead of classical definiteness of "simple location," wavicles are smeared out over small but indefinite regions of the spatiotemporal continuum. Particles are embedded in waves, and waves are embedded in even broader quantum fields. But none of this could be true if every occurrence begins in disarray and ends in completely unified definiteness. Certainly, our own temporally ordered subjective experiences of becoming do not begin or end that way. If all indefiniteness is totally resolved every tenth or so of a second in terminal satisfactions, none could ever be transmitted from one occasion to the next, so no indefiniteness should ever persist in our lives. In reality, our temporal streams of awareness are riddled with all kinds and degrees of enduring disunity and indefiniteness, mixed with persisting unity and definiteness. If Whitehead's theory of becoming-terminating-in-satisfaction were true, we should never experience any lingering perceptual, conceptual, volitional, moti

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vational, or affective confusion, unclarity, ambivalence, ambiguity, or indecisiveness whatsoever. But we do! So Whitehead's theory ofbecoming/concrescence is wrong. To account for the transmission of indefiniteness, we could say that our "satisfactions" end in definite indefiniteness, but Whitehead's account of concrescence cannot be saved by that kind of double talk.
Traditional Whiteheadian models or metaphors for temporality were drawn from two primary sources, our own subjective experience of temporal selfhood and quantum physics. These are the right models, but I doubt that Whiteheadian analysis does real justice to either. My recommendations for reform, especially for rethinking the whole notion of concrescence, will doubtless require refinement, but here is a beginning. (1) The elements of concrescence identified by Whitehead do not follow one another progressively and successively; they are present continuously through every occasion. (2) Occasions within our own streams of consciousness are not analyzable correctly into discrete atoms or epochs of experience; they begin and end indefinitely. (3) The epochal or atomistic model of time that Whitehead abstracted from quantum physics as he knew it is an incomplete and misleading model; he neglected waves and quantum indefiniteness; and non-local immediacy was unknown to him.
(1) In my (our) own immediate experiences of present moments, admittedly durational, the elements that Whitehead adduced to be successive do not occur successively but continuously. They are simultaneously present throughout concrescence,just like subjective forms. Moments of subjective immediacy are continuously and constantly being flooded with data or derived information; these data, feelings about them, valuations of them, and aims with respect to them are continuously present throughout every present moment of self-becoming, along with high degrees of unity and definiteness. These elements don't just occur only at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end respectively of present moments. Temporalistic consciousness continuously synthesizes data, possibilities (thoughts), and feelings into high degrees of unity and definiteness. Furthermore, practically all of this happens almost unconsciously, automatically, and irresistibly; and very little of it can be accurately described as involving conscious choices or voluntary effortfulness. Creative synthesis does not involve intentional creativity. We cannot choose to turn on or off our continuous synthesizing of multiplicity into unity. We cannot control it; it transpires not because of us; it happens to us and maybe even in spite of us. Decisions, properly so described, occur only intermittently, not in every present moment, certainly not every tenth of a second or so. Active synthesis of plurality into unity is always there in consciousness, but not active choosing or voluntary effortfulness. Freedom is intermittent, not ubiquitous. Arriving at a real decision about anything takes a while, and the preliminaries run through many present moments during which deliberations but not decisions occur. At times we actively deliberate, but even that takes a lot of time, not just fractions of a second. Our subjective aims, our plans of life, cover extended periods of time,

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not just the present moment. They do not achieve determinate "satisfaction" every tenth of a second. They exist continuously, not discretely.
High degrees of definiteness and unity run throughout our present moments of subjective immediacy, self-enjoyment, and self-awareness. Decisions, occurring only intermittently but not constantly, do cut things off into memorable definiteness; but unity and definiteness are constantly there to a significant degree, and I am always "satisfied" in that technical sense of the term. Clearly, unity and definiteness do not happen just at the "end" of each present moment. Time is not experienced as a series of oscillations that begin with indefiniteness and end with definiteness. Experienced temporality melds indefiniteness with definiteness throughout; it does not vacillate identifiably between indeterminate beginnings and determinate endings. Present moments don't even have discrete and clearly identifiable beginnings or endings. That brings us to atomization.
(2) Process thinkers should just drop the claims that the elements of concrescence exist successively rather than together, and that temporality, whether divine or in the world, is sharply atomized into discrete occasions. This conceptual theoretical construct, out of touch with all experience, creates all the problems. Our experiences of subjectivity are definitely not so synchronized or atomized. A quantum-like indefiniteness characterizes every present moment of temporal concrescence, experientially. Over the very short term, past, present, and future are not sharply divided or atomized. Instead, they interpenetrate and flow continuously, not abruptly and discretely, into one another. Experientially, we cannot tell with infinitesimal precision where the present ends, the past begins, or the future arrives. Perhaps something like this is what Lewis Ford means by the presence and activity of the future; but over the very short run it makes just as much sense to speak of the presence and activity of the past. Our philosophical theories, including our theories of time, should be grounded in both subjective and scientific experience. Real time, the basic stuff of reality itself, has to resemble experienced time, which is more like a continuum than like atomized squirts, bursts, flashes, pulsations, or epochs. This does not mean that it is infinitely divisible into real parts capable of existing independently of durations; but the boundaries of its real parts, concrescences, are quantum-fuzzy; their durations flow into one another and are not sharply differentiated. Over fractions of a second, indefiniteness separates immediate past, present, and future. This does not mean that experiences and events are not at some point definitively past, over and done with; but we can't tell precisely when because no absolutely precise "when" separates the present from the past or from the future. Rejecting temporal atomism does not mean that no intrinsic causal connectedness exists between events; rather, it makes this intelligible. The energy of one event infuses and flows imperceptibly and directly into the energy of another, and we can tell exactly where one (the temporal cause) ends and another (the temporal effect) begins. The cause is, in part, in the effect.

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Few process thinkers have questioned Whitehead's sharp temporalistic atomism; but his analysis of becoming or internal concrescence confuses our theoretical constructs, Whitehead's constructs, with both temporally ordered experience and reality and thus commits Whitehead's own "fallacy of misplaced concreteness." Theory should coincide with experience. When Hartshorne confronted the substantial discrepancy between our experience of time and the mainstream process theory of time, he conceded, in these words, far too much.

We here confront one of the subtlest problems which event pluralism has to face, that of the apparent continuity of process, its apparent lack of discrete units. Dewey, Bergson, Peirce, all three careful thinkers much interested in the analysis of experience as such (and to them Husserl and Heidegger could, so far as I know, be added), found no definite discreteness in the becoming of human experience. And no process directly exhibited in human experience seems to come in clearly discrete units. Here is a splendid example of a seemingly strong (empirical) case for a philosophical view, a case which is nevertheless inconclusive, and indeed can be opposed by perhaps a still stronger though non-empirical case.³⁰

That the Whiteheadian theory of the very essence of time is radically nonempirical is a devastating admission! The theory fails to agree both with selfawareness or subjective immediacy and with physics, quantum or otherwise.
(3) Whitehead's epochal, atomistic theory of time was at best only incompletely abstracted from quantum physics as he knew it in the 1920s, and, as suggested already, it is definitely at odds with quantum physics as we know it today. Its physical as well as its psychological models for temporal atomization are inadequate and misleading. Contemporary readers familiar with quantum physics understand that it blends indefiniteness with definiteness, particles with waves. The standard Whiteheadian view of time was modeled microscopically on particles alone, not on wavicles. Macroscopically, it was based on successive and discrete bursts and flashes, while ignoring their underlying wavelike constitutions and origins. Actual occasions are atoms or particles, not of space, but of time; each is discrete; and each has a definite beginning, middle, and end. So the theory says, but the theory is wrong.
What would happen if our theory of time gives at least equal weight to the wave model of differentiation? Definiteness (atomization or particularization of sorts) would still be there, but it would be smeared out, have fuzzy edges, and lack simple temporal or spatial location and infinitesimally precise discreteness. Waves have definite peaks and troughs, but they flow almost seamlessly into one another. Like circles, determining exactly where one ends and another begins is quite arbitrary. So it is with actual occasions. We cannot leap from "All energy is transferred only in discrete packets or quanta" to the conclusion that "All energy exists only in discrete particles or quanta," for some energy

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exists as indiscrete waves and encompassing but indefinitely bounded fields, not as discrete particles; and time is like that. We should go back to discussing "events," as in Whitehead's pre-systematic metaphysics, rather than "actual occasions," technically conceived.
Since no concrescences, not just God's, but ours as well, have absolutely discrete beginnings and endings, they cannot be the absolutely closed units that Whitehead took them to be; and the absolutely definite beginnings and endings he required are not the insuperable obstacles to mutual and self experiencing that he took them to be. Past events can penetrate present events sufficiently for efficient causation. Inherited definiteness of data, energy, purposes, and feelings are always and continuously mixed with degrees of openness and indefiniteness. No strictures pertaining to terminal "satisfactions" preclude one event's direct awareness of its own or another's concrescent subjective immediacy because significant degrees of unity and definiteness are always present, and because counting concrescences as "first" then "second" is arbitrary over the very short run. Because something like instantaneous non-locality obtains within events, they can know themselves directly, not merely retrospectively.
All of this should be just as true of divine as of human level concrescences. God's ongoing concrescence never begins or ends absolutely; yet, incredibly significant degrees of unity and definiteness are always present to God. This includes the complete definiteness, the full burden, the total joy and worth of the world that God takes into himself and saves forever without losing the subjective immediacy that we creatures lose to ourselves in the perpetual perishing of time. It is not true that God never experiences anything, and nothing else ever experiences God because God is a single everlasting concrescence with no beginning, no end, and thus no satisfaction. If unity and definiteness define "satisfaction," then God's concrescence is always satisfied, continuously satisfied, to a very high degree in this technical sense; otherwise, if achieved only in terminal satisfactions, God's everlasting concrescence has no unity or definiteness at all. God and nothingness would be indistinguishable!
Nothing, especially God, has the absolute beginnings and endings required by the epochal theory of time. All concrescences, including God's, are highly definite and unified throughout. All concrescences, including God's, can receive information without having absolute beginnings; they can transmit data without having absolute endings. Nothing has to await absolutely terminal satisfactions to experience itself or something else, or to be experienced by something else. God and the world are indeed available and open to one another-continuously. Most process thinkers probably agree with Whitehead that the closedness of concrescences to one another is essential for freedom and self-creation; but this cannot be true if the traditional account of concrescence is flawed from the very outset. (1) Temporal atomism and (2) sequential phases of concrescence just don't exist! For many reasons, our freedom is not overwhelmed by God's presence with and to us in the present moment, contrary to orthodox White

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headianism. God can be sensitively, passively, receptively present as well as actively present; our capacities for including, recognizing, and assimilating God are exceptionally limited even when God is fully available. God values our conscious individuality with its independence and freedom sufficiently to insure that his immediate presence with and to us does not overwhelm us.
Repudiating temporalistic atom ism allows God to know and experience us, not just as we were, not merely after our robust present moments perish, but as we are in the full vibrancy and value of our unique subjective immediacy, selfenjoyment, and self-creativity. This is where our intrinsic value primary resides. To that, God gives objective immortality. Ultimately, we contribute what we are immediately, not must what we were retrospectively, to God. Unhindered by the strictures of technical "satisfactions," which don't exist anyway, God can respond lovingly, providentially, and temporally or historically to particular events within the world as they occur, not in a timeless eternity, not from a nonexistent future, and without having to wait around forever for a Whiteheadian "satisfaction." By reconceiving the present moment of time, all of the religious advantages of process thought can be preserved and can flourish unfettered by untenable and unempirical theoretical distinctions and strictures.

B. Our Freedom and God's Self-Limitation

God is not the sole creative agent operating in the universe; we creatures are free to choose between good and evil. This is an important part of the process resolution of the problem of theodicy-reconciling the reality of a good and powerful God with the brute fact of evil in the world. This theodicy is developed much more fully in the next chapter, but a difficulty that arises in connection with it must be considered here.
If God is not the sole creative agent in the universe, is this because God freely chose to limit his freedom? Or is it because God is impotent to create unfree creatures or to interfere with creaturely freedom? Process thinkers agree that existing realities are partly self-creative, but they may disagree about whether this is so by metaphysical necessity or by divine choice. Mainstream Process Theologians seem to believe that God is merely the final but never the efficient cause of events within the world; but these tenns need to be defined carefully. Some might disagree verbally because they define "efficient" and "final" causation differently. As here understood, Divine efficient causation is God's power to create, infuse, or reorder energy. Divine final causation is God's purposiveness, which includes God's power to present developing spatiotemporal occasions with "initial aims," the set of viable possibilities open to them for both limited and long-tenn self-creation and choice. (But there is nothing "initial" about them!) Mainstream Process Theologians hold that God influences individuals within the world primarily if not entirely by gently persuading or luring them toward the best, by presenting them with aims that are slightly but

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not overwhelmingly weighted toward the good, but never by directly causing or forcing them to conform to the Divine will. Since miracles, by definition, involve Divine efficient causation, and since God never exercises efficient causation, no miracles or acts of God could inject energy directly into the world or redirect it, either at the beginning or subsequently. God never causes or prevents evil because God totally lacks the power to do so. Since God never causes anything, God never causes evil, if that is much consolation!
Although he would not formulate his position in terms of efficient versus final causation as just defined, David Griffin, among others, vigorously defends this dominant process solution to the problem oftheodicy. ³¹ Griffin identifies efficient causation with transition between occasions and final causation with the internal concrescence of occasions, (which unfortunately precludes purposiveness or final causation between occasions); but he also recognizes that final causation involves efficient causation.³² Mainstream process thinkers hold that God simply lacks the power to bring anything about unilaterally, whether good or evil. This implies, fortunately, that we cannot blame God for evil; it also means, unfortunately, that God could never create a universe out of nothing, or work any miracles, or do anything except nag! God works persuasively, at best, but not efficiently, in all natural causation; but since God never reaches "satisfaction," (on non-Hartshomean interpretations), it is difficult to see how God could even work persuasively.
As exemplified in David Griffin's books on theodicy and in various writings by John B. Cobb, Jr., Lewis Ford, Bowman Clarke, and many others, process orthodoxy says that God's power over the world is primarily if not entirely that of final causation, not efficient causation as just defined. They might word the issue differently, but these thinkers clearly hold that God lacks the power to do much of anything except persuade. God influences the world and its denizens by presenting attractive ideals, by "luring" toward the best; but beyond that God seems to do very little, if anything.
Process Theologians say that God shares creativity with the creatures,³³ but this is usually tempered if not contradicted by their insistence that God has no choice in the matter because creativity is a universal metaphysical category that necessarily characterizes all actual entities in all possible worlds.³⁴ This implies, says process orthodoxy, that God absolutely lacks the power to create the deterministic universes in which predestinationists, Newtonians, mechanistic materialists, and others believed. God has no choice but to create co-creative creatures; God simply does not have the power to do otherwise, to create absolutely predetermined events, individuals, or worlds.
I would like to see the options open to Process Theology expanded in many ways. To illustrate, let me flesh out briefly a notion of a supremely worshipful being, a being than whom none better or more worshipful can be conceived, that is much closer in some respects to the non-process tradition. It seems to me, and I recognize enormous room for honest disagreement about

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this, that God would be religiously deficient if he really lacks the power to influence or modify events except through persuasion or final causation, and if he absolutely could not create deterministic universes, however repulsive they might be morally and aesthetically, because he lacks the power to do so and not because they are repulsive.
I regard freedom/creativity as highly desirable, but not as a metaphysically necessary feature of the kind of universe that a truly worshipful Divine being would create. This implies, contra Whitehead and Hartshorne, that creativity/freedom is not a metaphysical category that is universally and necessary present in all possible temporal occasions and universes. Universality and necessity can be separated; creativity could be cosmologically universal in our world but not metaphysically necessary for all possible or conceivable universes. Even if creativity exists contingently in all actual universes, assuming more than one, this is by God's choice, not because of metaphysical necessity. If creativity is ubiquitous in our universe, this is because God freely and voluntarily made it so. Ideally, divine omnipotence involves having the power to create both deterministic and non-deterministic universes, but choosing from goodness rather than from metaphysical necessity to create free creatures. Creativity may not be ubiquitous even within our own universe. It may characterize mainly higher or more complex actual occasions like those in living beings, particularly conscious animals and human beings. Lewis Ford allows that although persisting elemental physical particles like quarks, protons, atoms, and molecules are novel in their individual actuality, they do not exhibit novelty of form. Except for somewhat rare sensitive and creative occasions in the material world, most persisting physical particles just do not have conceptual aims, and do not creatively modify their aims.³⁵
But this means that most elemental physical particles manifest no creativity whatsoever. This may also be true of many of the dull moments of human experience. I suspect that quantum-level wavicles are uncreative most of the time, but periodically they may manifest it. As indicated in Chapter Six, neither we nor an ace predictor like God can tell or predict when individual particles will change orbits, exactly where they will appear next within broad-band orbital shells, which slits they will go through, the directions they will fly when scattered, or which ones will decay and produce atomic radiation. Quantum uncertainty, indeterminateness, and spontaneity widely pervade physical reality; but this does not imply their universal presence. Creativity may be neither metaphysically necessary nor cosmologically universal. Either way, when present it is a precious gift of Divine grace.
As usually conceived by process thinkers, God lacks a kind of power that Kierkegaard and so many others believed to be of immense worth-the power to share power freely and voluntarily rather than necessarily. Wouldn't a being than whom none better can be conceived have that kind of power? Wouldn't a truly worshipful God have efficient as well as final causation at his disposal?

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Shouldn't God be able to do as well as lure? Shouldn't God have the power to create life-supporting universes from nothing, or to work an occasional miracle or two? Ultimately, each of us must answer these questions for ourselves; but many devout and thoughtful people answer affirmatively.
Miracles are another can of worms, I know; and the view I will now express is process heresy. But the "omnipotence as only persuasion" God of process orthodoxy seems to me to resemble too much a celestial George Bush, or some other conspicuous wimp, who espouses noble ideals like kindness and gentleness but never budgets for them or does anything about them except cajole and nag. George Bush was not that President than whom none greater can be conceived, and the God of process orthodoxy is not that Ultimate Reality than whom none greater can be conceived! (This was originally written about "Big Bush," as Rev. Jesse Jackson calls him; but it will probably also apply to "Little Bush." Only time will tell.)
Many traditional theologians and believers think that God has the power to create both free and unfree creatures but actually does the second (predestinationists ); others think that he has that power but actually does the first (freewillists); others try incoherently to have it both ways. Process orthodoxy says that God just doesn't have it, partly because of a power deficit, and partly because all creatures are necessarily free (ubiquitous creativity). Without wanting to have it both ways, I and many others think that God has all consistently conceivable power at his disposal, but God uses it freely and benevolently to create free creatures and the kind of universe required to sustain them. Adopting this view would help immensely in healing the alienation between Process Theologians and more traditional believers; but standard brand process thinkers won't like the suggestion.
The alternative process view of God's power, espoused here, concurs with many critics that the divine power-deficit at the heart of the dominant process outlook is religiously intolerable. Only a God who is not a supercelestial wimp is supremely worthy of human worship, service, and devotion, according to this minority perspective. On this voluntary self-limitation view, God voluntarily limits his own power and chooses to share power/creativity with free creatures. God exercises a desirable balance of both persuasion and efficient causation in relation to events within the world. Values, not metaphysical necessities, determine the balance. God is good, not impotent. Events within the world are partly self-creative because God, who could have created another kind of universe, chose instead from the outset to share creativity with us creatures and thus to limit his own power over and knowledge of the future.
Although God's omnipotence was often equated with omnicausality by Classical Theologians, it can mean instead that although God could predestine all, God actually chooses to influence all without determining all. God voluntarily uses his power to do the best that an omni-influential agent could do, which may include creating universes from scratch and performing infrequent

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miracles, as well as delegating creative power to others. Freedom within creation is a deliberate, gracious, and voluntary gift of divine self-limitation, not an impersonal metaphysical necessity about which God has no choice. Process thinkers can hold the minority view that creativity is general if not universal in our cosmic epoch, perhaps in all others, because God cherishes it and chooses to make it so, not because God had no alternative.³⁶
David Griffin critically discusses and rejects the view that co-creative creatures are free because God voluntarily self-limits his own power. He recognizes that this "hybrid free will defense," as he calls it, is currently supported by such prominent theologians as John Hick, Emil Brunner, and L. Harold DeWolf.³⁷ To this list must be added Arthur Peacocke,³⁸ John Polkinghome,³⁹ Nancey Murphy,⁴⁰ Ian Barbour, Diogenes Allen, and many others who accept Process Theology's emphasis on God's inclusiveness, temporality, sensitivity, affective capacities, persuasiveness, and causal efficaciousness, but who are reluctant to call themselves Process Theologians because they think that Process Theology can make no place for creaturely freedom bestowed by voluntary divine self-limitation. Arthur Peacocke explicitly affirms panentheism, the allinclusiveness of God, and divine self-limitation, while deploring their historical association in the twentieth century with Process Theology, which he repudiates.⁴¹ Ian Barbour says that Process Theology is the best model of God available, while preferring God's voluntary self-limitation in creating co-creative creatures.⁴² I also wish to see God's voluntary self-limitation recognized as a legitimate minority perspective for Process Theologians, even if this implies that many of the technical distinctions in process orthodoxy must be extensively revised or abandoned, especially Whitehead's detailed analysis of the nature of temporal concrescence and its application to God, which few have previously questioned seriously.

C. How Process Theology Can Affinn Creation Ex Nihilo

Many temporalistic theists object to mainstream Process Theology's clear repudiation of the traditional Christian view that God created our universe out of nothing, ex nihilo, at some point in the finite past. They affinn instead that God created our universe out of the chaotic remains of some prior universe or cosmic epoch, which in tum was also created out the chaotic remains of some still earlier universe, and so on to infinity, because every finite actuality was partly created by and out of some prior actuality.
As David Griffin put it, "Creation of our particular world was not initiated by a creation ex nihilo, in the sense of a total absence of finite fonns of actuality, but was a creation out of chaos, out of a less ordered realm of finitude."⁴³ Integrated into Process Theology, the claim that every reality is created partly by and out of antecedent temporal realities (and partly by God) implies that our universe or cosmic epoch is just the latest member of an infinite sequence of

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antecedent universes that God created necessarily because God is necessarily creative, social, loving, and embodied in some universe-ad infinitum. I wish to show that and how we can retain valuable process insights such as that God is necessarily creative, social, loving, and embodied in some actual universe and still affirm creation ex nihilo for our universe. Without relating his metaphysics to recent developments in scientific cosmology, Robert Neville, both a friend and a severe critic of process theology, has previously championed creation ex nihilo.⁴⁴ However, most philosophical-minded Process Theologians have not been able to conceive of a way to get around the principle that all realities are partly created out of prior actualities and still preserve God's necessary creativity, sociality, love, and embodiment. I will show that and how it can be done quite successfully employing concepts that are quite readily available in contemporary Big Bang astrophysics and cosmology, and that reasons given by process thinkers for repudiating creation ex nihi/o can be bypassed. In developing these points, I also hope to show how process thought can relate its insights to contemporary scientific Big Bang Cosmology, and that traditional process thought contains elements out of which a process understanding of creation ex nihilo can be constructed.

i. A New Framework for Understanding Creation Ex Nihilo

In answering the question "Is God Creator Ex Nihilo?'~ on the Process and Faith website, John B. Cobb, Jr. replies that "Whitehead knew nothing of the 'Big Bang' and thought instead of cosmic epochs evolving out of earlier cosmic epochs with no singularities involved. Process theology followed him."⁴⁵ Process thinkers have indeed followed Whitehead in affirming that our universe, our cosmic epoch, was created out of the ashes of some temporally antecedent universe, and that both universes belong within an infinitely prolonged series of created universes that collectively fulfill the necessity of divine creativity, sociality, love, and embodiment. Charles Hartshorne affirmed, admittedly with some hesitation,
That actuality is finite in space I readily believe. It is certainly finite in some respects; for to say otherwise would be to say that everything thinkable was also actual, and this is absurd. But the serious question concerns the past of the creative process. Is there an actually infinite regress of past stages-if nowhere else, then at least in the divine becoming? If not, how can a first stage be either avoided or made intelligible, if every experience must have antecedent objects ... ? So Kant's first antinomy, his most potent argument, stares us in the face. All I can see to do is to reject his disproof of the possibility of an actual infinity .... This question I cannot at present answer to my own complete satisfaction. ⁴⁶

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Hartshorne elsewhere fleshes out his cosmology of finite space and infinite time by linking it to Whitehead's doctrine of cosmic epochs, telling us that "I incline to Whitehead's view of cosmic epochs, each with its own laws."⁴⁷ Presumably all of this means that a series of spatially finite cosmic epochs extends infinitely into the past, and that our universe was created out of the remains of the preceding epoch. The same interpretation must also be placed upon Lewis Ford's "Alternative to Creatio & Nihilo," which affirms: "For if the world is not created from nothing, it can possibly have an infinite past. If every creative act creates itself out of past acts, ad infinitum, the world must have an infinite past"⁴⁸ and upon Cobb and Griffin's "Process theology rejects the notion of creatio ex nihilo, ifthat means creation out of absolute nothingness. Process theology affirms instead a doctrine of creation out of chaos."⁴⁹ Griffin positions this chaos within a temporally ordered set of oscillating universes, explaining that "There was no beginning. The chaos from which our world began can be considered the final state of a previous world. Creation is the gradual bringing of order out of chaos."⁵⁰
How does all of this relate to what is going on in contemporary scientific cosmology? Today, for the most part, cosmology is being done by astrophysicists rather than by philosophers or theologians. As seen in earlier chapters, most of these scientific cosmologists do not believe in God and seem to know little or nothing about process philosophy. They wish to leave the impression that their atheistic cosmological speculations are somehow "scientific," although this is far from being the case, as later explained. Still, for convenience, let us call cosmological speculation being done by astrophysicists and other professional scientists "scientific cosmology." Contemporary scientific cosmology is very diverse. The variety that best correlates with the views of mainstream Process Theologians is Oscillationism, even though process thinkers have not explicitly affirmed it by using the word "Oscillation ism." As explained in Chapter Four, contemporary scientific Oscillationists usually affirm that our universe is but the most recent in a temporally infinite series of cosmic epochs, that it was created entirely, not by God, but by an influx of energy from an antecedently existing universe, that this prior universe originated from its own Big Bang, enlarged to the maximum allowed by the tension between the expansive kinetic energy of its Bang and the constrictive force of its gravity, began to contract after gravity ultimately prevailed, and finally ended in a Big Crunch, from the ashes of which our own Big Bang rebounded.
Most scientific Oscillationists also affirm that the series or set ofBang-toCrunch epochs extends infinitely into the past. They do so primarily because they think that this is a way of avoiding God. As Alan M. MacRobert recognized in Sky and Telescope in 1983, "The idea of an oscillating universe, in which the Big Bang resulted from the recollapse of a previous phase of the

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universe, gained currency merely because it avoided the issue of creation, not because there was the slightest evidence in favor of it."⁵¹
The naivete of the view that an infinitely prolonged natural or spatiotemporal order of things needs no God would be readily apparent to philosophers, from Aquinas to Whitehead and beyond, who understand that an infinitely prolonged universe or set of successive universes would likely lack the complete self-sufficiency essential for naturalistic atheism and would be contingent upon God in many respects. For instance, God could and most likely would be required by each cosmic epoch to squeeze out any residual entropy or chaos inherited from an antecedent epoch, to select desirable laws (especially life supporting ones) for each new universe, and to choose its initial conditions (like the quantity of stuff, energy, or mass in the universe, the strength of the basic physical forces, and the asymmetry of matter over antimatter-or vice versa). Process thought would add that God is essential to provide each spatiotemporal occasion in every epoch with an "initial aim" that includes novel possibilities to be creatively actualized by the choice or initiative of every creature, and that God preserves and cherishes forever in his faultless memory the values created by existing individuals in each cosmic epoch and gives them "objective immortality." Pure Oscillationism, which affirms a single infinitely prolonged strand of successive universes, has some stiff competition in contemporary scientific cosmology. The main competition comes from the many worlds view, or what I call "Big Fizz Cosmology," according to which both time and space are infinitely extended and creative. Space in today's astrophysics is not just nothingness or an empty Ne\\1onian or Kantian form that separates physical objects and processes. As Whitehead recognized, a lot is going on in so called "empty space"⁵² Actual occasions constantly occur there, but they do not consolidate into persisting societies.
As documented in earlier chapters, today's cosmologists are convinced that space itself is a kind of physical something, a field with its own physical properties, its own actualized mass/energy and density. It has a fine-grained foamy texture, best described by the laws of quantum physics; and it can be bent, stretched, shrunk, warped, vibrated, and knotted. The seemingly emptiest spatial regions are seething or bubbling with "virtual particles" awaiting birth or actualization. Scientific-minded cosmologists think that quantum indefiniteness allows these virtual or real potential particles to be converted briefly into actual particles, so long as they promptly cease to exist so as not to violate-for more than an instant-the principle of the conservation or constancy of energy Matter and antimatter particles are constantly being created in empty space; usually they annihilate one another almost immediately, but perhaps not always. The cosmology proposed by highly influential Inflation Theory says that effervescent virtual particles occasionally escape from "empty space" into more enduring actuality, as allowed by the random fluctuations recognized by quan-

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tum theory, and then they inflate into entire universes. This happens more than once; most Inflation Theorists think that it happens an infinite number of times to actualize every possible world. Process thinkers should agree here with Hartshorne (and Leibniz) that the notion of actualizing every possibility is absurd since there are incompossible possibilities within and between every conceivable world. Quantum Cosmologists seem to think that every possibility is actualized, even if it talces an entirely new universe to accommodate each one. Process thinkt:rs dissent, however, on the grounds that for moral and aesthetic reasons, God would not create the innumerable horrible, trivial, or boring worlds that are logically possible.
Our spacetime system, the only one we can observe directly (at least in part), the one whose origins we can trace back to a chaotic Big Bang, originated around 15 billion years ago. All events that compose our spacetime system are causally connected with other events within that system, which is in principle traceable back to the Big Bang. The cause of the Bang itself lies outside our spacetime system; it is transcendent; but it may or may not have been God. Most Quantum Cosmologists, those who apply quantum theory to quantum questions, hold that our universe is but one of infinitely many universes spawned, not by God, but by and from the near-nothingness of quantum-foamy empty space. According to this many worlds Big Fizz inflationary scenario, the relevant infinitely fertile "empty space" is not a part of, does not belong to, our cosmic epoch. Big Fizz Cosmology postulates a transcendent quantum-fizzy Motherspacetime or Superspacetime within which infinitely many child-worlds or universes co-exist in infinitely extended space throughout infinite time. After child worlds are thus spawned, they may or may not then begin to oscillate Let us consider the "many worlds" notion of infinite Superspace that supposedly accommodates an endless number of independently co-existing and spontaneously conceived child universes to see if it can help us to conceive of creation ex nihilo. According to cosmological theories widely accepted today, since infinite Superspace has always existed, it co-exists with infinite Super time. When a spatiotemporally finite universe like ours expands, it pushes into pre-existing Superspacetime, not into absolute nothingness. We have seen that many scientific-minded cosmologists talce all of this stuff very seriously! Developments in contemporary cosmology outlined thus far may strike you as utterly wild speculation, having little or nothing to do with empirical natural science, even if it originates with professional astrophysicists. Indeed, it is just that! All postulated antecedent and contemporary universes, and the infinite Supertime and quantum-foamy Superspace within which they are located, transcend our cosmic epoch and are totally inaccessible to human experience. They exist before and beyond our spacetime system in a time prior to the beginning of our time and in a space beyond and outside of our space, so we can never observe them. They are supernatural realities, if real at all, that transcend our system of nature or spacetime. If they exist, they are supernatural other

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worlds. Even science, if this is science, cannot get along without the supernatural. As philosophical postulates or explanatory hypotheses, their reality (or lack thereof) can be considered and debated-as was done in Chapters Three through Nine. Obviously, any explanatory appeal to realities that transcend our spatiotemporal natural order of things always leaves empirical natural science far behind. Hereafter, "scientific" cosmology will appear in quotes.
So, what does this have to do with creation ex nihilo? The concept of transcendent Superspacetime developed by Big Fizz Cosmologists is purely theoretical and has nothing to do with verifiable natural science, but it may nevertheless be extremely useful to theologians! I began by saying that Process Theologians have been unable to conceive of how to make sense out of creation ex nihilo and still affirm infinite Divine creativity, love, sociality, and embodiment. This is largely because they assumed that finite space is the only possible complement to infinite time. Hartshorne, for instance, says that "The divine actuality so far as I can grasp the relevant concepts, must involve a numerically infinite number of past creatures, but the creation need not, and I think must not, be spatially infinite";⁵³ and he repeatedly asserts the finitude of space while affirming the infinity of time. ⁵⁴ By default, if in no other way, other Process Theologians seem to agree.
What would happen if, contra Hartshorne, the conceptual framework of process theology were expanded to include not only Hartshorne's infinite Supertime, but also the infinite Superspace postulated by so many contemporary "scientific" cosmologists? Here, our objective is simply to extend our way of conceiving of the arena of infinite Divine creativity, love, sociability, and embodiment; and this has nothing to do with verifying propositions about other transcendent worlds, which we mortals could never do. Neither infinite Supertime (previously assumed or affirmed by Process Theology) nor infinite Superspace (hitherto denied by Process Theology) are verifiable by us. Only God could do the job.
Within infinite Divine Superspacetime, God could be infinitely loving, social, embodied, and creative without being tied to a single temporal strand of spatially finite antecedent-and-successive universes. Within infinite Superspace and throughout infinite Supertime, God could create many co-existing universes out of nothing, or nothing more than "empty" Superspace itself; and God could be infinitely creative, social, loving, and embodied in relation to them. No coexisting universes would have to be created out of antecedent universes, although some might be. As God wills, some or all co-existing universes could be completely independent causally of all the others, so the crucial barrier between mainstream process theology and traditional Christian theology would no longer exist.
Divine creation of universes ex nihilo, thus understood, always presupposes other actualities, that is, God's embodiment somewhere in Superspacetime, but actual universes or Divine bodies need not be created out of other

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actualities, such as temporally antecedent universes. Process Theologians can consistently affirm that throughout everlasting Supertime, God may create, as willed, many independently existing universes out of nothing, or the nearnothingness of"empty" Superspace; and if, once initiated, some universes form an oscillating series, this is not true of our universe, which God could have created ex nihilo.
In infinite Superspacetime, all child universes could be so far removed from every other-infinitely far apart if necessary-that they could never contact or causally influence one another or be derived causally from preceding universes. Or, if God wills, some might have tangential contacts with others, being connected perhaps by wonnholes or creative acts of God. Some of these coexisting child universes might even be Heaven, Purgatory, or Hell; and God might be able to figure out how to get us from one to the other! "Beam us over, God!" After we die, God could just reconstitute us in transformed and much improved resurrected bodies (as John Hick suggests) in the spacetime of another world that co-exists with our universe in infinite Superspacetime. Again, the point is just to conceive of such things, to make them intelligible, not to verify or confirm any beliefs we may have about them.
The concept of infinite Superspacetime is neither the Newtonian notion of absolute space and time, nor Einsteinian relativity spacetime. It derives not from classical or relativity physics but from quantum physics applied imaginatively to cosmology. My suggestion that God might recreate an improved edition of us in another co-existing spacetime system is not as un-Whiteheadian as it may seem. If order as we know it is usually a complex emergent achievement from pre-existing order, this could not be true of creation ex nihilo; and even if true, in light of what quantum physicists have discovered about non-local causality, we can no longer assume that all causal influence requires spatiotemporal contiguity or proximity. The telepathy in which Whitehead believed⁵⁵ does not presuppose that. According to quantum physics, what Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" is a reality; and within Superspacetime, that action could transcend local universes. Whether it actually does or not, we do not know. If God is actualized in both infinite Supertime and infinite Superspace, the everlastingness of divine sociality, love, and creativity would not be subverted if a finite universe like ours was created out of nothing about 15 billion years ago. Why should God's everlasting creativity be tied to a single temporal strand of spatially finite universes, of which ours is the most recent member? God could be everlastingly creative in Superspace as well as in Supertime, where particular universes need not emerge from antecedent universes. To reconcile Process Theology with the creation of our universe ex nihilo, we need a concept of Divine Superspacetime as God's sensorium and arena for infinite creativity, as further explained in the following discussion. If my analysis is successful, Process Theology should adopt the view that God's potential embodiment is coextensive with infinite Superspacetime; and God's actual embodiment is

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coextensive with all the worlds God has chosen to make within Superspacetime. God's present body is not confined to our finite Big Bang spacetime epoch, which may or may not have antecedents, depending on the plausibility of Oscillationism.
Taking the general concept of Motherspacetime or Superspacetime from contemporary many worlds Big Fizz Cosmology does not and should not commit Process Theology to much of the unwieldy baggage often attached to it. Process thinkers will want to reject the Principle of Plenitude, so popular with today's "scientific" cosmologists, according to which all possible worlds are actual worlds. Instead, in infinite Superspacetime, God creates all the worlds that he chooses, but not all possible worlds. For many good reasons, God is not driven by the ideal of Plenitude, which requires the creation of all possible worlds. God may have created an infinite number of worlds in Superspacetime, but God understands that infinity cannot be used up and that an infinite number will always remain to be created. God also realizes that many possible worlds are too horrible, or too trivial and boring, to be created at all. As Whitehead noted, "It is not true that God is in all respects infinite. If He were, He would be evil as well as good."⁵⁶ Divine Superspacetime need not be conceived as resembling the quantum-foamy spacetime of our universe, in which actual particle-occasions are constantly emerging spontaneously but briefly from virtuality. Instead, Superspacetime is God's arena for deliberate but selective creativity; and it has all the properties that God wants to give to it, even though we may not know what they are.
Mainstream Process Theologians were unable to conceive of creation ex nihilo because they were wedded, implicitly if not explicitly, to the model of a single strand of spatially finite oscillating universes extending infinitely into the past, each member of which arises causally from both God and from its immediate predecessor. Hartshorne affirmed "an infinity of earlier universes, each produced out of its predecessor, more or less catastrophically or gradually;" but God created them all, including our universe, out of their predecessors.57 This cosmological model precludes the possibility that a universe could arise causally only from God at some point in the finite past-the essence of creation ex nihilo. It assumes that God's infinite creativity was only temporally ordered; but it may also be spatially ordered as Divine Superspacetime, where God might be everlastingly creative of multiple universes that have no causal relations with our system of spacetime; and our system of spacetime could arise directly from God's Superspacetime and creative will alone, without being preceded by antecedent universes. Other universes or cosmic epochs could be "beyond" ours spatially, to use Whitehead's word for it, without being "before" ours temporally, as mainstream Process Theology has assumed.

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ii. Elements of Superspacetime in Process Thought

Elements out of which a theory of Divine Superspacetime can be constructed already exist in Process Theology. In discussing the possible existence of many independent worlds in an essay in Science and Philosophy, Whitehead proposed that and how we might conceive of independently existing universes that have no causal, temporal, or even spatial relations with one another.

We can imagine that, in the realm of existence, there may be an alternative space-time process other than that of nature; but nature and the alternative process do not conjoin to make one process. In fact we are aware of such alternative processes in dreams, where we apprehend a process of events which in respect to nature are nowhere and at no time.⁵⁸

Despite any philosophical problems we might have with Whitehead's dream world analogy, this shows that historically the idea of multiple independent worlds is not entirely alien to process thought. The most effective and trouble-free way to conceive of independent worlds and to relate process theology to contemporary Big Bang Cosmology is to think of other worlds as coexisting, not in dreams, but within Divine Superspacetime, within which some worlds (like ours) could be created deliberately out of nothing, that is, out of the real potentiality and virtuality of genuinely "empty space."
Whitehead was unaware of Big Bang cosmology, as Cobb indicates. Hartshorne, by contrast, was well aware of it; but he neither made a serious and detailed attempt to relate his cosmological commitments to it nor verbally affirmed Oscillationism. However, he clearly had a concept of Divine Supertime, that is, of God's time before (and after) our time, the time of our fifteen billion year old universe. He wrote that:

Certainly someone ought to correlate metaphysics and physics. For instance, even if the supreme reality is a kind of becoming, then it seems there must be a sort of divine time (even Barth says something like this), and the correlation of this with worldly time, as construed by relativity physics, is a neglected and apparently extremely formidable task. Perhaps this is rather a problem in cosmology than in pure metaphysics, cosmology being the application of metaphysical principles to what science reveals as the structure of our "cosmic epoch." Yet unless either physicists or metaphysicians have erred, there must be an at least possible way of harmonizing what the physicists say is true of our cosmic epoch and what metaphysicians say is true of all possible epochs. ⁵⁹

As we have seen, today's "scientific" cosmologists do not restrict themselves only to our epoch, but this just makes them metaphysicians in disguise.

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I suggest that today's metaphysical (and only pseudo-scientific) cosmologists have done Process Theologians a great service in providing us with a concept of Superspace to complement the Supertime that Hartshorne and mainstream Process Theologians postulate to accommodate antecedent cosmic epochs. Superspacetime is the proverbial transcendent space beyond our space and time before our time. Although the concept of Superspacetime originated with infinitely many worlds atheism, it can be united with the process concept of God to form the notion of a Divine Superspacetime, within which both infinite divine creativity and universes created out ofnothing are possible and conceivable. If time and space are inseparable, as process thought and contemporary physics both suggest, then divine Supertime, affirmed by Hartshorne, also implies divine Superspace. Divine Superspace can be more inclusive than the finite space of our own and preceding oscillating epochs; it can embrace other co-existing universes.
Hartshorne likely had only the spacetime of our cosmic epoch (or similar antecedent oscillating epochs) in mind in insisting upon the finitude of space. If so, his insistence on the spatial finitude of our cosmos in no way conflicts with affirming infinite Superspacetime as the ultimate arena for divine creativity. As far as I have been able to determine, Hartshorne does not give a good argument for his insistence that space must be finite. He just affirms spatial finitude without argument, as if it were intuitively certain or obvious, which it clearly is not to contemporary "scientific" cosmologists; but his writings were never informed by the concept of Superspacetime that they have developed. A good argument for the finitude of our space can be given, namely, at or immediately after the onset of the Big Bang, the space of our universe began as finite (slightly larger than a singularity); it has since expanded at a finite rate (the Hubble constant or cosmic expansion rate, plus perhaps a brief exponential but still finite inflation rate); and the expansion has endured for only a finite amount of time (about 15 billion years). From these premises we can conclude that our space is finite. A parallel argument shows that our time is finite and has a "first moment"; but this is perfectly compatible with the idea that our finite spacetime exists within and is expanding into the "empty" quantum-foamy virtuality of infinite Superspacetime, which has no "first moment."
We might conjecture, as suggested to me by Lewis Ford, that Hartshorne would argue for the finitude of space by appealing to the premise that there can be no actualized infinities at all, that such things are unintelligible, from which we could conclude that there can be no actualized infinity of space, that space is finite. Yes, but when reflecting on the far distant past, Hartshorne bites the bullet and reluctantly admits that process thinkers must affirm an actual infinity if they hold that each creaturely event is created out of some other creaturely event-ad infinitum; otherwise one must affirm creation ex nihilo! ⁶⁰ In these passages, Hartshorne clearly affirms an actual, not just a potential, infinity of past events for our world and for God. Anyone who wants to avoid creation ex

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nihilo is logically committed to an actualized infinity and thus must repudiate the above argument that space is finite. As quoted earlier, Cobb says that Process Theologians accept Whitehead's notion of distinct "cosmic epochs." Whitehead invented this terminology, though he was not very specific about its scope. Under the influence of early quantum theory in the 1920s, Whitehead thought that our own cosmic epoch is dominated by electromagnetic energy that exists only in discrete quanta. He defined a "cosmic epoch" as "the widest society of actual entities whose immediate relevance to ourselves is traceable."⁶¹ Our present cosmic epoch can be traced "to an aboriginal disorder, chaotic according to our ideals,"⁶² Whitehead believed; but there are other cosmic epochs "far beyond our immediate cosmic epoch" that are ordered very differently from our own. ⁶³ He knew nothing about Big Bang Cosmology, which was still in its infancy when these words appeared in Process and Reality in 1929; and he did not explain whether his "beyond" is to be construed spatially, temporally, or both. Mainstream process theology has interpreted Whitehead's wording temporally; but "widest" and "beyond" are actually spatial words, not temporal words; he did not say "oldest" or "before." Perhaps Whitehead spoke better than he knew! Or perhaps he knew about Superspace as well as Supertime! Isn't it just his "extensive continuum" construed not simply as the realm of"real potentiality" for our own cosmic epoch, but "in its full generality beyond the present epoch"?⁶⁴ Notice especially his emphasis on potentiality. The in-depth explication of Whitehead's concept of "extensive continuum" by Jorge Luis Nobo is almost perfectly compatible with the understanding presupposed here. ⁶⁵ Whitehead distinguishes this more general extensive continuum from that of our own epoch, which is dominated by societies of electromagnetic occasions.⁶⁶ He describes it as

... a vast nexus extending far beyond our immediate cosmic epoch. It contains in itself other epochs with more particular characteristics incompatible with each other .... We cannot discriminate its other epochs of vigorous order in our own epoch. This ultimate, vast society constitutes the whole environment within which our epoch is set.⁶⁷

Whitehead uses the spatial word "beyond" rather than the temporal word "before" to refer to alternate cosmic epochs. He certainly does not say that our epoch's "whole environment" is merely temporal, as pure Oscillationism would have it. Co-existing universes in infinite Superspace are no more "traceable" by us than antecedent universes in infinite Supertime.

iii. Process Objections to Creation Ex Nihilo

As documented earlier, mainstream Process Theologians have clearly repudiated the traditional Christian belief in creation ex nihilo, and they have given a

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number of reasons for rejecting this belief. With one such reason I wholeheartedly agree, namely, the (Protestant) Bible teaches only that our universe was ordered out of chaos, but not unequivocally that it was created out of nothing. 68 Let us begin with the reasons that John Cobb, Jr. gives in his Process and Faith website discussion of "Is God Creator Ex Nihilo?"
First, Cobb explains, the traditional theology of creation out of nothing reserves the word '"creation' ... for a single act, the one in which the world is brought into being out of nothing." To this he opposes the process view that "God is creatively at work at all times and places." But these positions are not really opposed. Whether Cobb intends to make a historical point or a logical point here is unclear, but much of the hostility of mainstream Process Theologians toward creation out of nothing may issue from confusing historical associations with logical connections. It is true historicaily that traditional Christian theology tended to reserve the word "creation" for God's origination of our universe from nothing, but it did not deny that God is creatively at work at all times and places. It just used other words for God's ongoing creativity, words like "sustaining" the universe and exercising general and special "providence" over and within it.
Traditional concepts of God's sustaining and providential activities were usually qualified by the deterministic or predestinationistic assumption that everything that happens is implicit in creation itself from the very outset, or from the immutable vantage point of God's changeless eternity. Perhaps something like this is what Cobb has in mind. In their Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, Cobb and Griffin raise this more subtle metaphysical objection. They tell us that the doctrine of creation out of absolute nothingness "is part and parcel of the doctrine of God as absolute controller."⁶⁹ Viewed logically rather than historically, creation out of nothing, ongoing creation, and the creation of co-creative creatures are in no way incompatible with one another. Creation out of nothing is logically contradicted by the mainstream process assumption of creation out of something, but not by the notion of God's ongoing creative activity within our world; and God's creating cocreative creatures is logically contradicted by the traditional notion of creating totally programmed non-creative creatures, but not by the notion of God's creating the universe out of nothing. No logical obstacles exist to combining creation ex nihilo with ongoing divine creativity and divine creation of cocreative creatures. Cobb clearly wants to make a logical point when he says in "Is God Creator Ex Nihilo?" that " ... the implication of the doctrine of creation is that God is quite external to the world and the world quite external to God." Closely related is Cobb's charge that creation ex nihilo encouraged "exclusive emphasis on divine transcendence."
Historically, Classical Theologians consistently affirmed God's immanence as omnipresence and made some solemn efforts to take this seriously; so

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it is not entirely true that Classical Theology made God and the world to be totally external to one another. The real difficulty is that what the Classical Theologians gave with one hand, they usually took away with the other. They did indeed characterize the contrast between God and the world so severely (pure being/pure becoming, pure cause/pure effect, spatially extended/incorporeal, and so forth) that the two were "quite external" to and mutually exclusive of one another. ⁷⁰
Does creation out of nothing inevitably involve such catastrophic contrasts? I can't see that it does. The opposition here is between our universe or epoch as caused by both God plus a series of antecedent worlds extending infinitely into the past, and as caused solely by God at the beginning of its own finite past. Both have God as a causal factor; the latter has only God. Necessary and everlasting Divine creativity, sociality, love, and embodiment presuppose the everlasting actualization of other universes somewhere in Superspacetime, but God's creative actualization need not be confined to a single line of temporally ordered and spatially finite cosmic epochs in Supertime, of which ours is the latest member. If, through either metaphysical necessity or God's voluntary self-limitation, the laws of quantum physics apply throughout Superspacetime and its products, and are not limited just to our spacetime and its antecedents, then every actualized universe is grounded in indeterminateness, spontaneity, and creativity,just as process metaphysics affirms. However, there is no logical necessity that "empty" Superspace be quantum-fizzy. A purely Newtonian Superspace is at least logically conceivable and thus possible.
In "ls God Creator Ex Nihilo?" Cobb himself recognizes that "the event in which our universe arose certainly seems to be markedly different from all the subsequent events"; and process metaphysics has its own ways of differentiating between God, the world, and occasions within the world without implying that God, the world, and finite occasions are "quite external" to one another. As we have seen, some Process Theologians believe that God lacks the power to prevent evil, to work miracles, to create a universe out of nothing, or to bring about any effects where "persuasion" is not involved. ⁷¹ But must process thinkers presume that persuasive final causation applies absolutely everywhere? Might there not be some "markedly different" situations, for example, originating universes-creating the mass/energy out of which partly self-creative actual occasions emerge-in which God acts only as an efficient cause without being a final cause in the sense of giving initial aims to occasions that issue from pre-existing societies? Insisting that God, who has his own aims for newly created universes, must be able to persuade everything by imparting initial aims to successive occasions could not apply before the first moment of creation ex nihilo. Before that, nothing exists to be persuaded; the first moment of creation out of nothing succeeds nothing. Beginning with the very first moment, however, something may exist to be persuaded. The absolutely original grandly unified and undifferentiated mass/energy presumed to exist at the very begin-

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ning of our Big Bang might not be susceptible to persuasion; but as soon as it is sufficiently unwound, expanded, and diversified to generate actual occasions, it would. We cannot simply equate physical energy with persuasive creativity; the basic physical conditions that make partly self-creative entities possible must come first. Dictating that persuasion must be exercised even on the non-existence that preceded our Big Bang is an irrational demand, like insisting that circles must be squared. Non-existence cannot be a co-creator with God; but from or very near the outset, a new universe created ex nihilo could be. In his website discussion, Cobb relates the process view of infinitely prolonged ongoing creation to Big Bang Cosmology by indicating that the latter calls for an initial "singularity" from which our universe emerged, and by doubting that this means strictly "out of nothing." About this, at least four points need to be made.
First, singularities are defined as being infinitely small, dense, compressed, hot, and curved; an initial singularity has no magnitude or locus in our spacetime since that is what emerged from the initial singularity. Some versions of Big Bang cosmology really do affirm that our universe emerged from a singularity. Clearly, something infinitely small is absolutely nothing empirically and physically. Not even God could perceive something infinitely small, and nothing can be physical that is absolutely devoid of all spatial properties, having no size at all, because spatial extension is the very definition of the physical. As all modem philosophers agree, "All bodies are extended."
As noted earlier, initial singularities have many problems that make them cosmologically unattractive. In brief, being absolutely nothing empirically and physically is surely one of the most serious difficulties; another is that nonphysical things cannot be physical causes, so an initial singularity does not provide a physical explanation for the origin of our universe. Closely related is the problem that no one knows what would make a singularity explode because no known laws of physics apply to them. Again, cosmic epochs separated by singularities could not belong to a single, continuous, spatiotemporal, causal sequence because space, time, physical causation, and all natural laws break down completely and do not exist in or apply to singularities. Yet again, we could not reason back to singularities separating cosmic epochs, or to earlier epochs themselves, by extrapolating from the natural laws that we know because these laws presuppose spacetime for their application and terminate absolutely at singularities.
Second, Oscillation Cosmology is not bound inextricably to the idea that successive universes arise from and are separated by singularities. Many contemporary Oscillationists agree with Stephen Hawking that quantum effects would prevent a prior universe undergoing gravitational collapse from shrinking to a singularity. According to Big Bounce Oscillationists, a universe or cosmic epoch being terminated by a Big Crunch would rebound from a small finite state of intense compaction into a subsequent cosmic epoch initiated by a Big Bang

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without first proceeding all the way to total collapse into an infinitely condensed singularity.
As Cobb indicates, Whitehead thought "of cosmic epochs evolving out of earlier cosmic epochs with no singularities involved." Process Oscillationists would presumably find Big Bounce Oscillationism very congenial, for it requires no singularities between crunch/bounces. It has its own problems, as indicated in earlier chapters, but by appealing to it Process Oscillation ism could affirm a Big Bang that rebounds from an antecedent universe without having to embrace troublesome singularities.
Third, our universe may not be derived from a singularity or a crunched-up antecedent cosmic epoch at all. If and when singularities form at the end of a Big Crunch, why don't they just stay there forever? No one knows what would cause a singularity to explode. No physical laws that we know could account for it, for all of them break down in singularities. The quantum fluctuations to which Inflationary Cosmology appeals would not do the job because they presuppose the laws of quantum physics, which, along with all other natural Jaws, would also break down in singularities. Inflationary Cosmology does not derive its many worlds from singularities or from crunched-up antecedent universes. Inflation requires just the right kind of quantum-foamy "empty space" in Superspacetime; and singularities and crunches just aren't the right stuff.
For the reasons just given, with or without singularities, Process Cosmology need not and should not give an oscillationistic account of the origin of our universe. The most plausible view is that our world or cosmic epoch was not created out of a preceding universe. Instead it was created out ofnothing (without other-world antecedents) within divine Superspacetime. If our low mass universe is open, as it now appears to be, especially in light of the very recent revolutionary discovery that the rate of Hubble expansion is increasing, not decreasing as previously assumed,⁷² then our universe does not belong within any kind of an oscillating series because all members of such a series must be closed to sustain infinite oscillations.
Fourth, Cobb doubts that the nothingness to which contemporary cosmologist appeal is really nothing. Although singularities are empirically nothing and have many other problems, what about the "empty space" of Superspacetime? Well, it is not a full-fledged antecedent universe, so we are at least that close to creation out of nothing. Superspacetime may but need not have the actualized quantum-foamy physical mass/density that contemporary cosmologists assign to "empty space" within our existing spacetime system; on no empirical or scientific grounds can we infer that Superspacetime is like our universe's quantum-fizzy spacetime "vacuum." It could be closer to a realm of real potentialities than to an actualized energy field. Aside from the co-existing universes that God has created, Superspacetime could consist mainly of potential rather than actual occasions; and nothing is to potentiality as something is to actuality.

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As the everlasting arena for creativity, Divine Superspacetime is God's infinitely extensive potency for creativity and social sensitivity. Its "spontaneity" is God's well-considered selectivity and creativity.
The actualized regions of Divine Superspacetime would contain, not all possible worlds, but only those universes deemed desirable by an infinitely loving Creator. Just how many co-existing worlds there are, if any, only God knows; but at least one universe must exist in perpetuity to satisfy God's loving, social, creative nature and the plausible requirement that all minds are embodied. Any number of successive and/or co-existing universes could come and go, given an infinite amount of time to play with them. Unlike us, God doesn't have to rush to do anything. Presumably, as many universes would co-exist as God freely chooses to be involved with; but only God knows how many.
The view proposed here does not locate God entirely outside of our cosmos. It allows for all the divine immanence that metaphysics and religion find desirable; but it recognizes, as do most Process Theologians, that God's Primordial Nature, comprised of the everlasting and omnipresent features of divinity, transcends our cosmic epoch. It also does not violate Whitehead's "ontological principle," according to which explanatory reasons are always located in actual entities, but not necessarily in actual occasions. ⁷³ God is not located in Superspacetime; rather, it is located in God, the ultimate all-inclusive actual entity, without whom there would be no space, no time, no actuality, no potentiality. Finally, Hartshorne maintained very explicitly that the finitude of past time is inconceivable. After conceding that if we conceive of the past as infinite, what we could know of it is "negligibly small," he then argued,

Conceive of it as finite, and then it seems fairly clear that we never grasp what is meant by a first stage of creation, a process preceded by no process. All our thinking seems to break down at that point. We would have either an effect of an inconceivable cause, or something which simply transcended the causal idea, and hence our concept for explaining concrete things.⁷⁴

In response, we must distinguish the finitude of our spacetime, which is conceivable, from the infinitude of Superspacetime. Creation of our universe ex nihilo does not presume an absolute "process preceded by no process." It presupposes the everlasting processing of Divine creativity, which need not be located solely in oscillationist Supertime but could be expressed in many worlds that either co-exist within and/or are created successively within Divine Superspacetime. If so, God's occasions or experiences of created worlds would always be preceded by other divine occasions or experiences, even ifthe series of occasions that constitute our world originated ex nihilo around fifteen billion years ago. The God of Process Theology can be both the final (purposive), efficient (creating ex nihilo ), and formal (the Divine vision of eternal objects)

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cause of a universe created out of nothing. If efficient causation acts from the past to the present, God's creative act of bringing our world into being out of nothing could be in God's past without being in our world's past. Creation ex nihilo is possible and conceivable without violating the "no process preceded by no process" principle from God's perspective, though it might seem so from a non-process-theism human perspective. If the "all creation" refers to Superspacetime, God could still be "not before all creation but with all creation"⁷⁵ while definitely and necessarily existing "before" the creation of our spacetime system fifteen billion or so years ago.
Is it God as transcendent cause, or the world as an ex nihilo effect, that Hartshorne regards as inconceivable?
If God is everlastingly creative in Superspacetime, God's creation of our universe out of nothing would not be an inconceivable effect of "an inconceivable cause" because God, the cause, really is conceivable, at least in the abstract. Hartshorne has argued extensively and persuasively that we can and do have an abstract concept of God (the cause) without knowing God's full concreteness. The crucial issue is whether a universe caused by God alone is any less conceivable than a universe produced by God out of an antecedent universe. If God is conceivable at all, then a universe caused by God alone would not result from an "inconceivable cause." Perhaps it is inconceivable that a necessarily creative, loving, social, and embodied Supreme Becoming should exist without having created anything to love, but other universes in Superspacetime having no causal relations with our own epoch could fill that bill. Hartshorne's main point could be that a universe created out of nothing would be an inconceivable effect. I contend, and I believe Hartshorne would agree, that the notion of causation as such is broader than that of physical, that is, spatiotemporal, causation. It is the notion of conditions that are either necessary and/or sufficient for producing an effect. Even if, contrary to the absolute incorporeality and timelessness of the classical God, all efficient causal conditions must be in some sense spatiotemporal, then the relevant spatiotemporality for creation ex nihilo could just be transcendent Divine Superspacetime; it need not be the spacetime of an antecedent universe from which our universe was causally derived. Our Big Bang could have been created out of nothing within God's Superspacetime without violating any defensible presupposition of Process Theology.
Thus, subtle and not so subtle replies can be given to the central objections that mainstream Process Theologians have raised against the traditional doctrine of creation ex nihilo. The preceding account of how Process Theology can accommodate creation ex nihilo may need a bit more tweaking and development here and there; but its affirmation would permit Process Theology to avoid alienating those more conventional Christians who are convinced that in the beginning, God created our universe out of nothing.

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In sum, with a few minor revisions, Process Theology is the most religiously viable and rationally intelligible option available to us today. It can be saved from some of its own mistakes like its contention that God cannot know us in our subjective immediacy, that God creates free creatures because creaturely creativity is a metaphysical necessity not a Divine voluntary self-limitation or choice, and that God could not and did not create our universe out of nothing.
Armed now with a better understanding of what it means to exist and a more viable concept of God, whether God exists and whether God caused the Big Bang can now be addresses more intelligibly.

[Notes]

1. See Rem B. Edwards, Reason and Religion (Washington, D. C.: University Press of America, 1979), Ch. 9.
2. See Rem B. Edwards, "The Pagan Dogma of the Absolute Unchangeableness of God," Religious Studies, 14 (1978), pp. 305-314.
3. See Edwards, Reason and Religion, Ch. 8.
4. "The Westminster Confession ofFaith." in The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S. A.): Part I, Book of Confessions (New York: The Office of the General Assembly, 1983), section 6.001.
5. Mark W. Worthing, God, Creation, and Contemporary Physics, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), pp. 70, 78, 195-196.
6. Joel Friedman, "The Natural God: A God Even an Atheist Can Believe In," Zygon, 21 :3 (September 1986), pp. 369-388.
7. Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957),p.107.
8. See Charles Hartshorne, "The Ethics ofContributionism," in Responsibilities to Future Generations: Environmental Ethics, ed. Ernest Partridge (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1981), pp 103-107. See also Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948), pp. 46, 58, 124, 128, 130, 131, 133, 141.
9. Thomas M. Dicken and Rem B. Edwards, Dialogues on Values and Centers of Value: Old Friends, New Thoughts (Amsterdam-New York: Editions Rodopi, in press), Ch. 2, Section 5.
1O. See Rem B. Edwards, "Process Thought and the Spaciness of Mind," Process Studies, 19 (1990), pp. 156--166.
11. See Lewis Ford, Transforming Process Theism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000).
12. Sidney Norton Deane, ed. St. Anselm (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Company, 1954), p. 190.
13. Anton C. Pegis, ed. Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (New York: Random House, 1945), Vol. l, pp. 216 and 226.
14. Dean, St. Anselm, pp. 13-14.
15. "The Westminster Confession of Faith," sect. 6.01 l.
16. "The Shorter Catechism," in The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A): Part l, Book of Confessions (New York: The Office of the General Assembly, 1983 ), sect. 7 .00 l.
17. Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity, pp. 130, 131.
18. "The Westminster Confession," sect. 6.012.
19. David Bohm and B. J. Hiley, The Undivided Universe: An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory (London and New York: Routledge, 1993 ), pp. 218, 220- 221, 230.
20. John A. Jungerman, World in Process: Creativity and Interconnection in the New Physics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 102-103, 113.
21. Bohm and Hiley, The Undivided Universe, p. 375.
22. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (London: Nisbit & Co., 1955), Vol. I, pp. 263. 227.
23. See note 11 above.
24. Robert C. Neville, Creativity and God: A Challenge to Process Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), pp. 51-52, 90-93, 95, 140-141.
25. Ibid., p. 40.
26. See Rem B. Edwards, "The Human Self: An Actual Entity or a Society?" Process Studies, 5:3 (Fall 1975), pp. 195-203; Rem B. Edwards, "Kraus's Boethian Interpretation of Whitehead's God," Process Studies, 11 (Spring 198 l ), pp. 30-34; Rem B. Edwards, "God and Process, " in Logic, God, and Metaphysics, ed. James F. Harris (The Hague: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 45-57.
27. Ford, Transforming Process Theism, passim, but esp. pp. 233-326.
28. Jungerman, World in Process, p. 114.
29. See Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas (New York: The Free Press, pp. 192-195, 210-211, 230-332; Alfred North Whitehead. Process and Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978), pp. 84-87, 212-215.
30. Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophical Method (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court Publishing Co., 1970), p. 192.
31. See David R. Griffin, God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1976); and David R. Griffin, Evil Revisited: Responses and Reconsiderations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 199 l ). Cf David Basinger, Divine Power in Process Theism (Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1988).
32. See Griffin, Evil Revisited: Responses and Reconsiderations, p. 101.
33. Ibid., p. 107.
34. Ibid., p. 119. See also David R. Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 292-293.
35. Ford, Transforming Process Theism, pp. 270-271.
36. See J. Gerald Janzen, "Modes of Power and the Divine Relativity," Encounter, 36:4 (Autumn 1975), pp. 379-406; Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age: Being and Becoming-Natural. Divine. and Human (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993 ), pp. 121-126; and Edwards, "God and Process," pp. 41-57.
37. Griffin, God, Power, and Evil: A Process Theodicy, pp. 174--195, 226, 241.
38. Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), pp. 121-123, 308-311.
39. John Polkinghorne, The Faith of a Physicist (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), pp. 61-71, 85. 151.
40. Nancey Murphy and George F. R. Ellis, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), p. 246.
41. Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age, pp. 370-372, n. 75. 42. Ian Barbour, Religion in an Age of Science (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990), pp. 268-270.
43. David Griffin, ed. Physics and the Ultimate Significance of Time (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986), p. 139.
44. Robert C. Neville, God as Creator (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968); Robert C. Neville, Creativity and God: A Challenge to Process Theology (New York: Seabury Press, 1980), pp. 33-35, 44--46; Robert C. Neville, A Theology Primer (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 28-48.
45. John B. Cobb, Jr., "Is God Creator Ex Nihilo?" Process and Faith website, (July-August, 1999).
46. Charles Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophical Method, p. 125.
47. Charles Hartshorne, "Response to Alston," Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne, eds. John B. Cobb, Jr ., and Franklin I. Gamwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 100.
48. Lewis Ford, "An Alternative to Creatio Ex Nihilo," Religious Studies, 19 (1983), 205-213.
49. John B. Cobb, Jr. and David R. Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition, Philadelphia: Westminster Press. 1976, p. 65.
50. Griffin, Evil Reconsidered, p. 23.
51. Alan M. MacRobert, "Beyond the Big Bang," Sky & Telescope (March 1983), p. 211.
52. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Free Press, 1967, pp. 53-54; Process and Reality (New York: The Free Press, 1978), pp. 177, 199.
53. Charles Hartshorne, "Response to Martin." Existence and Actuality: Conversations with Charles Hartshorne, eds. John B. Cobb, Jr., and Franklin Gamwell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 74.,
54. Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, pp. 30, 125, 126.
55. Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 253, 308.
56. Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1926), p. 153.
57. Charles Hartshorne, Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964), pp. 94, 234, 239.
58. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and Philosophy (Patterson, N.J.: Littlefield. & Adams, 1964), p.144.
59. Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, pp. 53-54.
60. Ibid., pp. 63. 65, 125, 126.
61. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 91.
62. Ibid, p. 95.
63. Ibid., p. 97.
64. Ibid., pp. 66, 97. 288-289.
65. Jorge Luis Nobo, Whitehead's Metaphysics of Extension and Solidarity (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1986), pp. 205-218.
66. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 98.
67. Ibid., p. 97.
68. Edwards, Reason and Religion, p. 172; Lewis S. Ford, The Lure of God: A Biblical Background for Process Theism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1978), p. 21.
69. Cobb and Griffin, Process Theology, p. 64.
70. Edwards, Reason and Religion, p. 175
71. Griffin, Evil Revisited, pp. 24-25, 99-100.
72. Ann K. Finkbeiner, "Cosmic Yardsticks: Supernovae and the Fate of the Universe," Sky & Telescope, 96 (1998), pp. 3~5; James Glanz, "Breakthrough of the Year: Astronomy: Cosmic Motion Revealed," Science, 282 (18 December 1998), pp. 2156--2157; James Glanz, "American Physical Society: Celebrating a Century of Physics, en Masse," Science, 284 (2 April 1999), p. 34. See Chapter Three above, notes 47-59.
73. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 19.
74. Charles Hartshorne, Wisdom as Moderation (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1987), p. 96.
75. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 343.

According to another version of the Strong Anthropic Principle, the Final Anthropic Principle, our universe must exist. Why? Because it helps to create God. Our universe, together with infinitely many others, insures that God will one day come into being. This is its ultimate purpose and reason for being.

1. The Omega Point as the Purpose of the Universe

John Barrow and Frank Tipler develop and defend what they call the "Final Anthropic Principle," ¹ according to which the purpose of our presently Godless universe is to bring about God or the Omega Point. Only gradually do they identify the two, but this is the end result of their reflections, especially Tipler' s. From the future, the Omega Point creates the world, but only after the world creates the Omega Point (if that makes any sense). God creates the world only after the world creates God.
According to Tipler, who identifies himself as an atheist,² God's nonexistence is true now, but it will be false at the end of time when Theism becomes true. Tipler thinks that a godless universe will one day create God. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle culminates with the Omega Point. Tipler most fully develops the idea that the forthcoming Omega Point= God in his The Physics of Immortality, 1994, where he contends that the Omega Point will raise us (or virtual cyberspace computerized emulations of us) from the dead billions of years from now and give our emulations eternal life. ³
Every step in the futuristic pseudo-scientific eschatology of Barrow and Tipler is highly conjectural, unverified, and improbable. Over billions of future years, they believe, biological human life will perish; but it will re-embody itself in computerized robots that will gradually spread throughout the cosmos. Some day computerized humanity will exit planet earth and our solar system in space ships. Self-replicating humanoid or android computers will come to inhabit all of the Milky Way, then move on from there to conquer all other galaxies. Barrow and Tipler remind us that eventually our solar system will cease to support biological life. Our sun has already burned half of its energy and has only five billion years to go. In four billion years, it will expand as a red giant to incinerate all its planets. Eventually, all stars/suns will exhaust their nuclear fuel, and all planets everywhere will become biologically uninhabitable in a cosmic heat death.
After biological human life as we know it is extinct,⁴ intelligent life itself will not end, Barrow and Tipler claim. They define life as "information processing,"⁵ which, by definitional fiat, makes computers both alive and intelligent. (Yet, we must note, so much of the fullness of human reality and value is

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missing!) They insist that "Intelligent machines can be regarded as people. These machines may be our ultimate heirs."⁶ Eventually, we will construct complex robotic computers that can reproduce themselves and survive both the final cold of a closed universe's vast expansion and the final searing heat and pressure of its terminal contraction. In due time, all matter will decay, including protons and magnetic monopoles, so living computers will have to reembody themselves in radiant energy toward the end of the expansion phase. Toward the end of the contraction phase, they will be embodied in matter denser than iron and will endure long periods of hibernation with only fleeting moments of information-processing. Complex intelligent computers will still continue to communicate with one another and to gather information-until they take possession of, and make use of, all the mass/energy in the universe. Fat chance! Similar life or information-collecting processes that include all possible histories are going on in infinitely many co-existing worlds in an all-inclusive Superspacetime. The Final Anthropic Principle agrees that the Principle of Plenitude as objectified in infinite worlds metaphysics caused our Big Bang. As our universe approaches its final singularity, it will merge with infinitely many other worlds that include all possible histories. Collectively, they will possess an infinite amount of information. The final Supersingularity in which infinite worlds merge in Superspacetime is the Omega Point. The whole meaning and purpose of our universe, of every universe, is to generate the Omega Point. Objectively, when the Omega Point is reached, "This is the end"⁷ but subjectively it will not be the end.
The Omega Point will be subjectively immortal because the pace of events will be slowed down so much that time will seem endless; (and presumably the then-Omniscient Omega will be too stupid to realize that it isn't). Barrow and Tipler tell us that "A modem-day theologian might wish to say that the totality of life at the Omega Point is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient!"⁸ In The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, they do not actually say that the Omega Point is God; but since it exemplifies the traditional defining attributes of God, it is not misleading to say that according to the Final Anthropic Principle the purpose of the universe is to make God. Tipler explicitly calls the Omega Point "God" in later writings. ⁹ Like Samuel Alexander, whose Space, Time, and Deity appeared in 1920, Barrow and Tipler predict that some day the universe will create God. Unlike Alexander, they also contend that God created the universe, since the future (God created by the universe) creates the past (God creating the universe). Anthropic Atheism results in Omega Point Theism in the very far distant future; Tipler's God "exists mainly at the end of time." ¹⁰
2. Critique of the Final Anthropic Principle
The incredibly conjectural predictions proffered by Barrow and Tipler make their Final Anthropic Principle (F AP) highly problematic. Not inappropriately,

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one critic, Marvin Gardner, renamed their principle the "Completely Ridiculous Anthropic Principle (CRAP)". ¹¹
A. Unfounded Assumptions
Not one of the following claims made or presupposed by Barrow and Tipler are known to be true, and most of them arc either meaningless, blatantly false, immensely improbable, or logically incoherent.
l. Human beings (or our robot computer descendants) will one day travel to all inhabitable planets in the Milky way and eventually to every galaxy in the universe. This presupposes that:
a. Human minds and bodies can either survive the weightlessness and other adversities of very long-distance space-travel; or they can be perfectly encoded in lightweight computers that can survive such rigors.
b. Human beings will invest heavily in space-research and travel in the future.
c. Cheap and abundant sources of energy for space travel will be available in the future.
d. We and our biological descendants will long survive the enormous genocidal propensities of our species, our unpredictable adventures and misadventures with nuclear energy, our incredibly short-sighted environmental destructiveness, our dabbling with bioterrorism, and our propensity to overpopulate the earth.
e. Many planets throughout the Milky Way and the rest of the cosmos are inhabitable and will provide suitable habitats for our computerized robot descendants.
f. If inhabited, the occupants of other planets will be receptive to computerized humanoid aliens.
g. The native bacterial, viral, chemical, physical, and social occupants of other inhabited planets will not be devastatingly hostile to and destructive of computerized humanoid aliens.
The list could go on and on.
2. Life is nothing but "information processing," which implies that automobiles and all other machines are alive. ¹²
3. Machines (information processing computers) are people; they are (or will be) just as conscious, intelligent, and valuable intrinsically as biochemical, carbon-based human beings.
4. We and our biological descendants can be persuaded that 2. is true, will come to care about the long-term destiny of android computers, and will recognize that the whole meaning of our existence depends on what happens to merged computerized robots billions of years from now.
5. Our universe, and each member of the oscillating set to which it belongs, contains enough mass/energy to close it, so its expansion phase will halt,

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and the terminal Big Crunch will coalesce into the Omega Point. This is also true of infinitely many co-existing worlds and/or oscillating sets of worlds in Superspacetime. The Omega Point will result from the merger of an infinite number of universes that actualize all possibilities.
6. Intelligent computers can survive and function in the extremely hostile physical conditions that will prevail toward the end of the universe's expansion and contraction phases. At the end of time, they and the information they encode can survive the infinite density, timelessness, and spacelessness of the ultimate singularity, the Omega Point.
7. Computers can and will eventually capture and make use of all the mass/energy in the universe and manipulate its evolution.
8. Processes like 1-7 above are going on in infinitely many worlds coexisting with ours in infinite Superspacetime. Infinitely many worlds actualize all possibilities.
9. Near the final state of the Superuniverse, infinitely many computercaptured universes will merge with ours to form the Omega Point. Their contraction phases will somehow coincide with that of our world or its ultimate oscillating successor. Infinitely many universes can and will find ways to contract and merge that preserve and are not destructive of information about every detail of their existence.
10. The duration of the Omega Point will be objectively finite, but it will be subjectively immortal-or too slow and stupid to know that it is mortal!
11. At the end of all spacetime, the Omega Point, God, will become omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. The possible and the probable are not identical, and the logically incoherent is not even possible. None of the above claims are known to be true, and most if not all of them are highly improbable, blatantly false, unintelligible, or otherwise implausible. No attempt will be made here to criticize these claims in depth, but many of these presumptions have been decisively refuted in earlier discussions. The absurdity of this position speaks for itself. Let us consider only two of many insuperable obstacles to the realization of Star Trek, Star Wars, and all fanciful futuristic human space-travel scenarios-the time involved in space-travel, and the incredible quantities of energy required. As Timothy Ferris indicates,

The stars are just too far away: A spacecraft capable of traveling a million miles per hour-and this would be a stunningly fast ship, one that could fly from Earth to Mars in less than an hour-would take nearly three thousand years to reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest star." ¹³

Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light years from us; it actually consists of three stars closely encircling one another; it probably boasts no habitable planets, for any that try to form would be ground to bits by this encirclement.

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In his 1994 book, Tipler concedes all of this, then opts for travel beyond Alpha Centauri to two stars resembling our sun that are 11.3 and 10.7 light years away as the first feasible extra-solar destination. Habitable asteroids might exist along the way, he hopes. Tiny microcomputers could be transported to these stars at 90 percent of the speed of light in only twelve years or so, he claims. ¹⁴ But how and when will we build spaceships that can travel at 90 percent of the speed of light? Surely not in twelve years. Probably never. Building space ships to carry tiny microcomputers is one thing; building them to carry human beings is another. This is where the available energy problem gets serious. Physicist John A. Jungerman tries to bring Trekkies back to sober realism about this. Flying the starship Enterprise to the nearest star at only half the speed of light (much faster than in Ferris's example above) would take eight years one way, but accelerating it to that speed would be absolutely prohibitive. At four million tons of mass, the energy (fuel) required to accelerate the Enterprise to half the speed of light for the trip would be

the energy equivalent of about 10¹⁶ tons of TNT, or ten thousand trillion tons! The nuclear arsenals of all countries contain about twenty billion tons of TNT equivalent. So to put this into perspective, the fuel required for the acceleration to half the speed of light would be the energy equivalent of about five hundred thousand times all the nuclear arsenals of the world. ¹⁵

Jungerman further indicates that when the Enterprise gets to the nearest star, an equal amount of energy will be required to slow the ship down and land it. And this says nothing of fuel required for the return trip! Fictional space warps that allow for overcoming these obvious limitations of space-travel remain "a science fiction dream," Jungerman cautions. ¹⁶ Ferris, Tipler, and Jungerman discuss only space-travel within our galaxy.
Intergalactic travel, the real stuff of science fiction, is conspicuously less feasible. The light we see from the "nearby" Andromeda Galaxy has been traveling (at the speed of light) for over two million years to reach us. If you plan to vacation some day in the Andromeda Galaxy, forget it! Even if you would not age much while traveling at almost the speed of light, assuming you could attain that speed, you would still take over two million earth years to get there. We cannot conceive of the obstacles that are likely to arise or the fuel required for such a trip. The only intelligent space travelers likely to migrate to other solar systems or galaxies will be human-made computers; they won't be us or our biological descendants. Even if a chosen few elite specimens of biological humankind eventually travel to and survive in extraterrestrial environments, most ordinary people (the likes of you and me) will be left behind to suffer the fate of this fragile earth, whatever that fate may be. If we don't make it here, we won't make it anywhere!

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Some futurists paint a much rosier picture of our prospects for space travel. Whether it will ever happen or not is really quite irrelevant to the central issue, which is: Upon what does living a meaningful life depend? Are our lives meaningless if the ultimate destiny of our species is tied to our fragile planet earth, or to our solar system? Are our lives meaningless if neither we nor our biological descendants will ever colonize other planets, first within and then beyond our solar system, and then beyond our galaxy? Is every person's life meaningless unless he or she makes some contribution to space travel and the "terraformation" and colonization of other planets? Some astrophysicists think so, as indicated next.
Suppose, as seems likely, that neither we nor our biological descendants will ever get beyond our solar system, or that even if we do only a tiny number of human beings will ever colonize other planets. Does this mean that most of us live meaningless lives? Suppose that the earth ultimately dies a "heat death" and that this is true of all the other planets that a few elite human beings might ever inhabit. Will it all be for nothing? The answer is "yes" if the worth of our lives depends on endlessly perpetrating our species or contributing to some ultimate transspecies objective. The answer is "No" if our lives have intrinsic meaning and worth here and now.

B. The Meaning and Value of Human Life

Philosophers identify at least two types of value or goodness-intrinsic, and instrumental or extrinsic. An intrinsic good is an end in itself, valuable for its own sake. An extrinsic good is an efficient means to some other goal or value beyond itself. Extrinsic goods have desirable consequences. Systemic goodness-the value of concepts, ideas, and formalities of every description, was recently added to this traditional duality of goodness by Robert S. Hartman. ¹⁷ In considering the value of individual human lives, we must decide whether we have intrinsic worth, extrinsic worth, systemic worth, or some combination of all three.
The word "meaning" may have many different meanings, but it is something conceptual, something systemically good, as is "a meaningful life." Meaningful lives and valuable lives are intimately related. All valuable lives are meaningful, but they are not merely conceptual. Let us specify that human life is meaningful if we can conceptually comprehend and wholeheartedly affirm its intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic worth and can understand how human values are supported by broad social, physical, psychological, cosmological, and metaphysical structures and environments. Support makes little sense unless threats and dangers exist, so these too must be factored into any conceptual scheme that captures the meaning of human life. Metaphysical support for human life will be covered in following chapters. Valuable individual human lives are the concrete realities to which our concepts of"meaningful lives" make reference.

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i. Human Existence as Merely a Means to Something Beyond

Advocates of the Final Anthropic Principle make some commonplace but highly questionable assumptions about the value and meaning of human life; and they incorporate their flawed assumptions into their interpretation of the FAP. Barrow and Tipler suppose that the meaning and value of human life (of all kinds of life, for that matter) lie entirely in its future consequences. This implies that human lives here and now are nothing more than instrumental goods, that our own lives have no inherent or intrinsic meaning and worth at all. The following excerpt expresses this key axiological assumption presupposed by the Final Anthropic Principle. According to Barrow and Tipler,

We know space travel is possible. We argued that even interstellar travel is possible. Thus once space travel begins, there are, in principle, no further physical barriers to prevent Homo sapiens (or our descendants) from eventually expanding to colonize a substantial portion, if not all, of the visible Cosmos. Once this has occurred, it becomes quite reasonable to speculate that the operations of these intelligent beings could begin to affect the large scale evolution of the Universe. If this is true, it would be in this era-in the far future Near the Final State of the Universe-that the true significance of life and intelligence would manifest itself. Present-day life would then have cosmic significance because of what future life may someday accomplish. ¹⁸

If the "true significance" of life and intelligence is manifested only in the very distant future, this means that it has no true significance here and now. If present-day lives have significance only then or as means to then, they have no significance now, except as extrinsic goods. The end to which we are mere means lies billions of years in the future, the Omega Point. But the promise of the Final Anthropic Principle is as hollow as the sign in the bar that says "Free Beer Tomorrow," for tomorrow never comes. Biological human life will be totally extinct for billions if not trillions of years before it has any "true significance." Tipler makes the purely extrinsic or instrumental worth of human life even clearer in a later essay where he asserts that (1) "Value is something connected with life, and thus if value is to remain in the universe, life must persist indefinitely."¹⁹ (2) A universe "in which life (and hence intelligence) and all its works disappeared forever would in my judgment be ultimately meaningless."²⁰ (3) The laws of physics ultimately doom the human species to extinction.²¹ (4) "Humankind's place in the scheme of things is that of an intermediate link."²² (5) The future of life belongs to computers, not to DNA (biological) based life. ²³ In his 1994 book, Tipler adds that the intelligent computers of the future will eventually raise us-or rather, computerized virtual cyberspace emulations of

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us-from the dead; and we will be identical with these virtual emulations. ²⁴ Do you see any problems about personal identity here? Does the Final Anthropic Principle make you feel exploited as a mere means to ends beyond yourself, ends that you do not embrace?

ii. Enduring Grand Objectives

Many science-minded cosmologists feel and express deep anxiety about the meaning and value of human life because, like Barrow and Tipler, they presume that our lives are utterly worthless unless they contribute significantly to the achievement of some Enduring Grand Objective located in the far, far distant future. Unlike Barrow and Tipler, many skeptical or pessimistic cosmologists are convinced that no Enduring Grand Objective like the Omega Point will ever exist. So they despair.
Cosmological pessimists fully comprehend that humankind is destined to perish some day in a hostile cosmic environment, and they are obsessed by an awareness that our lives are extraordinarily tiny and brief within the vastness of cosmic spacetime. They conclude that human life has no value or meaning, and neither does the universe. This sort of cosmological pessimism was well expressed in an often-quoted excerpt from Steven Weinberg's book, The First Three Minutes. According to Weinberg, "Whichever cosmological model proves correct, there is not much comfort in any of this." Reflecting on the beautiful and supportive earthly environment in which we live, Weinberg comments,

It is very hard to realize that all this is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition, and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat. The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless. ²⁵

All twenty seven contemporary cosmologists interviewed by Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer for their Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists were asked to comment on this quotation from Weinberg. ²⁶ Their responses are fascinating! Clearly, many contemporary cosmologists share Weinberg's cosmic pessimism, and he did not change his mind in his more recent Dreams of a Final Theory, 1992.²⁷

iii. Human Insignificance in the Grand Scheme of Things

What should we make of all of this? The universe and our own existence are likely to seem pointless if we make any or all of the following assumptions:
1. No Enduring Grand Objective will ever exist.

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2. Genuine value and meaning correlate with enormous physical size and immense temporal duration or permanence. Little things have little worth!
3. Compared to the universe, individual human lives are indeed small and brief, and all human (and nonhuman) life in this world will eventually be extinguished. Although 3. is true, 2. is not; and I. is irrelevant to the question of the meaning and value of human existence.
Biological human life is indeed spatially tiny and temporally short when compared with the vastness of the spatiotemporal cosmos. Like Weinberg, Stephen Hawking also contrasted the immensity of the universe with "insignificant creatures like ourselves." ²⁸ In the 1990 BBC television program Master of the Universe, Hawking said that

We are such insignificant creatures on a minor planet of a very average star in the outer suburbs of one of a hundred thousand million galaxies. So it is difficult to believe in a God that should care about us or even notice our existence. ²⁹

Many individuals who reflect on our position in the universe seem to equate worth with size. Even the theologian John Hick proclaims that "a naturalistic conclusion" is strongly supported by the "sheer size" of the universe and "humanity's correlatively minute place within its spatial and temporal immensity."³⁰ Victor J. Stenger acquiesces: "So small is humankind" and "So vast is the universe," he laments "The insignificance of humanity is almost impossible for most humans to accept."³¹ "Surely the universe does not care about human existence,"³² Stenger bemoans. Frank Tipler, who locates ultimate meaning in the Omega Point, argues that we humans live "at an exceedingly early time" in the history of the universe, that "Most of life is in the future," and that "It is our relative insignificance in time, not space, which is the real challenge posed by modern cosmology for traditional religion."³³ Temporalistic versions of the insignificance argument focus on how little of the cosmic time line is occupied by living things.³⁴
Cosmologists with this pessimistic mind-set often assume that attributing great worth to individual human beings is merely a human judgment, therefore untrustworthy; but note carefully that the judgment that we do not have great worth is also merely a human judgment! The real problem is that the connection these pessimists assume between size, duration, and significance is all very wrong, both cosmologically ( spatiotemporally) and axiologically ( valuationally ). Cosmologically, Anthropic Cosmologists demonstrate, human life could never evolve in a universe very much smaller or younger than our own. Temporally, producing complex life requires billions of years for generations of supernovae to come and go and billions more for complex forms of life to evolve locally. Spatially, a stable and hospitable solar/planetary system requires vast separa-

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tions between heavenly bodies if life-budding, life-building planets are to avoid being tom out of their orbits by the gravitational effects of passing stars or other planets.³⁵ Spatial versions of the insignificance argument center on how tiny our bodies are in relation to the vastness of space, temporal versions on how briefly we endure within the whole of time.
Axiologically, our species and our individual lives are not insignificant simply because of our relatively limited physical size and duration. Value and meaning in and for our lives do not correlate with or depend upon great magnitude and/or permanence. Our species has existed for only a fraction of the age of the universe. As adults we typically live only seventy years or so, weigh between one and two hundred pounds, are only about six feet tall, and are less than two feet wide. There are exceptions! By comparison with the totality of time and space, we are tiny and trivial indeed; but that is the wrong comparison, a childish comparison, uninformed by the study of value theory. Philosophers tend to be scientifically naive; but scientists doing cosmology tend to be philosophically naive!

iv. The Intrinsic Worth of Human Existence

Philosophers deeply ponder the question of whether anything has intrinsic worth, is valuable in and of itself; and after careful consideration they usually find immense intrinsic worth in human existence. Few philosophically astute value theorists would agree with pessimistic astrophysicists that our speciestypical spatiotemporal limits are incompatible with immense intrinsic worth, for they reject the premise that value depends on immense size and duration. We don't have little worth just because we occupy very little spacetime!
If and when we are not blinded by cosmological magnitude, we can readily appreciate the great intrinsic worth of even small human infants, to say nothing of larger adults. When loving an infant, we realize that within broad limits smallness is no obstacle to great significance. Teilhard de Chardin was right (in part) in affirming that significance depends on the complexity of consciousness. ³⁶ It also depends on the uniqueness of that consciousness, and on properties experienced and actualized by and within that consciousness. Philosophers who reflect deeply on the question usually conclude that nothing has much intrinsic worth, if any, apart from consciousness; but more than mere, pure, or complex consciousness as such is required for life to have meaning and value.
Physically we are tiny, and our lives are short compared to the cosmos as a whole. Yet. we complex, conscious, and unique human beings are immensely if not infinitely valuable or significant in and for ourselves. Our great inherent worth does not depend upon our size, our duration, or upon what we produce in the near or distant future. This is true also of all but the simplest animals, but that is another story, too long to tell at present. We are immensely complex conscious individuated creatures, despite our spatiotemporal limitations. We can

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even comprehend the Big Bang and our place within the universe! Human consciousness and the physiological conditions that support it are incomprehensibly complex. Nothing else in the world known to us matches the intricacy of the human brain. Intrinsic value depends heavily on the enormous complexity and activity of embodied consciousness; and all but the most unfortunate human individuals have it or eventually achieve it. Great intrinsic worth depends on complexity of individuated consciousness; it also requires just the right kinds of intricacy, activity, and contents. But intrinsic value is quite independent of vast physical size and endurance. Some size and endurance are essential for spatiotemporally embodied individuated consciousness, but not vastness.
Intrinsic value is complex. Complex individuated consciousness as well as just the right activities and intensional objects of consciousness are required for great intrinsic worth. Intrinsic human goodness or worth is a synthesis of unrepeatable, unique, individuated consciousness with many additional repeatable concretized universals that are dynamic, conceptual, emotional, affective, and volitional. Many philosophers and other thoughtful persons realize that brain-grounded individuated consciousness can be enriched positively in many repeatable ways. Positive consciousness-enrichers or enhancers include the pursuit and attainment of happiness, knowledge, moral and religious virtues, love, interpersonal intimacy, beauty in art and nature, adventure, creativity in every constructive domain of human interest, and fulfillment of our beneficial or positive capacities, needs, desires, interests, and purposes.
Our worth as conscious individuals does not consist merely in our being instrumental receptacles for the realization of these universal and repeatable abstractions, as many philosophers traditionally assumed. Individuated consciousness is not just a worthless or merely useful bucket into which intrinsically valuable concrete universals may be poured. Individuated consciousness has its own inherent worth; and our fullest intrinsic worth consists of a synthesis of our individuated consciousness with the consciousness-enriching universals just mentioned.
In the existing cosmos, with a bit of luck and many wise choices, consciousness-enriching activities and goods can be and are available to individual human beings in great abundance, despite our spatiotemporal finitude. Embellished by such repeatable good-making properties, complex individual embodied consciousness is immensely and inherently good. It is immensely significant, meaningful, and valuable in and of itself right here and now, even with all its obvious faults and limitations. ³⁷ The universe has a magnificent point simply because we are here, no matter what comes later. For each of us, our being here is a valuable end in itself. Our worth does not depend entirely on our being means to ends beyond ourselves, grand or otherwise.
Enduring Grand Objectives are hypothetical goods that arrive later and last for eons of time if not forever. If our universe and our individual lives have no Enduring Grand Objective, can we or our universe be anything but pointless,

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given the inevitable eventual extinction of our individual lives and of humankind itself? According to pessimists like Weinberg and Hawking, no Enduring Grand Objective will ever arrive, and they despair.
Barrow and Tipler, by contrast, situate the whole point of human existence in their own peculiar Enduring Grand Objective, the Omega Point. Omega will arrive (supposedly) at the end of our (supposedly) closed universe; and it will live happily and omnisciently ever after (subjectively).
Barrow and Tipler are not alone in locating the meaning of human life in some enduring Grand Objective; but grandiose objectives may be conceived in many different ways. Freeman J. Dyson finds our existence to be ultimately meaningful only if and because the existence of intelligent life can be prolonged infinitely in an open universe through radical biological adaptations;³⁸ but this just turns the infinite prolongation of intelligent biological life into another Enduring Grand Objective, another free beer tomorrow that never comes.
For traditional Christianity, the endless survival of individuals after death in Heaven or the Kingdom of God, however conceived, is the Enduring Grand Objective. Most Christians, following St. Paul, assume that life here and now is completely meaningless, an utterly pointless pilgrimage to nowhere, unless there is a resurrection and a Heaven. Heavenly survival after death is the whole point of human existence, without which everything is in vain. Traditional Christianity assumed and taught that life in this world has value and meaning only as a necessary condition for or means to a Grand Existence Beyond this World.
Suppose, however, that no Omega Point will ever arrive; our descendants will never space travel to far distant solar systems and galaxies; the existence of intelligent biological life will not be infinitely prolonged; and we as individuals will not survive after death. Would human life really be worthless, pointless?
All Enduring Grand Objective theories mistakenly locate the meaning and value of human life only or primarily in some distant future Grand Objective that will last indefinitely; but what gives these Enduring Grand Objectives their significance? Nothing more than exactly the same conditions-perhaps intensified, amplified, and prolonged-that make active, individuated, and enriched consciousness so precious here and now! Grand Objectives themselves have value and meaning only to the extent that they epitomize things that are presently valuable and meaningful. If life now is a purely instrumental pilgrimage, life in some glorious future can be only an instrumental means to some even Grander Objective that never comes. If no inherent meaning and goodness now exist, no enduring and glorified future version of it will have any.
Future meaning and goodness make no sense unless meaning and goodness are now available. Even without a "then," intrinsic worth exists now. Individuated conscious life is for living-for itself; and its intrinsic worth lies in living it. The meaning and value of our existence do not depend on some future Enduring Grand Objective, even if there is one. The significance of either

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Heaven or the Final Anthropic Principle is greatly exaggerated, even if something like it is true. What makes the Omega Point so valuable according to Barrow and Tipler? Things like power, presence, and knowledge (omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience)! But we have these and many other excellences now, not in their "omni" form, but sufficiently to make conscious life in this world a great gift, an immense if not an infinite good in, of, to, and for itself. Why are other Enduring Grand Objectives like immensely prolonged intelligent, affective, volitional consciousness in this world or in the next valuable? Isn't it because they contain the very same good-making properties that make our lives here and now so precious-active individuated consciousness enriched by happiness, knowledge, adventure, and their pursuit, by moral and religious virtues of many descriptions, by love, friendship, and other manifestations of interpersonal intimacy, by beauty in nature, society, and the arts, by creativity in every constructive domain of human interest, and by fulfillment of our beneficial capacities, needs, desire, and purposes? Value and significance-making properties and predicates may not be available in the same degree here and now as they would be in those idealized Enduring Grand Objectives in which we continue to survive after death, but they can be and usually are quite sufficient to warrant cherishing our present lives for their own sakes-not just as a means, a pilgrimage, to something beyond themselves.

v. The Meaning and Value of lnfinitely Prolonged Existence

Hell would be infinitely prolonged individuated consciousness devoid of all value-enhancing enrichments including hope, together with the everlasting presence of their bad-making opposites. Its meaninglessness would consist largely in knowing that good-making properties are not and will never be supported by Hell's broad environment. Infinite duration (immortality or resurrection) and infinite complexity or richness in properties as such fail to differentiate Heaven and Hell beyond this life from heaven and hell on earth. Quality of existence matters immensely here and hereafter, not just quantity.
Both quality and quantity (intensity and duration) of consciousness enhancing properties are important; but individuated consciousness can be "enriched" numerically with bad-making properties like misery, authoritarian animosity to knowledge, cowardly adventure-avoidance, innumerable moral and religious vices like hatred, resentment, selfishness, interpersonal insensitivity, philistine revulsion to beauty and the arts, and fulfillment of welfare-destructive interests, desires, and purposes. Quantitative "enrichment" of complex individual consciousness with bad-making properties results in intrinsic disvalue, not intrinsic goodness. Since bad-making properties may in principle be indefinitely prolonged, neither property-richness nor temporal endurance suffice for intrinsic goodness and meaningful existence. Intrinsically good lives involve both

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qualitative and quantitative enrichment of conscious experiences and activities with good-making properties, not bad-making properties; and meaningful lives involve conceptually understanding that the intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic goodness of our lives is supported by our broad environments. Kind as well as number and complexity of properties enter into the constitution of inherent worth and meaningful existence, but vast spatiality or temporality are irrelevant, as are far distant Grand Objectives.
Sheer endurance is really not as valuable as supposed by those who compare our brief lives with the duration of the universe, or who yearn for everlasting survival after death. Sheer immortality or infinite endurance should not be confused with infinite goodness and meaning. According to traditional western religion, immortality-infinite endurance-could co-exist with and consist of nothing but endless evil and senselessness. Hell is forever. Nothing could be worse or more meaningless than everlasting survival, infinite duration, immortality, in a traditional Christian Hell. Hell could be infinitely prolonged and infinitely complex or rich in properties, but Hell nonetheless! How so? As John Stuart Mill maintained, many different qualities of feeling are called "pleasure," and many others are called "pain." The agreeable feelings we derive from reading our favorite authors are qualitatively different from the pleasures of music, dining, sex, or sadism. Likewise, the disagreeable feelings that we get from reading Schopenhauer and Nietzsche (I wanted to say Kant!) are quite distinct from the pains of grief, guilt, loneliness, boredom, emphysema, a bee sting, and/or a severe injury or burn. ³⁹ Consider the relation between pains and endless duration. Mill gave little attention to the topic of qualitatively distinct pains, and he wasted no energy worrying about Hell. But, for the fun of it, let us ask how many different kinds or qualities of pain might exist and consider how a concept of Hell might be constructed from such information. The issues are partly empirical and partly logical. Logically, an infinite number of qualitatively distinct kinds of pain might exist. Hell, says traditional Christianity, is a place of infinite pain in multiple respects. First, Hell could be infinitely rich in distinct qualities of pain; next, each of these could be infinitely intense; finally, all of these combined could endure forever, unrelieved. Working out all the details would give us a modem version of Dante's Divine Comedy and John Milton's Paradise Lost!
So conceived, would the existence of conscious persons enduring infinitely complex and intense pain endlessly in Hell have any positive meaning or intrinsic worth? Surely not! Total extinction would be preferable by far, and part of Hell's misery supposedly lies in the realization, the conceptualization, that extinction is impossible. Hell would be so devoid of hope that it allows for no hope for extinction! A brief moment in such a Hell would be unthinkably horrible, and an infinite duration of it would be infinitely bad, endlessly meaningless. Obviously, immense or endless endurance (immortality) does not necessarily correlate with positive worth and meaning!

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Both Heaven and Hell are at least logically possible as parallel or coexisting universes, but whether or not they actually exist we are not likely to know for sure in this life-unless we are confident that all possible universes are actualized. Still, nothing could be better, more meaningful, than infinite duration or immortality in a traditional Heaven, where individuated conscious existence is supposedly as rich in good-making properties as it can bear-within a totally supportive environment. Perhaps individuated consciousness and its excellencies do not endure forever; but Heaven might be nice anyway, since more of a good thing is generally better than less. To those who say that we would become too bored to want to exist after a vast period of heavenly survival, the proper reply is that we would be happy to try it for a few million years just to find out! Love, kindness, joy, creativity, curiosity, learning, and growth seem to be inexhaustible forever.
To return to the here and now, positive enrichments that make presently existing individuated consciousness so enormously valuable to, for, and in itself also make it instrumentally valuable to other persons (and to God, as explained in the next chapter). Our intrinsic and systemic worth here and now, and our extrinsic helpfulness and usefulness to others, are precious gifts that we contribute ultimately to God, who remembers and cherishes our intrinsic, extrinsic, and systemic worth forever. Others can recognize our intrinsic worth, as we can theirs, and relate respectfully to us as mutual members of a kingdom of ends, a kingdom of God. Our worth to others consists in what we mean to them here and now and the impact that we have on the quality and duration of their lives; but it has nothing to do with spatio temporal vastness, or with an ultimate Omega Point, or with the interminable survival of intelligent biological or cybernetic beings, or with any other Enduring Grand Objective.
Conscious human existence here and now can become intrinsically disvaluable, something to be avoided or eliminated for its own nasty sake. For example, all of a terminally ill person's wakeful moments may be filled with overwhelming and unrelievable suffering, despite medicine's best efforts to provide pain relief, and he or she may beg for a merciful death. Along with many others, I believe that moral duty requires the expeditious and active elimination of such intolerable and immense intrinsic disvalue, especially when death is requested by hopelessly ill persons crushed by unrclievable bodily pain and/or mental distress. With good pain management, fortunately, most suffering is relievable today; but not all. Active voluntary mercy killing is sometimes a moral duty, although not yet legal in most countries. Intrinsic disvalue for individuated consciousness is not mere privation or deficiency in kind or number of properties. It involves the presence of properties that are undesirable and worth avoiding or eliminating for their own nasty sakes-like the excruciating and unrelievable sufferings that maliciously tortured victims, or terminally ill patients, themselves judge to be too horrible to endure.

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If something is intrinsically good, its value does not depend on its consequences, even if they, too, are desirable. Life for us here and now, properly enriched, is an immense intrinsic good; and its inherent meaning and goodness are completely independent of any and all Enduring Grand Objectives or spatiotemporal amplitudes. With or without resettlement ofbiological or computerized human beings on other planets, or a traditional Heaven, or an Anthropic Omega Point, human and animal life can, and usually do, have immense and intrinsic significance and worth in themselves here and now. The goodness or worth of enriched, conscious, individual existence is inherent, in itself, and not merely instrumental. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "My life is for itself and not for a spectacle."⁴⁰
More of a good thing is generally better than less; but more goodness requires more time-for ourselves and/or for posterity. It would be nice to know that our descendants will happily inhabit this good and beautiful earth, rich in life-forms, for many generations. We really are capable of caring deeply about future generations and for non-human species; but do we actually care enough? We tend to be very short-sighted and to consume wantonly, wastefully, and conspicuously the natural resources that future generations, human and nonhuman, will need for worthwhile lives; and we overpopulate the earth with other people who bear the same imperfections. We pollute our supportive environment so much with chemical and nuclear poisons that the earth may be uninhabitable in a few generations by almost everything except cockroaches. Stephen Hawking now believes that the greenhouse effect resulting from human endeavors that spew excessive carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will make the earth uninhabitable in less than a thousand years; and he pushes space travel and colonizing other planets so that a few of us will survive.⁴¹ The trouble is, only a very few can survive this way; most human beings, most of our descendants, will perish with the dying earth. Does a species that befouls its own nest while knowing better really deserve to survive? Does our own species deserve to survive, given our enormous and largely unrestrained propensity to make the earth uninhabitable for our own kind and for all other forms of life? If we are stupid, greedy, and shortsighted enough to contaminate this fabulously beautiful planet earth to the point of uninhabitability, Homo sapiens does not deserve to survive. We must yet prove that we do.
To summarize, the Final Anthropic Principle affirms that infinitely many worlds, including our own, exist for the purpose of bringing about the Omega Point or God. Life and intelligence will gradually spread throughout our cosmos and all others. Biological life will be replaced eventually by computerized, robotized, android intelligence. In the far distant future, all universes, ours included, will merge into the Omega Point, an Ultimate Supercomputer that at the end becomes omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and Divine. The Omega Point includes the full actuality of all possible histories, all possible universes, rolled up into one. Barrow and Tipler make many dubious assumptions concern-

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ing the survival and proliferation of intelligence. Most seriously, they are mistaken about the meaning and value of the lives we now enjoy. They presume that our lives have no immediate intrinsic meaning or worth, and that our true significance will arrive only with the Omega Point-trillions of years after our extinction.
Enduring Grand Objectives are attractive only because they amplify and prolong all the good things that make life here and now meaningful and worthwhile. Because our lives here and now are ends in themselves and not mere means to ends beyond themselves, their true significance is here and now; and the vastness of the universe is irrelevant. The value of life is in living and enriching it-intrinsically, extrinsically, and systemically. The meaning or worth of our existence depends in no way on some remote Enduring Grand Objective, even if one will eventually come to be; but meaning is, or would be, enhanced significantly if and when we know that our worth is supported by our ultimate metaphysical environment, God, in ways explained in the following chapters.

[Notes]

1. John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 23 and Ch. 10. By permission of Oxford University Press.
2. Frank J. Tipler, "The Omega Point as Eschaton: Answers to Pannenberg's Questions for Scientists," Zygon, 24:2 (June 1989), p. 250.
3. Frank J. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality (New York: Anchor Books, 1994).
4. Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, p. 615.
5. Ibid., p. 667.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid., p. 677.
8. Ibid., p. 682, n. 123, and pp. 676--f,77.
9. Frank J. Tipler, "The Omega Point Theory: A Model of an Evolving God," in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology, eds. Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, and George V. Coyne (Vatican City State: Vatical Observatory, 1988), pp. 312-331; and Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, pp. 153-158 and throughout.
1O. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, p. 5.
11. Marvin Gardner, "WAP, SAP, PAP, and FAP," The New York Review of Books, 33 (8 May 1986), p. 25. Cited by Fred W. Hallberg, "Barrow and Tipler's Anthropic Cosmological Principle." Zygon, 23:2 (June 1988), p. 147.
12. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, pp. 124-124.
13. Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1988), p. 371.
14. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, pp. 48-49.
15. John A. Jungerrnan, World in Process: Creativity and Interconnection in the New Physics (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), pp. 27-28.
16. Ibid., p. 28.
17. See Rem B. Edwards, "Systemic Value and Valuation," in Forms of Value and Valuation: Theory and Applications, eds. Rem B. Edwards and John W. Davis (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1991), pp. 37-55.
18. Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, p. 614.
19. Ibid., p. 315.
20. Ibid., p. 316.
21. Tipler, "The Omega Point Theory: A Model of an Evolving God," pp. 316.
327.
22. Ibid., p. 327.
23. Ibid.
24. Tipler, The Physics of Immortality, Ch. 9.
25. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe, Updated Edition (New York: Basic Books. 1988), p. 154.
26. Alan Lightman and Roberta Brawer, Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990).
27. Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), pp. 255 ff.
28. From A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, by Stephen W. Hawking, copyright© 1988, 1996 by Stephen W. Hawking, p. 140. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. and Writers House LLC.
29. Stephen Hawking, in the television program Master of the Universe, broadcast on BBC in 1990.
30. John Hick, The Interpretation of Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), p. 121. 
31. Victor J. Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996), p. 17.
32. Ibid., p. 193.
33. Tipler, "The Omega Point Theory: A Model of an Evolving God," p. 315.
34. See Fred C. Adams and Gregory Laughlin, "The Future of the Universe," Sky & Telescope, 96:2 (August 1998), pp. 32-39.
35. See M. A Corey, God and the New Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), pp. 56--58.
36. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), pp. 226--228.
37. See Rem B. Edwards, "Universals, Individuals, and Intrinsic Good," in Forms of Value and Valuation, eds. Edwards and Davis, pp. 81-104.
38. Freeman J. Dyson, "Time Without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe," Review of Modern Physics, 51 (1979), pp. 447-460.
39. See Rem B. Edwards, Pleasures and Pains: A Theory of Qualitative Hedonism (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979).
40. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance" in The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Edward Waldo Emerson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1903), Vol. 2, p. 53.
41. "Top Scientist Pessimistic for our Survival," Knoxville News Sentinel (3 October 2000), p. A 2.

We live in a remarkable universe. Among possible universes, the fact that our universe is compatible with and supports our existence makes it extraordinary. Any universe in which intelligent creatures like ourselves could exist would be a fabulous universe, for lifeless universes could be produced in an infinite number of ways, but only a few highly contrived ways can produce life-sustaining ones. Some cosmologists claim that there is only one way to make a lifesustaining universe.¹
Except for the Greek and Roman Atomists, most pre-modem thinkers assumed that some kind of special relationship exists between humanity and the universe, that humankind is made for the universe and the universe for humankind. Teleology means purposiveness. Western philosophers and theologians traditionally believed that we live in a purposeful universe, that teleology is an important and conspicuous feature of nature.
Because seventeenth and eighteenth century mechanistic materialists vigorously attacked cosmic teleology, non-teleology became a fundamental presumption of modem science. To exorcize Aristotelian final causes and all other purposes from nature, modem natural science aspires to explain everything in terms of formal causes (natural laws), efficient causes (energy transfers) and material causes (spatially extended entities). Naturalism, as explained in Chapter Two, made anti-teleology a fundamental metaphysical principle. Humanistic Naturalists think that we and similar organisms have purposes, but not the whole of nature, and not some purely fanciful supernatural ground or cause of nature.
Teleology on a small scale inescapably reappears in natural and social sciences like biology and psychology, despite the domination of scientific orthodoxy by naturalistic metaphysics. Teleology also resurfaces on a larger scale in recent cosmology as the Anthropic Principle, so named by the physicist Brandon Carter in 1974. Carter was not the first to notice that the universe is fine-tuned for the emergence of human life, but he first christened this the "Anthropic Principle."²

1. The Anthropic Principle and Cosmic Purpose Without God

Cosmologists are again finding purpose in the universe, but we should not jump to the wrong conclusion. Most of them do not wish to revitalize and embrace a new version of the religious Argument from Design for the existence of God. In fact, most Anthropic Cosmologists are thoroughly atheistic and naturalistic and aspire to show how there can be cosmic teleology without God. Most of them make two fundamental claims: We live in a purposive universe that is

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exquisitely fine-tuned for the production of intelligent life, and God is not required to explain such conspicuous cosmic purposiveness. In their 1988 book, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler thoroughly develop Anthropic Cosmology, explore its history, and defend it against many challenges.³ Additional prominent contributors to the development of Anthropic Cosmology include Brandon Carter, P. C. W. Davies,⁴ Robert H. Dicke,⁵ Freeman Dyson,⁶ Stephen Hawking,⁷ B. J. Carr and Martin Rees,⁸ John Leslie,⁹ and John A. Wheeler.¹⁰
Anthropic Cosmologists do not want to overturn the Copernican revolution and reposition mankind in some privileged position in the center of the universe. They believe that we can have a special place in the universe without being at its physical center. As Barrow and Tipler express it, "Although we do not regard our position in the Universe to be central or special in every way, this does not mean that it cannot be special in any way." ¹¹ Brandon Carter remarks that "Our location in the Universe is necessarily privileged to the extent of being compatible with our existence as observers." ¹²
The purpose of the universe, says Anthropic Cosmology, is to produce complex intelligent fonns oflife, like human life. The word "anthropic" is a bit misleading, suggesting that we human beings are the only complex, intelligent, living things in the universe, that the universe is designed to produce only us; but these intimations are not really intended. This would distance Anthropic Cosmology too far from what many astrophysicists misleadingly call "the Copernican revolution." Copernicus himself did not doubt that God created the universe for mankind, even if our earth orbits the sun rather than vice versa. Anthropic Cosmologists agree that other complex intelligent life fonns may exist on planets in other solar systems. After all, a hundred and fifty billion stars exist in our Milky Way; at least a hundred twenty-five billion other galaxies of equal or greater complexity exist in the observable universe; and intelligent life is very likely to exist elsewhere. The basic chemistry for life is widespread. At the moment, neither the existence oflife outside our solar system nor the degree of its prevalence elsewhere have been con finned; but many planets orbiting other suns have now been located, and many cosmologists are convinced that life is prevalent throughout the universe.¹³

Anthropic Cosmology tends to be excessively anthropocentric only in the sense that it exhibits a definite bias toward intelligence. It assumes that other forms of life less intelligent than ourselves have little if any intrinsic worth, and that intelligence as a value epitomizes even if it doesn't exhaust our own worth. To avoid these errors, a broader Biopic Cosmology is needed, one that recognizes the great intrinsic worth of an immense variety of terrestrial and possible extraterrestrial forms of life, one that is not biased against the non-cognitive dimensions of human and non-human nature. Human life stands at the apex of complex, intelligent, affective, volitional life on earth. Yet, we differ from nonhuman animals only in degree, not in kind. Degrees of intelligence and many

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other traits that make life worth living for its own sake are shared with other terrestrial animals.
According to the Biopic Cosmology advanced in this book, the purpose of the universe is to produce "an immense variety of forms of experience, love, loyalty, enjoyment, responsibility, initiative, creativity, achievement, and satisfaction, even at the price of conflict."¹⁴ These desirable traits enrich and exist only in the lives of concrete conscious individuals, the proper locus of intrinsic worth. Valuable individual lives need be neither anthropic, that is, humanoid, nor carbon-based; but carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen have properties that greatly favor the origin and evolution of life.¹⁵ These elements exist abundantly throughout the universe. For all we know, the purpose of the universe may be fulfilled only on our earth; but this seems unlikely. Spectroscopic analysis discloses that the basic chemistry of the universe is the same throughout; and elements and compounds necessary for the formation of carbon-based lives are widely distributed throughout the universe. Carbon-based living things require hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, and traces of many other elements; but these too are found in ample quantities sufficient for life throughout our galaxy and in myriads of others. Many other special conditions may be necessary for life, so we are admittedly uncertain about the prevalence of life throughout the cosmos. Non-carbonaceous lifeforms are possible, even if carbon specially favors life. Complex non-carbonaceous life-forms are improbable; their existence has not yet been confirmed; but if any exist, the universe is even more suitable for the production of complex and valuable conscious living things than we commonly suspect.
Considering mainly carbon-based life, our universe manifests a huge number of"extraordinarily finely tuned coincidences,"¹⁶ as Barrow and Tipler put it, that seem designed intentionally to create life as we know it. More details of this fine-tuning for life will be given in the next chapter; but we must first examine several meanings of the Anthropic Principle and note that most Anthropic Cosmologists favor only those meanings that exclude Divine foresight, planning, and purpose.
Barrow and Tipler say that the Anthropic Principle has at least three meanings, the first two of which were recognized by Brandon Carter: (1) The Weak Anthropic Principle says nothing more than that we would not be here unless the universe were compatible with our existence. (2) The Strong Anthropic Principle affirms that the universe must produce human or intelligent existence. This "must" generates Theistic, Quantum Observership, and Infinite World-Ensemble (Big Fizz and Big Divide) interpretations. (3) The Final Anthropic Principle says that we exist for the sake of a final Omega Point. Each version has its weaknesses, and the whole enterprise of Anthropic Cosmology is highly controversial. Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists accept either the Weak Principle, the second or third interpretations of the Strong Principle, or the Final Principle, according to which God's non-existence is only temporary.

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They generally reject the theistic interpretation of the Strong Principle that is defended in this and following chapters.
After the Weak Principle is given a metaphysical underpinning, it is indistinguishable from the world-ensemble interpretation of the Strong Principle. Because it adds nothing to it and subtracts nothing from it, the fatal flaws of the former are also ruinous to the latter. Only the Weak World-Ensemble Anthropic Principle, the Strong Quantum Observership Principle, and the Final Anthropic Principle are viable options for Atheistic Anthropic Cosmology; but do they hold up under critical analysis?

2. The Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles

The Weak Anthropic Principle affirms nothing more than that we would not be here ifthe universe were not compatible with and supportive of our existence.¹⁷ Brandon Carter's formulation of the Weak Anthropic Principle says that "What we can expect to observe must be restricted by the conditions necessary for our presence as observers."¹⁸ As Stephen Hawking put it, "We see the universe the way it is because we exist."¹⁹ The Weak Anthropic Principle is not exactly a tautology, though it is occasionally denounced as such. Nevertheless, it is singularly uninformative. It tells us nothing more than that we are here only because the universe is compatible with and supports our existence. It gives no reasons why.
In its purest form, the Weak Anthropic Principle offers no reason for the compatibility between the universe and ourselves. Anthropic Cosmology becomes interesting and informative only when someone tries to explain why we live in a universe that is compatible with and supportive of our existence. Part of the answer is very obvious: if the universe were otherwise, we would not be here asking the question, and Anthropic Cosmologists would not be here concocting the answers. This is so patently obvious and unilluminating that Weak Anthropic Cosmologists usually take further steps. They advance from Weak to Strong. They offer a metaphysical underpinning for the Weak Anthropic Principle-an infinite worlds metaphysics; but this converts the Weak Anthropic Principle into an infinite universe interpretation of the Strong Anthropic Principle. These two options, having become one, will shortly be evaluated together. As Brandon Carter formulated it, the Strong Anthropic Principle says that "The Universe must be such as to admit the creation of observers within it at some stage."²⁰ The emphasis here is on the word "must," but what Carter meant by this is unclear. It suggests that no universe can come into being that lacks intelligent observers altogether, that some observational selection principle excludes universes inhospitable to our kind of life. What could this selection principle be? Barrow and Tipler consider three possibilities.²¹
First, the universe may have been designed deliberately by Divinity, by some "Supercalculating Intellect," as Fred Hoyle expressed it, who intended to

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create and sustain finite, conscious, intelligent beings. Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists like Barrow and Tipler reject this option in favor of the second or third. They are determined to give us teleology without Theism-at least until Omega comes in all its glory.
Second, observers may be necessary to bring the world into being, as claimed by Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics and John A. Wheeler's theory of Quantum Observership (discussed and refuted already), and by the Participatory Anthropic Principle. Third, infinitely many worlds co-existing in Superspacetime would necessitate our existence because they actualize all possibilities. Worlds containing intelligent life are possible worlds, so a few such worlds will be actual if all possibilities are actualized somewhere. We just happen to live in one of these. Some gloves will fit given an infinite number of gloves. No Supercosmic Intelligence is required to explain why we live in a universe in which astonishing cosmic coincidences conspire to produce and support our existence. The Principle of Plenitude insures the existence of infinitely many worlds; supposedly it explains everything, although it really explains nothing. This atheistic infinitely many worlds metaphysics must now be examined carefully. After finding it wanting, the Final Anthropic Principle will be examined and dispose of in the next chapter. Theistic options will fill the concluding chapters Atheistic versions of the Strong Anthropic Principle usually appeal to the existence of infinitely many worlds to explain why, without God, we live a universe that is exquisitely designed to support conscious, intelligent, sensitive life. Given an infinite number of possible universes, most of which are doubtless incompatible with life, why do we live in one that supports life? According to the metaphysical Principle of Plenitude, all possible universes, an infinite number of them, must actually exist. Possibility is identical with actuality. Given an infinite number of diverse universes, at least a few of them will support life accidentally; and we just happen by chance to be in one that does. No God planned it. The shoe fits; but if an infinite number of different shoes exist, at least one is bound to fit. This is almost self-evident; but it is false! At least four infinite universe cosmologies would serve the metaphysical purposes of Atheistic Anthropic Cosmology. First, as in Plasma Cosmology, a single universe may be infinite in space and time and contain an infinite number ofrelatively isolated metagalaxies, most of which are hostile to life, but a few will be randomly life-supporting. We just happen by chance to live in a supportive metagalaxy. Relatively isolated metagalaxies belong to a single spatiotemporal universe presumably because they continue to have causal contact with other metagalaxies along their edges; but these edges may be so far removed from particular observers like us that we cannot detect them. The relative isolation of metagalaxies cannot be complete because, if complete, this option is indistinguishable from Big Fizz or Big Divide world-ensemble cosmology. John Leslie

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points out that many worlds theorists disagree about whether many worlds interact causally.²² If worlds do interact causally in Big Fizz or Big Divide theories, they no longer differ from positions that affirm relatively but not completely isolated metagalaxies in a single universe. This is the old "same universe" quandary all over again.
Second, as in Oscillation Cosmology, an infinite succession of consecutive universes with different laws and initial conditions might exist, being separated temporally rather than spatially from one another. In most cosmic epochs, laws and conditions would be hostile to life; but within an infinite number of diversified tries, a cosmic epoch will occasionally come along that supports life. Periodically, in an infinite number of diversified successive universes, one will be suitable for habitation by conscious, intelligent, living beings like us. We just happen by accident to live in such a one. No observers, astronomers, philosophers, or ordinary people inhabit most of the others. Third, in Big Fizz world-ensemble cosmology, an infinite number of spatially co-existing universes with different laws and initial conditions are promiscuously spawned by Mother Spacetime. Some of these may then oscillate, so this metaphysics may be combined with the preceding. Infinitely many co-existing worlds are completely separated from and have no causal contact with one another in infinite Superspace. Given an infinite number of structurally diverse contemporary universes, most will be incompatible with life; but a few will support life. By chance, we just happen to exist in one of these. In most of the others, no observers, no scientists, and no inquirers wonder about the purpose of the universe. Fourth, in Big Divide many worlds cosmology, every universe branches profusely and indiscriminately into new and otherwise causally isolated parallel universes at every turn of events. All possibilities for every reality are actualized, and it takes an infinite number of universes to make it all happen. When parallel universes face a choice between life and no life, they divide; and at least one universe containing life is created. Given an infinite number of branches, some will be life-supporting. By pure chance we live in a life-supporting offshoot. Our own universe is constantly sprouting new universes that actualize every possibility open to every point of space and every instant of time, but most universes are uninhabited.
By appealing to one or more versions of infinite worlds metaphysics, Atheistic Anthropic Cosmology tries to account for the life-supporting purposiveness of our universe without resorting to an intelligent and purposive God. It offers teleology without theology, a universe fine-tuned for life purely by accident. But which is easier to swallow, an unseen transcendent infinite God, or an unseen transcendent infinity of worlds? Should an intelligent person affirm infinitely many worlds that don't know what they are doing, or an infinite God who knows what he is doing? The following considerations should facilitate a more informed decision.

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3. Critique of Infinite World-Ensemble Teleology

A. Non-Empirical Status

Atheistic interpretations of the Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles do not explain purpose in the universe until they trot out an infinite worlds metaphysics. Unfortunately, we have no direct experiential or legitimate inferential access to even one otherworld, much less an infinite number of them. Given an infinite number of universes, Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists claim, there can be cosmic purpose without God; but there is no good reason to give this, whether it be an infinite number of distant metagalaxies, antecedent universes, disconnected worlds co-existing in Superspacetime, or worlds branching from our existing universe. If quantum theory rejects as empirically meaningless the objective existence of unobservable quantum states, it should also refuse to proliferate unobserved and unobservable quantum and non-quantum worlds ad infinitum.
Barrow and Tipler acknowledge the non-empirical status of an infinite number of metagalaxies and oscillating universes, but they seem blind to the non-empirical status of the infinite world-ensemble (Big Fizz) option that they embrace. Eric Lerner's Plasma Cosmology postulates an infinity of loosely connected metagalaxies. Barrow and Tipler find the same postulate in the publications of G. F. R. Ellis.²³ After briefly explaining his position, Barrow and Tipler say that "It is hard to evaluate this idea any further, but one thing is certain: if it is true then it is certainly not original."²⁴ The theory is indeed hard to evaluate because it is nothing more than sheer fantasy!
Barrow and Tipler are much clearer about the non-empirical status of Oscillation Cosmology, remarking that "It is far from being testable. "²⁵ They fail somehow to see that this is true also of their own infinite world-ensemble metaphysics. If any version of an infinite worlds metaphysics is true, we merely human mortals could never know it; but we have no good reasons for thinking that it is true.
Oscillation Cosmology is not testable, according to Barrow and Tipler. Inconsistently, they later suggest that it actually makes a testable prediction, one that they are unwilling to accept. Given an infinite number of oscillations, if the basic laws and constants of nature change with each bounce,

Sooner or later the geometry would be exchanged for a noncompact structure bound to expand for all future time. The Universe should currently be 'open' destined to expand forever since this state will always be reached after a finite series of oscillations. ²⁶

Barrow and Tipler do not realize that this concession is utterly devastating to Oscillation Cosmology. Every cosmic epoch in an infinite oscillating series is

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preceded by an infinite number of antecedent universes persisting collectively through an infinite past. An infinite amount of time is quite long enough for "sooner or later," so every universe in such a series should be open. For this reason alone, the very idea of an infinite number of antecedent universes is completely untenable.
Our universe's being open or closed is testable, in principle capable of being decided. All we have to do is find out how much mass/energy the entire universe contains. Unfortunately, this is no easy task; but, given what we now know, as explained earlier, the available evidence strongly indicates that we live in an open universe. Because of their theoretical biases, Barrow and Tipler opt for a closed universe. They recognize that an infinite series of oscillating diversified universes eventually achieves a geometry that destines a tenninal member to expand forever; but they still insist that our universe is closed in order to secure their Final Anthropic Principle; only a closed universe can achieve what they think is its ultimate purpose-the Omega Point.
A closed universe is implausible indeed if grounding the Final Anthropic Principle is the best reason that can be given for it, but more about that in the next chapter.

B. The Principle of Plenitude

Weak and Strong World-ensemble Anthropic Principles presuppose the validity of the Principle of Plenitude, or the Principle of Fecundity, as Robert Nozick calls it,²⁷ which says that all possible worlds are actual worlds. Here is the heart of the Atheistic Anthropic position on the cause of our life-producing Big Bang. The existence of our universe is required by the Principle of Plenitude-an abstract, non-empirical, disembodied, supercosmic nonnative principle which necessitates that all possible worlds must be actual worlds. But what grounds and drives this supercosmic compulsion to actualize all possibilities? What gives it the power to actualize its ideal? Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists have no clear answer except that it is not Divine, at least not yet!
The ancestry of the Principle of Plenitude is unquestionably theological. Plenitude is definitely not an empirical principle or a verified discovery of empirical natural science. Arthur Lovejoy, who coined the phrase, classified it as "metaphysical theology."²⁸ Lovejoy traced the principle back to Plato's conviction that the actual world copies every one of, and every possible combination of, the eternal fonns because the richer reality is, the better or more perfect it is, and because the Divine Demiurge would not be good, perfect, complete, and divine unless he actually is or creates everything that he possibly could be or create. ²⁹
As Lovejoy interpreted it, the Platonic Principle of Plenitude requires the existence not only of every possible grade or kind of being, but also of every possible individual at every level, since the fonns combine to constitute indivi

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uals. Plenitudists have wavered on the issue of whether plenitude requires merely that all possible kinds of things be actual, or whether all possible individuals of every kind are also required.
The Greek Atomists hypothesized the existence of infinitely many worlds within the infinite void of space, but Plato and the Medieval theologians who followed him did not derive infinitely many distinct universes from the Principle of Plenitude. They maintained that for both God and the creation to be perfect, God only had to create representatives of all possible compatible kinds, degrees, or levels of being within this one world. So how many continuous grades of being are there? An infinite number, says Lovejoy, though he admits that neither the Greek philosophers who espoused plenitude nor the Medieval theologians who embedded it into Christian theology were always fully aware of its implications; they often combined it with incompatible qualifications.
The levels of being that the Medieval theologians actually identified were very finite; and they, like Plato, subscribed to incompatible premises that prevented infinite plenitude from really adding up to infinity. God in absolute selfsufficiency needs nothing, not even to create, they held; and God's being and goodness are in no way enriched by creation. God creates only what He freely chooses to create, even though Plenitude requires Him to create absolutely everything. Further, a morally good God creates only a morally good world, even though plenitude necessitates the creation of every possible world, no matter how nasty. The good world that God created contains only those kinds of being and those individual beings that are at least roughly harmonious with one another on the whole, but plenitude requires that every possibility be actual, whether harmonious or discordant, whether good or bad.
Traditional Christian theologians through the centuries so restricted the Principle of Plenitude that it did not readily translate into infinite creation. Only God is actually infinite, they held; the created universe, though in some vague sense complete and perfectly ordered from the beginning, is finite. God's plenitude is in himself-an absolute plenitude of being in which there are no unactualized possibilities; but Divine plenitude does not entail creating a truly infinite world or an infinite number of worlds. In himself, quite apart from any and all creation, God is pure being, everything that a perfect being could possibly be, they thought; but God creates only what he wills to create; and he willed to create a finite world which, in the light of modem cosmological knowledge, seems rather paltry.
Before Copernicus and the dawning of modem cosmology, the Christian theologians who espoused plenitude believed that God created a multi-storied finite universe with the earth at is center, surrounded by a finite number of concentric celestial spheres that separate us from God's Heaven. In the closest celestial sphere, a finite number of"wandering stars"-the planets, understood by many to be embodied angels-rotated around the earth. Our sun and moon were classified as planets. In the outermost spheres were the "fixed stars"-

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those we now know to have relatively fixed positions in our Milky Way. Many Medieval theologians thought the fixed stars to be either embodied angels or moved by angels who exist on a higher link in the chain of being. All heavenly bodies were mistakenly thought to rotate around the earth in perfect circular orbits. Non-circles are imperfect, and God created nothing imperfect. God sets the outermost celestial sphere into motion, and everything between there and the earth is moved by other motions in the next highest sphere. Despite plenitude, also affirmed, this great chain of being manifests no infinite regress (thus, God exists) and no infinite continuum of grades of being.
From the beginning of Christian cosmology, and through the Middle Ages, the Principle of Plenitude applied most conspicuously to God in himself; it really did not apply to the created world-even when it did! Christian theologians primarily emphasized the infinite plenitude of Divine Being, not the infinite plenitude of creation. Plato thought that the supreme form of The Good required that all the forms be actualized or copied within creation; and his creative and beneficent Demiurge executed this requirement.
For St. Thomas Aquinas, God in himself is pure being, pure actuality in whom there are no unactualized divine possibilities; but this did not translate into infinitely many created universes, partly because no created things made any internal difference to (had any real or internal relations with) God, and partly because a good God would create only a good world, not all possible evil worlds. Aquinas considered the hypothesis that God created infinitely many worlds because his infinite power³⁰ or goodness³¹ seems to require infinite creativity, but he rejected it for reasons not always very clear or defensible. Still, something that superficially resembles infinite plenitude of creation does appear in Aquinas. He held that the perfection of the finite world requires God to create representatives of innumerably many species or grades of created beings; but Aquinas never says all or infinitely many species. Many things that might exist do not, he insisted, and only those species were created that harmonize on the whole with the existence of other species, especially humankind.³²
Still, we might wonder, as did Lovejoy, why an infinite God, who is everything that he could be, did not create everything that he could create, and why infinitely many degrees of created beings could not exist within one infinite universe. Why and how could God's creativity be limited when God himself is pure, infinite, limitless, actual being in whom there are no unactualized potentialities at all? By affirming repeatedly that God wills to create only that which the divine intellect proposes under the form of goodness, Classical Theologians like St. Thomas Aquinas easily avoided the difficulty that some possible worlds would be so horrible that a morally virtuous God would never create them. The perfection of unqualified plenitude of creation is clearly incompatible with the perfection of moral goodness or righteousness. A benevolent God would not create all possible worlds. The problem of theodicy, addressed in more depth in Chapter

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Eleven, says that whether a good and intelligent God could have created this world of woe is seriously doubtful; but much worse worlds are possible, thus actual somewhere, under the unqualified aegis of the Principle of Plenitude. Historically, the Principle of Plenitude did not originate with empirical natural science. It sprang from a very peculiar but highly influential ancient Greek way of conceiving of divine perfection. Amazingly, despite its lack of empirical origin or justification, the principle is alive and well today among scientific-minded cosmologists. To avoid God, many contemporary Anthropic Cosmologists affirm either a single infinite spatiotemporal universe or an infinite number of universes in time and/or space. Just what differentiates them depends upon how universes are distinguished, as articulated earlier.
The infinite worlds metaphysics of today's Weak and Strong Anthropic Principles is nothing but metaphysical theology without God; yet, without God the whole rationale for it is lost. Unless Plato's ideal of divine perfection is first accepted, we have no good reason to affirm any version of the Principle of Plenitude or the infinity of this or any other universes. Also, many theists have very different concepts or ideals of divine perfection; and Chapter Ten will show how divine perfection may be conceived without Plenitude.

Today's world-ensemble cosmologists presuppose that the disembodied Principle of Plenitude is the ultimate, final, and efficient cause of our lifeproducing Big Bang, just as it is the ultimate cause of every other universe, an infinite number of them. What caused the Big Bang? The Principle of Plenitude! Yet, we have no good reasons to believe that disembodied, abstract principles are anything more than impotent Aristotelian formal or final causes. The main difference between Aristotelian and Platonic approaches to metaphysics is that Platonists think that universals, including abstract principles, can and do exist and exercise efficient causation without being located or embodied in actual entities. By contrast, Aristotelians are persuaded that universals exist only in actual individuals and that abstract principles can be causally effective only through embodied conscious individuals who understand and act upon them. On this issue, experience always favors the Aristotelian approach. Experience never supports Platonism. That is quite enough to make the Aristotelian view, but not the Platonic, rationally warranted.
In his brilliant book, Universes, John Leslie gives a highly persuasive Anthropic Argument from Design for the existence of God; but by "God" Leslie does not mean an actual personal conscious mind who understands and acts knowingly and deliberately upon abstract principles. Instead, he defines "God" as nothing more than an abstract Neoplatonic principle. For him, God is

the creatively effective ethical requirement that there be a good universe or universes. Or again he is the Principle that the ethical need for a universe or universes is itself responsible for the actual existence of that universe or those universes.³³

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But who or what has this need? Nothing; no one!
If"there is," as Leslie says, an ethical need for infinitely many universes, his Neoplatonic God is nothing but the abstract Platonic Principle of Plenitude, except that unrestricted plenitude entails both bad and good universes, since it supposedly produces all possible universes. In response to the objection that his theology provides no mechanism by which ethical needs produce their effects, Leslie explains that "Neoplatonism is the view that ethical needs are themselves creatively effective, unaided by any mechanism. "³⁴
No Aristotelian or Whiteheadian metaphysician would be convinced! Alfred North Whitehead's "Ontological Principle" says that
The reasons for things are always to be found in the composite nature of definite actual entities-in the nature of God for reasons of the highest absoluteness, and in the nature of definite temporal actual entities for reasons which refer to a particular environment.³⁵
If Aristotle and Whitehead are right, disembodied normative principles cannot be efficient causes of anything, much less of universes. Only definite actual entities like human beings or an embodied personal God can understand and act knowingly on normative principles to make them efficacious. Principles themselves are only formal causes; they cannot act by themselves. Abstract principles have no needs at all, especially no ethical needs for life-supporting universes. This Aristotelian/Whiteheadian position is universally confirmed by experience. This is really all that needs to be said for it-and against Platonism. M.A. Corey protests that Process Theists cannot affirm that God unilaterally determined the initial conditions of the universe so that they would be suitable for the later evolution of complex forms of life because these initial conditions themselves would have been free to resist the divine will, and some would have done so.³⁶ This spurious objection also treats abstractions-the laws of physics, the constants of nature, and the aggregate quantity of initially undifferentiated mass/ energy in the nascent universe-as if they were concrete individuals capable of making choices; but no process thinker would so regard them.
In fact, since the reasons for things must always be traced back to individual entities, and since God is the only individual entity capable of determining the initial conditions that govern and limit all lesser individual entities, we could and should expect God to set the initial limits for all creation. Disembodied, unindividuated abstractions can neither resist the will of God nor actualize any possibilities, much less all of them. Impersonal aggregates like door knobs and just-created, pure, undifferentiated, grandly-unified energy have no consciousness or freedom to resist God's will, just as impersonal principles have no power to accomplish anything by themselves. Ethical needs for good universes, or for all possible universes, must exist in some actual entity, if they exist at all; but these needs are not compatible with one another.

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C. Infinity = All Possibilities

Let us grant for the sake of the argument that the Principle of Plenitude might be the efficient cause of whole universes, either temporally as an infinite linear series of oscillating worlds, or spatially as an infinite number of co-existing worlds, or both. Fully deployed, this principle demands the existence of an infinite world or number of worlds in which every possible grade of reality, every possible individual entity, and all possible qualities and relations are actualized. In physical terms, this principle necessitates the realization of every possible quantity, quality, kind, and combination of mass/energy. Each tiny variation calls for a whole new universe in which everything else in the universe has a new relationship with that variation, no matter how minute. Oscillation Cosmologies express the temporal alternative; and co-existing universes in Big Fizz and Big Divide Cosmologies express the spatial option, which may be combined with the temporal.
Logically, a single temporal series of oscillating universes can never absolutely fulfill Plenitude of Creation, for an infinite number of spatially coexisting universes are also possible; but neither can Mother Spacetime's Big Fizz, for possibly only a single temporal strand of oscillating universes exists. Many possible worlds and combinations of them exclude other possible worlds and combinations. Absolute plenitude of creation is utterly unintelligible! We have no good reasons to believe in any other worlds, much less infinitely many of them. More seriously, even if infinitely many universes exist, infinity as such does not explain why we live in a life-supporting universe, despite what most atheistic cosmologists assume. Why must an infinitely prolonged spatial or temporal series of worlds actualize all possibilities, or even all logically compatible possibilities? Plato's God and the God of classical western theology supposedly, but not always consistently, actualized all possibilities knowingly and deliberately; but would infinity alone do so in the absence of Divine Agency, as Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists contend? No, for infinite numbers alone do not necessitate or entail endless categorial, individual, qualitative, and relational diversity, despite what most atheistic philosophers and astrophysicists think. We must take a careful look at this last great unchallenged dogma of unwarranted metaphysics.
By assuming finite matter enduring for infinite time, David Hume tried to escape the theological implications of the Argument from Design by arguing: Instead of supposing matter infinite, as Epicurus did; let us suppose it finite. A finite number of particles is only susceptible to finite transpositions: and it must happen, in an eternal duration, that every possible order or position must be tried an infinite number of times. Innumerable revolutions produce at last some forms, whose parts and organs are so adjusted as to support the forms amidst a continued succession of matter.³⁷

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What insures that Hume's "innumerable revolutions" will all be different, instead of just being endless repetitions of lifeless sameness? Finite matter existing for infinite time cannot by itself insure infinite diversity. A universe composed of a single hydrogen atom enduring from everlasting to everlasting would fulfill Hume's suppositions. It is a logically possible world, but clearly it would never produce any diversity at all. Neither would a universe of two hydrogen atoms, or three, or four, or many more. All these are logically possible Humean universes. At exactly what point would the addition of finite materiality result in the actualization of infinite diversity? None!
Suppose that infinite quantities of matter exists for infinite time and/or throughout infinite Superspace. Would this insure infinite diversity? Would it necessitate that every possible world, relationship, quality, and individual be actualized? For some theologians, God intentionally makes it so, as Lovejoy points out; Divine perfection deliberately diversifies universes and thereby insures the existence of every good kind and degree of being, but not all possible imperfections. Perhaps divine perfection, Pure Being for and in whom no unactualized possibilities exist, deliberately diversifies universes and guarantees an infinite variety of actual individuals, qualities, relationships, and degrees of being. Hume's disproof of the existence of a purposive God tacitly appeals to a metaphysical principle that requires God, who can supply diversity when sheer numbers cannot!
For Atheistic Anthropic Cosmology, what insures that every possibility is actualized in infinite time and/or space? No one, including David Hume, really knows that time or space are infinite, but let us grant this groundless assumption for the sake of the argument. Infinite time and/or space alone would not insure that every finite combination of individuals and forms will inevitably be actualized because: i. This presumption confuses two very different things-numerical spatiotemporal infinity, with an infinite variety of classes, individuals, qualities, and relationships. ii. It clearly lacks a Principle or Agent of Diversification. iii. It definitely confuses infinite possibilities with all possibilities. iv. It mistakenly assumes that infinity would eventually use up all lifeless universes. v. And the very idea of actualizing all possibilities is logically incoherent.

i. Infinity Is Not Infinite Diversity

The assumption that all possibilities must be actualized in infinite time or space may confuse different orders of infinity. Georg Cantor discovered different orders of infinity, some of which are richer than others. The members of a denumerably infinite set can be put in one to one correspondence with the set of whole numbers, but a nondenumerably infinite set is so rich that its members exceed the set of whole numbers. According to Cantor's theory oftransfinites, spatial or temporal infinities are denumerable sets. However, the set of all possible individuals, qualities, and relations is nondenumerably rich.

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Denumerable sets cannot exhaust or use up nondenumerable sets. Denumerably infinite spacetime cannot actualize a non-denumerable infinity of potential individuals, qualities, and relationships. There are just too many of them;
but even if this error is not committed, other more serious difficulties plague infinite worlds metaphysics.

ii. An Agent of Diversification Is Needed

Most seriously, infinity alone does not insure diversity. In infinite worlds metaphysics, lifeless worlds could simply repeat themselves endlessly; and probabilities insure that they would. An infinity of spacetime alone does not guarantee life, the rich environmental order required for its support, or its harmony and goodness on the whole. Endless accidents, or random spontaneous fluctuations alone can insure the actualization of nothing more than an infinite number of garbage universes. Mere infinity cannot guarantee that any universe would ever be life-supporting. For this, an infonned choice must be made between lifeless and life-supporting universes, and between good and bad ones; but nothing in the concept of sheer infinity insures any kind of diversity, goodness, or intelligent selection.
Perhaps many worlds metaphysics does not require an infinite number of universes. Some cosmologists suggest that finite but very large number of universes would be sufficient to make a life-supporting universe just happen occasionally. The trouble is that neither finite nor infinite numbers as such insure any diversity at all; if infinity can't do it, neither can finitude. Universes, finite or infinite in number, can be identically lifeless. This is possible and probable. Neither finite nor infinite numbers provide or insure diversification. For that, some additional cause, an agent who selects for diversity, is required.
Life-supporting universes are infinitely improbable. Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists regularly concede that for every single way to get a life-supporting universe right, there are infinitely many ways to get it wrong.38 Something more than mere spatiotemporal infinity is required if conditions essential for life are to converge in some actual universe. The Teleological Argument for the existence of God, developed in a following chapter, says that to get it right, this informed choice must be made by a Superintelligent Being who comprehends infinite errors and blind alleys and chooses against them.
Alfred North Whitehead recognized the necessity for a Divine Principle or Agent of Limitation or Concretion who picks or selects desirable universes to be actualized from unfathomable numbers of undesirable possible worlds.³⁹ Nothing in the mere concept of infinity insures any diversity whatsoever, much less the right kind of diversity needed to support highly complex living beings who can live worthwhile lives. An individuated, actualized, and embodied intelligent principle or agent of qualitative selection and diversification of Divine proportions is necessary to make any numerical set of universes exem

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plify the right kind of qualitative conditions to support worthwhile and complex forms of life.
Neither David Hume nor today's Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists provide for an intelligent, or even for an unintelligent. agent of qualitative limitation and diversification. Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists dismiss the Strong Theistic Anthropic Principle much too quickly.

iii. Infinite Possibilities Are Not All Possibilities

Infinite Worlds Metaphysics definitely confuses infinite possibilities with all possibilities. "All" includes "infinite," but "infinite" does not entail "all." God or Mother Spacetime could create an infinite number of good universes without creating a corresponding number of evil universes. Plenitude of creation requires both; but plenitude as a perfection is radically different from and incompatible with the perfection of moral goodness, which adds responsible and purposive moral selectivity to the requirement to produce infinite actualities.
As the ancient Stoics and nineteenth-century Friedrich Nietzsche contended, infinite time (or space) could simply repeat an identical set of mass/ energy configurations, individuals, qualities, and relations an infinite number of times in an Eternal Recurrence of sameness. They supposed that life would participate in Eternal Recurrence, but what would guarantee this? An everlasting or an eternally recurring universe composed of a single hydrogen atom would result in no life or meaningful diversity; neither would an eternally recurring universe composed of an infinite number of hydrogen atoms (and no others). Both are logically possible universes that could eternally recur. That all universes are merely hydrogen universes is logically possible. "All" does not translate into "infinite diversity"!
Despite incessant claims to the contrary, a monkey banging on a typewriter for an infinite amount of time would not necessarily write the Bible or all the works of Shakespeare. Infinite time alone could not and would not prevent a secretarial monkey from banging on just one key-forever. Its doing so forever is logically possible, and if all possibilities are actual, it must be so! If the monkey is bored (teleology), it might strike a diversity of keys. At first, it would produce only trash. In an infinite amount of time, it would produce only an infinite amount of trash. Garbage in, garbage out-forever.
The secretarial monkey universe actually raises more questions than it answers. Who or what created the monkey? Who created the typewriter? Does only one monkey exist? Did it have parents? Does it have a navel? What does it eat? Does it ever take a break? Why does it type rather than doing something else? How does it live forever? Has its universe been around forever? How so? Some things that sound possible in the abstract are not very plausible in the concrete. The example requires a cosmology, which requires a metaphysics, which requires a theology!

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Those who assume that an infinitely diverse temporal or spatial series (which requires an Agent of Selection and Diversification) will exhaustively actualize all possibilities simply fail to understand the concept of infinity. Suppose that an infinite number of diverse individuals, qualities, and relationships were or are actualized during an infinite past or in endless space. This would not mean that all possibilities are actualized; even infinity does not use up infinity; an infinite number of universes would still remain to be actualized! Infinity subtracted from infinity still leaves infinity, and "infinite" does not mean "different" or "all."
If probability is to be our guide, without God, all past, present, and future worlds would probably be lifeless worlds. The existence of an infinite number of antecedent or contemporary universes does not explain why we live in a universe in which incomprehensibly complex and remarkable concurrences conspire to generate and support our existence and that of innumerable other inherently valuable forms of conscious life. An infinity of antecedent or coexisting universes would likely be nothing more than endless variations on inexhaustible themes of lifelessness. Life-supporting worlds are infinitely improbable, and rationality rejects infinite improbability.

iv. Infinity Would Not "Use Up" Lifeless Universes

Those who think that life-supporting universes will inevitably occur in an infinite amount of time (or space) seem to assume that certain sub-sets of infinity like lifeless universes would eventually be used up, and then a lifesupporting universe would necessarily come along; but this is not true at all. This approach treats infinity as if it were finite. It assumes that infinite sets can be used up in infinite time or space; but infinity, especially nondenumerable infinity, cannot be actualized exhaustively in any amount of space and/or time. Neither qualitative infinity, nor sub-sets of it, can be totally depleted in numerically infinite time or space. Sub-sets of infinity-all possible lifeless universescontainjust as many members as infinity itself, so they can never be exhausted or used up so that something else can come along. Even after an infinite amount of time, an infinite number of lifeless universes would remain to be created. Each one could and probably would be exactly like the last unless some infinitely wise and intelligent Divine Agent of Limitation and Diversification knowingly and deliberately selects just the right conditions for life-affirming qualitative diversity.
Those who think that an infinite number of universes will actualize all possible qualitative diversity may believe that universes will be randomized, and that infinite randomization will produce infinite qualitative diversity and eventually use up all possible lifeless universes. However, randomization itself needs explaining and has its own necessary conditions. What selects and causes these conditions? Why does infinite randomization not result in infinite repetition?

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The concept of randomness makes sense only against an established background of law and order in an actually existing universe. As Alan Guth recognizes, '"randomness' is ill defined. The word 'random' does not become meaningful until the probability rules are stated. "⁴⁰ But no established finitistic probability rules exist for pure sets of all possible universes.
Given the orderly background of the actual finite laws of physics, cards in a deck can be randomly shuffled; but with no actual laws of physics, no actual cards, and no actual shufflers, no random shuffle can occur. Randomization of actualities makes no sense in a realm of undifferentiated possibilities devoid of any and all background order; and randomization alone could not use up infinity to insure that randomly produced lifeless universes are not repeated endlessly. Given the orderly background of quantum Superspacetime and the laws of quantum physics, quantum spontaneity might generate randomness; but what guarantees the existence of Superspacetime, the ubiquity of quantum laws within it, and the exclusion of all possible non-quantum universes? Why does Superspacetime exemplify quantum instead ofnon-quantum laws? Alternatives are logically possible! Quantum-foamy Superspacetime cannot use up all possibilities, for a uniformly featureless Newtonian/Kantian absolute Superspacetime is logically possible also.
A teleological explanation for quantum universes is readily available and highly plausible. A creator God wanting to make free, responsible, and cocreative creatures would choose quantum laws, not Newtonian laws, for created universes in order to make room for creaturely freedom, responsibility, and creativity. God would just make spontaneously creative creatures ranging from sub-atomic particles to conscious animals and human beings. Quantum laws actually presuppose their existence, for laws are products of the average behavior of concrete entities, not efficient causes that antedate and constrain their behavior. This is also true of the laws of sociology and psychology. v. Actualizing All Possibilities Is Incoherent
Finally, the very idea of actualizing all possibilities is logically incoherent. Possibilities are both negative and positive. Possibly, all universes are lifesupporting; possibly, none are. Possibly, the physics of every world is Newtonian; possibly the physics of every world is quantum/relativity; but these universalized possibilities cannot both be actual. Possibly the epoch that preceded ours was Newtonian, or it was open or flat; but then quantum effects in an antecedent singularity or in antecedent nothingness would not account for our world. (They don't anyway.) If all possibilities were actual, we would not be here, for it is possible that neither we nor our world should exist. Yet, we would be here, for it is possible that we and our world might exist. Possibly, all worlds are good, possibly created by a benevolent God; possibly, all worlds are bad, possibly created by a malevolent demon. A negative possibility corresponds with every

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positive possibility; and all possibilities include both! All possibilities just cancel out everything!
The Principle of Plenitude of creation is logically unintelligible. If modified to say that all "consistently combinable" possibilities are actual, who or what does the selecting? Different combinations are possible in different universes and between universes. Contradictions indicate mutually exclusive alternatives, but they do not select one or the other to be actualized. To settle this, a choice must be made. Not an abstract Principle, but an Agent of Selection and Diversification is required for this because disembodied abstract principles are impotent.
Postulating multiple universes does not account for our life-supporting universe, as it seemed to do for Schrodinger's cat that was alive in one universe but dead in another, for many possibilities that would apply to all universes are mutually exclusive. For example, it is possible that all universes are life-supporting or that none are, that all are quantum or that none are, and so on. If the "consistently combinable" qualification is accepted to begin with, Schrodinger' s cat poses no problems. Unlike the Medieval theologians, Quantum Cosmologists seem to be very serious about the actualization of all possibilities-logic be damned. But logic says the same thing of Quantum Cosmologists!

D. Infinitely Many Life-Sustaining Universes

Suppose we knew that an infinite number of worlds exists, and all of them are good, interesting, and life-sustaining. This too is logically possible. Would this tell us anything about cosmic or supercosmic teleology? Anthropic Cosmologists themselves concede that life-supporting worlds are rare exceptions, not the rule, among possible universes. Low probabilities are possible but highly unlikely. Possibility should not be confused with probability. That each member of an infinite series of oscillating or co-existing universes handsomely supports valuable life-forms is logically possible but not very probable. Yet, if all possibilities are actual, this must be true; but it must also be false! If a large finite or even an infinite number of universes were life-supporting and none were lifeless, what would be the most plausible explanation? Atheistic interpretations of the Anthropic Principle explain the remarkable lifesupporting coincidences of our universe by postulating an infinite number of antecedent or contemporary worlds, and by equating numerical infinity with infinite diversity. Given an infinite number of qualitatively diverse shoes, at least one will fit accidentally, they say, even though it is logically possible that none will fit, or that all will be exactly alike-all size eight when you wear a ten, or all left feet. But suppose that an infinite number of shoes all fit! No mere chance depletion of infinite diversity could explain it, for there would be no relevant diversity; no lifeless universes would be used up. Why would each

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world support life when endless lifeless worlds are logically possible? Only a Divine Agent of Limitation and Diversification could explain it. Abstract principles are not efficient causes; they are efficacious only when embodied in and acted out by concrete decision-making individuals. Only a concrete individual agent of Divine proportions could select the right conditions for worthwhile life even once, much less an infinite number of times. If lifesupporting universes are infinitely improbable subsets of a nondenumerable infinity of possible individuals, qualities, and relations, these subsets would be actualized only if a deliberate and informed choice is made between them and infinite subsets of lifeless universes. A following chapter on the Teleological Argument for the existence of God concludes that God made the choice. Just one life-supporting universe is infinitely improbable, and so are an infinite number of them. To be sure, we do not know that any other universes exist, much less an infinite number; but one interesting argument for the existence of an infinite number of life-supporting universes should be considered, even if it is finally rejected.
If the constants, initial conditions, and laws ofnature did not break down in the final collapse of an infinite series of oscillating universes, they would presumably be the same in every successive universe. Conservation laws, along with all others, would carry over from epoch to epoch. The First Law of Thermodynamics would be in effect from one epoch to the next, and the amount of mass/energy in each cosmic epoch, no matter how many, would be identical; no mass/energy would be lost from epoch to epoch. Conservation of mass/energy would be metaphysically everlasting.
Collectively, the harmoniously integrated laws, constants, initial conditions, energy densities, and so on, of our own universe produce sufficient qualitative richness and diversity for complex living creatures to exist. If these do not break down at the end of any cosmic epochs, they would be the same in every previous and succeeding cosmic epoch. With identical laws, physical constants, quantities of energy, and initial conditions, each preceding universe would be generally life-supporting like ours (with a fly in the ointment to be explored shortly).
An infinite series of exclusively life-supporting quantum universes would not destine every cosmic epoch to be a detailed rerun of its predecessors. This might be true of deterministic Newtonian universes, but not of indeterministic Heisenberg universes. If quantum laws always obtain, each ofus would not live our lives over and over again in an endless series of Eternal Recurrences. If, like ours, all previous cosmic epochs include the laws of quantum physics, then quantum indeterminacy, fluctuations, and free choices made by complex creative agents in each epoch would preclude detailed duplication. Only general life-supporting conditions could be replicated by the laws, constants, initial conditions, and quantity of mass/energy of all earlier and later relevantly similar universes. But if endless universes are as rich in life as our own, how, why, and

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by whom were life-supporting conditions chosen for all, when infinitely improbable even for one, given all possible universes from which to choose? The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the fly in the ointment for an interminable string oflife-supporting universes. If entropy or disorder increases from one cosmic epoch to another, then chaos increases from epoch to epoch. Because more chaotic, no universe could be qualitatively similar to its predecessor after all; each would have to be much less ordered than its immediate antecedent. An infinite number of earlier increases in chaos would result in pure chaos today, and too much disorder is incompatible with complex valuable life. Since our present universe is not pure chaos, either the Second Law does not carry over from epoch to epoch, or there have not been an infinite number of prior cosmic epochs, or a Divine Being intervenes periodically to bring order out of chaos, or God just created our universe out of nothing. But which is it?

E. Infinite Time and the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy

Ian Hacking brilliantly argued in 1987 that Oscillation Cosmologists like John A. Wheeler commit the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy.⁴¹ The gambler makes a logical mistake that usually costs him dearly. He comes into a game of dice and asks how many previous rolls occurred before he arrived. If many previous rolls produced no double sixes, the gambler assumes that the chances for non-twelves have been used up; and he concludes that his chance of rolling a twelve are very high; he bets heavily on twelve-and loses. The problem is that no matter how many previous rolls, the gambler's chances are exactly the same when he starts to play as on the very first roll. Once the relevant statistics about habituated entities are available, the odds do not change. The odds are the same on every roll! This is what gamblers, both cosmic and non-cosmic, do not understand. Hacking's essential point is easier to grasp if we consider flipping a coin. With only two sides, the odds for flipping heads or tails are equally fifty/fifty. In a fluke situation, a gambler learns that tails have come up forty-nine times in a row and assumes that the odds favoring heads on the next flip are forty-nine to one; so he bets on heads-and loses. All along, the odds are just fifty/fifty. In the inverse situation, learning that heads just turned up, the gambler bets that tails appeared on the previous forty nine tosses. He bets on that-and loses. The inverse gambler's fallacy begins with the information that an improbable double six was just rolled. From this, the gambler infers that it must have been preceded by a large number of rolls with no double sixes. If no dies were cast since he entered the room, he waits to see how the roll comes out. If it is a double six, he infers that many previous rolls must have produced different results. He then bets that many previous rolls resulted in no double sixes-and loses. In actuality, once the odds are established and known, the statistical chances of rolling a double six are just as good (or as bad) on the next as on the millionth roll. The number of rolls makes no difference to beating the odds, and

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a single current roll makes no difference in estimating the number or kind of previous rolls.⁴²
Applied to Anthropic Cosmology, the inverse gambler's fallacy says that "The universe has been around for ever so long, so it is not in the least surprising that it should have got into its present orderly state. Given an old enough universe, we would expect our order to arrive eventually by mere chance. "⁴³ This Humean reasoning is fallacious, says Hacking, because "There would have been no ground for believing we have an old universe, except that it explains the present order. But it does not explain the present order. So there is no ground for believing in an old universe."⁴⁴
Thus, the supposition that our orderly life-supporting universe occurs late in an infinite sequence of non-life-supporting universes does nothing whatsoever to explain its existence. There is no such thing as "occurring late in" or "using up" an infinite temporal series. In an infinite series, every universe, no matter where positioned, is preceded by infinite time and an infinite number of antecedent universes. Cosmological gamblers cannot beat those odds! And if an open universe inevitably occurs after a finite or even an infinite number of oscillations, then every universe will be open, and the very notion of infinite oscillations is incoherent.
All Atheistic Anthropic Cosmologists commit the inverse gambler's fallacy when they assume that infinitely many preceding worlds would account for our life-supporting universe. Gamblers should learn that the odds against winning are the same on every throw of the dice; and cosmologists should learn that the odds against life-supporting universes are eternally the same-infinite-no matter how many antecedents. We lack absolute certainties, but rationality bets against infinite improbability. Rationality bets on a God who knows and cares.

E. Infinite Space and the Inverse Gambler's Fallac

Does the spatial option for the Weak and Strong World-ensemble Anthropic Principle commit the inverse gambler's fallacy? Big Fizz Cosmologies affirm that if infinitely many worlds co-exist in infinite Superspace, as Carter, Linde, Barrow, Tipler, and others believe, then somewhere in that vast simultaneous infinity, some worlds would support life, not by Divine design, but just by beating the odds. Ian Hacking thinks that the infinitely many simultaneous worlds theory does not commit the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy, for time is not a factor; this theory just deduces its conclusion directly from the Principle of Plenitude. If all possible universes simultaneously co-exist, and if our ordered world is a possible universe, then our ordered world will exist. Here "Everything in this reasoning is deductive. It has nothing to do with the inverse gambler's fallacy."⁴⁵ Our life-supporting world is just deduced from the truth of the Principle of Plenitude. But plenitude is not a truth!

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Our well-founded doubts about the Principle of Plenitude are just as cogent when applied to infinitely many worlds co-existing in Superspace as to an infinite temporal succession of cosmic epochs in Supertime. Plenitude is not an empirical, scientific truth. It originated with a peculiar theological concept of Divine Perfection, and there is no other plausible rationale for it. It cannot be employed to avoid Theism. Applied to co-existing worlds, Plenitude confuses orders of infinity and is logically incoherent. The probability is infinite that lifeless worlds would occur endlessly in mindless Superspacetime. Without some intelligent and deliberately selective Divine Agent of Limitation or Diversification, infinitely many co-existing worlds would probably all be lifeless. This is possible as well as highly probable, and if possibility equals actuality, it must be so-even if it cannot be so! World-ensemble theories fail to provide an Agent of Selection and Diversification. Infinite Superspace cannot actualize all possibilities, for no matter how many contemporary lifeless universes exist, an infinite number of lifeless universes will remain to be actualized.

G. Faith vs. Reason

In discussing the relation between the Weak Anthropic Principle and worldensemble metaphysics, Fred W. Hallberg wrote:

So all those "other" universes would exist unobserved (Gale 1981, 168). The existence of our special life-enhancing universe would be the inevitable result of chance within this larger ensemble of universes. Of course, this entire supposition of an ensemble of universes is a purely speculative idea beyond any conceivable scientific determination. An equally valid alternative supposition, that our universe expresses an intention that life and consciousness be realized, also takes us beyond what could be conceivably determined by scientific experimentation.⁴⁶

Hallberg thinks that very different attitudes toward the world would be appropriate, depending on which explanation of life-supporting cosmic coincidences we accept. He concludes that "Neither choice is more factual, or realistic, than the other" and that "The weak anthropic principle limits reason in a way that leaves room for faith (Kant [1787] 1958, 29)."⁴⁷
Hallberg is right about the limits of science, but perhaps he restricted reason (conceived more broadly as philosophy) prematurely. Theism has more than an equally valid claim with world-ensemble Atheism on our confidence. Hallberg does not challenge the assumption that infinite number equals infinite diversity. Consequently, he does not realize that life-affirming diversity within infinitely many worlds requires an Agent of Selection and Differentiation of Divine proportions. Chapters Ten through Twelve of this book will show that belief in God is rationally warranted. Theistic faith (confidence) need not be

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blind or irrational. All rational beings, including cosmologists, should take the theistic option much more seriously.
To summarize, Atheistic Anthropic Cosmology concedes that our universe is exceptionally fine tuned for intelligent life forms; but this can be explained, its adherents claim, without appeal to God. The universe is compatible with our existence because we would not be here if it were not, says the Weak Anthropic Principle. But why is the universe compatible with our existence? The Weak and non-theistic versions of the Strong Anthropic Principle explain our good fortune by appeal to infinite worlds metaphysics. Yet, no infinite worlds metaphysics is verifiable directly or inductively. As an explanatory hypothesis, it is derived historically from an unscientific theological Principle of Plenitude, which affirms that God would be less than perfect unless he actually creates everything that he possibly could create. The assumption that an infinite number of worlds in time and/or space would actualize all possible individuals, qualities, and relations is not true, partly because a lower is not equivalent to a higher order of infinity, partly because infinite sets cannot be used up, partly because infinite sets need contain no diversity at all, and partly because the notion of actualizing all possibilities is logically incoherent. Lifeless worlds could and most likely would be repeated infinitely, just as monkeys banging typewriters would most likely produce garbage infinitely. Infinite numbers do not translate automatically into the existence of infinite diversity. Only a super-calculating life-loving God could select conditions for one or more life-supporting universes.
Infinite temporal oscillations do not improve the odds against a life-supporting universe, according to the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy. An infinity of worlds, whether successive or co-existing, is deduced from the indefensible Principle of Plenitude. An infinite plenitude of universes does not make good sense and is supported by no good reasons because abstract, disembodied, normative principles are not efficient causes, and the notion of actualizing all possibilities for all conceivable universes is logically incoherent. Atheistic Anthropic Cosmology does not successfully account for what caused our Big Bang.

[Notes]

1. See Frank J. Tipler, "The Omega Point Theory: A Model of an Evolving God," in Physics, Philosophy, and Theology, eds. Robert J. Russell, William R. Stoeger, and George V. Coyne (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory, 1988), pp. 323-324; George Smoot and Keay Davidson, Wrinkles in Time (New York: Avon Books, 1993), pp. 293-294.
2. Brandon Carter, "Large Number Coincidences and the Anthropic Principle in Cosmology," in Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observation, ed. M. S. Longair (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974), pp. 291-298.
3. John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). By permission of Oxford University Press.
4. P. C. W. Davies, The Accidental Universe (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
5. Robert H. Dicke, "Dirac's Cosmology and Mach's Principle," Nature, 192 (1961), pp. 170--171.
6. Freeman Dyson, "Time without End: Physics and Biology in an Open Universe," Reviews of Modern Physics, 51, pp. 447 ff.
7. Stephen W. Hawking, A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes (New York: Bantam Books, 1988).
8. B. J. Carr and M. J. Rees, "The Anthropic Principle and the Structure of the Physical World," Nature, 278 (1979), p. 605.
9. John Leslie, Universes (London: Routledge, 1989).
10. John A. Wheeler, "Genesis and Observership," in Foundational Problems in the Special Sciences, eds. Robert E. Butts and Jaakko Hintikka (Dordrecht-Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1975). See also John A. Wheeler, "The Universe as Home for Man," in The Nature of Scientific Discovery, ed. Owen Gingerich (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1975), pp. 261-296.
11. Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, p. I.
12. Carter, "Large Number Coincidences," p. 293.
13. See Steven J. Dick, Life on Other Worlds: The 20th-Century Extraterrestrial Life Debate (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Paul Davies, The Fifth Miracle: The Search for the Origin and Meaning of Life (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999); and Bruce Jakosky, The Search/or Life on Other Planets (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
14. Cf Rem B. Edwards, Reason and Religion (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1972, and Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979), p. 285.
15. See Ch. 8 of Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle.
16. Ibid., p. 13.
17. See Carter, "Large Number Coincidences," pp. 291-293, and Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, pp. 16--21 and elsewhere.
18. Carter, "Large Number Coincidences," p. 291.
19. From A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME. by Stephen W. Hawking, copyright© 1988, 1996 by Stephen W. Hawking, p. 124. Used by permission of Bantam Books, a division of Random House, Inc. and Writers House LLC.
20. Carter, "Large Number Coincidences," p. 294.
21. Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, p. 22.
22. Leslie, Universes, pp. 89-91.
23. Barrow and Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle, p. 249; for the writings of G. F. R. Ellis, see their footnote 96 on p. 283.
24. Ibid., p. 249.
25. Ibid., p. 248.
26. Ibid., pp. 248-249.
27. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1981 ), pp. 128 ff.
28. Arthur 0. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1961), p. 315.
29. Ibid., pp. 52 ff.
30. Anton C. Pegis, ed. Basic Writings of St. Thomas Aquinas (New York: Random House, 1945), Vol. I, pp. 462-463.
31. St. Thomas Aquinas, On the Truth of the Catholic Faith: Summa Contra Gentiles, Book 1 (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1955), pp. 258-259.
32. Ibid., pp. 258-259, 266, and Book 2, pp. 68-69, 77-79, 117, 135-139.
33. Leslie, Universes, p. 2.
34. Ibid., p. 171.
35. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, corrected ed. (New York: The Free Press, 1978), p. 19.
36. M. A Corey, God and the New Cosmology: The Anthropic Design Argument (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), p. 250.
37. David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Part 8.
38. See J. B. Hartle, "The Quantum Mechanics of Cosmology," in Quantum Cosmology and Baby Universes, eds. S. Coleman, J.B. Hartle, T. Piran, and S. Weinberg (Singapore: World Scientific, 1991 ), pp. 65-151.
39. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp. 174, 178.
40. Alan Guth, The Inflationary Universe: The Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1997), p. 250.
41. Jan Hacking, "The Inverse Gambler's Fallacy: The Argument from Design. The Anthropic Principle Applied to Wheeler Universes," Mind, 96 (1987), pp. 331-340.
42. Ibid., p. 135.
43. Ibid., p. 136.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid., p. 137.
46. Fred W. Hallberg, "Barrow and Tipler's Anthropic Cosmological Principle," Zygon, 23:2 (June 1988), pp. 146--147.
47. Ibid., p. 147.p