WHY DO WE HAVE A
PHYSICAL BODY?
And
why is there anything at all?
Copyright, Dr.
Anthony B. Kelly, 19th July 2000
While Christianity
has always proposed the ultimate Divinisation of mankind, embodied like the
risen Christ, it has regarded this transition as an insoluble mystery.
This is not the only
mystery faced by early Christianity. The early Councils of the Church proposed
formulas designed to elucidate, if not to explain, some of those mysteries.
Could some of those
earlier answers have been forged without the philosophical tools appropriate to
the task? In particular, were the
earlier categories, in terms of which the mind conceives reality, adequate to
the task undertaken by the early Councils?
The problem of the
Divinisation of man is looked at afresh in the light of the modern categories
of Process.
If
matter has to be created to serve God's purpose, why did God not create mankind
directly? Why initiate the enormously complex process which has led to
man. Current Science tells us that God
initiated matter in the Big Bang. Matter was initiated in its most simple form.
It then developed or evolved into the vast material universe. It took some 8
billion years before our planet developed, a planet capable of supporting life
It
then took almost four billion years for life on our planet to evolve to produce
mammals. It took a considerable further time for the Hominids to evolve, and
Homo Sapiens has only been around for about the last
hundred thousand years. Homo Sapiens then evolved
culturally, over the millennia.
Could
it be possible to envisage a more complex process simply to equip a material
human body with a spiritual dimension? How can this process be explained? Can Aquinas help us here?
One
of Thomas Aquinas' conclusions as to God's purpose and activity was that, as
far as was possible, God would seek to create another God, the closest
approximation to himself, in order to share himself as fully as possible with
that imitation of himself. (Madigan 1988,104)
Aristotle
had held a similar but more negative view. He considered that God's activity
could only be directed back to God himself, as the highest object. The world and
mankind, in Aristotle's view, were not worthy of God's concern. (Madigan 1988,3-7)
Christianity
changed this perspective radically. Rather than have God ignore man,
Christianity proposed that God sought to deify man. In his Existence and
Analogy, Mascall points to the consistent
Christian teaching that man was made for deification. He recognises that this
is difficult to understand in view of the radical distinction between God and
creature. Mascall poses the question: `How can a
creature be deified? - for this is
the term which Christian theology has dared to use.’ (1966,184)
If
God intended somehow to bridge the distinction between himself and a creature,
in order to deify that creature, it would seem at first glance that it would be
more reasonable for God to deify a spiritual creature, perhaps an angel. As a
spiritual entity, an angel would provide a closer approximation to God than
would man. Man has a spiritual dimension, but man is also encumbered with a
material body, unlike God or an angel. Why would God seek the deification of an
embodied spirit? Why should God complicate matters by creating matter?
Max
Charlesworth has recently asked how the religious
interregna, between the beginning of mankind, the
choosing of the Hebrews and the manifestation of Jesus Christ is to be
explained. (1997,30-31)
I
ask how is any, or all of this complex process of the cosmos, to be explained? If the human body is just the vehicle for the
human spirit, as the ascetics appear to have thought, why should such a vehicle
be necessary?
Thomas
Aquinas' conclusions as to God's purpose and activity may assist us to find
answers to all these questions. As we have seen, Aquinas held that as far as
was possible, God would seek to produce another God, the closest approximation
to himself. What would such an entity have to be like?
To ask this, is to ask what is the essence of divinity?
This
question has been considered by Clouser in his The
Myth of Religious Neutrality. From a survey of many religions, Christian
and otherwise, he concludes that divinity means `having the status of not
depending on anything else’ (1991,22). The essential
characteristic of divinity therefore is self-existence. In the Christian
understanding, God is also spirit, is good, and is creative.
God
could obviously create an entity that is spirit, is good and is creative. Such
an entity would have three of the characteristics which are attributed to God.
But what would be the point? It would lack the essential characteristic of
divinity. It would not be an entity which was similar to God in the one
characteristic of divinity that is of the essence.
The
problem arises with the essential characteristic of self-existence. God could
not create a self-existent entity. This would be a logical contradiction. There
can not be a directly created self-existent entity. But could there ever be, or
become, an entity which was similar to God and which was not directly created?
Let
us accept that Aquinas was correct in his conclusion that God sought the creation
of another God, the closest approximation to himself. How could God go about
achieving this objective? One way would be to initiate a process which could
possibly result in the self-creation, and so the self-existence, of that `other
god`. I argue that this is what
God does.
A
process of self-creation would ideally begin with some entity that does not
have any of the characteristics of God. Such an initial entity has to be
created. It could not be a spiritual entity. It could not be good in the moral
sense. It could not be creative. All it
has to have is some potential to develop. What would such an entity be like?
The
one entity that fits the criteria of created, non-spiritual, non-creative and
non-moral, is matter. Matter is distinct from spirit. Matter is the antithesis
as well as the antonym of spirit. Matter has no moral dimension. It is subject
to the deterministic laws of physics and chemistry, and it has some potential
to develop in accordance with those same laws.
If
God wanted to initiate a process involving self-creation, a process that had
the potential to produce a self-created, spiritual, good and creative entity,
which would be similar to God, matter appears to provide a sufficiently remote
starting point. But a process involving self-creation can not be a
deterministic one. It has to be free to fail, if it is to be a genuine process
of self-creation.
Teilhard de Chardin has
proposed Cosmogenesis as a deterministic process
which evolves from Alpha to Omege. He sees the
process of Cosmogenesis as one controlled by God as
it moves from stage to stage through several thresholds. He also postulates
that matter is always imbued with spirit.
This
vitalist idea has been proposed by others, but it is insupportable. Matter is
the antithesis of spirit. Matter is subject to the deterministic laws of
physical nature. Spirit is superior to matter, not subject to it. The human spirit utilises the deterministic
laws of physical nature in order to extend man`s
control over matter. We might also note that Teilhard
does not provide any explanation as to why God would initiate a deterministic
process which would take an inordinate time to reach a pre-determined
objective.
A
process of self-creation provides an explanation of why matter is initiated in
its simplest possible form in the Big Bang. It also provides an answer to the
most fundamental philosophical question: Why is there anything at all?
If
there is to be the possibility of the evolution of an entity which is similar to
God, by a process of self-creation, the overall process can not be a
deterministic one. It has to be a process which involves freedom, and at some
stage it has to be a totally free process. Ideally it would have to be free in
the higher dimensions of self-creation, the dimensions of spirituality,
goodness and creativity.
From
our present vantage point we can see that following the Big Bang matter had the
potential to develop until it produced a planet, Earth, which was capable of
supporting life. From relatively simple beginnings, and in accordance with the
deterministic laws of physics and chemistry, stars, galaxies and solar systems
with planets could result from the Big Bang. At this initial stage of the
process of the cosmos there is no freedom, but there is contingency.
As a result of the interaction of the deterministic physical and chemical laws
there could at some time, in some place in the universe, eventuate a planet
that was suitable as a platform for life.
Life
is then initiated on Earth. Whether life developed from matter by the operation
of some as yet unknown law of nature, or whether life was simply initiated by
God, makes no real difference. As with matter, life is initiated in its
simplest possible form, but life has a greater freedom to develop than has
matter. It can evolve. Matter is deterministic but life is opportunistic.
Alan
Olding recently remarked that: `By ordinary
engineering criteria the living world is full of the bad, even silly, designs
to be expected of a process which floods the market with shoddy goods stitched
together, not in time and with forethought, but on the run, with an eye to a
utility good enough for the moment.’ (2000,64)
This
does not look like Divine design, but it could be expected of an opportunistic
process of self-creation, where life has the potential to diversify to fill
available ecological niches. Again there can be no time constraint, and no
overall direction, only the potential to mutate and to become more complex - to
self-create. From our present vantage point we again know the outcome. About
four billion years after Earth evolved, some 100,000 years ago, Homo Sapiens evolves.
With
the evolution of Homo Sapiens, evolution can become
cultural evolution. This is a freer form of evolution. Just as biological
evolution enjoyed greater freedom to develop than did physical matter, cultural
evolution enjoys even greater freedom. There appears to be no real limit to the
varieties of cultural development. Each stage of this overall process, from the
Big Bang to Anthropogenesis, has a greater freedom than did the previous stage.
Culture is clearly a reciprocal self-creating process. People make cultures and
cultures make people.
Eventually
some cultures evolve intellectually until they are capable of supporting a
moral or spiritual consciousness. During the First Millennium BC these moral
cultures appear to include the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans and the Celts.
Jaspers identifies this development as the Axial
period, which he places as between 800 BC and 200 BC. (1953,1)
With the development of moral cultures the process of self-creation reaches a
totally free stage. Moral cultures are able to evolve spiritually, as moral
ideas can inform the culture. This is an entirely free process. Moral cultures
can also regress in the spiritual dimension, as well as progress.
In
this overall process we can see an increase in freedom, from the simple
contingency permitted by the interaction of the deterministic laws of Physics
and Chemistry, to the total freedom of spiritual humans in relation to the
moral law. The moral law tells us what to do, but it does not make us do it. We
are completely free to make our own moral decision. Moral individuals are
responsible for the moral development of their culture.
The
process of the Cosmos has been, and continues to be complex. But it is no
longer mysterious. It is easily understood once we grasp the idea of an overall
process which involves increasing freedom together with an increasing potential
for self-creation, from one Emergent stage to the next.
Once
we realise that God's purpose in creating the universe is to open the
possibility of the self-creation of an entity similar to Himself,
as the only means available to produce another God, a number of theological
problems arise, and some earlier Christological concepts become problematical.
THEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS.
In
his The Problem of God, John Courtney Murray S.J. considers the problems
which were faced by the early Church. He identifies three major issues of the
time. The first was the relation of Christianity to Hebrew religion and to
Greek culture. The second was the nature of reality and the power of our
intelligence to understand it, and the third was the nature of the reality that
the symbols of Scripture symbolise. These issues were brought into new focus by
`the problem of the Logos, the Word, the Son of God, in his relation to the
Father.’ (1964,32-3)
In
considering the second issue, the nature of reality and the power of the mind
to understand it, Murray poses the question which had to be resolved as `What are the ultimate categories of the real in terms of
which the mind conceives and affirms that which is?’ He identifies four sets of
categories and asks whether they are to be `the categories of space, time and
matter as in Stoic materialism or the categories of ideas in the Platonic
tradition? Are they the intersubjective categories of
Hebrew thought, I and Thou, or are they the categories of being and substance
as in the tradition of metaphysical realism that originated in Aristotle and
was renewed and transformed by its contact with the tradition of Biblical
realism?' (1964,33)
These
four sets of categories were the only categories which were available to the
Fathers of the Church when they were faced with the problem of the Logos at Nicea. The limitations of these four categories necessarily
limited the possibilities of the resolution of the problem. If there could have
been another more accurate set of categories, in terms of which the mind could
conceive and affirm that reality, the expression of the truth which was sought
at Nicea could have been quite different. There is
now at least one further set of categories by which the world can be understood
the categories of Process. This unrealised fifth set of categories was not
available to the Philosophers and Theologians of the time. The fundamental
world-view of the time was essentially a static one, rather than one which took
account of time. This world-view was
maintained until very recently. It also exerted its influence on the process at
Nicea. (Kelly 1999A)
In
their resolution of the Logos problem the Fathers took into account the idea of
God found in the Old Testament. The subject of this ancient concept was also
the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ of the New Testament. God the Father, the
Creator, is radically distinct from his Creation. As Murray states, He was
understood as the Pantokrator. To the Israelite and
to the early Christian the Pantokrator is not only
the God who can do everything, he is the God who does
do everything. (1964,35) This concept, of an
autocratic God who governs the whole universe, exercising an all-pervading
control and sovereignty, was to have significant consequences. (Kelly J.N.D.
1960,83)
Murray
points out that biblical thought, like other primitive thought, made little or
no distinction between the nature of an entity and its power, nor between the
action of an entity and the power behind it.
As
Murray states, `Insofar as the notion of being was conceived at all, it was
conceived as constituted by power and action.’ (1964,34)
This failure to distinguish nature from power and power from action gives rise
to the problem of the co-existence and co-agency of Creator and creature.
Murray says this problem which `has always claimed anguished attention, has now
come into the foreground for a variety of historical and theoretical reasons’.
Murray asks `If God is, and if he is what he is, not only the Creator but the Pantokrator, how can the world be what it is, a place of
manifold evil, an arena of human misery?` (1964,103-4)
This
problem was compounded by the decision of Nicea to
maintain the following propositions as true. Firstly, there is only one Pantokrator, God the Father. Secondly, Jesus Christ is also
Pantokrator, and thirdly that Jesus Christ is the
Son, he is from the Father and is therefore other than the Father, who is THE
God, the Pantokrator. (1964,35-6)
There
is no conflict between the first and third propositions. The problem arises
with the second proposition, that Jesus Christ is the Pantokrator.
We have already seen that the concept of God as Pantokrator,
results partly from the primitive failure to distinguish the nature of an
entity from that entities power and its action, and partly from the static
world-view within which Hebrew thought developed.
In
retrospect it would seem that Hebrew thought, alone among primitive peoples,
contained the seeds of a linear process approach to the understanding of
reality. They were the only ancient people who perceived the world as having a
beginning and an end. But the determinism they imported into this understanding
of the world, which had its source in the concept of God as Pantokrator,
appears to have limited the possible development of a process approach.
A
process approach might have understood the production of a Messiah as a
possible development within a culture that placed its major emphasis on moral
behaviour, rather than as a dramatic Divine interruption in the course of
history. But a Pantokrator would be expected to act
dramatically.
While
Murray does not directly challenge the concept of God as Pantokrator,
he does point out that the post-Augustinian notion of God is of one who `can do
everything`, and he distinguishes this concept from the earlier concept of a
God who both can do and who also does everything. (1964,34-5)
The
idea of a God who does everything also exacerbates the problem of evil, which,
in Murray`s view, `utterly defeats philosophy` (1964,104)
All
of these problems can be resolved once we discount the categories of reality
which were open to the Fathers at Nicea, and we adopt
the categories of process. We can then
perceive the process of the cosmos as a process of self-creation, of which
Christ can be considered the first fruit.
PHILOSOPHICAL CONSIDERATIONS.
Process
is not a new concept in philosophy but the concept of a progressive rather than
a circular repetitive process is a recent one. A process is a series of changes
with a unifying principle. In an automobile production line, components are
manufactured or added and a vehicle comes off the end of the line. The telos or unifying principle in this process is the idea of
the finished vehicle.
Time
is essential to any process, particularly to the process of history. The
unifying principle or telos in the overall process of
the cosmos is the possible production of another God.
Baltazar, in his Teilhard
de Chardin: A Philosophy of
Procession, argues that process is the basic structure of everything which
exists. He points out that in most Sciences today, a
dynamic and historical process perspective has replaced the old static and
timeless view of the world. However it has not greatly affected Philosophy or
Theology. Baltazar argues that the time scale of our
individual frame of reference is so small that we do not tend to perceive any
significant change. But if we take the long view, we see that everything is
change. (1965,134-150)
Evolutionary
theory helps to explain the prevalence of the short term view. Our remote
ancestors evolved to cope with the here and now. They did not have the ability
or the opportunity for contemplation and reflection. It is only in more recent
times that the process perspective has become sufficiently evident for it to
begin to overthrow the grip which the static, short-term view of the world has
had on our minds.
What
have been called first-order philosophical questions, those concerning the
nature of the world and our role in it, could never be
answered adequately while the old static view of the world prevailed. Neither
Philosophy nor Theology could answer these questions from within that static
world-view. These first-order questions can only possibly be answered from a
process perspective, a perspective that recognises that process is the basic
and objective structure of being. The rejection of the static world-view, and
the recognition that the world is in process, opens the possibility of our
understanding the meaning and purpose of the world.
Philosophy
makes no new discoveries. Its role is to find the pattern and coherence of
reality. The modern turn towards process began with Hegel (1770-1831). It has
been said that Hegel's philosophy is essentially the philosophical expression
of the essence of Christianity. (Hirschberger 1976,156) Hegel brought to light the process perspective
inherent in Christianity. This process perspective had previously been
submerged by the dominant static world-view. Hegel rejected the static concept
of the world as permanent and substantial. He denied the ultimate validity of
everyday experience, which is convinced that things are substantial and more or
less permanent. Hegel understood that everything was in motion as part of a continual
flux.
Since
Hegel, the unreflective and static world-view is gradually being replaced by a
more dynamic understanding of the world. This can be seen in the philosophical
insights of a number of modern philosophers. Their diverse contributions can be
drawn together, along with scientific Cosmology, to provide an explanation of
the process of the Cosmos.
Hegel's
rejection of the view of the world as permanent and substantial, and his
understanding that everything is in motion as part of a continual flux, was
confirmed in part by Charles Darwin's Origin of Species. Darwin showed
that animals, which had seemed to be permanent features of the world, had in
fact evolved over time. We now know that the whole Universe has evolved since
the Big Bang.
After
Hegel, the next process philosophy was provided by Henri Bergson
(1859-1941). He published his Creative Evolution in 1907. Bergson was influenced by Darwin, but he realised that
evolution could not just be the result of the random activities of matter. There
had to be an inner sphere, which shaped the outer. This inner sphere, he
argued, grows with the subject. Nothing simply `is', everything `becomes'
through creative freedom. Bergson was the first to
emphasise the importance of the time dimension in evolution.
Early
in the 20th Century the question was asked how life could emerge from inanimate
matter. This is the problem of Emergent Evolution. Samuel Alexander (1859-1938)
was the first Philosopher of Emergent Evolution. He published his Space Time
and Deity in 1920. Alexander saw the Universe as a process evolving from
level to level, always moving towards an unknown higher level, a spiritual
level which he characterised as Deity. He postulated a nisus in Space-time, an
impulse which drove it forward to produce new levels of reality, eventually
bringing Deity to birth.
Alexander
was the first to recognise that each new emergent level was accompanied by new
laws of nature. He postulated four Emergent levels, Matter, Life, Mind and
Moral Personality. Alexander's most important insight was that evolution was a
development towards a more spiritual entity.
Alfred
North Whitehead (1861-1947) published his Process
and
Reality in 1929. He argued that
Science could treat entities in isolation but that Philosophy had to see the
unities and connections between entities and to recognise that everything was
connected. While Science could abstract from reality for its own purposes, and
deal with instants of time, points in space or particles of matter, these
remain only abstractions and are not what is ultimately real. Whitehead argued that the world was comprised of events
rather than of things. Everything was in a process of becoming, and was
involved in an ongoing process of self-creation.
The
static model of reality, which characterised thought prior to the realisation
that the world was in process, is based on Aristotelian categories such as
substances, essences and objects. Its unit is the lifeless atom. Its ideals are
permanence and logical necessity. Whitehead rejected
the concept of the lifeless atom. He called his self-creative units of reality
`actual occasions'. These units of reality are always involved in a
self-creative process of becoming, a creative advance into novelty. They relate
to other units of reality, by `prehending' them.
Prehension can be understood as a limited form of awareness.
Whitehead's name is almost synonymous with Process
Philosophy. Unfortunately his convoluted expression and multiple neologisms
have ensured that Process Philosophy stagnates as a philosophical backwater.
Few philosophers today take any interest in Process Philosophy. However his
most important insight is clear. This is his recognition that the universe
advances into novelty, by the self-creative activity of the units of reality.
While
we can see the influence of Hegel and Darwin on Alexander and on Whitehead, Nicolai Hartmann
(1882-1950) stands more independently. His Ethics (1932) and his New
Ways of Ontology (1953) are his only English translations. He was a phenomenologist,
concerned to investigate and to make clear the actual state of affairs. His
major concerns were the nature of humans, and the ontological structure of
reality.
Hartmann
argued that the world could not be understood until it was recognised that it
comprised a series of strata, which rested one upon the other. His four strata
were the physical, the biological, the conscious and the moral or spiritual.
These strata are parallel to Samuel Alexander's Emergent levels of matter,
life, mind and moral personality.
Like
Alexander before him, Hartmann also recognised that the laws of nature were
different at each of the strata of reality. His most significant insight was
the realisation that these laws permitted a greater degree of freedom at each
successive stratum, ultimately providing total freedom at the moral or
spiritual stratum. Hartmann provided the key to understanding the process of
the cosmos.
Hartmann
contrasted the deterministic laws of the physical level with the total lack of
determination of the moral law. The moral law tells us what to do but it is a
matter for us, for our will, whether we do it or not.
Hartmann
argued that if a free human moral consciousness existed then God had to be an
illusion. This argument, that the freedom of human moral consciousness was
inconsistent with the existence of God, could only prevail if the Divine
finalism was a perfect determination, which would necessarily exclude any human
finalism. It would only prevail with the Pantokrator.
However if God had initiated a process of free
self-creation, rather than a determined process leading to an inevitable
outcome, Hartmann's argument would have no force. Hartmann's study of
man's spiritual nature convinced him of the freedom of the human will in
relation to the operation of the moral law, and he could not reconcile that
freedom with an understanding of God which proposed that everything that
happened was God's will.
Like
Hartmann, Teilhard de Chardin
was a phenomenologist. He was also a Palaeontologist. While Hartmann examined
the nature of humans, Teilhard was more concerned
with the development of humanity. He recognised that there was an increase in
freedom throughout the emergent stages, but he did not analyse the increase in
freedom from stage to stage. He initiated the concept of Cosmogenesis,
the idea that the whole Cosmos is an evolutionary process.
Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin
(1881-1955) published his The Phenomenon of Man in 1955. Teilhard was the first to show that the idea of evolution
was not incompatible with Christianity. He understood the universe as an
evolutionary process of ever increasing complexity and ever increasing
consciousness. Many Christians considered evolution to be antagonistic to the
heart of their philosophy. This was partly because the theory of evolution
attacked the static world-view, in which terms Christianity had found its
initial expression.
Teilhard's vision of the Cosmos is dynamic rather than
static. As he says, the very concept of cosmogenesis
is `opposed to the ancient and medieval concept of a static cosmos' (1974,18) Despite this recognition, he was still affected by the
static world-view in which Christianity was expressed. This led him to see
evolution as a process determined by God, rather than as a free, self-creating
process. The difficulties adverted to by Charlesworth
and Olding seem to indicate that it is a free process
of self-creation, rather than an ordered process which is determined by God.
While
Process philosophy was developing, Science was also discovering more about the
universe. These discoveries had a bearing on some of the ideas of the
philosophers who have been mentioned. Alexander had postulated Space-time as
the initial force driving everything towards a more spiritual level, but
Cosmology showed that space and time did not exist before the Big Bang which
initiated the Universe. Whitehead had believed that
matter was eternal, but this view was also contradicted by Cosmology. However,
Alexander's fundamental insight that evolution was a progress towards a more
spiritual stage, and Whitehead's insight concerning
the self-creative nature of the process of becoming, remain valid.
The
failure of Philosophy to adopt a process perspective provides the reason for
its failure to provide answers to the first-order philosophical questions
concerning the meaning of existence, the nature of reality, and our place in
it. The quest for such answers has been largely abandoned by academic
Philosophy, and left to Theologians and Physical Cosmologists.
In
Theology, there are three rival concepts involving process. The best known is
commonly called Process Theology, and is based on Whitehead
and Hartshorne. This view turns aside from the concept of God as all knowing
and all powerful. It proposes a developing God who acts persuasively. This view
appears to be an attempt to resolve the problem presented by the conflict,
which Hartmann has identified, between a strictly determinative will of God and
a free human will,. This form of Process Theology
seeks to resolve this conflict by reducing God. While it maintains that the
whole of reality is a self-creative process, it does not provide a unifying
principle or Telos of this process.
The
next most widely held view is based on the work of Teilhard
de Chardin. It retains the determinative will of God
but argues that God works towards a determined objective by means of
evolutionary processes. Its Telos is Point Omega.
The
third and most recent proposal is the Kelly Thesis. This thesis, published as The
Process of the Cosmos: Philosophical Theology and Cosmology (1999) argues
that the cosmos is a process of self-creation through successive stages, with
increasing freedom of self-creation available at each successive stage. This
view utilises Hartmann's analysis of the increasing freedom which is found at
successive strata of reality, in particular the total freedom of humans with
regard to the moral law.
The
Kelly Thesis does not seek to reduce the traditional concept of God's power,
but argues that with the Big Bang, God initiates a process of self-creation.
This process proceeds through a series of stages of increasing freedom, until
it reaches a stage which is totally free in relation to the law of that stage,
the moral law. The motive for this Divine action is to open the possibility of
there resulting a communal entity which is both freely
self-created and good. Such an entity would be similar to God, who is
self-existent, creative and good. It would be appropriate for God to love this
self-created entity.
The
achievement of this self-created and good entity could usher in the next stage
in the process of Emergent Evolution. As with all previous emergent stages, the
laws of nature of this new emergent stage could be expected to differ from the
laws of nature of the previous stages. The Telos of
the Kelly Thesis is this self-created and good spiritual entity.
One
of the major issues faced by the early Church was the question of the nature of
reality and the power of our intelligence to understand that nature. This
resolved to the question of the nature of the ultimate categories of reality,
in terms of which the mind conceives and affirms that which is. The categories
available at that time did not include the categories of process.
While
Christianity has always proposed the deification of man, it has also treated
this process as an insoluble mystery. Without the adoption of a process
perspective it was destined to remain a mystery.
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