Farrer & Whitehead

8/2/2019 Farrer & Whitehead

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Simon Smith, April 10, 2011. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows:Simon Smith, On Knowing, Being, and Playing Croquet: Personalist Perspectives on Process Cosmology,Ars Disputandi[http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 10 (2011), 43-60

On Knowing, Being, and Playing Croquet:A Personalist Perspective on ProcessCosmology

Abstract

This article concerns two of the last great metaphysical thinkers: AustinFarrer and Alfred North Whitehead. It also concerns a fundamental

cosmological question: does the world point inexorably to God? Often,attempts to formulate and answer this question still stand firm on the

Aristotelian categories of scholastic theology. Confronting these head-on, Farrer and Whitehead offered an antidote to Aristotles outdatedmetaphysics. They re-conceived being in active terms. This deploymentof action-concepts was designed to overcome the logical andontological inertia of divine Ipseity and so heal the breach between Godand Creation. By exploring the ways Farrer and Whitehead addressedthese matters, I hope to remind readers of a fertile alternative torealist/anti-realist conflicts currently dominating philosophical

theology.

Simon SmithUNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON,

UNITED KINGDOM

Ars DisputandiVolume 11 (2011)

ISSN:1566-5399

The Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu said that a journey of a thousand milesbegins with a single step. What he thought about all the steps that follow hasgone unrecorded. It is, nevertheless, those steps which test ones resolve to goanywhere. Hence this article. This is another step in an ongoing effort to bringtogether two of the last great metaphysical thinkers: Alfred North Whitehead and

Austin Farrer.1

The specific question under consideration is the cosmologists first order ofbusiness. Does the world cry out for theistical explanation? Does it demandcosmological interpretation? Such questions do not, of course, end in logicaldemonstration. Proof may be a grand ambition, but if such a thing were going tobe found, it would surely have been found by now. After all, no little intellectualeffort has been devoted to the search. Anselm thought he had produced it, so

1See also Simon Smith, The Age of Immanence: Whiteheadian Metaphysics from a Farrerian Point of

View, Process Studies Supplement 13 (2009) .
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Simon Smith, On Knowing, Being, and Playing Croquet

Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 11 (2011) 44

perhaps did St. Thomas; but [Farrer observed] Gaunilo and Kant and Russell arenot convinced, and they are as good men to follow an argument as any others.2

Russell was particularly quick to remind us that there is no logical difficultyin standing before the endless complexity of Creation and denying there is aCreator. When debating with Father Copleston, he deftly put cosmological claims

down to a simple Category Mistake.

Every man who exists has a mother therefore the human race must have amother, but obviously the human race hasnt a mother, thats a different logicalsphere.3

Philosophers and theologians may be justly dissatisfied with that, however.For Charles Conti, it is not only a violation of that natural curiosity whichprompts scientific explanation, it also calls a superficial halt to philosophy.Russell, it seems, had denied the very spirit of enquiry that sparked the debate inthe first place.

It is arbitrary (it might be protested) to raise causal questions within the systemof nature while precluding the origins of nature itself, and modern

2Austin Farrer, Finite and Infinite (2

ndedition, Westminster: Dacre Press, 1959), 4. See also: neither

under the head of causality nor under any other head can God or His activity be made the case of a rule, orthe instance of a class, and therefore He cannot be demonstrated in the ordinary sense; for no principle canbe found for a proof (Finite and Infinite, 7). Farrer would make a similar point in Faith and Speculation(London: Adam & Charles Black, 1967), 1-3, p. 8 below. This goes to the heart of the Auseinandersetzungbetween Farrer and Whitehead. They were evidently in agreement over the failure ofa priori demonstrationsof God. However, Farrer seems to have deviated from tradition in a way that even Whitehead might haveconsidered too radical.

[God] cannot be demonstrated a posteriori either, i.e. from His effects, because we must firstknow that they are effects, and effects of a perfectly unique activity. But to know that they areeffects in the relevant sense is to know the nature of the activity; for the character of being aneffect is conferred on a thing merely by its relation to the activity of which it is an effect. Andagain, to know the activity is, in this case, to know the Agent, forwe know God simply as theagent of activities, so far as is necessary for the apprehension of those activities. So then, to arguefrom effects is to begin by positing the divine activity and the divine Agent, and begs the question(Farrer, Finite and Infinite, 7).

Notably, Farrer would go on to make precisely this kind of mistake. By his own confession, Finite andInfinite reconstructed a formalist account of the argument a contingentia mundi. But that formalism seemsbound to beg the question, arising as it does from the theistical interpretation it claims to discover.Moreover, he acknowledged, the force of that reconstruction depends on an assumption: the formalistaccount must be the only tolerable account that can be given of the motive concealed in the [cosmological]question (Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 117). This was the position of apparent strength which, heconceded, ultimately betrayed formalism. As we shall see, Farrer would in the end reject any such demand,opting instead for a more pragmatic foundation.

3 Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian (London: Unwin Books, 1967), 145. Cf. MetaphysicalPersonalism(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 2 for Charles Contis summary of the argument: [t]o say thatevery effect in the world has a cause and therefore the world itself must be caused is like reasoning thatbecause every child has a mother, the human rac e must be mothered. Antony Flew called it theStratonician Presumption: things are what they are simply by the fact that they are (See Flews God andPhilosophy (London: Hutchinson, 1966) and The Presumption of Atheism (London, Elek for Pemberton,1976), both cited in Metaphysical Personalism , 211, n9). However, Russells phraseology is more telling, and(fortuitously) more fertile. Both Farrer and Conti exploited this logic qualifying that must to supply, notwatertight deduction, but a looser presuppositional argument a contingentia persona: the 'self' as non-self-explanatory. Thus, in a sense, persons are mothered by some Other, authored in a way that finite selves

cannot adequately explain.


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cosmogonists in search of theories of everything do not shrink from just suchspeculations.4

Process thinkers have certainly not shirked this challenge. Whitehead (likeFarrer) bequeathed to us a philosophia perennis. In the words of CharlesHartshorne, it is a study of the necessary, eternal, completely universal aspects ofreality. No abstract speculation, as Russell might have supposed. Rather, anattempt to combine metaphysical and scientific knowledge. This transformedmetaphysics, compromising between Russells naturalistic constraints and thespeculative drive pointing beyond the system of nature. Compromises, however,can be precarious, as Hartshorne evidently knew. That, perhaps, is why hedubbed it science running more risks than usual.5

Exploring the ways in which Whitehead and Farrer addressed thosecosmological risks will bring an important dispute between process andpersonalist thinkers into clearer focus. It is my hope that a better understandingof this dispute will provide a fertile alternative to the conflict between realism

and anti-realism currently dominating philosophical theology.Our exploration begins with natural inference, that primary cosmological

move which carries the mind from world to God.6 Despite its revisionary charter,process theology is not entirely at odds with scholasticism on this point.

Whitehead predicated his neo-classical metaphysics on a decidedly classicalassumption. He too held that the brute facts of existence point inexorably todivine agency. For Whitehead, however, those facts do not point to Being apart,or Being-just-being-itself. They point to a concrete conjunction of beings. Not aPrime Mover then, nor any other scholastic back stage artiste.7 Instead,

Whitehead offered equiprimordiality: the necessary co-concrescence of God-and-

the-world. In other words, Creation co-opts all existents, finite and infinite, in aprocess of becoming. Apart from this process, any being lacks the determinacy ofparticular being, so remains devoid of actuality.8

Briefly, the disembodied being beloved of scholastic thinkers is what it isessentially, that is, by definition. Logical philosophers will be quick to remind usthat essentialist definitions offer no actual existents. Definitions are linguisticartefacts, products of invention and convention. They indicate the ways in which

words might be used.9 It is doubtful whether so descriptively threadbare an item

4 Conti,Metaphysical Personalism, 3.5 For these remarks see Charles Hartshorne, Whiteheads Metaphysics, in: Victor Lowe (ed.),

Whitehead and the Modern World: Science, Metaphysics, and Civilisation (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950), 25-41,25. See also A. Cornelius Benjamins preface: Whitehead stands almost unique among recent philosophers inthe way in which he reconciled opposing strains in modern thought and achieved the unification withouteclecticism which is the true philosophical goal (viii).

6A phrase best known as the title of R. W. Hepburns discussion of cosmological thinking. See BasilMitchell (ed.), The Philosophy of Religion (Oxford: OUP, 1971), 168-178.

7 For this memorable expression, see J. L. Austin, Performative Utterances, in: J. O. Urmson & G. J.Warnock (eds.), Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), 220-239, 223.

8 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality, 7.9Cf. J. N. Findlays Can Gods Existence be Disproved? in: Flew and MacIntyre (eds.), New Essays in

Philosophical Theology (London: SCMP, 1955), 47-55. Also, Friedrich Waismann, Verifiability, in: G. H. R.Parkinson (ed.), The Theory of Meaning(Oxford: OUP, 1968); and The Resources of Language, in: M. Black

(ed.), The Importance of Language (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1969), 107-120.


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as sheer or mere being could manage even that. Put simply, such abstractionsremain logically under-determined.

Being apart from real relation lacks the means to make itself known. Herelies the fatal flaw in theistical realism: any attempt to identify this being, whetherby proper definition or ostensive indication, breaches the terms of its ontological

charter. Knowledge is an expression of concrete contact; knowledge requiresaccess. It, therefore, constitutes the very connection which being-talk rejects, sobridges the logical and ontological gap. According to the terms of scholasticrealism, then, identification must fail: it cannot grasp the essentialreality of thisbeing. At best any relation between signifier and signified will be arbitrary. At

worst, being cannot be designated as this, that, or any other particular thing.Hence, Farrer argued, it (whatever it is) cannot be restricted to, or in any wayidentified with, one place in the world rather than another, no one selection offacts rather than another.10 This leaves being ontologically dispossessed, cast outof the world of concrete situation. Whitehead too, rejected any meaningful

conception of that exile. There are [he insisted] no self-sustained facts, floatingin nonentity.11Thus, a thing which is no particular thing is logically equivalentto no actual thing. In short, being apart is not simply unknowable, nor evenstrictly inconceivable. It isnt anything at all.

This dynamic rejoinder to the ontological inertia of being-talk follows fromthe rigorous application of action-concepts. Whitehead (like Farrer) locatedbeing in the accidental embodiments of concrete connection. [T]he actual world[he argued] is a process, and that process is the becoming of actual occasions.12Conti captured the spirit of Whiteheadian metaphysics like this: [n]o actualities

without full and proper integration with other actualities, themselves in the

10 Farrer, Finite and Infinite, 173. Hence, the very notion of being apart breaches Quines predicate rule:no entity without identity and no identity without describability; no entia non grata (Conti, MetaphysicalPersonalism, xxii). In short, no that without what. And what is a function of real relation, experiencedinteractively. Sheer or mere being, however, means the predicate is incomplete, the subject-term lacksinstantiation. Pressing the point, Conti reminds us of Austins commentary on the Exodus Metaphysic.[T]he proper reply to any burning bush that announces itself with I am that I am is You are what?. Seealso Farrer, Finite and Infinite, 66 and 176-7; and Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action, 18-19.

11 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 11.12 For these remarks, see Whitehead, Process and Reality, 35 and 22 respectively. The dialectic between

God and Creativity is a central theme ofProcess and Reality. It is also frequently misunderstood. Traditionalthinkers have seen it as an attempt to reduce God to Creation while simultaneously deifying Creativity itself.This misunderstanding, however, might have been expected: see, for example, Process and Reality, 345 forGod as derivativeconsequent on the creative advance of the world. Moreover, Whitehead variouslydescribed God as creature of creativity, primordial created fact, primordial creature, outcome ofcreativity, and primordial, non-temporal accident of creativity (Process and Reality, 31, 21, 88, 7). It appearsWhitehead did indeed regard God as a product of the creative discharge of actual occasions.

Process thinkers have robustly denied this view, calling it an example of the fallacy of misplacedconcreteness. Deify Creativity and we assume that it is a process, even a thing, in its own right; that it is thesort of thing that can be deified. This, however, misrepresents the nature of Creativity as Whiteheadconceived it, and its role in process metaphysics. Neither process nor thing, Creativity is a principle ofreality. It is the metaphysical truth which indemnifies all existence and speculation about existence. Hence,for Whitehead, the desire from which Creation springs, presupposes the general metaphysical character ofcreative advance, of which it is the primordial exemplification. Otherwise put, the primordial nature of Godthe fundamental realisation of God, not in action but in the desire or appetite for creation is theacquirement by creativity of a primordial character (Process and Reality, 344). Recast in Farrerian terms, thisprinciple of novelty becomes esse est operari: to be is to act, critically, to self-enact. Clearly, that is neither an

existent nor a definition of existence.


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process of becoming.13 This bold retention of mutual immediacy reconnectsaccident with essence.14 Real being is reconceived asa mode ofbeing. So says the

Whiteheadians principle of process: how an actual entity becomes constituteswhat that actual entity is.15And how an actual entity becomes is a matter ofenvironment not essence. Not just action, then, but interaction. Real being is

collaborative; it entails the entire matrix or nexus of which it is part. Thisinstantiates all actualities as co-determinants.

To function [or act] means to contribute determination to the actual entities inthe nexus of some actual world. Thus the determinateness and self-identity ofone entity cannot be abstracted from the community of diverse functionings ofall entities.16

For Whitehead, then, every actual entity is a vital element in the becomingof every other actual entity. Similarly, for Farrer, ESSE is OPERARI, and anoperatio, energia, has a plurality of elements to it.17 Being in the operative mode

is a social fact, realised only in combination.This mutual conditioning of actualities represents a critical turning point inphilosophical theology. It signals the rejection of that radical separation of Godand the world. Perforce, Ipsum Esse transcends all creation, so repudiatesrelation. Per contra, Whitehead demanded nothing less than a full-bodied returnof Creator to Creation. This privileges the responsive nature of God overtraditional ontological independence, thereby reinvesting the God-construct withconsequentialist motifs. Put simply, God is embedded in the nexus of Creation.

Like their classical forebears, therefore, neo-classical theologians conceiveGod as an essential feature of the world-process. Furthermore, according to

Whitehead, the reverse is equally true. God before Creation is no Creator; Heremains free, complete, primordial, eternal, actually deficient and unconscious.18On process premises, that is, agents are actualised only as the agent oftheir acts.Prior to self-enactment the (alleged) agent exists only in potentia. But potentialexistence is, by definition, no actual existence. The inference from actual back topotential may be logically sound, of course. But that (Farrer reminds us) is aboutas vacuous a truth as truth can be.19 Here too, logic is a matter of linguisticconvention, not real being. Like Whitehead, Farrer was explicit about thetheological implications of this. We cannot think our way up to God above andbefore all worlds.

13 Conti,Metaphysical Personalism, xxii.14 Conti,Metaphysical Personalism, 211, n9.15 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 23.16

Whitehead, Process and Reality, 25.17 Farrer, Finite and Infinite, 21. See also Finite and Infinite, 28, 31, 44, 133; Faith and Speculation, 114; and

The Physical Theology of Leibniz, in: Farrer, Reflective Faith (C.C. Conti (ed.), London: SPCK 1972), 91-113,91.

18 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 345.19

Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 136.


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No gulf opens in the empirical argument between the will of God and God. IfGods will means Gods voluntary action then it is a synonym for God himself;for what is a person but his voluntary action?20

Prior potentiality remains devoid of agency, so offers no epistemologicalpurchase on real existence. In a Latin phrase, esse est operari. No simplereconnection; a fortiori, a Creator must be equiprimordial with the act ofCreation. For Whitehead, that is, no two actualities can be torn apart: each is allin all. Theologically speaking, this means the worlds nature is a primordialdatum for God; and Gods nature is a primordial datum for the world.21 Thefulfilment of one is necessarily the fulfilment of the other. Thus,equiprimordiality defines God as the enactment of world-process. [E]achtemporal occasion embodies God and is embodied in God. Divinity is enacted inand as the world-process: God-in-the-world-and-the-world-in-God. In short, Godis as God creates.

Farrer, too, might have concluded with equiprimordiality. He would,

however, resist its reductive implications. Rejecting the act-agent equivalence itentailed, he held out for a vital distinction. We have two words, act and will;two words that are logically inseparable, not simply de facto.22 Equated, then,but not equivalent, critically connected not synonymous. Individually, these

words retain epistemological interest in and for active agents: they denote asingle fact under different aspects: act emphasising what I perform, and willmy choice, energy or interest in the performance of it. They distinguish, in other

words, an agent from the fact and mode of its activity. Put simply, they preserveidentifiability for the doer of the deed.

Surrender that distinction, and the theist must face the Charybdis of the

enquirythe abyss of vacuity. Without some recognisable distinction betweenact and agent, the overwhelming self-presence of natural process will obscure theobject of religious reference. Process naturalism offers finite existence nometaphysical counter-part so deprives the God-construct of its role inmetaphysics. Assign divine governance the same logical status as naturanaturans, that is, and theism adds nothing to naturalism.23

To avoid vacuity, the religious hypothesis must find some real work fordivinity to do. This, however, is where Whiteheads ontology of action comesunstuck.

20 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 57.21 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 348.22 This and next, Farrer, The Freedom of the Will(New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1960), 109-110 and

Faith and Speculation, 114.23 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 70. See also Transcendence and Radical Theology, in: Reflective

Faith, 171-177, 172; and Farrer, Grace and Resurrection, in: Leslie Houlden (ed.), A Celebration of Faith(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1970), 145-150, 146. William James would make the same point: The whole defence of religious faith hinges upon action. If the action required or inspired by the religious hypothesis isin no way different from that dictated by the naturalistic hypothesis, the religious faith is a pure superfluity,better pruned away, and controversy about its legitimacy is a piece of idle trifling, unworthy of seriousminds (The Will To Believe, in: John J McDermot (ed.), The Writings of William James (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1977), 717-735, 734, n47). Whitehead had, of course, criticised Newton for affording no hintof that aspect of self-production, of generationof natura naturans, which is so predominant in nature

(Process and Reality, 93).


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To be sure of shunning our Charybdis, we are driven to say that the divinegovernment makes nature more than natural, by bringing natural forces intocombinations of achievement they would not of themselves attain.24

So saying, however, we inevitably run on Scylla, the impossibility ofverification: the refusal to agree the evidence is what we claim it is. We cannotdeny that with all the furniture of heaven and earth before his vision, theunilluminated can still say, There is no God.25 Creation, qua divine act, cannotbe directly observed, nor can it be deduced from the bare facts of existence. 26Faith may form under the pressure of perceived facts. However, theologians aremistaken if they think this means raking the universe for signs of a First Cause. Alife of faith (Farrer reminds us) is not an activity which appreciates certain factsor qualities among things and interprets them by the concepts it is led to form.

We do not perceive the God-suggestive aspects of things and on the basis of[our] perceptions accept or formulate the theology which they alone can justify.

We do not because we cannot claim objective perceptions of [those] God-

suggestive qualities.Even if we could make such a claim, our theology would not be free of

logical difficulties. Cosmological thinkers are hardly faced with a paucity ofevidence; rather, there is altogether too much. Like traditional arguments fromcontingency, theistical naturalism surveys an embarras de richesse. Sinceeverything might stand out as evidence of divine agency, nothing actually does.

The demand for particularity of effect is frequently put to scholastictheologians by process and personalist thinkers alike. The divine autarkeiaremains logically under-determined, indistinguishable from sheer non-entity.Unless, therefore, God stands out with sufficient clarity in some event, [Conti

warned] God is particularly manifest in none.27 Put simply, radical abstractiondefeats the theological programme altogether. Verily, Thou art a hidden God,saith the prophet; a Deus Absconditus. And absence is double-edged: it cuts two

ways: it keeps us from looking but also prevents our finding. Any theology donein the Aristotelian mode will run aground here. Moreover, this is, I suggest, achallenge which neo-classical theologians are still to meet. The grand sweep ofnature naturing lacks sufficient specificity to stand out as divine act. Since wehave no criteria for determining what does not count as theophany, neither do wehave any for determining what does. Between Scylla and Charybdis, then, naturalinference appears to offer an impossible choice: vacuity or verification.

24 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 70-71.25 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 126.26 For these remarks, see Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 1-3. Modern philosophers and theologians can

hardly expect to get away with producing the rabbit of theistical proof from the hat of impartial cosmology(Finite and Infinite, 6). We cannot hope to experiment with an uninterpreted environment, to see whether itprompts the formation of a brand-new interpretative concept, the concept dear me, yes! the concept ofGod (Faith and Speculation, 1). This, then, is no disinterested inquiry, but an experimentin drawing onFirst Causality (Faith and Speculation, 130). And that notion, Farrer argued, is first encountered, not innature, but in church and home. How did religion get into our heads? It was taught to us, was it not? (Faithand Speculation, 3).

27

This and next Conti,Metaphysical Personalism, 6 and 7.


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Traditionalists [of whatever hue] seem caught between aligning God with eitherthe glaringly obvious or that nothingness which (as Sartre converted it in hisexistential ontology) noths the presence of some absent X. The one exploitsneon miracles; the other propels God off the chart of being altogether. Theformer deprives faith of its function; the latter absconds with all finite

content.28

If the evidence is to have explanatory yield [t]he theist must be able to

distinguish between an epistemic distance and an empty presence. Likescholastic orthodoxy, it seems process thinkers chose this same inferentialprecipice as their point of departure.

So much for natural inference. There is, of course, a more fundamentalquestion here. We might wonder whether there is any such thing as the world-process in the sense that Whiteheads argument requires. Let us be clear, thecoherence or unity which makes the world a world is one of Whiteheads

founding premises. The world is a nexus; that nexus is the necessary condition forany particular existence: each is all in all.29 The world according to Whitehead isa necessary interconnection of actualities.

Farrer considered such claims staggeringly false. [T]o all evidence [heargued], there is no world-pattern pulling the world together.30 This is noattempt to gainsay modern physics: no counter-intuitive resistance to empiricalevidence. Nor is it the mark of a crude Cartesianism: an a priori denial that wecan know there is a world-pattern. It does, however, follow from the activistpremises on which personalist metaphysics stands. It represents the consistentdenial of independent existence for anything; in this case, everything. It is, in

short, the observance of an empirical mandate. No physical science withoutphysical interference, no personal knowledge without personal intercourse; nothought about any reality about which we can do nothing but think. 31 Farrer

28 Conti,Metaphysical Personalism, 7.29 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 348. See also Whiteheads claim that the final facts are all alike,

actual entities; and these actual entities are drops of experience, complex and interdependent (18). Crucially,Whitehead meant to account for everyelement of our experience (3). Recall, without that community ofdiverse functionings, there would be no particular actuality. Moreover, the essential solidarity of allactualoccasions entails divine participation. Thus, when Whitehead describes the final facts as all alike, hemeans allthe final facts and allthe occasions on which they occur. For traditional theists, this represents aprime example of what D. Z. Phillips termed a naturalistic fallacy (The Concept of Prayer (Oxford: BasilBlackwell, 1981), 13-14). It is an attempt to reduce God to one fact among others.

30 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 149.31 This and next, Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 22. Cf. Process and Reality, 40 for Whiteheads claim to

be extending and rigidly applying Humes principle, that ideas of reflection are derived from actual facts.See also Finite and Infinite, 231: we know things as they condition or affect our activities; and 17: Seeing isbelieving, but contact is knowledge. Designating this a newly defined empirical principle has provedmisleading. The Faith and Speculation formulation we can think nothing as real, about which we can donothing but think (28, 36) was borrowed directly from Finite and Infinite: It is not plausible that we shouldbe able to talk about types of things, about which we can do nothing but talk (74). By failing to acknowledgethe reiteration, Farrer masked a critical connection from his readers. This has contributed significantly to theconfusion surrounding the development of his thought, particularly the pragmatic revision taking place inhis philosophical theology. Hence, Contis reproach: it might have helped readers appreciate thefundamental continuity between his books. FS drew on the interactionist epistemology of FI to refine thesense in which it is possible to think about God interactively or agentially in the latter (Conti,

Metaphysical Personalism, 219, n23). Here, and in the acknowledgements at the beginning of his article,


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dubbed this the highest possible generalisation of the empirical principle. Itsignals the personalists point of departure from process metaphysics. It alsounderpins a refusal to allow the ontological gap between knower and known toreopen, even when it would appear to be of most use to the theologian. If we areto stake our claim to real knowledge, he argued, we must be prepared to meet the

terms of that principle. Thus, Farrer suspected Whiteheads neo-classical dialecticof concealing nothing but the great Newtonian fiction of a space-timecontinuum viewed from no point in space and no moment in time.32 No coherentunity, and no processive super-organism; on activist premises (he argued) themost we are entitled to claim about the world is an unimaginable free -for-all ofnumerous bits of organism, system, process.33

The universe we know isnt a system, still less anorganism; its a free-for-all of amillion million million bits of system, interacting as they can and largely withirrelevance to one another, according to a few rules of the game controllingtheir mutual collisions and mutual exploitations.34

This raises a crucial question for process and personalist thinkers. If Farrersrejection of a unifying world-pattern follows from the activist premises he and

Whitehead shared, why is that pattern so central to process metaphysics? Thetwo men grounded cosmology in the same kind of dialectic, therefore, the sameconclusion ought to follow. Moreover, Whitehead explicitly rejected thatNewtonian fiction.35 Granting this, could Farrers objection simply be amisunderstanding?

Resistance to the idea of a universe constructed from discrete reals,existential atoms logically and causally isolated from one another, certainlyought to be common ground for personalist and process thinkers. We have seen

Whitehead insist upon the necessary correlation of actualities. [I]t belongs to thenature of every being that is a potential for every becoming.36 Farrerssentiments precisely.

The notion of energies in a pure or simple state, prior to mutual engagement isphysical nonsense. All activity is mutual, as between energies, and all activitythus mutually engaged changes and redistributes itself.37

Austin Farrer & the Analogy of Other Minds, Conti attributes the recognition of this connection to EdwardHenderson. See Jeffrey C. Eaton & Ann Loades (eds.), For God and Clarity, New Essays in Honour of AustinFarrer(Pennsylvania: Pickwick Publications, 1983), 51.

32 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 150. See also Farrer, Saving Belief(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1964),67: The old definitions accepted by Sir Isaac Newton and his followers were not merely incorrect, they werenonsensical. It is not merely that Einsteins very special and advanced physical observations proved that thisisnt a Newtonian world. You couldnt have a Newtonian world. It is no blasphemy to say that God himselfcouldnt have created such a system.

33Farrer, Transcendence and Radical Theology, 173.34Farrer, The Prior Actuality of God, 187-188.35

See Process and Reality, 94 for Whiteheads description of Newtons Scholiumas one of the two greatcosmological documents guiding western thought. (The other was Platos Timaeus.) Whitehead agreed thatwithin certain limits, [the Scholium can] be thoroughly trusted for the deduction of truths at the same levelof abstraction as itself (Whitehead, Process and Reality, 93). He was not, however, blind to its shortcomings.

36 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 22.37

Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 82.


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Furthermore, process thinkers will no doubt point to Whiteheads rebuttalof one ideal order. [T]here can only be some definite specific order [heargued], not merely order in the vague.38 This suggests a rather less abstractconception of world-process than Farrer realised. For Whitehead, that pattern

was a logical corollary of interrelated actualities. As such, it appears to be in

keeping with Farrers own rejection of an infinite pre-existent fieldwhere bits ofmatter float about. Even more so with his web of interactions between materialenergies which form a system by thus interacting.39As with Whitehead, Farrersuniverse was one in the sense that its multifarious constituents condition oneanother positively or negatively in the great web of space-time relations.40 Surely,then, Farrers activist revision must issue in some kind of coherent unity forCreation.

The universe is indeed organised, or drawn together into unity; but it is soorganised or drawn together a million million times over at all the single pointswhere a field of forces finds a focus; and that is wherever any single active

existence is present. All of these focal points have a certain extension they arepatterns of activity.41

Not quite the radical departure from process principles.42 Drawing stillcloser to the process camp, Farrer argued that theology rests, not upon thecoherence of the universe as such, but upon whether it coheres as a projection ofdivine consciousness.43 This seems compatible with the discordant multiplicity ofa world in potentia coming to fruition in its conceptual realisation by the

Whiteheadian God.In light of these similarities, we must reconsider the apparent discord

between process and personalist metaphysics. The question is whether Farrerscriticism of Whitehead is, in fact, justified. The answer, I submit, is still yes.

38 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 83 & 84.39 Farrer, Saving Belief, 145.40Farrer, Transcendence and Radical Theology, 174.41 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 150.42 He went on to say [o]ur own sentient animal existence is a highly-developed example. A

sympathetic eye might discern a resemblance to Whiteheads view of persons here. For Whitehead, that is,the life of man is a historic route of actual occasions which in a marked degreeinherit [a commoncharacteristic] from each other (Process and Reality, 89). In other words, the Whiteheadian self is a nexus,the occasions of which are characterised by some faint form of mutual conformity to a central direction(Process and Reality, 107). They are in serial order. Thus, prehensions in the personal mode are a matter ofinheritance; and the historic route of occasions is a process of genetic derivation (Process and Reality, 89).

43Farrer, Transcendence and Radical Theology, 173. See also Faith and Speculation, 151: Thought andpurpose in a man animate or direct a pattern of action which organises and, as it were, builds upon amultitude of cellular activities. There is no such organising pattern on the cosmic scale, so how can theuniversal will bear upon us and our fellow creatures in any way significantly analogous? If the God of Naturepulls the universe together, he must be presumed to do it through his creative employment of the energieswhich do pull the universe together. And these, as we have seen are nothing but the individual creatures intheir focal capacity. This nothing but creates its own problems. Principally, perhaps, having pulled theuniverse together in this way, can God intervene in Creation without destabilising the living connectionsthat constitute it? If the answer is no, then the theologian may be in dire straits. If everything counts asevidence for divine involvement in Creation, then nothing does: sans particularity of effect, the evidenceremains logically under-determined. And this, as we have seen, is liable to defeat the theological programme

altogether.


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Despite the similarities, a critical element remains unaccounted for byWhitehead: the role of conscious personal agency in that projection.

Conceiving God in purposive terms follows from the primary activistpremise: esse est operari. Our conception of divine being is conditioned by ourunderstanding of divine doing.44 That is the foundation of all cosmological

theism. Moreover, it stands upon a direct experience of active agency.Interpreting the universe as a field of (divine) action derives from the experienceof being an agent. We construct versions or diagrams of reality based on ourcapacity to interact with our environment.

There are two connected propositions at work here. First, the unity of theuniverse is not objectivelyreal. Second, it is only unified in the experience of aunifying agent. Without a unifying agent to complete it the universe isconstituted by the continual collision of actualities: actualities interacting withirrelevance to one another.45 Thus, unity is in the eye of the beholder. And sansbeholder, we have no grounds for inferring the providential guidance needed to

underpin cosmological thinking. This is the crux of Farrers objection to processmetaphysics. Consciousness, qua personal agency, provides the logically primitivegrounds for conceiving the world as a coherent unity. Without it, the God-construct offers neither interpretational nor experiential yield.

To explain, real knowledge, like real being, is a matter of impact: we knowthings as they condition or affect our activities. This was Farrers causal solutionto ontological isolation.46 Put simply, the world is (as process thinkers will agree)a field of activity. And knowledge is the result of our encounters with and in thisfield. Apart from such encounters, any being remains beyond our epistemologicalreach.

The features of [the agents] field only become features and so perceptible in sofar as they disturb and diversify the field. And so [the agent] knows the other,relatively to which I operate only in so far as it varies the disturbances of hisfield he knows it as a class of disturbances.47

44 The epistemological implications of Farrers realignment of existence and action represent thecentral theme ofMetaphysical Personalism. For Conti, Farrer operated theological inference from thebottom up (Metaphysical Personalism, 62). For that, Farrer reminds us, was how the world was made: Godis the cause of the worlds existence, and he has woven nature from the bottom up ( SG, 73). With theemphasis on action as the clue to any agency, Farrer and Conti could reject specious inferences that offerknowledge of the life of God-in-God. Such knowledge is beyond the reach of finite knowing (MetaphysicalPersonalism, xxii). This, Conti argues, closes the conceivability-gap between persons and their God(Metaphysical Personalism, 196).

45Farrer, The Prior Actuality of God, 188.46 Farrer, Finite and Infinite, 231. See also The Freedom of the Will, 171: [T]he world is not known but as

the playground of human thews and human thoughts; were there no free play, there would be noknowledge. Should philosophers need convincing of the active embodiment of personal agency? Bettercatch them in the posture of vigorous action (since philosophers off duty are agents too) and get them tointrospect before they have introspected, before they have time to retire to their fly-pitch on the ceiling(Finite and Infinite, 109). Locating the criterion of real being in the physical extensions of consciousness,transforms both philosophyand theology, shows reason its human face. It does so by revising the model ofcausality on which the cosmological inference stands. Whitehead, as suggested, opted for a naturalisticmodel. Farrer looked closer to home: in the experience of being a causal agent. This experience was mappedout in the central chapters of Finite and Infinite (Chs. XV XXI) and in The Freedom of the Will. See alsoFarrers essay Causes, in: Reflective Faith, 200-218.

47

Farrer, Finite and Infinite, 234.


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These are the first and most reliable facts of experience. As features of thatfield, real existents are first experienced as a mode of operation in pari materia

with my own. That which is not me but impinges upon me makes itself known asa corollary of my actions, a physical ingredient in conscious interaction. In other

words, tobe an existent of some recognisable sort is to exercise what Farrer called

disturbance-effect. This emphasises the impact on conscious agency.Highlighting the concrete quality of encounter, Conti dubbed it interferencecapability. Both expressions denote a mutual interplay of action-patterns. Thus,Hume was correct: causal explanations are not born from interactions observed.They are, however, born from direct participation in them.48 Only byparticipating can we see past the abstract schematics of a coherent world-process.The underlying inference is presuppositional; the epistemological requirements,pragmatic. Participation turns on the adequate logical conditions for makingsense of interaction as interaction. That is, there should be at least two inter-agents.49 And the conceptual tools needed to frame that inference are in the

hands of exploring agents.[A]part from any personal identity with my bodily performances; and apartfrom my experience of impinging upon, and being impinged upon by, otherthings or forces, I have no conceivable clue to physical existence, or physicalforce, or physical interaction.50

This re-establishes the connection between knowing agent and objectknown. Bodily performance conscious physical action supplies access to aphysical environment, so becomes the natural unit of our thought.51 This placesunique metaphysical weight on our own capacity to act as interpretative key tocognising and recognising real being.52 It means our most basic conception ofexistence is extrapolated from our own actions: real beings are recognised by theproperties they share with us. The fundamental property of any being is itscapacity to impact on another. That enables me to treat the thing as an otherover against me. Philosophers will be quick to point out that we do not regardourselves as things any more than we regard things as selves. Perhaps not,Farrer agreed, but we do erect a pseudo-genus of which thing and self are

48 See also, The Freedom of the Will, 187: concerning animal behaviour, specifically cats, Farrer appliedthe activist principle to good effect. We are content to see her anger in her claws and eyes and not to askwhat sort of anger it is, beyond what her action defines. We hear her pleasure in her purring, we feel it in therelaxation of her muscles. Yet pleasure can no more be heard in purring than cold can be seen in ice. There isan associative imputation of emotion and it borrows from our own bosoms. It seems safe to say that the catis pleased. After all, pleasure has a wide range of levels in ourselves; yet we are content to claim pleasure, forthe most part without particularising it. Such knowledge is a product, not of observation, but of interaction.For the theological application of this, see The Will to Believe, especially the claim that: This feeling, forcedon us we know not whence, that by obstinately believing that there are gods (although not to do so would beso easy both for our logic and our life) we are doing the universe the deepest service we can, seems part ofthe living essence of the religious hypothesis. If the hypothesis were true in all its parts, including this one,then pure intellectualism, with its veto on our making willing advances, would be an absurdity; and someparticipation of our willing nature would be logically required (James, The Will To Believe, 733).

49 See P. F. Strawson on presuppositional logic in Individuals (London: Methuen & Co. 1959), Ch. 3,especially 105-6 and 112, and his Introduction to Logical Theory (London: Methuen & Co., 1952), Ch. 6.

50Farrer, Causes, 210.51 Farrer, Finite and Infinite, 67.52

See Farrer, Causes, 207.


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species.53 Thus, the disturbance-effect is parasitic upon the model of affectiveactivity best known to the effected agent. It signifies the presence of an object bydesignating it an agencylike me.

Crucially, this rises not on direct apprehensions or watertightdemonstrations, but analogical extensions. Otherwise put, the experience of

being an agent gives shape to our experience of, and thought about, other agents.However, it cannot give us the agents as they are in themselves, their essentialreality as it were. No matter how sensitive we become to the subtle shades ofinteraction, this via analogia offers only diagrams drawn from our experience ofaction: models of interpretation. The less personal, or me-like, thosedisturbances are, the greater the degree of abstraction. Hence, the models we useto explore and structure our world develop through a process of refinement,paring away the anthropocentric layers. For some investigations this is entirelyappropriate and, moreover, has proved highly profitable. Consider, for example,the physical sciences. In metaphysics, however, it is essential that we remember

these are only ever diagrammatic fictions.54This is the key to Farrers critique of Whitehead. [T]he realorder of things is

diagrammatisable, not diagrammatic; the diagrammatic unity is in the mind, notin the world.55 Thus, any coherence or rationality the world exhibits is always inrelation to some exploring agent. Our diagrams are neither objective reals norpicture-perfect representations. They are simply versions. The world in itself isneither unified conjunction nor disjunctive multiplicity. Apart fromconsciousness organising experience, constructing and imposing interpretations,the world isnt anything at all.

Whatever we call by that name is a map, a diagram of our construction, true in

the main as diagrams are true, and serviceable for finding our way among thoselive points of process in which alone the word is actual.56

We must take care, however, when applying deceptively neutral terms likemap and diagram. If a map is accurate it may be supposed that it entails theobjective reality of the area it represents. When considering the totality ofCreation, such assumptions hardly stand up. That is why Farrer wouldrecommend that we pulverise that idol of the mind, the universe.

Deny this and the theological programme stalls. We have no access toobjective realities even when fully and necessarily integrated. For real being is acorollary of our exploratory diagrams. In the words of another pragmatic thinker,the world is what we might call a melioristic or participative truth.57Consequently, in the absence of diagrammatising consciousness, the inference toboth universal coherence and the divine actuality underwriting it is vitiated.

The aim here is not, as realists might fear, idealist reduction. Nor is it anytranscendental inflation, designed to shore-up freewheeling supernaturalism.

53 Farrer, Finite and Infinite, 67.54 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 19.55 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 150; my italics.56 Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 169.57

See The Will to Believe, 739.


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Rather, the aim is simply to reconnect mind and world. Only by placing theweight on personal agency, that is, will we reverse the isolationist tendencies ofclassical ontology. Do so, and our description of what Whiteheadians call thefinal realities58 may finally be able to account for the consciousness whichconstructs it. Put simply, it takes active explorations to complete the

metaphysical revision that Whitehead began. For they secure the vital exchange:conditions of being for conditions of knowing, world in se for world inres.

This takes the argument a stage further. It means that the coherence of ourexplorations and explanations is a corollary of the regularity and stability wediscover in the world. Pressing the point, without the presupposition ofregularity and diagrammatisability the evolution of mentality (qua purposefulinteraction) is at best unlikely. Hence Farrers reminder to ontological thinkers:human consciousness has been bound up from the first with the ability toproduce indirect effects, or make other agents act.59 Consciousness, in other

words, is teleological: continuous with the realisation of unrealised

consequences. We act in order to achieve some further goal, organising ourenvironment (and our experience) in its pursuit. That requires a relatively stableenvironment to act within and upon. The alternative sees conscious actionexhausted in its immediate interference with its environment. Such constraints,however, are psychologically and philosophically detrimental; what remainswould be scarcely human at all.

To highlight the absurdity here, Farrer borrowed an idea from Lewis Carroll.When conscious action is reduced to its immediate impacts (he argued) theresult is something like Wonderland croquet.60 Students of the game will beaware that flamingos are not good sports; being glared at by the mallet can put

off the most determined player. Hedgehog balls are not much better (thoughhedgehogs might disagree) and they have a militant streak. It is provocative (as

Alice found out) to find your ball has upped and wandered off. Alive to thephilosophical mischief here, Farrer made the joke plain. Disconnect the swingingof a mallet from the hitting of a ball and the decision to produce an indirecteffect like the passage of a ball through a hoop, will lead to little butdisappointment. And disappointment is unlikely to provide sufficiently fertileconditions for the evolution of anything, especially consciousness.

The regularities governing such indirect effects are not objectively orindependently real. Rather, the relative predictability of those agencies is

continuous with the expectation and intention to bring about some change intheir situation. These expectations and intentions supply experience with shapeand content. Thus, I deliberately interfere with this state of affairs (the relation ofmallet to ball) in order to bring about a new one (the passage of ball throughhoop, winning the game, glory and honour). My understanding and consequentcontrol of the sequences of interaction (mallet-ball-hoop) cannot be predicatedon the objective apprehension of inter-agents, or their relations. Understandingand control result from direct participation. And participative relations issue in

58 Whitehead, Process and Reality, 18.59 Farrer, The Freedom of the Will, 177, this and next.60

Farrer, The Freedom of the Will, 177.


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analogical extensions. Regularity and predictability are, in other words, built intoour diagrams of the world in the act of constructing them.

Drawing on a long-standing philosophical tradition, Farrer emphasised thepragmatic requirements of a developing consciousness. We presume that auniform natural world is the condition of intelligence (he observed) because

causal chaos would [not] offer sufficient objects to the mind. In process terms,the disjunctive multiplicity of eternal objects could not of itself constitute orsustain the ongoing process of concretion. That is why Whitehead appealed to anact of primordial conception. Farrer, in contrast, held fast to the central role ofintentional agency.

It seems more in accordance with the order of cultural history to start from thepragmatic end, and correlate the growth of intellectual power with the abilityto extend our action through subordinate agents. A predictable regularity innature is the condition of our imposing effective decision.61

Predictable regularities, then, presuppose a predicting (and also, in someways, predictable) regulator. It is only because the universe can be depended onto behave in relatively predictable ways that we are able to construct ourdiagrammatic fictions. Without this stability, we could impose no system ofactivity on the world; nor could we exert the articulation of purpose, whicheither calls for human mentality or employs it. It follows that the regularity ofthe world is no threat to the consciousness on which it depends for itsorganisation. Equally, consciousness is no threat to the regularity of a world on

which it depends for the structure and content of its diagrams. In fact, there is noneed to reduce one model of causal relations to the other at all. Mind-and-worldare intrinsically interconnected. Bi-conditional constructs, they simultaneouslyinform and in-form one another.

Recast in theological terms, the personalist pay-off sees transcendenceseverely chastened. No need for freewheeling supernaturalism nor for a Creatorexiled to the glacial heights of scholastic ontology. Instead, Farrer realigned thediagrammatising activities of conscious agency with the diagrammatisability of aphysical environment. In doing so, he reconceived Divine Mind as fully involvedbut neither identical with nor reducible to those physical patterns.62

On the cosmological scale, the world of Wonderland croquet is a theologicaldead-end. Apart from the regularity mediated by consciousness, the world-process is nothing but a collection of colliding actualities. It is a physical

environment for every free agent, entirely composed of the bodies of other freeagents. This is natura naturans: a hurly-burly in which every movement is free,i.e. uncaused, more accurately, unintended. In such circumstances, the ways in

61 Farrer, The Freedom of the Will, 178.62 Farrer was careful not to draw the parallel between finite and infinite mind too close. He did not

suggest that the divine consciousness arose out of the patterns which constitute Creation as do ours. To saythat, with us, mind is embodied, is to say that our personal action is geared to the workings of many minuteactions themselves organising actions more minute. And naturally, for our personal action is not, like Gods,that out of which the world arises. His action, being prior and creative, is free and simple. Surely to believe inGod is to believe exactly this (Faith and Speculation, 166-7). As already suggested, this is not a claim forradical transcendence. It is an anti-reductive move, one designed (as he put it) to allow the Creator to see an

inch ahead of the creature (Faith and Speculation, 160).


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which any particular agency affects any other will be determinate insofar as theyare limited by the individuals capacity to physically extend itself. This constraintis more severe than it might, at first glance, appear. In effect, it reduces every act

within the collection to its immediate impact on another agent.

Every agent can make another suffer but none can make another act. Necessarysequence in such a system is limited to the following of suffering upon action; itdoes not extend to the following of action upon suffering.63

Conceive the world-process in exclusively naturalistic terms, then, and webreach a fundamental premise of process theology. Reducing necessary sequencesto immediate impacts means that no one actuality is essential to the nexus. It isimportant to remember that, on Whiteheadian premises, every actualityincludes God. Therefore, the vital entailment relation between God and the worldhas been fatally undermined. Furthermore, this negates any unity or coherencethe nexus might have. There is no regularity or predictability beyond these

foreshortened action-suffering sequences. Hence there is no nexus, no higher-level pattern of actualities. If, however, there is no higher-level pattern toexistence, then we have no grounds for inferring anything other than naturanaturans is at work. Otherwise put, there is no room here for the directed actionor secondary effects which would provide that higher-level pattern. This defeatstheology altogether. No nexus and no action to organise one, so no God required.

To bring off the supposed cosmologicality of the nexuswe must pursue theinference beyond mere creativity.64That requires a higher organising principleonly to be found in the concept of the governing mind. Without this, Farrerreminds us, any pattern must be explicable without invoking the formativeinfluence of the pattern itself.65 In other words, if the explanation for coherenceis not, in some sense, outside or in addition to the world-process, then coherenceitself explains nothing. Limit the (alleged) coherence to the process and it mustbe explicable in terms of those immediate impacts. This, however, vitiates theinference to the enactment of a pattern, rendering the very supposition vacuousand the higher organising principle redundant. Farrer put it like this:

If no new principles of action come into play at successive levels oforganisation, the electrons composing the atoms have it in them to be you andme, precisely as the water molecules have it in them to be the tide; and that is atall story.66

That the actualities composing the world-process have it in them to be Godis an even taller one. Empty the God-construct of its formative influence, itsgovernance or providence, and we reduce theology to flattened naturalism. Thepattern we call the tide is no pulsating agency, its a composite effect of watermolecules. Each molecule impacts on its neighbours, but it cannot make them doanything. Similarly, Whiteheads world-process is no more than the large-scale

63 Farrer, The Freedom of the Will, 177.64 See Conti,Metaphysical Personalism, 17 for these remarks.65 Farrer, The Freedom of the Will, 56. See also Finite and Infinite, 133.66

Farrer, The Freedom of the Will, 58.


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result of working forces.67 Contrariwise, conceive the world as a coherent unityand we presuppose that it is more than a mere resultant [or] mass effect. Wepresuppose that its coherence is the effect of some organising influence, thecorollary of some participative act. That is the more than which theology mustbring to naturalism.

Ultimately, then, despite crucial similarities in their activist revision ofclassical theology, Farrer could not accept Whiteheads retention of one

Aristotelian component: the objectification of the world-process. The formativeinfluence of conscious personal agency is the essential ingredient missing fromprocess metaphysics. Nature may well embody the vast extent of Gods physicaland creative thought, Farrer agreed; and minds inclined to think theistically willno doubt find ample evidence for the enormous scope and intimate su btlety ofhis wisdom.68However, that evidence is not enough. [N]ature fails to supply theclue by which her own signs can be read; in and of itself, creation offers no clueto a Creator.

Impersonal process lacks the interpretative key required to construe naturalfact as the clue to something other than natura naturans. That key is the notionof wisdom, or mind itself. Once again, mind itself is not in-itselfbut physicallyextended (and therefore socially oriented) so concretely connected to itssituation. This supplies adequate logical conditions for construing natural facts as(divinely) creative acts. If Creation is to be more than blind process, then theenactment of divine creativity must be conceived as purposeful.

The world-order on one hand, and human mentality on the other suggest to usthe hypothesis that wisdom made the world, and supplies us with the terms inwhich to formulate it.69

Putting the God-suggestive aspects of things back in the hands of God-seeking agents loosens up the logical requirements for a coherent theism.Refusing the demand for a traditional theological a priori, it plants the search onmore pragmatic, and more fertile, ground. Ifthe world requires conscious agencyto complete it, something like human mentality, then the question is whetherthat consciousness might be divine. This reverses the logic of cosmologicalthinking. If there is a God, then we may have reason to see, or seek, solidarityamong natures constituents. And most importantly, ifwe experience providencein relation to the exercise of personal will, the corollary of that might be the samegeneral and sovereign providence extended throughout nature.

This brings us back to the cosmologists first order of business. Thephilosophical upshot was, perhaps, to be expected. We must concede thatuniversal coherence cannot necessitate divine insurance. The naturalness ofCreation does not point inexorably to its foundations. All is not lost, however. Wemight, as Farrer suggested, resist the lure of old-fashioned totalising mythologies,defy classical and neo-classical attempts to convert causal connections into

67 Farrer, The Freedom of the Will, 57.68 This and next, Farrer,A Science of God?(London: Geoffrey Bles Ltd, 1966), 93.69

Farrer,A Science of God?, 93-94.


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Ars Disputandi [http://www ArsDisputandi org] 11 (2011) 60

entailment relations.70 We might, then, return to a more pragmatic formulation.Not does the world logically demand cosmological interpretation? But simplycan we be sure that the world does not require a divine will to complete it? Thepoet said, [t]hey reckon ill who leave me out.71 That, after all, is the believersclaim and, moreover, the foundation of all theistical reflection.72 No necessitarian

connections here perhaps; but still, a universe might need God to give it thewholeness it lacks by projecting it in the single focus of his mind.73 Once weadmit that possibility, theology finds its natural starting point and we may findourselves faced with the most serious of metaphysical experiments. That, Isuggest, where the most fruitful philosophical and spiritual journeys begin.

70This, Farrer suggests, is the cosmologists Achilles heel: the foundational assumption that causationought to be assimilable to implication. The empiricist movement, as everyone knows, destroyed thisargument. It was shown to everyones satisfaction that causal necessity had nothing in common with logicalnecessity, i.e. with valid implication. Since the idea of construing causal sequence in terms of logicalconsequence was merely grotesque, it became absurd to complain that natural causes failed to do the jobbecause they could not be turned into a watertight implicational system. The standard tightness for causalsystems on any level could only be derived from the best worked-out of such systems themselves (Causes,216).

71 From Brahma, in: Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: New American Library;

Reprint Edition, 2010), 524. Farrer quoted the line inA Science of God?, 11.72 See Farrer, Faith and Speculation, 1. Whatever else the rational theologian may pretend to do, he will

in fact be considering a question posed to him by religious belief; and he may as well be above board aboutit.

73

Farrer, Transcendence and Radical Theology, 173.

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