Skip to content
quotesby

These distinctions make sense only when AR [absolute perfection in some respects, relative perfection in all others] is assumed (hence Spinoza's failure, who assumed mere A). Just as AR is the whole positive content of perfection, so CW, or the conception of the Creator-and-the-Whole-of-what-he-has-created as constituting one life, the super-whole which in its everlasting essence is uncreated (and does not necessitate just the parts which the whole has) but in its de facto concreteness is created - this panentheistic doctrine contains all of deism and pandeism except their arbitrary negations. Thus ARCW, or absolute-relative panentheism, is the one doctrine that really states the whole of what all theists, if not all atheists as well, are implicitly talking about.

Charles Hartshorne#8

More from Charles Hartshorne

  1. God thus includes the world; he is, in fact, the totality of world parts, which are indifferently causes and effects. Now AR [absolute perfection in some respe…

    Permalink to quote #7
  2. In Plato's Republic one finds the proposition: God, being perfect, cannot change (not for the better, since 'perfect' means that there can be no better; not fo…

    Permalink to quote #9
  3. God thus excludes the world; he is only its cause; in no sense is he effect, of himself or anything else. Pantheism (better, 'pandeism,' for again it is not re…

    Permalink to quote #6