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.
More from Charles Hartshorne
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 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 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