This was originally posted on Sept 2, 2013
Last week I wrote about Protestant Neo-Orthodoxy’s deification of male power as power over. This week I want to ask why the relational Goddess or God* of process philosophy has not been more widely embraced, both generally and in feminist theologies.
Could it be that a relational God just isn’t powerful enough? Are some of us still hoping that an omnipotent God can and will intervene in history to set things right? Do we believe an omnipotent God can save us from death?
Process philosophy provides an attractive alternative to the concept of divine power modeled on male power as domination. According to leading process philosopher Charles Hartshorne, the power to coerce, power as power over and domination, is not the kind of power God has.
The concept of divine power as omnipotent (having all the power) leads to what Hartshorne called “the zero fallacy.” If God has all the power and can dominate in all situations, then the power of individuals* other than God is reduced to zero. In effect, this means that individuals other than God do not really exist, but at most are puppets whose strings are pulled by the divine power.
Moreover, as Hartshorne argued, the power to coerce is not the kind of power Goddess “should” have. Although many have been forced to submit to them, tyrants and bullies do not empower others. Should we not understand the “highest power in the universe” as empowering of others?
For process philosophy Goddess is understood to be the most sympathetic or empathetic of all relational beings. Goddess did not first “exist” and then later “create” other individuals in order to relate to them. Goddess has always existed in relationship to some universe and to some individuals. To be related is part of the “nature” of Goddess.
While other individuals understand each other imperfectly at best, God “enters in” to the experiences of every individual in the universe with infinite understanding and compassion. The power of a relational God is not the power to coerce, but the power to inspire or persuade individuals to act in their own best interests and in the best interests of other individuals in the universe. The love and understanding of God opens us to understand more deeply and to love more widely.
From the standpoint of traditional theologies shaped around the image of male power as power over and the concept of omnipotence, it might seem that the power of the process Goddess is “limited.” This is a mistake. The process Goddess does not voluntarily “withdraw from the world” (as in Kabbalah) or voluntarily “limit” her power (as in some forms of the free will defense) in order for the world and free individuals to exist. According to process philosophy Goddess never did have all the power, because Goddess has always been in relationship to some other individuals. To be an individual is to have at least a degree of freedom and at least a degree of power. This means that individuals other than Goddess have always and will always have some of the power in this or any other universe. Goddess cannot be omnipotent, because an omnipotent Goddess logically cannot be in relationship to other individuals who also have a degree of freedom and power.
The relational understanding of the nature of God satisfies me both intellectually and emotionally. My moral question about how a good God could “allow” the evil in our world to occur, is answered. God does not “allow” evil to happen because the power to stop it single-handedly is not the kind of power God has. My personal question about why God did not answer many of my most heart-felt prayers is also answered. The power to coerce others in order to “make things happen” for me or for any other individual is not the kind of power God has.
On an emotional level, it makes me very happy to think of and to experience a divine power that enters into the experience of every individual in the world—including but not only my experiences—with perfect insight and with infinite care and concern. Goddess is “always there,” encouraging me and every other individual to enjoy life, to “make the best” of difficult situations, and to widen and deepen our understanding and compassion for others.
The omnipotent God of many traditional theologies may be dead, but the God or Goddess whose power is in relationships is not. There is a traditional Biblical name for this power: “Immanuel,” God with us.*** Omnipresence is the theological term describing the divine power present in and for everyone and everything. In traditional theologies omnipresence is swallowed up in omnipotence. Perhaps it is time to separate these theological “twins.”
I suggest that power in relationship, the power to love, understand, and inspire really is the highest power.
*I am speaking here of one divine power which may be called Goddess or God. In this essay I use the two names interchangeably.
**For process philosophy, individual is not a term reserved for human beings: individuals include particles of atoms, cells, animals, and human animals.
***If we want to speak in Hebrew, also “Immanu-Elah,” Goddess with us.
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Oh Carol always asked the right questions and then answered them including ALL SENTIENT BEINGS human and otherwise “According to process philosophy Goddess never did have all the power, because Goddess has always been in relationship to some other individuals. To be an individual is to have at least a degree of freedom and at least a degree of power. This means that individuals other than Goddess have always and will always have some of the power in this or any other universe. Goddess cannot be omnipotent, because an omnipotent Goddess logically cannot be in relationship to other individuals who also have a degree of freedom and power” Nature has taught me that relationship is all – my word for goddess/god…… I am including excerpts from an article that address this issue on its dark side….Excerpt from article Taken from The Guardian, an independent British newspaper that OWNS itself unlike the American News owned by corporate America. 09/24
“Any attempt to understand the attraction which fascism exercises upon great nations compels us to recognize the role of psychological factors,” the German-Jewish social psychologist Erich Fromm asserted in 1941. Such factors are not specifically German or, say Italian, nor were they the manifestations of a unique historical era, now safely in the distant past. Not only can the malignant political-economic-ideological climates required for the flowering of fascism develop anywhere, so are its emotional dynamics present in the psyche of most human beings.
“We each have a Nazi within,” the Auschwitz survivor Edith Eger has written – pointing, in my observation, to a near-universal reality. Many of us harbor the seeds for hatred, rage, fear, narcissistic self-regard and contempt for others that, in their most venomous and extreme forms, are the dominant emotional currents whose confluence can feed the all-destructive torrent we call fascism, given enough provocation or encouragement.
All the more reason to understand the psychic sources of such tendencies, whose ground and nature can be expressed in a word: trauma. In the case of fascism, severe trauma.
Nobody is born with rabid hatred, untrammelled rage, existential fear or cold contempt permanently embedded in their minds or hearts. These fulminant emotions, when chronic, are responses to unbearable suffering endured at a time of utmost vulnerability, helplessness and unrelieved threat: that is, in early childhood.
The human infant enters the world with the implicit expectation of being safely held, seen, heard, physically protected and emotionally nourished, her feelings welcomed, recognized, validated and mirrored. Given such an “evolved nest”, in the apt phrase of the psychologist Darcia Narvaez, we develop and maintain a strong connection to ourselves, a deeply rooted confidence in who we are, a trust in innate goodness present in the world and an openness to love within ourselves, as without. Trauma represents a disconnect from these healthy inclinations, in extreme cases a defensive denial of them as being too vulnerable to bear. And that, in essence, is what fascism is on the emotional level: a desperate escape from vulnerability. The forces of loneliness can cause political instability and threaten democracy.
Looking at the hideous demigod of fascism, Adolf Hitler, or at his present-day caricature Donald Trump, who is often compared to him – including some years ago by his current vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance – we find many remarkable characteristic similarities: relentless self-hypnotising mendacity, mistrust bordering on paranoia, devious opportunism, a deep streak of cruelty, limitless grandiosity, unhinged impulsivity, crushing disdain for the weak.
Both had grown up in homes headed by abusive fathers, with mothers impotent to defend their children. In Hitler’s case, the bright and sensitive child suffered merciless violence. Trump was subjected to the ruthless emotional dictatorship of a father, Fred Sr, who Mary, Donald’s psychologist niece, describes as a “sociopath”. “Donald Trump is a poster boy for trauma,” the eminent trauma psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk told me.
In both cases the rage and hatred represent eruptions of the forbidden and therefore repressed emotions of childhood and the compensations of a psyche pulverized into insignificance. In turn, as the biographer Volker Ullrich writes: “Hitler … gave the decisive signal for Germans to give free reign to their hatred and destructive desires.” He spoke to and promised to redeem those masses in his nation who also experienced themselves as threatened and insignificant – to “make them great again,” if you will.
“What they want,” he wrote, “is the victory of the stronger and the annihilation or the unconditional surrender of the weaker.” This fascistic drive to dominate is the unconscious rejection of the small child’s vulnerability and a defensive identification with the unassailable power of the abusive father.
What draws people to such leaders? On the socioeconomic plane, their own sense of exclusion, dislocation, grievance, marginalization, loss of place and meaning. On the emotional, psychological level, a trauma-induced absence of confidence in themselves and the drive to submit for protection to some person perceived as “strong.”
This is coupled with an urge to flee from responsibility by casting blame on some vulnerable yet vermin-like and threatening “other” – a Jewish, Muslim, Hispanic or Slavic person, say – who serves as the target of one’s ingrained hostility, the real sources of which rest in the deep infantile unconscious
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The American psychologist, Michael Milburn, has studied the childhood antecedents of rightwing ideological rigidity. His research confirms that the harsher the parenting atmosphere people were exposed to as young children, the more prone they are to support authoritarian or aggressive policies, such as foreign wars, punitive laws and the death penalty.
“We used physical punishment in childhood as a marker of dysfunctional family environment,” Milburn said. “There was significantly more support for the capital punishment, opposition to abortion and the use of military force, particularly among males who had experienced high levels of physical punishment, especially if they had never had psychotherapy.” I was intrigued by that last finding.
“Psychotherapy,” Milburn said, “speaks to a potential for self-examination, for self-reflection.” Self-reflection, something the fascist mentality cannot abide, can soften the heart.
Neuroimaging studies have shown that the amygdala, the tiny almond-shaped brain structure that mediates fear, is larger in people with more rightwing views. It is more active in those favoring strong protective authority and harboring a suspicion of outsiders and of people who are different. This is a telling finding, because we know that the development of the circuitry of the brain is decisively influenced by the child’s emotional environment in the early years.
“The monster Adolf Hitler, murderer of millions, master of destruction and organized insanity, did not come into the world as a monster” – so wrote the psychoanalyst Alice Miller. Fascism, in that sense, is an all too human phenomenon, an outcome of many influences salient among which, on the personal scale, is the unspeakable suffering of the child”.
(I would add that a child might inherit certain tendencies that if left unaddressed can create an adult who becomes a monster of one sort of another).
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