1001Philosophers

Charles Hartshorne Quotes on God

Charles Hartshorne, the principal developer of process theology, reconceived the very nature of God, and the quotes gathered here present that reconception. Against the classical picture of an unchanging, self-sufficient deity, Hartshorne held that God is the supremely related being, related to all that is, and that each moment of experience adds new richness to the divine life. He took as his guiding intuition the conviction that God is love, defining God as the being worthy to be loved with all one's heart, mind, soul, and entire being. Hartshorne argued that the traditional notion of divine infinity is hopelessly unclear and has itself bred atheism as a natural reaction. Drawn from The Divine Relativity and his other works, these passages present God as a living, related, and genuinely affected being rather than an immutable absolute; several condensed formulations are marked as attributed.

Quotes

  • Attributed to Charles Hartshorne:

    “God is the supremely related being, related to all that is.”

  • Attributed to Charles Hartshorne:

    “Love is the inclusive virtue, embracing all the others.”

  • Attributed to Charles Hartshorne:

    “Each moment of experience adds new richness to the divine life.”

  • “In the Veery journal interview in 1996, in reply to the question of "What is the most rewarding aspect of philosophy?" presented by Veery editor Steven Vita, later reprinted in 1997 in the Austin American-Statesman and then quoted from in The New York Times obituary entitled “Charles Hartshorne, Theologian, Is Dead; Proponent of an Activist God Was 103.”

    the search for necessary truths, truths that are not only true, but they couldn’t have been false.
  • “My ultimate intuitive clue in philosophy is that " God is love " and that the idea of God is definable as that of the being worthy to be loved with all one’s heart , mind , soul , and entire being .”

    The Philosophy of Charles Hartshorne (1991), edited by Lewis Edwin Hahn, p. 700
  • “[T]he traditional idea of divine perfection or infinity is hopelessly unclear or ambiguous and that persisting in that tradition is bound to cause increasing skepticism, confusion, and human suffering. It has long bred, and must evermore breed, atheism as a natural reaction.”

    Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes(1984)

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