Given the profound differences between the Orthodox Christian understanding of God’s divine energies and the dipolar nature of God in process theology, one might wonder how—or even if—it is possible to harmonize these two positions. I believe it is, in part through revising the process understanding of creativity and the Eastern Christian understanding of God’s immutability, but far more through reading the traditional Christian doctrine of the glory of God through a revised process lens of creativity and novelty.
My harmonization is dependent upon Thomas Hosinski’s revision (itself adopted from Langdon Gilkey) of Whitehead’s position on creativity. While Whitehead sees creativity as the “universal of universals,” Hosinski argues creativity is the divine life itself. Taking seriously Whitehead’s assertion that “the world lives by its incarnation of God in itself,” Hosinski says his revision “Enables us to understand the freedom and creativity present in the universe as the universe’s participation in God’s own life. Creativity and freedom are present in each actual entity as a gift from God, who freely shares the creativity and freedom of the divine life with the creatures God makes possible.” Creativity and freedom, he adds, “are present in each actual entity as a gift from God, who freely shares the creativity and freedom of the divine life with the creatures God makes possible…God’s creative activity makes possible free and creative creatures that reflect the freedom and creativity of God and participate even in God’s own autonomy.” I should note that seeing creativity as intrinsic to God is not entirely foreign to process thought—R.J. Connelly attributes such a position to Charles Hartshorne—but Hosinski’s perspective is uniquely Christian.
Hosinski’s merging creativity into the divine life enables us to see the divine energeia and theosis through a process lens. Whitehead posits all actual entities, including God, are interrelated activities or processes; Eastern Christianity maintains the divine energies are God’s self-present actions (and more specifically, as experienced by creation, God’s self-present activity within the world). This gives an immensely deep and rich perspective on the concept of the “divine lure:” the divine energies are “God-for-us” (as worded by Eric D. Perl), and through them God is not simply suggesting good courses of action or “nudging” us in their direction but instead, containing the (current) fullness of beauty, truth and goodness, is working with-and-within us in a glorious synergia to bring all actual entities into harmony with each other and the divine actuality (see Maximus the Confessor). Elizabeth Theokritoff wonderfully explains what this means with an Orthodox Christian emphasis on theosis, “Here daily life, interactions with people and other creatures, the use of land and machinery and building materials are consciously part of a work of growing into Christ.”
