AnthonyFlood.com
Panentheism. Revisionism. Anarchocapitalism.
Lewis S. FordTransforming Process TheismS.U.N.Y. Press, 2000
Excerpts selected, with emphases added,by Anthony Flood
“The meaning I propose to give to the future . . . . is an extension of Whitehead’s analysis of the concrescence or actualization of a present act of becoming, proposed as a way of explaining how the everlasting divine concrescence can influence present occasions.”
1
“. . . the future [is] conceived in terms of being, which is the ordinary sense, and . . . as becoming, our extended sense.”
2
“Whitehead . . . . did not reckon with the possibility that there could be one future actuality that is not an occasion . . . .”
2
“According to the future as becoming, . . . the metaphysical qualities of the temporal modes are essential. This metaphysical differentiation is leveled by determinism, since it assigns determinate being to all three modes.”
3
(To be is to be determinate. To become is to be indeterminate.)
“Every process of concrescence comes out of the future to become determinate. Whitehead analyzed its present and past status. His analysis is here extended to include the future, to include that which has not yet separated itself out of the divine. . . . . As God withdraws into a more distant future, the present actualizes itself and becomes past. The same locus was once part of the divine, is now our present subjective immediacy, and will become past fact, as the creative advance moves on.”
3-4
“God is in unison of immediacy with us. . . . The everlasting divine subjectivity will overlap with our own at some juncture. Since we are present, the juncture will also be in the present experience of God. . . .
“. . . [Contemporaries] are not present [to each other] in that they are causally independent. Contemporaries are in unison of becoming with the present occasion, even though not directly present to it. So we may conceive of God as in unison of becoming with present occasions, yet in their future in the sense that its indeterminate activity will become the activity of present occasions subsequently.”
4
“For Whitehead, God provides each actuality with its own initial aim, which is the possibility for its own future, which it strives to actualize. In this sense God creates the relevant future in terms of which each actuality can experience and integrate its past into a determinate achievement.
“That God is our future providing the aims we strive for is the fulcrum by which Whitehead’s philosophy can emancipate us from some long-standing difficulties of the tradition.”
4
“Either God determines the being of the creature unilaterally or the determination is achieved by other factors as well.”
6
“If the notion ultimately makes sense, then only an omnipotent being could create the world ex nihilo. Only an all-determinative act could bring some being into being if there were no other resources involved. . . .
“The general principle of concrescence takes on special meaning for the history of evolution. . . . Without that divine aim, however, there would [be] only chaos and extreme improbability; with it, this mighty world has come into being out of practically nothing.”
7
“Since becoming is primary, God should be conceived as perfect becoming, and the perfection of becoming includes being enriched by that which comes into being.
“. . . [I]f Whitehead’s ‘timeless objects’ were dependent upon becoming for their existence, then it is possible to conceive of them as derivative from temporal actualities. They are abstract, because they abstract from time. . . . [T]ime transcends timelessness. . . . God transcends us as our future.”
9
“. . . [A]ll present becoming is subjective; all past being (outcome of becoming) is objective . . . . [W]hat of the future? . . . .
“. . . [W]e assume actuality to have univocal meaning. Aristotle initiated the tradition of conceiving the actual to be something concretely determinate. As indeterminate, the future, cannot be actual in this sense. . . .
“Whitehead treated both concrescing occasions and concrete occasions as actual, at least insofar as both can serve as basic reasons, according to the ontological principle (PR, 24).
“Whitehead has discovered a common element between these two types of actuality: decision. Concrescence, the reduction of many alternative ways of integration to a final one, is a process of deciding, while the outcome [the concrete] is something decided. In either case there is decision, the cutting off of alternatives. ‘”Decision” cannot be construed as a causal adjunct of an actual entity. It constitutes the very meaning of actuality.’ (PR, 43)”
10
“If the present and the past constitute distinct forms of actuality, why cannot the future also have its own distinctive kind of actuality? . . .
“Like most of us, Whitehead assumes that the present (and past) alone are actual. Then the future is merely possible. Then God is presently actual or merely possible. If only possible, God is an imaginative projection of our own making. . . .
“. . . [The future] must be less determinate than either the present or the past. It should be the source of creativity for the present, and it could also be the ultimate source of aim.
“If so, there are three modes of actuality: the past as determinately actual, the present as the activity of determination, and the future as activity, transferring the power of creativity to the present. . . .
“From whence comes the creative power of present causation? I argue that it comes from the transfer of creativity from the future to the present. This transfer can be conceived as future causation.”
11
“. . . [C]reativity is . . . the underlying power of concrescence, it is the basis of present actuality. Creativity has the proper indeterminateness. In one sense it is even more indeterminate than an eternal object, for it cannot be objectified.”
“Creativity either comes from within an occasion or from beyond it. . .
“An individual occasion lacks the resources to be the source of its own creativity. Its creativity is limited to the task it faces in unifying the multiplicity it receives, which [creativity] is exhausted in the process of concrescence. An occasion is nothing but what it receives, and what it can make of what it receives. Whatever it prehends it receives; should it not also receive the power of prehending? How could this creativity simply well up from within?
“The past . . . lacks all active power, for any individual past actuality [a concretum] is completely devoid of creativity [it was exhausted in the concrescence]. . . .[I]t is only through the creativity found in the present that the past can exert influence.
12
“As long as the future is thought to contain nothing actual, everything that an occasion needs must be derived from the past. . . . even though every individual past actuality has no creativity. (If it had any creativity, it would still be on the way to becoming past. There is no real pastness unless its creativity has perished.) If the future is actual, and particularly if the future is creativity itself, it can be the source of creativity. If creativity cannot simply well up in the present, nor come from a creativityless past, it must come from the future.”
12-13
“Pure creativity underlies both the actuality of the future and the many actualities of the present. In the future, creativity constitutes a single activity, unbounded in its forward reaches, which then becomes pluralized into the many finite present actual occasions in the creative advance of nature.”
13
“. . . [A]im signifies the very real future toward which each concrescence aims. It is the occasion’s own future, and it is appropriate that it should come from the future.
“Aim is only derivatively existent, but it does not depend upon present or past actualities for its existence. Aim exists as characterizing creativity, the actuality of the future. It does not characterize creativity the way eternal objects or objective forms do. . . . Aim characterizes future creativity by means of a subjective forming that never becomes objective.
“. . . [O]ne future creativity is pluralized into the many present concrescences. . . . [T]he creativity of the nascent occasion is directly continuous with the nearest portion of the future. The subjective forming of that nearest portion is most directly relevant to the nascent occasion, such that the aims of the future become the aims of the present. This involves no objectification. . . . [T]he nascent occasion starts out as part of the future actuality, and only in the process of concrescence individuates itself as a distinct act of creativity.
“Aim is needed by creativity in order to give it form. Pure creativity (without form) is the same in all of its instances. Creativity could only distinguished in terms of actual occasions if it did not have any form of its own.”
13
(Aim gives creativity form. Creativity is formless until aim gives it form. Actual occasions could not distinguish creativity unless the latter is formless.)
“In what sense, then, could the future be actual? As pure creativity.”
14
“. . . only the creativity is primarily existent. Aim is derivatively existent. . . . The aim inherent in each occasion as that toward which it strives, perishes in the attainment of its goal. Each present instance of creativity is shaped and focused by its particular concrescence, which is its acting.
“In contrast, future creativity is always moving on, deeper into the far future even while becoming pluralized in the immediate future into the many acts of present activity. It is forever future.”
14
“The future is indeterminate in contrast to the past, which is determinate, while the present is the process of achieving the determinate.”
14
“For Whitehead all creativity is concentrated in the creative advance, which is the present in its cosmic extent. Therefore, the future, like the past, is devoid of creativity. I extend the locus of creativity to include the future as well.
“This means that the creativity for a particular locus was once part of the divine activity, but becomes a finite concrescence resulting in determinate actuality as that locus shifts relative to the creative advance. There is continuity between the immediate future and the initial situation of the occasion, even though the finite part is merely a very small portion of the divine immensity. [The future approaches backward or “pastward” into the present.] All present decisions, however, are incremental determinations of that divine input. . . . God is in us the way the future is in the present . . . . God as such is purely future.”
14
“In the absence of future creativity, could creativity explain the transition from a completed occasion to a new one? The old occasion has exhausted its subjective immediacy, for its activity of unification ceases with the attainment of concrete unity. There must be an influx of creativity for there to be any new occasions but how can creativity come from that which is devoid of any further creativity (activity of unification)? [Creativity = Activity of Unification]
“. . . [A]n intrinsic self-generating creativity explains nothing, while the past cannot supply it. The influx of creativity is best explained by the future. Future creativity can account for the ultimacy of creativity transcending the present. . . .
“Creativity and the ontological principle are interdependent. The ontological principle grounds reasons, or ordinary explanations, in actualities, while creativity provides the ultimate explanation why actualities are the only reasons. For ‘actual entities prehend their predecessors because they are all linked together as the particular “creatures” of a single creative process’ (EWP, 222). . . .
“. . . [I]f it [creativity] has no independent reality, it is difficult to see how it has the power to be the creativity for occasions yet to be (RM, 92). Thus, on Whitehead’s terms we have this dilemma: Creativity explains the concrescent unification of feelings that brings about decision. Decision is the basis for [any?] actuality and reason whatsoever (PR, 43, 45). On the other hand, pure creativity by itself, since not actual, lacks the ontological primacy to provide this ultimate explanation, if it is restricted to present actualities alone. Creativity in some form needs to be actual in its own right, and this is possible only in terms of future creativity.
“Put most generally, 'the ontological principle means that actual entities are the only reasons' (PR, 24). God as the future actual entity is the ultimate reason why there can be the ongoingness of concrescences. The infusion of future creativity explains why present occasions actively concresce, and why they can be actual as ontologically primary in their own domain of the present. If actuality is to be differentiated according to its temporal modes, then there must be a future actuality of universal creativity.”
254-255
“[N]ew forms are introduced into the material world, if there is any truth to the evolution of matter. The more complex material entities become, the more acute becomes the need for the explanation of their form. . . . [S]elf-determination also depends on other conditions: whether the occasion has the resources and power for self-decision, and whether the alternatives can be differentially valued. If one alternative is just as good as another, any decision would be quite arbitrary.
“In any case, there is emergent novelty in the material order, especially as we ascend to greater complexity. One reason for a theory of occasions sensitive to novelty is to account for evolution. Such novelty can be explained by actual occasions. Their categoreal structure is designed to actualize unrealized possibilities, thus responding to divine persuasion. If emergent novelty is not just the result of blind chance, there must be some receptivity to ideal novelty. In terms of his theory, there must always have been occasions around capable of being persuaded by God for the natural order to have come into being.”
271
“Many find panpsychism difficult to accept. [In] Whitehead’s version of panpsychism . . . each occasion has a physical as well as a mental pole. As we have seen, Whitehead’s commitment to novelty leads him to posit a mental pole for every occasion. To be sure, only true individuals (occasions) and not mere aggregates have mentality. There would be no need to ascribe mentality, however, to those occasions whose responsiveness has atrophied. Such occasions would have a limited categoreal structure: physical prehension, including prehension of the form of unification from its predecessor, and satisfaction. No possibilities are needed, nor could they be entertained. . . .”
271-272
. . . [T]he inorganic realm is impervious to any continued novelty, and hence needs no mentality. Only life and mind need novelty. That means we live in a world surrounded by actualities that are now dead, though once they were alive in their own way, perhaps in the deep past. Yet once the novelties for which they were suited were exhausted, they became insensitive to any others.
“Actualities now dead, that is, now having lost all mentality, cannot hear God’s call. That means that God’s power is restricted, insofar as that power is purely persuasive. Earthquakes, the weather, the collision of comets, etc. are outside God’s direction, though God once had a hand in creating them. This may apply also to most plants and animals, and, more problematically, to brutalized humans.
“. . . [Natural selection] states that once an organism is suited to its environment, it will produce offspring at a greater rate than its competitors. In other words, it will manage to persist, and has no need to evolve further. If so, natural selection may be an added reason for the lessening sensitivity to divine aim. Novel actualization gives way to persistence. Persistence signifies the power of the past in contrast to the power of the present, which is finite concresence.”
272
“Except for the most primitive of all occasions . . . all occasions are either persistencies, or include persistencies as subordinate elements. These persistencies determine the spatiotemporal regions of actualities, either directly for themselves or indirectly for the inclusive occasions they participate in. The position and velocity of these persistencies determine where the next generation of actual occasions will be. They atomize the continuum inherited from the future into its many occasions.
“This is a more realistic alternative to Whitehead’s proposal that God determines the initial standpoint of the occasion (PR, 283). For the sake of the continuity of persistencies and other societies, that task can safely be delegated to the world.”
278
“However, the continuum of future creativity is not atomized by the activity of persistencies alone. They determine how it should be atomized, but cannot bring about that atomization apart from the creativity they receive from the future. Without it they could not bring their past particularity into the present. So we should say most precisely, that the future creativity brings particular persistencies into the present whereby it [future creativity] becomes atomized.”
278-279
“Descartes held that were God to withhold the divine power from the world, it would vanish in an instant. That is true for the divine creativity, for without it there could be no further advance into the present. Yet in other respects the world is quite durable. Much of it can persist without aim. If we think of spirit as source of aim, the biblical writer is more accurate: [Job 34:14-15] Life and consciousness depend on novelty, but not necessarily the primitive elements.
“The transfer of creativity from the one cosmic future to the many occasions of the present depends upon persistencies for its dispersal, but it also requires the exact determination as to which aim is appropriate for which occasion. This is not clearly specified in Whitehead’s account, yet this is not something that the nascent occasion can do for itself. Not having yet received informed creativity, it lacks the discernment or the power to select its proper aim from the myriads of aims found in God. If so, the determination of the appropriate aim must be provided for it by God, but how?
“The interface between the future and the present provides a way, but first we need to make a distinction between what we shall call ‘physical perception’ and physical prehension. Physical prehension prehends actual entities in all their concreteness, as opposed to the abstractness of conceptual prehension. Physical prehension is also the way persistence from the past is maintained. This is most evident in the structure of concrescence, which individualizes the process of creativity, whereby the many become one. The many are many past actualities that persist into the present occasion. The one is the final feeling of satisfaction that unites all these persistent elements.
“Persistence is essential if we wish to explain causation. . . .”
279
“Efficient causation concentrates on that part of the past that persists into the present. . . . Since the scope of prehension in the earlier book (Science and the Modern World) is much broader, I propose for clarity’s sake that we rename its notion of prehension ‘physical perception.’ Whitehead’s model was clearly perception, but he wished to generalize from ordinary perception. . . . Early prehension is primarily the relation between two events in terms of a common eternal object. Looked at from one end it functions as a generalized form of perception.
“Physical perception is formed on analogy with ‘physical memory.’”
279
“. . . When substance theory tries to explain change by reference to the accidents of some underlying essence inherent in the actuality, it must perforce abstract from the total concrete actuality. What changes must be less than the total concrete actuality. If this were not so, there could be no accidental features to be exchanged. On the other hand, unchanging substantial persistence is a very accurate description of the past, which remains what it is unchanged. In itself, the past is forever the same. Theories of substance cannot explain change as well as theories of process. But they may be able to explain stability and persistence better than theories of process.”
281
“Physical perception contrasts with the persistent elements of physical prehension. The sensa that occasions perceive from distant occasions shape our inner experience, but its objectification has little impact, except indirectly in terms of its subjective response expressed in terms of its subjective forms. Each of us enjoys a rich inner perceptual experience, but this has little impact on any successor occasions other than upon one thread of personal experience and memory.
“Physical perception may explain one feature of our ordinary perception better than prehension. Prehension is either in concrescence or satisfaction, that is, either in unification or final unity. Unification suggests a measure of indeterminacy, yet we can perceive sharply and clearly. If perception were indeterminate, we should expect everything to be slightly out of focus, as it were. On the other hand, the unity of satisfaction is intolerant of any addition. Anything occurring subsequent to the satisfaction can only be externally related to it. Yet not only is perception determinate, but it is capable of receiving further sensations. The subjectivity of the perceiver transcends what has been already perceived to allow for subsequent perceptions as well.”
281-282
“[H]ybrid prehension is superfluous in a world where God influences occasions by the infusion of creativity informed by aim, and where in place of living persons inclusive occasions share their creativity informed by aim with included occasions.”
282
“The importance of physical perception becomes evident when we consider how God as future perceives past actual occasions. For the past can only persist as far as the present. Physical prehension is the means of bringing the past forward. If there were future physical prehensions, the past could persist into the future.
“Future perception abstracts from the partial persistence inherent in physical prehension. By the same token, there are no physical prehensions for God to unify, as is the case with finite occasions. If there were, it would be possible for the future to bring about a determinate past without the intervention of the present. The present differs from the future in that it can bring about the determinate past. The future, by indefinitely formed creativity, brings about the present instead.
“. . . [Whitehead] insists that divine feeling be physical as well as conceptual, for it were purely conceptual, it could be entirely independent from the world. Then the coherence and interdependence between God and the world would be lost, for God would be independent from the world as in classical theism. Yet interdependence can also be preserved if we require that divine experience be perceptual as well as conceptual.
“Perceptual feeling is inherently particular and temporal. The actualities are perceived in terms of their sensa, to be sure, but the actualities perceived result from concrescence, and each has its location. The experience of God [i.e., God’s experience of the world] would be the same, whether God were to physically prehend or to perceive the world.
“. . . Physical prehension retains an element of persistence, whereas physical perception does not. Both may be conceived as two species of a more general notion of physical prehension. Then we could take the retention of location to be the distinguishing character of the genus, with two species: causal and perceptual. This would have the advantage of showing that although God responds to the contingencies of the world, God is not caused or coerced by the world, since perceptual prehension abstracts from this coercive element.
“. . . Perception in the mode of presentation[al] immediacy abstracts from the massive experience of causal efficacy. . . . It . . . is subject to the errors of delusion and illusion. What prevents similar ills from befalling divine perception?”
283
“Divine perception ranges over the entire domain of the past. It is direct even for distantly situated actualities, for it perceives their sensa abstracting from all intermediate transmission. . . .
283-284
“. . . [At the] instant between the end of one occasion and the beginning of another . . . . God immediately perceives the newly emergent past, and retains that memory forever. Whether we call this perfect memory or immediate experience is immaterial, for God experiences every past in complete immediacy, what just happened now or thousands of years ago.
“. . . Divine perception is independent of any objective persistence, since it is derived from the perfection of divine memory, the epitome of subjective persistence.
“Pure subjective persistence is really only possible for the future. . . . Freed from any objective persisting of the past, the future may retain its concrescent immediacy and hence subjective persistence forever. By not having any past persistents to unify, future concrescence has nothing to objectify. This is one reason why God is imprehensible.
“. . . [T]here is also the refocusing of divine perceptions at each potential standpoint along the interface between the future and the present. These standpoints are determined by the way the persistencies atomize the future continuum. In order to provide each nascent occasion with its appropriate aim, God needs to experience precisely the same experience that the nascent occasion will at the outset of its concrescence. By anticipating that standpoint, God can perspectively draw upon the immediate divine experience of occasions just achieving determinate being. In this way divine perceptions and present physical prehensions exactly parallel each other, except that the physical prehensions also incorporate persistent elements from the past.
284
“The divine experience from that standpoint evokes an evaluative response. Purely abstract, nontemporal possibilities do not evoke such evaluations, except indirectly, for the true good or evil consists in the way possibilities are realized under particular conditions. . . . The way God experiences those conditions together shapes the indefinite subjective forms, which inform the creativity that is infused in the nascent occasion. Because God shares the same standpoint and experience with the occasion, albeit on the future side of the divide, the aim devised by God will be naturally appropriate to every contingency that arises.
284-285
“Persistence is largely unconscious, and does not need conscious direction. It is the continued presence of the past operating independently from any present reaction to it. Only concrescent response is enhanced by consciousness. . . .
“Perception is physical in the sense that it perceives the sensa of a given actuality, and it perceives those sensa as spatiotemporally located in the actuality. It is, however, not physical in the sense that it abstracts from the persistence of the actuality. For the purposes of consciousness, I submit that the former sense is the more relevant. Perception contrasts with other conceptual feelings which abstract from the spatiotemporal locatedness of the actuality as well.
“Thus, on this view consciousness arises from the contrast between propositional feeling and its corresponding perception, not its corresponding physical prehension of persisting elements. If so, God is conscious in the same way that sophisticated occasions are. Perception is the basis for consciousness, not persistence. [That is, perception, not persistence, is the basis for consciousness. There may be perception without consciousness, but no consciousness without perception.]
285
“Divine creativity in the future is one activity in contrast to the present. The present is individualized into many potentially competing occasions, but the future is individualized as a whole. Individualization, not size, is the relevant factor. . . . God acts pantheistically, but this is compatible with a theism, provided the theistic activity takes place in a future mode.
“Divine creativity is necessarily very indeterminate, if it is the task of present occasions to render actuality determinate. . . Cellular and particularly occasions of the mind have much richer subjective experience, yet are only indirectly objectified. The infinite subjective divine experience results in no finite determinateness, yet its infusion of informed creativity fuels and coordinates the activities of the universe.”
286
“Some have regarded God as ‘outside’ spacetime, as if this were possible. Perhaps more precisely, they have thought of God as not extensive at all. . . . But . . . God’s consequent nature is everlasting.
“. . . Yet when the consequent nature is conceived as everlasting, extensionality seems to follow inexorably, provided we assume the fusion of space and time. In any case, my account presupposes divine extensionality, in order to account to [for] the way the active future impinges on the present.”
287
“The extensive continuum is intended to span the modes. It is neither actual nor potential, or it can be the same when characterizing the potential and the actual.”
287
(The extensive continuum is not a category of existence. The extensive continuum is not a distinct formative element. The extensive continuum cannot be understood in terms of the formative element, God; or in terms of the formative element, creativity; or in terms of the formative element, eternal objects.)
“If objective forms are not uncreated but emergent, . . . the future domain of the extensive continuum needs to be reconceived. It is not ‘already’ fully spread out before us in objective fashion, but is still in the making.
“This does not mean that the past is constituted by a fully definite continuum. The task of coordinate division renders the continuum more definite, but this task need not be completed.
“. . . While our own anticipations may project features on the future, such as times and places for meetings, etc., the primary projections for the extensive continuum are natural projections, arising from extensive tendencies of determinate persistencies. Here the motions of the heavenly bodies may be used as an example, since their well-established momenta are expected to continue unchanged into regions of the far future.
“. . . the future loci of the extensive continuum are not just projected out over nothing. According to the ontological principle, the divine future concrescence grounds their existence. (If God were a present concrescence, that grounding would be problematic, as there would be no actuality inherent in the future.) That these future loci have derivative existence depends on God, but what they are follows from the projections from the past and present.”
288-289
“. . . we can reconceive the extensive continuum in terms of the common extensional properties of one vast society embracing all actualities and all temporal modes.”
289
“On my theory, the extensive continuum can apply to the divine creativity of the future as potential extensionality, even though not in any objectified form capable of coordinate divisibility. . . .
“While past actualities concretely manifest one portion of the extensive continuum, and the divine concrescence fills future regions, we cannot say that the future extensive continuum objectifies God. It is more accurate to say that past (and present) occasions objectify the region of God, for the influx of future creativity into present occasions first becomes objectifiable in terms of their finite outcomes. Yet while this may be thought to be an objectification of the region God inhabits, it is not purely that. The future extensive continuum is not an objectification of any actuality, but a projection on the future in terms of past objectifications.
290
“Actual occasions were conceived by Whitehead as extremely small, giving them a very sharp standpoint from which to prehend and order the world. In contrast God as future has an extremely large standpoint, for the divine region reaches from the present to the most distant place in far future as is necessary to encompass synoptically the entire multiplicity of the world. The divine experience is always unifying itself, but at any one instant it is only provisionally unified.”
290-291
“The extremely large standpoint of God diffuses any possible conflict with relativity physics. . . .
“In order for God to experience and to reconcile the differing inertial systems, God must be temporally thick. Actual occasions differ widely, but still within very narrow parameters. It is the nature of the present to be very brief in comparison with the past and the future. The active future, on the other hand, is potentially infinite. This extensiveness allows for there to be intermediate unifications of divine experience, first according to a particular inertial framework, then mediating activity enabling the experiences of differing frameworks to be unified or allowing for experience to be ordered in another way that obviates the need for any frameworks. Ultimately, but only in the distant future, God would experience the entire universe as one.
“Each experience would require God to project godself [himself] into a more future perspective, thereby enlarging the extent of the active future. Surrendering the near future to the present is counterbalanced by reclaiming the far future from the nothingness beyond.”
291
“On the usual views of time, which are limited solely to being, there is only activity in the present as things become actual. The past is already fixed, and the future contains nothing actual. If, however, the future is active, then there is activity not only in the present but [also] in the wide reaches of the future.”
292
“We may conceive the creative advance as whatever [present or future] is in unison of becoming with the present concrescing occasion. . . .
“. . . God ‘now’ occupies regions of the extensive continuum that we will occupy later on, yet in those regions God is in unison of becoming with us. The scope of what is in unison of becoming with us needs to be enlarged to include both contemporaries and future activity.
“Since the future is to be understood primarily in terms of the de facto activity inhabiting it, we would be advised to conceive it not as an actual infinity, but as a potential infinity, that which is capable of being increased without any limit.
291