In his book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe [1] the Christian author, C. S. Lewis creates the figure of Aslan. [2] Aslan is a Christ Figure, the “Great Lion,” “Son of the Emperor Beyond the Sea.” Near the beginning as the name “Aslan” is mentioned, Peter, Susan, and Lucy are strangely attracted to the name. But, when they learn that he is a lion, they begin to wonder just what it will be like to meet a great and powerful beast, the Great Lion himself. So, during a conversation in Beaver’s House, Lucy asks the question, “Is he safe?” “Safe?” Mr. Beaver replies, “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about Safe? Course he isn’t. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.” [3]

Lewis took his image of Aslan as a Christ figure from texts in Old and New Testaments that speak of the Lion of the Tribe of Judah in Messianic terms. As early as Genesis the Bible prophesies;

Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He stooped down; he crouched as a lion and as a lioness; who dares rouse him? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples. Genesis 49:9-10).

Over and over in Scripture references are made to the lion-like character of the Messianic King, and often to the lion-like character of Israel’s king. David symbolized the hopes of Israel. It is one of the staples of Old Testament and New Testament prophesy. [4] However, unless we look at all of Scripture, we may be misled concerning the nature of the King and of his kingdom. In looking at the notion of the Messianic King, we will also look at the New Testament for a look at Revelation and the figure of the Messiah it embodies.

What Kind of King Is This/What Kind of Kingdom?

One important continuing theme in political theology is the notion of the “Kingdom of God.” In this blog, we look at the assumptions of Israel concerning the figure of the Messianic King and the Kingdom he was going to institute. We, like the ancient Jews, begin by receiving the revelation of Christ as the Lion of Judah and Son of David, one who saves us and brings us into the Kingdom of God. However, that great revelation blinded Israel (and often blinds Christians today) to another side of the revelation of Christ—the fact that the “Lion of Judah” is also the “Lamb of God” and the kingdom of the Lion/Lamb King is unlike any earthly kingdom we can imagine. As we shall see next week, the vision of the Kingdom of God is a vision that transcends any earthly Kingdom we could possibly create.

Although our focus this week is on the expected King, these passages give us an understanding of the expected Kingdom. Every king has a kingdom. Every leader and every king, has an influence on the kind of kingdom he or she rules, for the laws, customs and expectations of a leader influences the nature of the kingdom. Therefore, unless we properly understand the nature of the Messianic King, we cannot understand the Messianic Kingdom, and when we understand the nature of the Messianic Kingdom, we understand the Messianic King.

The Lion of Judah

One of the most familiar of all Christmas texts comes from the prophet Isaiah. In Isaiah 11 it is recorded:

A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of the Lord will rest on him—the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord—and he will delight in the fear of the Lord. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears; but with righteousness he will judge the needy, with justice he will give decisions for the poor of the earth. He will strike the earth with the rod of his mouth; with the breath of his lips he will slay the wicked. Righteousness will be his belt and faithfulness the sash around his waist. The wolf will live with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion and the yearling together; and a little child will lead them. The cow will feed with the bear, their young will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. In that day the Root of Jesse will stand as a banner for the peoples; the nations will rally to him, and his resting place will be glorious. (Isaiah 11:1-10).

The first part of Isaiah is filled with descriptions of an anticipated Son of David, who will restore David’s Kingdom and the land of Israel and who will reign over God’s people with unusual, even supernatural wisdom and insight. In one of the most quoted Christmas verses in Isaiah the author writes:

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever (Isaiah 9:6-7).

In Isaiah 11, we see an even more dramatic vision of the Messiah and of his kingdom. This king will act like no king or ruler in the history of the world past or present: there will be justice for the poor and needy unlike anything the ancient Jews or modern Americans experience. There will be a time of extraordinary justice, and the wicked, who so often get away with their crimes, will finally be punished. In Isaiah’s vision, even nature will be impacted by the coming of the Messianic King: lions will lie down with lambs and leopards will lie down with goats. Instead of meat, carnivores will eat straw. Little children will be able to hold cobras and play with them, and little boys will be able to hold vipers.  It is like saying that out in West Texas we can stop worrying about Rattlesnakes!

I believe that the author knew exactly what he was saying and was giving us an image of a world of perfect shalom, which we translate “peace”. He was giving us a transcendental vision of a world in which everything is in perfect order, and the struggles, dangers, accidents, and injustice of our world are a thing of the past. In my view, Isaiah is not so much given a concrete, earthly vision of the future as he is given a universal vision to guide Israel and the church as it acts in history.

For example, ancient Israel was familiar with lions and poisonous snakes. David, when he killed Goliath made reference to the fact that he had faced lions, and even today periodically one reads of someone dying of the bit of a snake in Israel. These were realities that the Jews faced. We need not take the vision of Isaiah too literally. Instead, we might understand the writer as informing his readers that the Messianic Kingdom is going to be different, very different, than anything we can imagine. This kingdom can be partially achieved by God’s people know, but will only be fully realized at the end of human history, The vision is a guide to action in a fallen and imperfect world.

A Revelation of Love

I am not sure that any of the great prophets of the Old Testament would have expected Self-Sacrificial Love, Cruciform Love, even the love of a pacifist who endures suffering without response, to be a primary characteristic, even “the characteristic” of the Messiah. [5] Throughout the first part of Isaiah the figure of the Messianic King to come is described in increasingly God-like ways. He is the son of a virgin, a hidden king from the line of David, a child of the Galilee, a Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father. The Spirit of God, like a sword, springs from his mouth (See Isaiah 9:1-12; 11:1-5; 31:4; Hosea 5:14; Amos 3:8). But, that image suddenly changes after Isaiah 42.

In the second part of Isaiah, perhaps due to the prophet’s meditation on the years of suffering surrounding the Babylonian Captivity of the people of God, another figure emerges. [6] This is not the figure of a military commander, a king, or a governmental leader. This is the figure of a Suffering Servant. Isaiah portrays this Messianic figure as a person of sorrows, not as a conquering hero. (Isaiah 53:1-12).

He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain. Like one from whom people hide their faces he was despised, and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:2b-5).

This is a figure of a sacrificial leader. He is to be gentle person, one who will not even break a damaged, bruised reed (Isaiah 42:1-4). In successive visions, This Messianic figure bears the sufferings of others, and his suffering works a healing of their lives. This isnot the military hero and earthly kingdom builder that the Jews anticipated. Just like us, the Jews preferred a Messiah who was a victorious lion to one who embodied the life of a suffering servant.

The Lion is the Lamb

The disciples, almost immediately after the death and resurrection of Jesus, understood that some of the most obscure prophesies of the Old Testament—and especially those of Isaiah—pointed to and were fulfilled by the Jesus the Christ (See for example, Acts 2). It is as if the Cross and resurrection made sense of a great amount of the Bible and of teaching of Jesus that to which the disciples had misunderstood or barely understood. [7] The most important place where the Crucifixion made sense of the Bible and of life for the Church, then and now, involves the “suffering servant” prophesies of Isaiah.

John, in his gospel, has John the Baptist, having seen the Christ, say, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). In Revelation, John returns to this image of Jesus as the “Lamb of God” (Revelation 5:6-14). The Messiah, the Lion of Judah, the true successor of David, is also a Lamb—a gentle creature who suffers and is sacrificed for others. John is the one who says, “God is Love” for he has seen what love is—love is God taking human form and suffering rejection and even death for his fallen, alienated, human race.

At the very end of C.S. Lewis’, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, there is a scene in which the children are at the end of the world of Narnia. The movie tells the story a bit differently from the book. The children are walking along a great wall of water which marks the end of the world of Narnia. Suddenly, far away, the children see a wide plain and green grass, and a white speck.

But between them and the foot of the sky there was something so white on the green grass that even with their eagles eyes they could hardly look at it. They came on and saw that it was a Lamb. “Come and have breakfast,” said the Lamb in its sweet milky voice. Then they noticed for the first time that there was a fire lit on the grass and fish roasting on it. They sat down and ate the fish, hungry now for the first time for many days. And it as the most delicious food that they had ever tasted.

“Please Lamb,” said Lucy, “is this the way to Aslan’s country?”

“Not for you,” said the Lamb, “for you, the door into Aslan’s country is from your own world.”

“What!” said Edmund. “Is there a way into Aslan’s country from our world too?”

“There is a way into my country from all the worlds,” said the Lamb; but as he spoke his snowy white flushed into tawny gold and his size changed and he was Aslan himself, towering above them and scattering light from his mane. [8]

Lewis, in this scene, perfectly portrays the deepest insight of the disciples—that Jesus was love incarnate—the Lion of Judah, who is also the Lamb of God who whispers to us by the power of the Holy Spirit, encouraging us to be born anew in his love. In Narnia, we know him by the name of Aslan; here we know him by the name of Christ. The Lion is a Lamb and the Kingdom of the Lion/Lamb is a kingdom of love.

If we are to understand what God’s Kingdom means and the characteristics of that Kingdom and its citizens, we too must go from seeing Jesus as merely a lion but also as the lion that has become a lamb to take away the sins of the world. In Revelation 5, John brings together the two images of the Lion and of the Lamb in order to teach us that the Lion of which the Old Testament spoke is the same as Jesus, the Lamb of God, who came to suffer and die for our sake:

In Revelation John returns to the theme of the Messiah as Lamb/Lamb when he writes:

Then I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides and sealed with seven seals. And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming in a loud voice, “Who is worthy to break the seals and open the scroll?” But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth could open the scroll or even look inside it. I wept and wept because no one was found who was worthy to open the scroll or look inside. Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of him who sat on the throne. And when he had taken it, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and they were holding golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of God’s people. And they sang a new song, saying:

You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.” (Revelation 5:1-10, emphasis added).

What does this mean for us? It means that we are children of the Lion/Lamb. It means that we need both the strength and courage of the Lion of Judah as well as the suffering, sacrificial, servant life of the Lamb of God. It means that the entry of the Kingdom of God into the world in our day will be no less painful and difficult for us than it was for Jesus, or for John, or for the countless other Christians who have worked for the Kingdom in ages past. It means that in our homes, families, businesses, communities, churches, and in the sphere of politics, we too must work just as Christ worked for the slow entry of his kingdom into the world.

Many people are concerned about our nation in exactly the same way that the prophets were concerned about Israel. We should be worried. On the other hand, we should have that confident faith that enables us to show love to all and to work for the great values of Truth, Freedom, Justice, and Fairness, just as many others have who, like us, never saw the fulness of the Kingdom. They saw the Kingdom as a vision and a source of hope, for the Lion of Judah will in the end win the battle, and  the Lamb of God is the key to unlocking to our role in history, hidden in the scroll of God’s providence.

Copyright 2022, G Christopher Scruggs, all rights reserved.

[1] C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Collier ed. (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1950). This blog appeared in a different form as the transcript of a sermon several years ago. I have expended and rewritten that sermon as this blog.

[2] C. S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Harper Trophy ed. (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1952):189ff.

[3] Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, at 74.

[4] The kingly character of Judah mentioned in verse 10 is symbolized by the lion, often called the “king of beasts.” This theme is expressed over and over in Scripture, even into the New Testament. Revelation 5:5, for example, describes a scene in the throne room of Heaven in which the lion of the tribe of Judah is the main character.

[5] The Suffering Servant hymns of Isaiah were read by the Jews as reflective of their national experience.

[6] I am not unaware of the fact that some scholars feel that the second part of Isaiah was written by other hands than that of the original prophet, who would have been very old at the time of the return of the captives from Babylon.

[7] There is little question that there is a “progressive” aspect to revelation. Throughout the Old Testament, and then in the revelation of Christ, God gradually reveals more and more of his self to Israel and to us through the Biblical authors. God, of course, has not changed, but the depth of our understanding of God has changed and deepened.

[8] Voyage of the Dawn Treader, 268-270. This scene, which is taken from John 21 is one of those situations in which Lewis specifically adapts a scene from Scripture to his purposes in the novel. This scene is one where Lewis makes explicit his pre-evangelistic motives. He is trying to introduce Christian teaching in formerly Christian context in such a way that contemporary people can understand the message.

The philosophy and practice of political non-violence was Gandhi’s great gift to political philosophy. In the long expanse of human history, Gandhi was the first political leader to embrace non-violence as a principle of statesmanship. The early Christians, for example, practiced non-violence, but in so doing distanced themselves from the Roman state and military. Since the decline of the Roman Empire in the West no political leader ever embraced nonviolence as a state policy. The same is true in the east. Whereas Taoism is generally pacifistic in nature, no Chinese politician embraced pacifism. Gandhi did. In his long struggle for Indian independence, he continued to embrace, defend, and expand upon this practice of “ahimsa” or “no violence.

Definition and Aspects of Nonviolence

In Sanscrit the word “himsa” is the word for violence. “Ahimsa” literally translates “no violence. For Gandhi, the term “ahimsa” implies a commitment to no use of violence of any kind, physical, mental, or emotional. Thus, even passive aggressive behavior is a form of violence to be avoided. In the work of Gandhi, non-violence moved from the arena of the philosophically desirable to the realm of the politically possible.

One analyst of Gandhi sees the following aspects to Gandhi’s notion of “Ahimsa”:

1. Nonviolence implies the virtues of love, active resistance to injustice, courage in the face of violence, and truthfulness in the face of lies.
2. Nonviolence implies avoidance of physical, mental, emotional and other forms of violence towards the other in an act of self-giving love.
3. Nonviolence is not the strategy of the weak but of the strong who have overcome the temptation to violence in every human heart.
4. Nonviolent persons must hold nonviolence to be of higher importance than their own life. (It is interesting to recall that Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., both proponents of non-violence were victims of assassination.)
5. True nonviolence is not limited to the political but is an aspect of the economic sphere of life, which Gandhi connected to his commitment to manual labor as a way of demonstrating his solidarity with the poor.

Nonviolence as an Ultimate Value

For Gandhi, nonviolence is an ultimate value on three for three basic reasons: (i) it is universally applicable (i.e. everyone should be nonviolent in all situations); (ii) it enhances all other values without detracting from any (that is to say that no other virtue is interfered with by nonviolence), and (iii) it is unlimited in its application (that is to say that unlimited nonviolence by all people would not create any moral evil). [1] In other words, there can be no logical or moral contradiction in advancing the cause of nonviolence. For Gandhi, any form of violence had negative consequences, and thus violence is a moral evil in all situations, however justifiable one might think a resort to violence to be under the circumstances. In this, Gandhi follows the reasoning of the Tao, for which any violence, however necessary, is ultimately a bad thing. [2]

The Christian writer Thomas Merton quoted Gandhi describing the dubious nature of using violence to eliminate moral evils as follows:

In the use of force, one simplifies the situation by assuming that the evil to be overcome is clear-cut, definite, and irreversible. Hence there remains but one thing: to eliminate it. Any dialogue with the sinner, any question of the irreversibility of his act, only means faltering and failure. Failure to eliminate evil is itself a defeat. Anything that even remotely risks such defeat is in itself capitulation to evil. The irreversibility of evil then reaches out to contaminate even the tolerant thought of the hesitant crusader who, momentarily, doubts the total evil of the enemy he is about to eliminate. [3]

In this passage, Gandhi is noting that the use of violence is always preceded by cutting of dialogue and therefore a relationship with the one who is attacked. This “cutting off” may be physical (as in war), mental (as in cutting off negotiations and discussions), emotional (as in cutting off a friend or partner), or even spiritual (as in devaluing the other). Gandhi believes that the inevitable result is the descent of the moral crusader into the very evil he or she is attempting to eliminate.

The Necessity of Nonviolence

As Gandhi surveyed the horrors of the Second World War and the obvious evil of both Stalin and Hitler, as well as the tactics of “Total War” employed by the allies, he saw that the nations were moving inexorably towards disaster and continued to urge nonviolence. When he heard of the atomic bomb, he was convinced that the world had reached a point of no return. The only option remaining was some form of nonviolence. He felt, like Einstein that the world was headed towards catastrophe unless the nations of the world in some way embraced nonviolence.

The Rational Practice of Nonviolence

Gandhi was, as he often said, not a theoretician, but a practical person of action. As such, during the course of his lifetime he was able to develop his nonviolence as he adapted himself to political, social and economic conditions. While he never developed a “system” in the philosophical sense, he did develop practical rules that are rational and can be defended. Some of the principles are as follows:

1. Nonviolence is not an excuse for inaction in any area of life. Thus, nonviolence is active, not passive in its nature. Thus, Gandhi says, “Truth and nonviolence are no cloistered virtues but are applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the market-place.”
2. Nonviolence is not irrational but rational in the deepest sense. Thus, the person practicing nonviolence is called to act rationally, truthfully, and wisely under the circumstances presented.
3. Nonviolence is the active interjection of compassion and love into a concrete situation. Thus, it must to be practiced in such a way as to minimize the potential violent reaction even of the opponent, since the opponent’s violence will harm himself and his followers.
4. Nonviolence is to be practiced with courage and fortitude, including a willingness to suffer for the cause undertaken.
5. Nonviolence begins with a personal commitment to achieve the virtue of nonviolence in one’s own life through humility, faith in God, truthfulness, willingness to suffer for the truth, and compassion upon all things.
6. Nonviolence is a virtue, a personal attribute of the virtuous person. Thus, it must be applied in many and constantly changing situations. Gandhi himself indicated that he was still learning truth and nonviolence since he continued to live and adapt to a changing environment.
7. Nonviolence is not just a strategy; it is a skill to be tested. Thus, it must be tactically applied to specific political and social action, the tools of civil disobedience, noncooperation, nonviolent strike, and constructive action are cherished

Conclusion

As readers will recall, in my first blog I mentioned Niebuhr’s objection that Gandhi was either unaware or unable to sustain awareness of the difference between his principles of Non-Violence and Truth Force and the reality of the battle for independence. [4] Thus, Niebuhr believes that any responsible leader of a political community must be willing to use coercion. In a revealing passage Niebuhr state that, like Mr. Gandhi, “such a leader may make every effort to keep his instruments under the dominion of his spiritual ideal; but he must use it, and it may be necessary at times to sacrifice a degree of moral purity for political effectiveness.” [5]

I am not sure that Gandhi would have disagreed with a part of what Niebuhr is saying, but I also believe that this is the place where Niebuhr most dramatically misunderstands and thus minimizes Gandhi’s contribution to political thought and to Christian political theology. It is a given of practical life that transcendental ideals, and especially moral ideals, will not always be achieved by actors. However, as mentioned, unlike Niebuhr Gandhi would not have thought that the moral ideals he employed were personal to him “his spiritual ideal”. Instead, he would have thought that truth and love are embedded in reality, and any failure to embody that ideal, whatever its pragmatic attraction, is a failure.

Copyright 2022, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Ajay Kumar Attri, “Gandhi and Luther Philosophies of Non-Violence” International Journal of Education for Peace and Development at https://ndpublisher.in/admin/issues/IJPEDV2N1c.pdf (Downloaded August 17, 2022). I have taken the liberty of using this summary as the basis of my own somewhat different summary.

[2] See, G. Chrisopher Scruggs, Centered Living/Centered Leading: The Way of Light and Love Rev. Ed (Cordova, TN: Permisio Por Favor & Booksurge, 2016), Chapter 68 at 126, Chapter 69 at 138,

[3] Thomas Merton, Gandhi on Nonviolence (New York, NY: New Directions Publishers, 1964, 1865), at 21.

[4] MMIS, at 242,

[5] MMIS, at 244.

Last week, I introduced the political thought of Gandhi, the Indian activist, statesman, and political figure. As mentioned, Gandhi was not a systematic political philosopher, but he was a philosophically and religiously motivated political actor. In fact, he resisted writing anything philosophical or religious not based upon his own actual experience. [1] Nevertheless, Gandhi was both thoughtful and spiritual in his approach to political action, which makes his views important.

At the basis of Gandhi’s thought is his theory of “Satyagraha” which is often translated “Truth Force” or “Soul Force.” [2] For Gandhi, truth has a spiritual reality and is identified with God (“God is Truth”), a God which can only be known by love, that is by a kind of sacrificial compassion that is similar to what Christians denote as “Agape Love” or “Self-giving Love” or “Cruciform Love”. This kind of love implies a relational approach to political life that is peaceful, focused on truth as opposed to power or success, and willing to sacrifice for the cause of justice. “Truth/Soul/Love Force” was Gandhi’s, basic tool in achieving Indian independence through nonviolent social action.

This week focuses on specific elements of Gandhi’s methodology in hopes that it might flesh out some of the implications of the “Politics of Love. The foundations for any “Gandhian” peaceful social action include:

1. The action must be founded on a kind of truth that includes operational morality and justice. The means used must accord with the universe as it is (Truth), including morals, equity, ideals of justice, and the principle of nonviolence that Gandhi viewed as fundamental to the universe.
2. The issue requiring action must be such that the action taken is warranted by the nature of the cause, such as racial equality, freedom from oppression, and the like. Truth/Soul/Love Force cannot be used to justify selfish or self-centered motives.
3. The activist must have purified his or her own heart from any kind of violence and hatred, that undermine the value and power of Truth/Soul/Love Force.
4. The activists involved must be willing to suffer physically, mentally or morally in the conflict, showing unconditional love to opponents. (The principle of “non-violence” will be the subject of the next blog.)

The Common Good and Truth Force

What kind of issues justify a Gandhian approach to political life? Here it is necessary to introduce yet another principle that guided Gandhi: the notion of “Sarvodaya”, which connotes something like what Western thought calls, “the Common Good.”  [3] The common good implies a society in which the values of justice, equality, order, peace are achieved or in the process of achievement in a non-violent way.

This leads to the question as to what kind of society would actually serve the common good. As used by Gandhi, Sarvodaya implies that all labor is honorable and deserves its fair reward, which Gandhi felt meant some form of income equality. Because all reality is both interconnected and fundamentally spiritual, the gain of one person is the gain of all and the loss of one person is the loss of all. In such a world, there must be service to the poor and sacrifice for the benefit of the poor. Thus, Gandhi says,

I cannot imagine anything nobler or more national than that for, say, one hour in the day, we should all do the labour that the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them with all mankind. I cannot imagine better worship of God than that, in His name, I should labour for the poor even as they do. [4]

Gandhi was, of course, aware of what we might call “the Secular Power of the State,” that is the achievement of a stable and fair social order by the use of force and violence. In Gandhi’s mind, however, the use of violence cannot achieve this kind of social order, only a society characterized by reason (the search for Truth), dialogue (respect for all opinions), societal cooperation (the ability to compromise), and the welfare of all members of society, including the poorest and least powerful, can possibly achieve the kind of “Common Good” that results in true social peace. Thus, the kind of political and military power that colonial powers used to dominate Indian society were bound to fail and ultimately fall under the pressure of “Truth/Soul/Love Force.” I think Gandhi would have agreed with some of the critique of Augustine of the Roman Empire and by analogy of the modern secular state: the reliance on power and force ultimately destroys their possible legitimacy in some ultimate way, whatever their temporary hold on power might be.

The Order of a Just Society

In addition, to Truth/Soul/Love Force having implications for the use of secular power, it also has implications for the ordering of society.  Gandhi’s notion of the Common Good or welfare of a just society also had implications for the ordering of society that are similar to suggestions previously made in this blog. His views are organic, placing emphasis on small units, political, economic, and social. It is strengthening their vitality that societies can find this Common Good or “Sarodaya” for which they long. For Gandhi this implies several concrete attributes of a society that serves the general welfare of its citizens:

1. The smallest units of society, including social, economic and political units, are to be nurtured in an organic way.
2. Individual success or achievement cannot be achieved without attention to the common good, for society is an relational organism not simply a grouping of independent units, human, economic, or political.
3. Economic units should include some significant form of ownership by labor in economic units and the freedom to work and earn a livelihood for all. [5]

Conclusion

The kind of society that Christians seek is unquestionably “Gandhian” in some significant sense. His vision is of a society made up of a harmonious ordering of individuals, families, economic units (large and particularly small), religious and social organizations, political parties, all striving in a non-violent and rational way to achieve a state of Common Good. Gandhi was not, however, naive. He understood that the achievement of such a society was only partially possible under the conditions of modern life. He understood the value of slow, measured change as opposed to violent revolution. It is to the value and character of Gandhian non-violence that I will turn next week.

Like the physicist David Bohm, who also studied Indian philosophy, Gandhi believes that meaning and fundamental morals are embedded in an “implicate” or “implied” order, which included the unbroken wholeness of the order of the universe in some general way. [6] This implicate order is a hidden, “enfolded order” which includes “the all-encompassing background to our experience: physical, psychological, and spiritual.” Gandhi’s notion of the gradual unfolding of Truth (God) and Non-Violence in his consciousness is based upon a similar view that there is a spiritual reality that transcends material reality, and which we can provisionally understand by means of study. [7] Finally, Gandhi was an idealist, but not an idealist of the impatient revolutionary kind, though his ideas are revolutionary. He understood that his ideal of the perfect society was not achievable during his own lifetime and was content to work for the increase in social justice during the term of his life, unfortunately cut short.

Copyright 2022, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] This blog is heavily dependent upon the work of Tarun Gogoi, in his “Social-Political Philosophy of M. K. Gandhi: an Analysis” found at https://www.ijmra.us/project%20doc/2018/IJRSS_FEBRUARY2018/IJMRA-13306.pdf (downloaded August 13, 2022). For those who are interested, the entire site of the Mahatma Ghandi.org is filled with useful articles, quotations, and ideas of Gandhi. See,  https://www.mkgandhi.org/. It is at the point of Gandhi’s lack of interest in speculation that qualifies his ideas as empirical and pragmatic as opposed to speculative.

[2] The term “Satyagraha” is a Hindu term not easily translated into English, for it connotes a truth that is a spiritual reality as opposed to simply a truth that comports with reality. Satyagraha is a kind of reality and reality making truth, similar in some ways to idea sitting behind John 1 in the Christian New Testament. In the following, I speak of the term using the awkward phrase, “Truth/Soul/Love Force.”

[3] “Sarvodaya is a Sanskrit term which, as used by Gandhi, generally means “universal uplift” or “progress of all”. Sarvodaya includes the notion that the good of the individual is contained in the good of all.

[4] Quotation found at https://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap45.htm (Downloaded, August 16, 2022).

[5] Gandhi was not a classic socialist, and I think that he would have approved of worker and consumer owned cooperatives, mixed ownership, significant ownership by employee stock plans and any strategy that creates better economic and social justice for labor. The importance of this notion will be dealt with in a later blog.

[6] See generally, David Bohm, Wholeness and Implicate Order (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1980), 163-182. And Diane Elgin, :The Living Universe: A Living Systems Paradigm for Viewing Big History” at https://www.kosmosjournal.org/article/the-living-universe/ (Downloaded August 16, 2022) and “The Bohm Krishnamurti Project: Exploring the Legacy of David Bohm and Jiddu Krishnamurit “ at https://bohmkrishnamurti.com/beyond-limits/ (downloaded, August 16, 2022)/

[7] Irene J. Dabrowski “David Bohm’s Theory of the Implicate Order: Implications for Holistic Thought Processes” ISSUES IN INTEGRATVE STUDIES No. 13, pp. 1-23 (1995).

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was trained as a lawyer and an important figure in South African anti-discrimination activism, the campaign for Indian independence, and the first premier of India after its independence from Britain. In India and around the world, he was known by the honorary title “Mahatma,” which means “Great Soul” in Sanskrit. During his lifetime, Gandhi faced opposition, was imprisoned times, and finally assassinated by a Hindu nationalist on January 30, 1948. His autobiography is one of the most important works by a 20^th Century political figure. [1] Gandhi was foremost a political activist and secondarily a thinker. His thought, sometimes contradictory, flowed from his commitments to human betterment, and are, therefore, to be respected as the reflections of a person of action.

One reason for covering Gandhi at this point is that he was referenced by both Alfred North Whitehead and Reinhold Niebuhr, both of whom mention his life and work. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, to whom we will next turn, was influenced by Gandhi and wanted to meet him. Finally, Martin Luther King, Jr. and, therefore, the American civil rights movement, was influenced by him.

By the time Whitehead published Adventures of Ideas, Gandhi was known throughout Great Britain, and his work and strategies for eliminating British Colonialism in India were legendary In Whitehead’s view, Gandhi’s work in India, and his influence on British public opinion and political action were evidence of the potential importance of religious and moral factors in political life. In Whitehead’s view writing in 1933, Gandhi’s success is used as an example of the potential for divine persuasion to move in public affairs in which a way as to produce social harmony without destructive, revolutionary conflict. [2] Foreseeing the destructive potential not only in that conflict but in the course of post-World War I European history, Whitehead felt Gandhi’s life and work symbolized and gave hope to the potential for religious and moral action and thought to promote a calm and reasonable approach to political progress. [3]

Niebuhr gives attention to Gandhi’s work in Moral Man and Immoral Society, published in 1933 around the same time as Whitehead is writing. [4] Niebuhr’s focus was on harmonizing Gandhi’s thought with his own positions on the inevitability of conflict in social progress. Because of Niebuhr’s negative views, I will save an analysis of his thought until after a review of the philosophical basis of Gandhi’s views.

Truth as Central

As is indicated by the title of his autobiography, The Story of My Experiments with Truth, the notion of Truth plays a central role in his thought about political matters. For Gandhi the concept of Truth or “Satya” is at the center of his political theory. For Gandhi truth was a spiritual and intellectual reality central to human spiritual, social and political life. His most famous formulation of his view is “Truth is God.” In a letter to Basil Matthews, Gandhi wrote:

If God who is indefinable can be at all defined, then I should say that God is TRUTH. It is impossible to reach HIM, that is, TRUTH, except through LOVE. LOVE can only be expressed fully when man reduces himself to a cipher. This process of reduction to cipher is the highest effort man or woman is capable of making. It is the only effort worth making, and it is possible only through ever-increasing self-restraint. [5]

This quotation is important to unpack so that we may understand what it means with Gandhi says, “Truth is God.” Gandhi  influenced by the Hindu a notion of God as an absolute impersonal, and so Gandhi does not mean a “Personal God” in the Christian sense of that term. However, Gandhi does also from time to time refer to God as personal. Thus, Gandhi states:

I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever-dying, there is underlying all that change a Living Power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates. That informing Power or Spirit is God. And since nothing else I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is.[6]

Gandhi speaks of God as a “Living Power,” an “Informing Power,” and a “Spirit.” All these are personal attributes. This personal quality of God is particularly true when he speaks of God as love, an idea we will discuss below. Perhaps most revealing, while not a Christian, Gandhi was an admirer of Christ as a person and revelation of God.

God as Love

In the quote above, Gandhi states that “It is impossible to reach HIM, that is, TRUTH, except through LOVE.” In other words, the only sure path to Truth is through Love. For Gandhi the Love that is God or by which God is known is a deep pervasive relationality, not unlike what can be seen in the Chinese Tao. He speaks of this love as follows:

Scientists tell us that, without the presence of the cohesive force amongst the atoms that comprise this globe of ours, it would crumble to pieces and we would cease to exist; and even as there is cohesive force in blind matter, so must there be in all things animate, and the name for that cohesive force among animate beings is love. We notice it between father and son, between brother and sister, friend and friend. But we have to learn to use that force among all that lives, and in the use of it consists our knowledge of God. Where there is love there is love there is life; hatred leads to destruction. [7]

For Gandhi, God was Truth before all things. However, there is a consciousness in Gandhi that to speak of love is to speak of a personal quality. Only a person with some degree of consciousness can love. This would be especially true of any love that would require a aware self-giving attitude, which Gandhi does recognize on occasion in says such as, “Love can never express itself by imposing sufferings on others. It can only express itself by self-suffering, by self-purification.” [8]

Non-Violence

The nature of God as Truth and the importance of Love led Gandhi to a recognition of non-violence or “Ahimsa” as the fundamental principle of political action. [9] Like the Christian virtue of “Agape” or self-giving love, Ahimsa connotes the highest form of love — a universal love, kindness, compassion, and forgiveness, an unconditional sense of belonging to everyone and everything, and a self-giving restraint for the benefit of the other.

The practical application of Truth to politics is for Gandhi a power that Truth inherently possesses. For Gandhi, the concepts of satyagraha (truth force) and ahimsa (non-violence), were the key to the practical application of Truthto the political realities he faced. Since God is Truth, there is a Truth Force (satyagraha) in the practical application of non-violence to political realities. Truth has a force, a power, that is inherent in its existence.

As one follower of Gandhi’s thought puts it:

The Gandhian philosophy of satyagraha is a natural outcome of the supreme concept of truth. If truth is the ultimate reality, then it is imperative to safeguard the criteria and foundations of truth. A votary of God which is the highest Truth and the highest Reality must be utterly selfless and gentle. He should have an unconquerable determination to fight for the supremacy of spiritual and moral values. Thus alone can he vindicate his sense of ethical devotion. Satyagraha means the exercise of the purest soul-force against all injustice, oppression and exploitation. Suffering and trust are attributes of soul force. The active nonviolent resistance of the ‘heroic meek’ makes an immediate appeal to the heart. It wants not to endanger the opponent but to overwhelm him by the over flooding power of innocence. [10]

These ideas are important if Western democratic society is to undo the damage of the kind of “politics as war” that have characterized the past years. For Christians, who believe that God is Love and Truth, the best way to seek a better social order is through the Truth Force of Non-violent Love. If we believe that God is a kind of transcendent love and wisdom, then we believe that the power of God is found in love.

Niebuhr on Gandhi

It is interesting to compare the difference between Whitehead, an early constructive post-Modernist, and Niebuhr, the  late Modern, in their reaction to Gandhi’s thought and action. Whitehead, whose philosophy is a form of Objective Idealism, recognizing the reality of values, Gandhi is a sign of hope for the future. For Niebuhr, Gandhi is a romantic idealist—whose pragmatic leadership was not always consistent with this ideals.

One of Niebuhr’s students put it this way:

I disagree with Niebuhr on his analysis of Gandhi. I think he didn’t understand Gandhi. He regarded Gandhi as a sentimentalist, the same way he regarded Marx as a sentimentalist: as someone with vaunted expectations about human nature. But Gandhi was more of a realist than Niebuhr assumed, and his method of conflict resolution involves exerting a certain kind of pressure. This is not exactly the coercion Niebuhr accused him of, because Gandhi tried to make a distinction between coercive and non-coercive force. [11]

If my reading of Niebuhr is correct, he receives as a kind of given that the universe is made up of matter and energy, that human beings are fundamentally material, that religious ideals function within the spirit of individuals, but that force and power motivate and control the political sphere of life. Revolution and violence are inevitable and can only be moderated by moral and religious ideals. In Moral Man and Immoral Society we also see the early Niebuhr, who was much less suspicious of Marxian analysis than he became in his later years.

Fundamentally, Niebuhr claims that Gandhi was either unaware or unable to sustain awareness of the difference between his principles of Non-Violence and Truth Force and the reality of the battle for independence. [12] Rather than seeing that Gandhi was constantly under pressure to put his ideals into practice in a complex political situation he feels that Gandhi was unable to recognize what he was doing and subscribe to views similar to his own.

In one revealing passage, Niebuhr writes:

The responsible leader of a political community is forced to use coercion to gain his ends. He may, as Mr. Gandhi, make every effort to keep his instruments under the dominion of his spiritual ideal; but he must use it, and it may be necessary at times to sacrifice a degree of moral purity for political effectiveness. [13]

In other words, spiritual ideals are nice but fundamentally divorced from the exercise of power in politics. It is this view with which I fundamentally disagree and view as destructive.

Conclusion

We will return to Gandhi when we deal with Martin Luther King, Jr and with the American civil rights movement. In the next blog, we will see that Gandhi had an impact on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and shaped a portion of his response to Hitler. In the meantime, it seems to me that Whitehead’s response to Gandhi is the better one.

Copyright 2022, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Mahatma Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1983).

[2] A. N. Whitehead, Adventure of Ideas (New York, NY: Free Press, 1933), 160.

[3] Id, at 161.

[4] Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study in Ethic and Politics (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1932, 2001), hereinafter, “MMIS”.

[5] The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 33, p. 452. See also Judith M. Brown, Gandhi: Prisoner of Hope (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 199. I found this at Douglas Allen, “Ghandi, Contemporary Political Thought and Other Relations,” https://umaine.edu/philosophy/douglas-allen/publications/gandhi-contemporary-political-thinking-self-relations/ (downloaded August 4, 2022). Dr Allen’s views are important in my understanding of Gandhi and in the preparation of this blog.

[6] See, “My life is My Message,” at https://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap10.htm (Downloaded August 4, 2022).

[7] Id, attributed to (YI, 5-5-1920, p. 7).

[8] Id, at https://www.mkgandhi.org/epigrams/l.htm#Love (Downoaded August 4, 2022)/

[9] Ahimsa is a Sanskrit word meaning “non-violence.” The term is derived from the root word himsa, meaning “to cause pain,” and the prefix – ‘a’ means “not.” Himsa, which connotes physical violence). Thus, Ahimsa is not to employ physical violence.

[10] Ramananda Choudhurie, “Gandhian philosophy of Satyagraha” at www.mkgandhi.org/articles/ramanand.htm (downloaded August 4, 2022).

[11] Nathan Schneider, “Mark Juergensmeyer on Gandhi and Niebuhr” in Wgaging NonViolience: People Powered News and Analysis at https://wagingnonviolence.org/2010/07/mark-juergensmeyer-on-gandhi-and-niebuhr/(Downloaded August 5, 2022).

[12] MMIS, at 242,

[13] MMIS, at 244.

Last week, we began our exploration of the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and his importance as a founder of the “process school” of philosophy. This school of philosophy has, in turn, given birth to a theological movement known as “Process Theology.” Whitehead himself grew up the son of a Church of England minister. In the course of his mathematical, logical, scientific, and philosophical careers, he drifted from what might be called “theological orthodoxy”. However, he did have a place for God in his philosophical system, and his works are replete with kind words about Jesus and the role of Christianity in Western civilization.

Before launching into this week’s analysis, I would like to say a few words to my friends in the Evangelical movement, who often find themselves at odds with the views of proponents of Process Theology. Keep an open mind for the following reasons:

1. One does not have to be a process theologian to appreciate the thought and work of Whitehead. There are orthodox thinkers who find him enlightening.
2. One does not have to adopt all of the ideas of process thinking to find some of its ideas important and useful.
3. For whatever it is worth, the writer believes that many of Whitehead’s ideas can be fruitful within an orthodox, Trinitarian theology and political theology.

God and Eternal Objects,

In order to understand Whitehead’s views on the movement from a society based on force to one based on persuasion, it is important to understand his notions of reality, of God, and of universals, or what Whitehead calls, “Eternal Objects.” For Whitehead, the world in which we live and have our day-today existence (what Whitehead sometimes calls, the “Actual World”) is built up of actual occasions. [1] Those things that we perceive as stable objects (what Whitehead calls, “Enduring Objects”) are simply events that have an enduring character because of their underlying structure. [2]

For Whitehead there are, however, two objects which participate in the emergence of the world of Actual Occasions that are not Actual Occasions. These are:

1. Eternal objects, which are ideal entities which are pure potentials for realization in the actual world and form the conceptual ground for all actual occasions; [3] and
2. God, who is both an Eternal Object and also the primordial Actual Entity; God is not an actual occasion but is present in all Actual Occasions. [4]

According to Whitehead, Eternal Objects are the qualities and formal structures that define Actual Occasions and related entities. Each Actual Entity is defined by an infinite hierarchy of Eternal Objects. This feature permits each actual entity to be experienced by future entities in important ways.

1. Eternal Objects participate in the causal connection of individual entities, functioning as private qualities and public structures, characterizing the growth of actuality in its rhythmic advance from private, subjective immediacy to public, extensively structured fact.
2. Eternal Objects are ideals conceptualized by historical actual entities. As such, they are the potential elements which provide that the process of nature is not deductive succession but organic growth, creative advance. [5]This characteristic is very important for an understanding of such political notions as Justice.

Eternal Objects are primordially realized as pure potentials in the conceptual nature of that one unique actual entity, which we call “God.” As realized in God, Eternal Objects are ideal possibilities or potentialities, ordered according to logical and aesthetic principles, which can be realized in Actual Occasions. As realized in God, Eternal Objects transcend the historical actual entities in which they are realized. [6]

A God of Persuasion Instead of Force

For Whitehead, God is “actual” (an Actual Entity) but non-temporal and the source of all creativity, the source of innovation, who transmits his creativity in freedom and persuasion. [7] Whitehead’s God has two poles of existence, a transcendent pole, which is primordial and a consequential or physical pole. The transcendent pole is the “mental pole” of God wherein one finds the existence of Eternal Objects.  As primordial, God is eternal, having no beginning or ending and is the ultimate reason for the universe, a factor that was important to Whitehead. [8]

As consequential, God is present in the universe and in all actual occasions, which is the physical pole of God’s existence. In this physical pole God experiences the world and the actualization of Eternal Objects in Actual Occasions. Because of God’s physical pole, God can be impacted by and experiences Actuality. Thus, Whitehead’s God   experiences and grows with creation.

It is with respect to this physical pole that Process Philosophy makes its unique contribution to certain theological ideas. For Whitehead, God is not an all-powerful ruler, a cosmic despot. God is intimately involved in the universe of Actual Occasions and impacts the future not by force but by persuasion. [9] Thus he says, “More than two thousand years ago the wisest of men proclaimed that the divine persuasion is the foundation of the order of the world, but that it could only produce such order as amid the brute force of the world it was possible to accomplish.” [10]

This divine persuasion, the slow working of God in history as love and wisdom is the hope of the world that the constant resort to force and violence in human affairs can be overcome. Writing before the Second World War, before Hiroshima and the wars of the last century, Whitehead saw the important role of Christian faith and of all religious groups as instruments for the evolution of the human race towards a more harmonious world based on persuasion, reason, and love rather than brute force. [11] In a much quoted and beautiful passage, Whitehead writes:

The essence of Christianity is the appeal to the life of Christ as the revelation of the nature of God and of his agency in the world. The Mother, the Child, and the bare manger: the lowly man, homeless and self-forgetful, with his message of peace, love, and sympathy: the suffering, the agony, the tender words as life ebbed, the final despair: and the whole with the authority of supreme victory. I need not elaborate. Can there be any doubt that the power of Christianity lies in its revelation in act of what Plato taught in theory? [12]

The Victory of Persuasion over Force

Plato had taught that the divine agency was persuasive relying on reason not coercion to accomplish the creation of the world. Plato also taught that it was a part of the reordering of the human person by virtue to recover the primordial reliance on reason and persuasion by which the world was created, and by which human beings recover an original reasonableness and harmony. This view has obvious implications for political philosophy and political practice.

For Whitehead, “The progress of humanity can be defined as the process of transforming society so as to make the original Christian ideals increasingly practicable for the individual members.” [13] The project of human civilization and of every human society and political institution is, therefore, achieving the victory of persuasion over force. [14] Recalling the words of Plato, Whitehead writes:

The creation of the world—said Plato—is the story of persuasion over force. The worth of men consists in their liability to persuasion. They can persuade and can be persuaded by the disclosure of alternatives, the better and the worse. Civilization is the maintenance of social order, by its own inherent persuasiveness as embodying the nobler alternative. The recourse to force, however, unavoidable, is a disclosure of the failure of civilization, either in general society or in a remnant of individuals. [15]

Against Hobbes, Whitehead holds that persuasion has always been a part of human society and denies that force is the defining characteristic of human society. He does not agree that human society is nothing but “a war of everyone against everyone else.” The social and persuasive side of society may even be older than the recourse to force. The love between the sexes, the love of parents for children and families for one another, even the communal love of small groups are all probably older than brute force as a fundamental aspect of human society.

This does not mean, however, that force is not an inevitable characteristic of society, for there is and always will be a need for laws, structures, and their enforcement and defense. Forms of social compulsion are an outgrowth of the need for social coordination, but are (or at least should be) of themselves the outgrowth of reason. [16] Interestingly, Whitehead believes that Commerce is an important component in the movement from force to persuasion, for commerce depends upon private parties reaching agreements without recourse to force, which in itself tends to build the capacities for reason and persuasion that a free society requires. [17]

Conclusion

In the end, Whitehead believes that there are four factors which govern the fate of social groups, including our own society: (1) the existence of some transcendent aim or goal greater than the mere search for pleasure; (2) the limitations on freedom which flows from nature itself and the basic needs of human beings; (3) the tendency of the human race to resort to compulsion instead of reason, which is fatal to social growth and flourishing if extended beyond necessary limits; and (4) the way of persuasion, which relies upon reason and agreement for the resolution of social problems. In the end, it is the way of persuasion that holds the hope for social and human flourishing. [18]

We will return to this aspect of Whitehead in the future, for his insights are related to the development of a more dialogical, reasonable, and sympathetic political culture.

Copyright 2022, G. Christopher Scruggs, All Rights Reserved

[1] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York, NY: Free Press, 1929, 1957), at 27, 90. Hereinafter, “PR.”

[2] Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York, NY: Free Press, 1925, 1967), hereinafter “SMM”, at 132-133.

[3] PR, 26

[4] PR, 105

[5]. See, Susan Shottliff Mattingly, “Whitehead’s Theory of Eternal Objects” DISSERTATION Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy. I am indebted to her for portions of this analysis.

[6] It is beyond the scope of this blog to exhaustively look at Whitehead’s notion of God. He did view God as an essential element of his metaphysical system as the ground of the order and creative potential of the universe.

[7] Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York, NY: The McMillian Company, 1936), 88, hereinafter “RM”.

[8] In Whitehead’s system all actual occasions have both a physical and a mental pole. Thus, intelligibility and the potential for the emergence of mind goes all the way down into the smallest actual entities in the universe.

[9] AI, at 166.

[10] Id, 160.

[11] Id, at 161. It is beyond the scope of this blog, but Whitehead believes that it is not the existence of dogmatics and religious theories that are the problem with religion, but the attitude of finality with which these opinions are voiced. In this, Whitehead echo’s Pearce. The theories of theologians are evidence of the importance of reason to Christian faith, and reasonableness is one of the ways in which brute force is overcome.

[12] Id, at 167. Plato had taught that the divine agency was persuasive relying on reason not coercion to accomplish his goal.

[13] Id, at 17.

[14] Id, At 25.

[15] Id, at 83.

[16] Id, at 69.

[17] Id, at 70-84. This is a most interesting discussion in which Whitehead deals with Malthusian economics, and its limitations.

[18] Id, at 85-86.