In my version of process thought, the uniquely all-inclusive way of newly interacting (God) can just as easily be described in more Hegelian terms as boundlessly self-othering communion—a way of interacting, in order to be newly interacting, must be inherently self-othering, and in order to continue as that way, it must be inherently self-othering communion.
(Communion is intimately sharing others’ distinctive reality. It’s not total absorption—“communion” means “union-with,” and the “with” is just as crucial as the “union.” Differences don’t disappear but enhance the sharing.)
As boundless, God is the version of this communion “than which a greater cannot be thought,” as St. Anselm famously said. Countless others, like and unlike you and me, are bounded versions of this (“God’s image”) than which a greater can be thought. So there is a mutually entangling likeness/unlikeness among God and countless others. (Catherine Keller calls it apophatic entanglement: “a full ontological relationalism [wherein] uncertainty, the apophatic, the unknowable [is] built into the elemental fabric of the universe.”)
There’s a Trinitarian structure to this that is, arguably, congruent with the Nicene Creed.
What the creed calls “God the Father” can be associated with boundlessly self-othering communion as boundlessly SELF-othering communion.
What the creed calls “true God from true God, begotten, not made” can be associated with boundlessly self-othering communion as boundlessly self-OTHERING communion, fully humanized in the ongoing, communion-enlivening life of Jesus of Nazareth.
What the creed calls “the Holy Spirit” can be associated with boundlessly self-othering communion as boundlessly self-othering COMMUNION.
But the reality here is not expressed in any of these words taken separately from the others. The reality here is expressed only in the entire phrase, “boundlessly self-othering communion.” There is no self here apart from boundlessly self-othering communion. There is no othering here apart from boundlessly self-othering communion. There is no communion here apart from boundlessly self-othering communion.
In process thought there is of course no final resting place in boundlessly self-othering communion. Boundlessly self-othering communion is endlessly self-othering.
It does not imply a final end to conflicts that may arise from this endless process of self-othering. It does imply that such conflicts are not the final end either. There is always a new way of moving, albeit inseparably, beyond them (not totally beyond, but still beyond, inseparably).
Again, boundlessly self-othering communion can readily be described in process terms as the all-inclusive way of newly interacting.
For Zizek fans, this can just as readily be described as follows: “‘All there is’ is the interstice, the non-self-coincidence, of Being, i.e., the ontological nonclosure of the order of Being.”—Slavoj Zizek, The Monstrosity of Christ (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009), p. 99. “The all-inclusive way of newly interacting” likewise points to “the ontological non-closure of the order of Being,” as does “boundlessly self-othering communion.” Neither the “all” in “all-inclusive” nor “communion” imply any sort of closure, not if all-inclusiveness is newly interacting, and not if communion is boundlessly self-othering.
Fr. Charles
