Man's Vision of God and the Logic of Theism is a 360-page
book on
theology written by
Charles Hartshorne, a disciple of
Alfred North Whitehead. The book was first published in
1941 (republished in
1964), and served as a vehicle in which Hartshorne developed Whitehead's
process philosophy into a
process theology.
The fundamental idea of this process theology is that God is capable of change, and is in a constant process of achieving greater perfection. Hartshorne laid out with fairly mathematical precision what he believed to be adequate
philosophical proofs that this was the nature of God. These ideas are asserted as a serious of logical formulae which support the argument for the existence of God while dismissing traditional aspects of
theism, and other conceptions of the divine which Hartshorne deems flawed. Hartshorne examined numerous theological conceptions, rejecting
pantheism,
deism, and
pandeism in favor of
panentheism - the belief that
God is the
universe, but also
transcends the universe.
Hartshorne defines God first and foremost as an ultimate force of
love, reasoning that such a characteristic would be necessary to explain a God-created universe. His examination flows in part from the rejection of other aspects commonly attributed to God, which Hartshorne finds to be incompatible with this primary attribute. For example, Hartshorne rejects the idea that God could be unchanging, in contrast to a God-created universe that is in a constant change of flux. Perfection is relative, and God must be able to become more perfect. It follows, Hartshorne contends, that God is not necessarily omniscient or omnipotent, but may exercise only relative perfection in these regards--having greater power or sentience than anything else that exists, but nevertheless having limitations on these attributes.