Do Process Buddhists Believe in ‘God’?

Sometimes I use the word ‘God’ in my reflections and I use it both sincerely and ironically.

It’s ironic because I’m a Buddhist and Buddhists have always criticized and deflated the notion of a monotheistic creator or absolute supreme being.

But it’s also sincere because I understand what the concept of ‘God’ is supposed to *do* for everyday people when they invoke it, and on a more philosophical register this is A.N. Whitehead’s term of choice for the “divine element in the world” in his process-relational metaphysics. Whitehead stresses that his God is not a dogmatic one derived from revealed scripture but a philosophically necessary posit required for his metaphysics (much in the same way that Aristotle posited his “Unmoved Mover”, although Whitehead’s God is nothing like the UM).

For Whitehead, what he terms “Creativity” is the true ultimate, and what he terms “God” is the “primordial accident” of creativity (almost as if the divine element is the logically first creature of creativity, although in actuality they always come together). The function this God fulfills is twofold: in its primordial nature it is the reservoir of all potentiality and in its consequent nature it is the medium through which actuality and potentiality meet to produce a new actuality with greater value. The actual world needs God in order to draw from the reservoir of potentiality and realize something new and greater, but Whitehead also stresses that this is a two-way street (a reciprocal relation) and that God is affected by and dependent upon the World as much as the World is affected by and dependent upon God.

Why does he call this “God” though? To quote Whitehead: “It is here termed ‘God’; because the contemplation of our natures, as enjoying real feelings derived from the timeless source of all order, acquires that ‘subjective form’ of refreshment and companionship at which religions aim.”

Here Whitehead does refer to concrete religion but he refers to all of them generally rather than singling out one in particular. As an Anglo-American of the 19th and 20th centuries, Whitehead is deeply embedded in a Christian society and culture. So the term “God” is the one that is resting on the tip of the tongue when we reflect on the “timeless source of all order” and our feelings of deep “refreshment and companionship”.

But when I read this, what’s at the tip of my tongue is “Bodhisatva”. Like Whitehead’s God, the Bodhisattva embodies a dipolar nature of being at once primordial (dharmakaya) and consequent (rupakaya), is reciprocally entangled with the world (of sentient beings), and is a lure of becoming who offers higher values for realization by actual sentient beings through their dharma teachings. So with some qualifications and modifications, I believe a consistent Buddhist Process Theology is possible, because Whitehead’s ‘God’ was always a metaphysically necessary conceptual posit and not based on dogmatic adherence to any particular religious revelation. Christian Process Theology may have been the natural housing space for Whitehead’s philosophy (and thank the lord for their noble work on keeping his vision alive and creatively advancing beyond it in their own ways), but I believe the time is ripe for a fully elaborated Buddhist Process Theology, and I have taken upon the task to deliver this for the world (with the indispensable help of many others, of course).

So whenever you see me use the word ‘God’, remember the post-ironic nature of my use of it. I do believe in ‘God’, but I really don’t, and I believe in ‘God’ not in spite of but precisely because of the fact that I really don’t.