Whitehead, Hartshorne, and the Classical Concept of God
Many great philosophers have speculated about the true nature of God; although they had
different ideas, some commonalities in the classical Western concept of God are evident. The
great monotheistic religions, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, tend to characterize God as the
highest and most perfect being. Philosophers of these religions, influenced by others such as
Plato and Aristotle, constructed a view of God built from the Greek definition of perfection and
all that it entailed. From the writings of Philo, this perspective of a perfect God was incorporated
into the religious doctrine. Whitehead and Hartshorne reject the classical conception of
immutability as a facet of perfection and argue in favor of a dynamic God.
While the logic behind the relationship of perfection and immutability seems at first
sound, Whitehead argues against immutability because of the contradictions and incoherencies it
