Mutability and Relationality: Towards an African Four-Dimensionalist Pan-Psychism

Abstract

This article challenges a certain Theist conception of God as immutable. I argue that the idea that God is immutable can be challenged on the grounds of its metaphysical groundwork. More precisely, I contend that the idea that God is immutable entails endurantism, which I demonstrate to be mistaken. This view cannot be right because it potentially involves three absurd implications: (a) a violation of the principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals (b) the idea that God becomes a different God with any change that occurs (c) the view that only the present is real and there is no future and past. As these solutions are absurd, the endurantist view ought to be abandoned. I then suggest an alternative theory that does not meet the same problems, which I call African four-dimensionalist Pan-Psychism. This theory I advance maintains that God is the sum of His spatial and temporal parts, is mutable and has relational properties (e.g., He changes with the occurrence of evil or good in the world). I uphold that this view does not have the absurd implications of its competitors.

1. Introduction

The nature of God and its existence is a topic that has occupied philosophical discussions for a long time (Wainwright 2017; Oppy 2020; Augustine 2012; Plantinga 1974). Routinely, the discussions are carried out in a Western and, more specifically, Christian context. Nonetheless, more recently, various philosophers have contended that these questions need to broaden their scope in terms of including a wider variety of philosophical traditions from different places across the world (Harrison 2020; Metz and Molefe 2020). In fact, there is nearly no literature on non-Western philosophy and, especially African philosophy, regarding the nature of God. In this article, I wish to discuss the question of the nature of God through an African philosophy of religion. More precisely, I wish to challenge the Western Christian perspective of God as immutable and offer an alternative theory of God as mutable and with relational properties, that is based on African religious thought. Note that the understanding of God as immutable does not necessarily mean that He is beyond time; a being can be in time and be immutable. Understandings of immutability can take many forms and while some Scholastic philosophers think immutability means to be beyond time, contemporary analytical philosophers such as Eleanor Stump and Richard Swinburne do not conceive God in that way. But, broadly speaking, most Christian philosophers (especially the mainstream ones) agree that God is, to a certain degree, immutable.

To carry out this task, the next section briefly outlines what God being immutable means. The section after that starts challenging the idea that God is immutable. The argument in this section is that underlying this idea of immutability is the metaphysical view of endurantism, which is a logically incoherent theory. More precisely, my argument is that the notion of God as immutable relies on endurantism and this theory leads to either absurd implications or to a contradiction of the principle of the Indiscernibility of Identicals. Resultantly, if that conception of God is based on a significantly problematic metaphysical theory, then the conception ought to be rejected. The following section advances what I call African four-dimensionalist Pan-Psychism, a view which does not open up the same metaphysical problems as endurantism. This theory is grounded in African vitality theory, with God as the sustaining force of everything that exists. The theory argues that God is a mutable a relational entity and should be understood as the sum of His spatial and temporal parts together. From this viewpoint, due to the fact that God is present in everything, He changes with the events in the world. For instance, good or evil acts have an impact on God’s properties. I do not claim this theory is true, but I maintain that this theory does not face the same unsolvable problems as endurantism. Further, I address some objections mostly referring to questions about the plausibility of the approach and show there are good reasons to endorse the view I advance here. It is important to emphasize that albeit I offer this alternative theory to the Western Christian view of God, this does not mean that the African and Western views are diametrical opposed. Given that the Christian tradition is old and widespread, there are Christian philosophers and believers who may identify with the view defended here. Having said that, the argument put forward here is different from more mainstream Christian approaches to the nature of God. The last two sections address possible objections to my view. The penultimate section responds to possible objections of supporters of endurantism. The final section replies to those who are sceptical about African four-dimensionalist Pan-Psychism.

The thesis forwarded in this article is distinct from previous scholarship in at least three ways. Firstly, although there are similar views to mine, such as Western Pan-Psychism and Process Theology, none of these have been developed with a grounding in African metaphysical beliefs like the work presented here (Taliaferro 2019; Mander 2020; Wainwright 2017; Cobb 2016). These views do not conceptualize God as a vitality or flux that goes through all this, and the difference is epistemically valuable because it broadens horizons for debate. Epistemically, one’s beliefs are weaker if they only focus on the intuitions and theories of a small number of people. It is necessary for epistemic reasons to broaden the discussion and consider theories and intuitions beyond the West: the strength of theories is dependent on whether they are confronted with sufficient intuitions and theories that support or challenge them (Sidgwick and Rawls 1981; Wareham 2017). Additionally, there are also justice related reasons: for example, the exclusion of non-Westerners from philosophical debates may entail a form of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2009).

The second way this work differs from previous research is because most of the work on African religions has been anthropological and historical (Olupona 2014; Thornton 1998). The project here is different: I wish to develop a philosophical account of African four-dimensionalist Pan-Psychism. Although based on African religious thought, this goes beyond it to develop a philosophical argument that can compete with philosophies of religion in and outside Africa. Thirdly, the work I carry out goes further than previous research on African philosophy of religion. Previous work on African philosophy has mostly confronted its scholarship with debates in African philosophical circles (Olupona 2014; Mbiti 2015; Bewaji 1998; Agada 2019). Nonetheless, in this article I go further and respond to potential objections against an African-inspired view from likely sceptics including scholastic, Western analytical and continental philosophers.

2. The Nature of the Theist God

In this section, I will outline some of the characteristics that Theists usually attribute to God. It is not my intention to give an extensive list of all the characteristics but I present some of the relevant ones for the current article. The list and definitions I use in this section is in accordance with the views of contemporary analytic Christian philosophers. The God of the Theists usually has at least the following characteristics: He is the creator, a person, necessary, perfect, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and immutable (Swinburne 1978, 1998; Plantinga 1974; Van Inwagen 2008). Being the creator means that He is the being that created everything that exists. To be a person means to the possibility of being addressed. By necessary it means, He had to exist. He exists in all possible worlds and there is no possibility that He would not exist. By being perfect, Theists mean that He is morally perfect, He does not make mistakes and He always acts rightly. Omnipotence means He has the power to do anything logical. God cannot make square circles as this is illogical. Nonetheless, anything that follows the rules of logic can be done by God. Omnipresence means that God is everywhere all the time. There is no moment in time or place in space where He is not present (Plantinga 1974; Swinburne 1998; Taliaferro 2019; Van Inwagen 2008). Note, for the Theist, this does not mean that God is every moment and every space in time (this is what the Pantheist affirms), rather, what the Theist is affirming is that God is all the time at every place. The property of omniscience entails He knows everything. Immutable means He is always the same, never changes, and keeps his perfect nature. His properties do not change. For example, He does not become bad, He does not evolve or become corrupted. It is this later property, however, that I wish to contest. I do not think that God does not change. Rather, I argue that He is a mutable being.

3. Problems with Endurantism

I wish to argue that there are metaphysical problems with the conception of God as immutable, which derive from our observation that there is a change in oneself when there is a change in one’s creation. The perspective of God as immutable rests on a metaphysically complicated theory: Endurantism. Endurantism is the philosophical theory that defends that entities only have three dimensions and not temporal parts. This theory however has an implication for change. As Damiano Costa contends:

‘Change seems to require difference: if something has changed, it is different from how it was. But if it is different, it cannot be identical, on pain of contradiction. Now, endurantism requires a changing thing to be identical across change.’

(Costa 2021)

Owing to the fact that endurantism does not admit four-dimensions, it has a specific implication for change. Namely, when change occurs the entity that changes cannot be the same entity anymore. In other words, an entity to be the same entity has to maintain all of its properties all the time (or at least its essential properties). This is because endurantism endorses the idea that entities persist through time as a whole. Consequently, it rejects the idea that objects that persist through time can be understood as having temporal parts or being the sum of such parts (Lewis 1986). Consequently, according to this theory, things do not have temporal parts; rather, things are totally present whenever they exist.

This metaphysical perspective is problematic; but to understand this another concept needs to be introduced; namely, I need to introduce the notion of numerical identity, i.e., the relation that an entity has necessarily with itself. Numerical identity indicates that Boris Johnson the Prime-Minister is the same as Boris Johnson the Conservative Party member. This understanding of identity derives from a logical principle which is called Indiscernibility of Identicals. According to this logical principle identical objects are indiscernible (they have exactly the same properties). Put differently, for all objects x and y, they are identical if and only if for every property x has, y also has the same property. Thus, an object to be the same has to have the same properties. This principle is a logical truth because its denial leads to a logical contradiction. Suppose x and y numerical identical, i.e., they are the same object. Suppose further that the principle is false. If the principle is false, then it would be possible for an object to have and not have at the same time a certain property. As this is a contradiction, the principle is a logical truth (Lewis 1986).

Having this into consideration, the problem is that endurantism is not consistent with the Indiscernibility of Identicals principle, so it must be false. If an entity to be the same entity has to have all the time its properties and never changes (like endurantism defends), then there are three possible solutions: a slight change in the properties (be it a loss or a gain of a property) makes the object a different object, the object only exists in the present, or the principle is false. The first option is rather counter-intuitive—entities are recognised as the same even though they have slightly changed. They are not completely different objects because of their change. For example, Boris Johnson does not cease being Boris Johnson because he did not win the elections. The skeptic may push saying this is not an implication of endurantism. But the skeptic is mistaken to state this: if all that an entity is is its three dimensions, endurantism has no way to explain the change of an entity besides affirming that if those properties of an entity in one moment are absent in another, then it is a different entity. The second view is also counter-intuitive. That view, that can be classified as presentist, is that there is no change of an object because the object just exists at the present time. An entity is only wholly present at each time because there is no such thing as other times besides present and things do not exist though different times. Nonetheless this view seems to be too far from how we usually see the world that philosophers consider it to be too far from reality to be true (Lewis 1986). Both these positions are untenable.

The third option is also not viable because logical truths are necessarily truth; therefore, it cannot be denied. Given that both solutions are problematic, then endurantism is false.

How does the immutable notion of God endorse endurantism? My argument is that this perspective of God is endurantist to the extent that it implies that between time T₁ (…) T_n will remain exactly with the same properties. It implies this because by stating that God is defined by a fixed set of characteristics that make Him distinctive, then it states that in all the times between T₁ (…) T_n it has the same properties. Put differently, the view defended by Theists implies that properties do not change: God is defined by a specific set of properties and if these properties are absent then the implication is that (a) it is not the same God or (b) the God is not equal to itself. The possibility (a) however is rather counter-intuitive; would we, for example, call God not God because He is different from the God of two centuries ago? It is very likely that this God, if exists, has kept some properties from two centuries ago; still, it is counter-intuitive to state that one of them is not ‘God’. This is not to say that God is exactly the same as He, in fact, may not be; but we still recognize Him as sharing some identity and continuity. The solution (b) is also not a good solution, for it would mean a violation of the Indiscernibility of Identicals in order to affirm a metaphysical theory that supports this conception of God. Nevertheless, because this principle is a logical truth, then this solution is also not satisfactory. Note that the argument does not depend on controversial premises, but simply on the following propositions being both true: (i) God did not create the world yet; (ii) God created the world. In (ii), there is an additional and uncontroversial (for Theists) predicate that is attributed to God. The mere fact that there is this change would be sufficient for God in terms of T₁ and T_n not having the same properties. Even if there is no moment that distinguishes God’s creation and Him existing (imagining they were both created at the same time), there was a sequence in the events of creation, and in T₁ God created x and in T_n created y, which are different attributes.

4. African Pan-Psychism in Four-Dimensions: Relationality and Force

In this section, I wish to advance a theory that I call African four-dimensionalist Pan-Psychism. My goal is not to contend that this theory is correct but simply to point the way to an alternative that does not face the same problems as endurantism. African ontology tends to understand the whole world as relational. This means that identities are not separate from the existence of other things; instead, these identities are formed through the interaction with others and what one is not separate from what others are (Badru 2010; Gbadegesin 1996). Illustrative of this is the West African art motif of the Siamese Crocodile. In this art motif, one can see a crocodile with two heads and a shared stomach. Whatever one head of the crocodile eats affects the other head to the extent that they have a shared stomach. The art motif has a variety of possible meanings, but one of them which I wish to tease out here is that the world is connected and nothing is separate (Gyekye 2011; Wiredu 2009). Therefore, what one is is, in part, what others are as well. As Innocent Azouzu puts it ‘[entities in the world] are also all the units and combinations necessary in the conceptualisation of an entity or of the whole… all existent realities relate to each other in the manner of mutual service’ (Asouzu 2005, p. 286). Hence, the African saying, “I am because you are”, where the identity of an entity results from and is inextricably linked to the identity of other entities. This does not mean that they are the same. Rather, it is possible in African thought to perceive different entities and, indeed, there is a ranking amongst entities. In particular, African thought is significantly anthropocentric, with humans at the center. Here, humans often rank higher than nature and non-human animals and the features of supernatural entities (like God and the living-dead) are described in humancentric ways (Mbiti 1990, 2015).

The question that remains is: what exactly is the uniting aspect of all beings that exist? A salient view in Africa is that there is a force or all-pervading energy that although invisible penetrates all things. In other words, there is a flux that gives life to everything and can, to a certain extent, be understood as a consciousness in everything that exists. The African view defended here is Pan-Psychist: it understands that the whole world has the capacity, albeit to different levels, of experiencing things. In short, consciousness exists in all things. This force, (which I contend to be manifested in a consciousness in all things) is equivalent to being (Tempels 2010).

This vital force is often understood as issuing from God. The idea is not exactly like Pantheism where all matter is God and God is in all matter. It is also not like Deism which separates God from all matter. Instead, it is more like Panentheism, which is the view that all matter exists in God (Culp 2020). Hence, God, according to this view, is a dynamic entity that sustains all things that exist through its force for providing vitality and, if God withdraws His hand, then everything collapses. It is only through this energy emanating from God that consciousness can exist. This means that, from an African viewpoint, God as this source of vitality is a dynamic entity. For some Africans, God is the vital force and source of all and thereby a dynamic entity (Tempels 2010). As this vital force, His being is being becoming (and this is the case for the whole world as God sustains it) (Ramose 2017). His nature and of the reality He sustains is fundamentally dynamic. Force is therefore not an attribute of being but what being is. Placide Tempels captures this idea extremely clearly when he affirms “‘[f]orce” in his [the Bantu’s] thought is a necessary element in ‘being’, and the concept ‘force’ is inseparable from the definition of ‘being’. There is no idea among the Bantu of ‘being’ divorced from the idea of ‘force’” (Tempels 2010 p. 34).

According to this view, God is a constant and conscious dynamic process that gives life to the world. Indeed, according to various African religions, God is mutable and evolves. God is not a finished entity, but an entity which is formed in relation to the world. It is through routine exchange with the world that He becomes who He is and, gains or loses some properties (Mbiti 1990, 2015; Agada 2019). For example, when evil or goodness occur, these impact on the properties of God. The different parts of all that exist relate to each other and modify each other including God Himself, albeit not to the same degree (Olupona 2014; Miller 1976). Thus, the status of God can be conceptualized as a process. God is therefore shapable by human’s (evil or good) actions. This is especially the case because for many Africans we live in a moral universe, i.e., a universe regulated primarily by moral laws.

This African conception is compatible with four-dimensionalism. This is the metaphysical viewpoint considering that entities persist through time in a similar way, and that entities also extend through space. Consequently, according to four-dimensionalism, any object has, in addition to its spatial parts, temporal parts. A temporal part of an entity is a temporal cross-section of that object. So, a temporal part is temporally smaller than the entity, existing in a shorter temporal interval than the whole entity. The various sub-regions of the entity make up the total region of time the object occupies. In short, an entity is constituted by the addition of all its temporal and spatial parts. Thus, things have a spatiotemporal continuity in the sense that an object is a continuous series of locations in space and time (Lewis 1986). Owing to the fact that this view accepts change to be the nature of things, it does not face the same complications as endurantism; rather, is considered to be a theory with more explanatory power than the alternatives (Conee and Sider 2007).

African ontology tends to be four-dimensionalist view to the extent that it does not understand God as immutable, but rather, as changeable over time. The force changes and is affected by what it passes through but this does not constitute a different identity as its identity is a combination of spatiotemporal sections. Put differently, the identity of this force is the agglomerate of temporal and spatial parts in T₁ and T_n. Thus, the African relational God is a four-dimensionalist one: that is, it is the force that though all time and space sustains the world. As God is understood as the constant sustaining force throughout time and space, His entity is affected by the world and gains different properties. Hence, when someone commits an act of evil that also changes a property in God. The changes over time, however, do not make Him a different entity. This is because despite the changes, God is permanently the force that sustains and gives vitality to everything. Particularly, God is all the spatial-temporal sections together that sustain everything that exists. What this means is that God is the sum of the temporal and spatial parts of the sustaining force and has been since the beginning of existence. So, the God of one thousand years ago is the same God as now: for the God of one thousand years ago is simply spatial-temporal section of what God is.

5. Possible Defenses of Endurantism

One objection that can be raised against my argument is that it is not the case that that conception of God has this endurantist metaphysical theory underlying it. Particularly, the argument is that that notion of God only requires that a restricted number of properties remain the same and not that all properties continue existing throughout time. Endurantism, contrastingly, implies that all properties remain the same all the time. Hence, that conception of God cannot be refuted by demonstrating that endurantism is false.

In reply, note first that there are some versions of endurantism that require that all properties remain the same in time; however, it is not the case that all forms of endurantism imply that all properties need to remain the same throughout time (Conee and Sider 2007). The absence of these properties is also necessary and sufficient to categorise an object as not the same. In this case, there is still violation of the Indiscernability of Identicals because a slight change of properties would mean that the God is not equal to itself which contradicts the principle. Alternatively, it would lead to the counter-intuitive conclusion that it is a new God; this implication violates the intuition that God is the same even though He may go through profound changes in time.

Someone like Peter van Inwagen would contend that I am attacking a straw man: Theists only argue that some of His essential properties do not change, it is not that He does not change at all. Rather, what Theists are affirming is that properties like necessity, omnipresence, omniscience, and so forth do not change (Van Inwagen 2008). But this is a misunderstanding of the nature of the properties God has. Most properties of God are relational, contrary to what van Inwagen assumes. To be an omnipresent creator requires creating something, to be somewhere, to know something, and so forth. These properties are only realized in relation to other things and are not simply non-relational properties. This is especially the case for God being a person. As explained, to be a person means the possibility of being addressed. But the only possible way to have this property is for there to be another being which can address you: it is the nature of the other being in relation to God’s nature that makes God addressable because they are non-relational/intrinsic properties. Indeed, many of the above properties are acquired through existence. The Existentialists famously suggested that existence precedes essence and it is through the performance of certain actions that one forms essence (Sartre 2007). Similarly, it is through the performance of existence—in relation to others—that God can be an omnipotent creator and a person.

Another possible objection to my criticisms is that endurantism ought to be endorsed because it can explain God’s nature in a more convincing way than the alternatives. More precisely, the argument here is that a change in a God’s properties, particularly essential ones, entails that then a new God is formed. This explanation, the objection goes, is a better explanation than affirming that a God that becomes different is still the same God.

To respond, the way that intuitions are usually tested is by checking how they cohere with a theory and/or with a larger body of intuitions (McMahan 2000; Rawls 2005). The problem with this objection is that the intuition that a new entity comes to life when there is a change does not cohere with a larger body of intuitions about numerical identity. Imagine that aliens came to Earth and abducted your mother. In a scientific experiment, they were able to change one of the essential properties (your choice of property) of your mother. Despite the change in this essential on your mother’s property, would you consider that she is not the same person? The intuition is that your mother is still the same person, despite the change in property.

This example may be contested because either because there is a real change by changing the essential property or because it appeals too much to emotion. Regarding the real change point, it seems to me that the point that a mother continues to be a mother no matter what is self-evident. Nonetheless, the fact that is self-evident does not mean that further explanations cannot be provided. Imagine that you knew your mother as being a very caring person: this was her key characteristic as a mother. But she had an accident that damaged her brain exactly in the parts that regulate emotions. Resultantly, she became a very cold and distant person because she is now incapable of emotional attachments. Would your mother not be your mother anymore? Most people would disagree that this is not your mother. Some still may argue that this is not an essential property, that the essential property of being a mother is to be a female. Hence, imagine that your mother has recently undergone a surgery to change genders. In a sense, this person is not your mother because now self-identifies as a male, but he is still the same person, albeit you ought not to call him your mother unless he so wishes. The point is that the transformation of any property which may carry substantial changes does not make a new person, it just transforms the person, and this person is the sum of all these spatial and temporal parts.

In terms of the emotion objection, the mother example obviously inclines the reader to answer the mother is the same person because of emotional attachment. Nevertheless, it is also the case that because our families are the ones we know best, we are also in a privileged epistemological position to affirm the continuity or change of that entity. In addition, it is also possible to use examples with less emotional appealing. Imagine now that a person cheated on their partner and claims that he is ought to not be considered guilty because he is not the same person as he was before. The cheater is not the same cheater now and, therefore, he should not be held account for what the cheater did. Again, it is very counter-intuitive to affirm that he is not to be considered guilty because of whatever change he experienced. More generally, this objection also clashes with the intuition of how we perceive the continuity of identity. Usually, identities are understood to have some degree of continuity. Consequently, when referring to identity changes we do not consider the identity as a new entity, but as the same entity but as a different temporal part. However, if one endorses endurantism, the changes should be understood as relating to a different entity, even though it may be causally related to the previous one. There is, indeed, no logical contradiction in stating this. Nevertheless, it seems that this perspective overcomplicates an explanation and, thereby violates the principle of Occam’s Razor whereby simpler explanations are to be preferred.

A final criticism to my view can be that I have misunderstood what endurantism is and its implications. Endurantism is compatible with the view that all properties are relational properties and, specifically, relational properties with respect to time. According to this view, no entity possesses intrinsic properties, but simply properties that are acquired in relation to time. So, for example, the cup is red-today not simply red and has blue-tomorrow rather than blue. This view, however, can hardly be called endurantism. For the defender of this thesis to consider that the object which is red-today and blue-tomorrow to be the same she has to admit temporal parts, which will then mean that she is endorsing four-dimensionalism. If the defender of this perspective does not wish to accept this, then there is only one other alternative, which is to claim that the objects are not the same. This, as, defended above, is untenable.

6. Challenges to African Four-Dimensionalist Pan-Psychism

One possible form of objection against African four-dimensionalist Pan-Psychism is that any God-talk is nonsense to the extent that it is empirically unverifiable. There is no way to empirically verify the statements that I have made above regarding African four-dimensionalism and therefore it must be false (Ayer and Rogers 2001). More specifically, some philosophers contend that the things in the world do not exhibit anything like consciousness, and there is no reason to ascribe psychological attributes to things that a Pan-Psychist view like the one here described assigns. So philosophers such as John Searle consider this family of views as ‘absurd’ arguing that such perspectives do not have ‘enough structure even to be a remote candidate for consciousness’ (Searle 1997, p. 48).

There are two answers to this view. First note that if the view held here exhibits a strong sense of verificationism which needs corresponding facts for all statements, the view is considered false because of its overdemanding requirements. This is particularly because it would imply that all universal statements are false because they lack factual meaning (Swinburne 2016). For example, it would imply that the statement ‘all men are mortal’ is false because we have no way of confirming it. This has led philosophers to appeal to a different way of doing philosophy, i.e., by looking at the explanatory power of a theory. What should matter is how well and plausibly a theory can explain a phenomenon, especially in comparison to alternative theoretical explanations.

This takes me to the second answer. Namely, that this skepticism about Pan-Psychism is misplaced. Recent studies on the philosophy of mind and philosophy of physics suggest not that such a theory is nonsense but that there is indeed some reason to believe in a non-material explanation of the world. Given the limited explanatory power of material conceptions of the world, it is difficult to hold a view which is purely materialistic (Gao 2014; Agada 2019; Ells 2011). This is particularly true since recent discoveries in physics suggest a high level of indeterminacy in terms of quantum particles, such as protons, electrons and photons. Experiences made in quantum physics environments suggest that such particles behave in ways which cannot be predicted, i.e., in a probabilistic manner. This suggests some level of subjectivity in quantum particles, even if this is rudimentary. This indeterminacy at the low level contradicts the idea that there is no evidence of consciousness. Although this indeterminacy does not prove consciousness, the consciousness explanation is a good candidate because it has strong explanatory power. This coheres with the paradigm of scientific inquiry which is grounded in finding the best explanations for phenomena (Kuhn 2012).

Another challenge to this perspective is that the entity described by the African Pan-Psychist view seems to be at odds with how the concept of God is usually understood and, consequently, this kind of entity cannot be understood as being God at all. The concept of God entails the idea of perfection and a being that changes is obviously not perfect. As Plato (Plato and Lane 2007) states in The Republic (381b–c):

-

Would he change himself into something better and more beautiful than himself or something worse and uglier?

-

It would have to be into something worse, if he’s changed at all, for surely we won’t say that a god is deficient in either beauty or virtue.

Routinely, the conception of God is one that is not deficient in goodness and therefore a God that is imperfect does not match the way the idea of God is understood. A God that can be improved is not very much of a God. Further, it seems unthinkable that a concept of God suggests that He can become worse. Thus, the view defended here is conceptually dubious.

The reply to this view can be grounded in three key ideas. To start, the concept of God as perfect is an ethnocentric understanding of God grounded in the Christian tradition. African, Latin-American and Asian religions do not routinely understand God as perfect. The majority of traditions do not match God with perfection, but simply identify God as supreme. In the African tradition, it is not uncommon to think that God to be imperfect and capable of evil. For instance, the Igbo God Chukwu is understood to sometimes do evil acts partly due to his imperfect nature. There is no reason to privilege the Christian view of God. This is because many other views can be found in the different world religions (Mbiti 2015; Harrison 2018; Black and Ram-Prasad 2019; Fowler and Fowler 2007). Even in the Western tradition, it is not the case that God is considered perfect (e.g., Jurgen Moltmann does not think this is the case). The existence of God can simply be understood as a cosmological fact which does not need to be grounded in the concept of perfection. Indeed, it does not need to be a logical necessity as in the case of philosophers like Anselm of Canterbury. For example, this is how the Chinese God Pangu is understood. Thirdly, African philosophy understands aspects of reality that look like opposites rather than contraries and exist as complementary sides of entities. From an African viewpoint reality is complementary and opposites are reinforcing entities for the creation of something. Harmony, for example, is the result of the conflict which involve disruptive tensions for the creation of a harmonious state of affairs (Chimakonam 2019). Also, take the example of generosity. The good of generosity is only possible through the existence of ontological tensions, where there is a situation of scarcity (which is an evil) where generosity can occur. The condition for the formation of generosity is that the ontological opponents of it take place. This is generalizable for all goods and evils. The point here is that negative states (or evils) rather than understood to be the opposites of positive states (or goods), they are instead understood as complementary ontological aspects of reality (Chimakonam 2019; Chimakonam and Ogbonnaya 2021).

An additional potential issue with my view is that four-dimensionalism cannot capture the eternal nature of God. God is eternal and as an eternal being cannot be understood as a spatiotemporal entity, like in four-dimensionalism. But what does it mean to be eternal? In the history of Western philosophy of religion, there are two families of answers. One is that God is non-temporal or timeless, i.e., outside time itself. The other is that God has no beginning and no end: that is, He always existed and will always exist (Davies 2000). The latter option has no tension with the view forwarded here: it could be the case that God had no beginning and no end and that his identity is the sum of all these endless time and spatial fractions. Nonetheless, the former understanding of eternity, if true, may potentially refute my argument. This view, defended by some philosophers of Scholasticism, such as Boethius, is that God’s mode of being is such that there is no ‘before’ and no ‘after’, i.e., there is no successiveness of events (Boethius 2008). Anselm of Canterbury expresses this same idea in the following way:

You were not, therefore, yesterday, nor will You be tomorrow, but yesterday and today and tomorrow You are. Indeed, You exist neither yesterday nor today nor tomorrow but are absolutely outside all times. For yesterday and today and tomorrow are completely in time; however, You, though nothing can be without You, are nevertheless not in place or time but all things are in You. For nothing contains You, but You contain all things.

(Anselm and Walz 2013, p. 19)

If this view is true, then to speak of God in terms of temporal sections is not capturing exactly what God is, as God cannot be contained in this idea of time. Nonetheless, I wish to challenge that this conception of God beyond time is plausible. In order to reply, it is important to firstly understand why scholastic philosophers have held this view. It is primarily because they want to guarantee that God is immutable and they consider that the only way for God to be immutable is to be outside time because time necessarily implies change. But this is not a problem for the view here: the point of my argument is that God is mutable. Moreover, even if God were not mutable, being outside time is not a necessary condition for immutability: something can be in time even if it does not change, i.e., there can be time with no change (Swinburne 1980). In addition to this, it seems that the idea of being outside time is in conflict with at least one important feature of God, omnibenevolence. To be an omnibenevolent God implies an emotion, a process of loving. Consequently, timeless things cannot be God as they do not involve love and God is love (Sobrino 2002). In other words, this is a relational property which requires it exist in time. On top of this, there seems to be some level of incoherence in conceiving God as timeless. Anthony Kenny expresses this idea that there is some incoherence in an understanding God as timeless:

Indeed, the whole concept of a timeless eternity, the whole of which is simultaneous with every part of time, seems to be radically incoherent. For simultaneity as ordinarily understood is a transitive relation. If A happens at the same time as B, and B happens at the same time as C, then A happens at the same time as C. If the BBC programme and the lTV programme both start when Big Ben strikes ten, then they both start at the same time. But, on St. Thomas’ view, my typing of this paper is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Again, on his view, the great fire of Rome is simultaneous with the whole of eternity. Therefore, while I type these very words, Nero fiddles heartlessly on.

(Kenny 1969, p. 264)

What Kenny expresses in this passage is a fundamental incoherence in conceiving God as beyond time. Namely, this would imply that all temporal events are present to God and if this were the case, it would mean that they occur simultaneously. However, this is not the case: temporal events are clearly distinct from each other. If the conclusion that temporal events are simultaneous to God is absurd, then the idea of divine timelessness must also be mistaken (Kenny 1969, 1979).

A final challenge to my view is that my use of an analytical methodology to discuss the nature of God is problematic in at least two ways. Firstly, religious experience and, thereby its concepts should be understood as unexplainable by words, as they refer to a mystical experience. Using the concepts of analytical philosophy over restricts the understanding of a being which is beyond us. Secondly, it is somehow inauthentic to use analytical tools to forward an African philosophical viewpoint because African philosophy is essentially non-analytical. This is problematic for me given that there is some incoherence in method when I refute endurantism with analytical tools and simultaneously offer an African-inspired alternative.

Regarding the first problem, there are two possible replies. One is that endurantism is especially and more problematic in terms of over-restricting religious experience. By assuming a set of properties which are unchangeable does not mean encompassing the phenomenological aspects of how someone may experience God, unless these phenomenological experiences can be classified under the umbrella of those rigid properties. In other words, the rigidity of endurantism regarding God’s properties is in conflict with people’s idea of how they experience God. The alternative to the view I offer here is one which is worse and what I forward is the explanation that has a stronger explanatory power.

This takes me to the second point: the Pan-Psychist and four-dimensionalist view I put forward despite the fact the analytical groundwork does not contradict the intuition that religious individuals have in terms of their religious experience. In fact, it is compatible with it. Routinely, religious experience refers to the presence of God in people’s lives and the Panentheism view I advance argues precisely that God is in everything. The Pan-Psychist view I advance does not challenge the subjectivity of each person’s experience but instead provides space for subjectivity within an objective understanding of a property of God. Here, its presence exists everywhere as a sustaining force.

With respect to the second question, there are three important replies. To start, note that there are several prominent philosophers in the African philosophical tradition, such as Cornelius Ewuoso, Thaddeus Metz, Bernard Matolino, Motsamai Molefe, Kwasi Wiredu, Kwame Gyekye, to name but a few, who endorse an analytical approach (Wiredu 2009; Gyekye 2011; Ewuoso and Hall 2019; Metz 2007; Matolino 2013; Molefe 2016). The very fact that these recognized philosophers endorse such methodologies is sufficient to suggest that the view defended here does not significantly distance itself from what the African intellectual community understands to be ‘authentically’ African. An additional point is that this paper does not take an exclusionist approach to methodology but is inclusive in encompassing different methodological tools. The way that the argument is set up is to provide an analytical framework which serves to justify the views of some non-analytical philosophers such as Innocent Azouzu, Jonathan Chimakonam, Placide Tempels, Ada Agada, John Mbiti, and the French existentialists.

Finally, I wish to challenge this idea of ‘authentic’ African philosophy making sense. Although I recognize that one of the problems of colonialism was precisely to misrepresent Africans in inauthentic ways, this problem was posed because their description of Africans did not fit the corresponding empirical reality and was instrumentalized for colonial purposes. In contrast, the perspective I suggest here has empirical correspondents supported by Africans themselves and rather than diminishing African thought like colonialism it elevates it by showing it can be a plausible alternative explanation to a philosophical problem that Western philosophy fails to convincingly address.

On top of this, the understanding of a culture as authentic relies on the classically anthropological view of culture as a self-contained, homogeneous whole. Traditionally, human culture was taken as a closed unchangeable symbolic system through which groups represented and understood the world. Resultantly, individuals’ beliefs, perceptions and so forth become shaped and, indeed, determined by culture. Whatever one’s perception of the world, according to this theory, ultimately refers to one’s own culture. Additionally, from this point of view, culture is normative. Individuals’ behavior is explained and determined by what the culture informs them to be and what actions they should take. According to this view, individuals’ moral language and behavior are determined by culture (Mead 2001; Levi-Strauss 2012; Malinowski 2014). Take the example of Mead’s account of the Samoan people. According to Mead, the Samoans have a distinct ethical code for sexuality which is unlike other cultures and clearly guides and limits the thought and behavior of those within the Samoan culture (Mead 2001). This view of culture as unchangeable has been contested mostly for lacking empirical evidence. In particular, it is often affirmed that cultures routinely borrow beliefs and practices from each other, and so it is not possible to demarcate cultures in this way. As Jeremy Waldron states, ‘(…) for human cultures, it is the rule not the exception, that ideas and ways of doing things are propagated, transmitted, noticed, and adapted’ (Waldron 2000, p. 232). Cultures are understood to be in constant change, existing as dynamic entities which continually renew their properties (Phillips 2007).

Thus, the classical essentialist anthropological view of culture is dismissed by most scholars who consider it reductionist. Cultures are influenced by other cultures and are internally heterogenous, having a variety of elements that are sometimes contradictory. There is, therefore, no such thing as an “authentic African culture”, and the argument is based on a misconception of how culture works. But this then leads to the question of how to define “African” at all. I consider that a philosophy can count as African to the extent that it is built upon a conceptual groundwork salient in the African continent, albeit potentially present elsewhere. This leads to another point, which is that there are various elements in African thought that ground the theory advanced here. As in African philosophy, it relies on a relational understanding of the world, and understands God and the world as changeable and dynamic.

7. Conclusions

In this article, I took on the project of inquiring into the nature of God by using African philosophical resources. Particularly, I wanted to challenge the mainstream Christian idea that God is unchangeable. I argued that the view of God as unchangeable endorses endurantism, the view that objects do not have temporal parts. I contended that endurantism either implies a violation of the Indiscernibility of Identicals or leads to counter-intuitive conclusions. Resultantly, this view on the nature of God, as endurantist, meets the same problems and should be abandoned. I have offered an alternative metaphysical theory that I believe has more philosophical strength, which I called four-dimensionalist African panpsychism. Note that not all Christians endorse the endurantist view criticized in this article and would be sympathetic to my argument. Further research should also explore how Christian concepts can endorse four-dimensionalist African panpsychism, especially with a focus on African Christianity.