Process Mysticism

The Russian philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev claimed the ideal of an omnipotent God made the relation between God and humanity impossible except through an apophatic mystical theology. The mystic encounter of God was direct and, for Berdyaev, I-Thou. It was personal and transcended rationality. In his recent excellent Process Mysticism, Daniel Dombrowski follows Charles Hartshorne in showing that only the omnipotent God who creates ex nihilo and who is ontologically separate from the world cannot in any sense be thought. Thus, mysticism's advocates often hide behind apophaticism. The irony is that the idea of a relational God that Berdyaev took to be apophatic is in Dombrowski's and Hartshorne's terms the more rational approach. The mystics “often complain of ‘the God of the philosophers,’ without realizing that only some philosophers defend the concept of God that they see at odds with their personal experiences” (220–221). Dombrowski's purpose is to show that...