In this work, David Ray Griffin has provided a careful, thorough, and thoughtful account of what process philosophy of religion involves. Remarkably comprehensive, Griffin uses this work to cover everything from human personhood and morality to evil and the concept of God. He is explicit in his understanding of what religion involves, and it is reassuring to see a philosopher of religion spending much time on what is often assumed rather than discussed. For Griffin, religion is equated with the desire to be in harmony with ultimate reality. This position underpins the argument of the entire work, and also leads him to a forceful rejection of non-realism. We are, he claims, all realists in practice (p. 60), and to deny this is to seriously limit the extent to which one can engage with the focus of religious belief and practice. Griffin’s concern is with discussing issues of truth, and he envisions philosophy of religion as the means by which to do this.

It is difficult to isolate particular parts of a book that is so rich in content. Perhaps the most important section occurs right at the beginning, when Griffin challenges the oppositional way in which science and religion have been understood. He believes that this polarisation occurs because a particular account of naturalism dominates modern science. It is this account that Griffin wishes to challenge, and he is at pains to define this aberrant naturalism: it is sensationist (the only knowledge comes from sense experience), atheistic, and materialistic (in Griffin’s shorthand it is ‘naturalism_sam’). At the root of his detailed critique is the claim that such an approach is, in fact, unscientific, for it fails to deal adequately with the totality of human experience. Rejecting those philosophers of religion who would seek to respond by proffering a supernaturalist view, Griffin is eager to show how A.N. Whitehead’s philosophy can bring science and religion together by providing an alternative account of what constitutes naturalism. His discussion of how Whitehead’s claims for non-sensory forms of perception pose a challenge to Humean empiricism is convincing: our memory of the past and our hopes for the future, for example, show that such ways of knowing beyond the empirical are possible. Therefore to base our account of reality only on what can be gleaned from sense experience is inadequate.

As a consequence, Griffin argues for a naturalistic theism that goes beyond naturalism_sam and supernaturalism. Under his account, the naturalism that underpins this model is prehensive (highlighting the conscious or unconscious grasp of something), panentheistic, and panexperientialist (meaning that experience is not limited only to the sensory). Having set out this vision, he uses it as the basis for some interesting and thought-provoking arguments. For example, he claims that the arguments for the existence of God are not wrong, but are trying to support the wrong concept of God. Process offers a new conception of God that is not supernatural. Rather, God is identified with the world, but also transcends the world ‘in the sense that God has God’s own creative power, distinct from that of the universe of finite actualities’ (p. 142). In fleshing out this concept, he adopts the view of Hartshorne and Cobb that God is like a living person, but understands this within the context of Whitehead’s claim that this God is dipolar (for example, and most crucially, God is both changing and unchanging).

In suggesting an alternative to the God of philosophical theism, Griffin is in a position to offer some interesting responses to the key issues that concern philosophers of religion. So, he provides a fine critique of the traditional theodical responses to evil, and is highly critical of the idea that nothing is genuinely evil. At the same time, he wants to argue that God is responsible for evil, but not indictable, as a world without human beings would be the poorer, despite the suffering they bring in their wake.

This is a mature work that offers an excellent and comprehensive philosophy of religion from the standpoint of process thought. Of particular interest is the way in which Griffin suggests a way beyond the stultifying and polarising disputes between realists and anti-realists philosophers of religion. Religion is revealed as the attempt to connect with reality, and it is this rather beautiful vision of the need for an engagement with the awesome world around us that remains long after the book has been finished.