EKWE JONAL

Our traditional ideas of God and evil in philosophy are inspired by Judeo-Christian metaphysical categories. However, the Judeo-Christian notions of God and evil as basically formulated by St Augustine are lacking in two major areas: ‘their inability to resolve the problem of evil and their failure to satisfactorily explain the relationship between the immanent and transcendent natures of God or rather, how a God who is divine and transcendent comes to interacts with a world that is both fallen and material. Alfred North Whitehead tries to resolve these problems in his ‘Philosophy of Organism’ where he argued that God and evil are part and parcel of an integral process that is evolutionally moving towards the point of self-actualization. This study employs the method of hermeneutics to argue that Whitehead’s theodicy or solution to the problem of evil though, defective in some aspects, offers a robust and more satisfactory explanations of God and evil than the Judeo Christian inspired theses. The work agrees with abuses by political leaders that we see today in society and recommends Whiteheads understanding of God, especially, as a loving and persuasive reality as what is required to build a more respectful and accommodating society. To this end, the use of hermeneutics is informed by the fact that Process and Reality, the main primary source Whitehead’s process philosophy is written in what many scholars agree is esoteric and abstract diction. The method brings down Whitehead’s highly technical vocabulary to conventional philosophical language. Whitehead that the autocratic presentation of God by traditional theism is responsible for some of the power

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