1. In chapter one--"God as Supreme, Yet Indebted to All" of his book Divine Relativity(New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978) Charles Hartshorne is concerned to answer the question, "Is God supreme, yet indebted to all?", and "Can the idea of deity be so formulated as to preserve, perhaps even increase, its religious value, while yet avoiding the contradictions which seem inseparable from the idea as customarily defined?"(p. 11
2. Hartshorne's answer is that God is supreme yet indebted to all, and that the idea of deity can be so formulated as to preserve, perhaps even increase, its religious value, while yet avoiding the contradictions which seem inseparable from the idea as customarily defined.
3. Hartshorne's method of teaching us God as Supreme, Yet Indebted to All is by showing us what is logical and metaphysical paradoxes(pp. 2-5), what is external relations and knowledge(pp. 6-18), what is nonidentity of supreme and absolute(pp. 18-9), what is definition of perfection(pp. 19-22), what is religious meaning of absolute(pp. 22-5), what is God as social(pp.25-6), what is the social nature of existence(pp. 26-9), what is social deity and creation(pp. 29-34), what is critique of the negative theology(pp. 34-6), what is literalness of theism(36-40), what is in what sense God is unknowable(pp. 40-1), what is religious meaning of perfection(pp. 41-2), what is complete independence not admirable(pp. 42-4), what is the independence which is admirable(pp. 44-5), what is proportional dependence(pp. 45-7), what is sympathetic dependence(pp. 48-9), what is the metaphysics of democracy(pp. 50-1), what is skeptics who argue from a medieval premise(pp. 51-3), what is Anselm and Coe on divine compassion(pp. 54-58), what is relativity and the value of life(pp. 58-9).
4. Hartshorne maintains that the significance of understanding God as Supreme, Yet Indebted to All is that we as "an enlightened person" not only can conceive God without logical absurdity, but also "may worship and serve him with whole heart and mind"(p. 1), that we can not only overcome the logical contradictions of the traditional paradoxes, and thereby that we can give "a partial answer to those positivists who declare that metaphysical ideas are without intellectual import."(p. 2)
5. My own opinion is this. Classical theism affirms God as absolutely supreme, not as indebted to all. Its intention is to say the qualitative difference between God the creator and other creatures. Because it presupposes the difference, classical theism has developed dualism and paradoxes. Dualism and paradoxes produced honest atheists, and positivists who regards metaphysical ideas as meaningless, because classical theism didn't show them its validity and adequacy.
If God is totally different from others, it is impossible for us to know and say him. Since it tries to do this impossible thing, classical theism produces dualism and paradoxes. Classical theism goes wrong in the starting point.
On the contrary to it, Charles Harshorne develops dipolar theism on the basis of the social conception of the universe, that is, one generic notion of the universe. According to him, God is both absolute and relative. So he is knowable in some respects, but unknowable in other respects. By his conception of surrelativism, we can not only overcome the traditional paradoxes, but also preserve the worshipfulness of God. Therefore, our religious life becomes meaningful, because we can add some values to God, and vice versa.
Finally, it was somewhat difficult but very interesting that his indication of classical mistakes by the conception of 'external' is used in disproving why the "alleged reversal of cognitive relativity God"(p. 8) is erroneous.