Process Theology and its Relationship to Christian Doctrines

 

Process theology is a theological approach of the world resulting from cosmology. It arised from the knowledge of contemporary natural sciences, in particular the theory of relativity, the theory of biological evolution and quantum physics. It is a critical perspective developed from the philosophy of process of mathematician and logician Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and developed by Charles Hartshorne and John B. Cobb during the twentieth century.

A-HISTORICAL EVALUATION

Although Whitehead was Hartshorne’s senior by thirty-six years, the two men began seriously to develop their ideas about God in written form at roughly the same time. In his Harvard doctoral dissertation (1923), Hartshorne argues for the existence of a God that is the eminent exemplification of relational and social values. Whitehead’s writings on the concept of God appear only after 1924, when he moved to America. Between the publication of Science and the Modern World (1925) and Process and Reality (1929)—a time of intense creativity for Whitehead—he articulated his metaphysical system, including the concept of God. During Whitehead’s first year at Harvard, Hartshorne was in Europe for his second year as a Sheldon Traveling Fellow. When he returned to Harvard in 1925 he was given the dual assignment of editing the papers of Charles Sanders Peirce and of serving as Whitehead’s assistant. After 1940 Hartshorne became the primary conduit for Whitehead’s theistic ideas. Indeed, the elaboration and defense of process theism fell largely to Hartshorne and his students at the University of Chicago (1928–1955), Emory University (1955–1962), and the University of Texas at Austin (1962–2000). So great was Hartshorne’s influence that some scholars try to rescue Whitehead from a too Hartshornean interpretation. This fact should serve as a warning that Hartshorne’s version of process theism is not the same as Whitehead’s. We shall see that Hartshorne’s treatment of theism owes much to Whitehead’s metaphysics while departing from it in ways that the Englishman would not accept.

Hartshorne accepted the task of chronicling process theism’s history and showing its importance as a significant alternative to classical theism, pantheism, atheism, and other lesser known options in philosophical theology. His 1953 anthology (republished in 2000), Philosophers Speak of God, edited with the help of his student William L. Reese, is a massive critical study of the varieties of concepts of God as they relate to process theism. The book includes selections from and commentaries on a wide range of thinkers from Western and Eastern traditions, both well-known and obscure. It is safe to say that Hartshorne’s vigorous efforts on behalf of process theism are the single most important factor in eroding the consensus among philosophers that an eternal, immutable, and impassible deity should be considered normative for philosophical theology.

Philosophers Speak of God demonstrates that Whitehead and Hartshorne are not the sole representatives of process theism, although they are its chief exponents. Buddhism, with its twin emphases on impermanence and dependent origination, is arguably the most sophisticated ancient form of process philosophy. Buddhist philosophers criticized the notion of a timeless absolute without, however, developing a form of process theism (e.g. Arnold 1998). Whitehead remarks that his concept of God has more richness than the Buddhist concept of nirvana and that his philosophy of religion could be viewed as an effort to “true up” the Buddhist idea (Johnson 1983, 8). Hartshorne maintains that aspects of process theism are in Plato’s later writings—specifically, the Sophist, the Timaeus, and the Laws—but they are never brought together into a coherent theory. Hartshorne sees process theism as providing the needed coherence (Dombrowski 2005 and Viney 2007).

In the generation immediately preceding Whitehead, C. S. Peirce (1839–1914) and William James (1842–1910) closely anticipated process theism and served as important influences on its development. There was also a cross fertilization of ideas from some of Whitehead’s contemporaries: Henri Bergson (1859–1941), Samuel Alexander (1859–1938), and William Ernest Hocking (1873–1966)—Hocking was one of Hartshorne’s teachers at Harvard. Philosophers and religious thinkers who independently formulated aspects of process theism in the twentieth century include: Bernardino Varisco (1850–1933), Nicholas Berdyaev (1874–1948), Mohammad Iqbal (1877–1938), Martin Buber (1878–1965), Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), Edgar Sheffield Brightman (1884–1953), Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975), Sri Aurobindo (1892–1950), Hans Jonas (1903–1993), and Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907–1972).

Because process theists reject the idea of a deity whose moral character is ever questionable, John Stuart Mill’s essay, “Theism,” is not an anticipation of process theism. By parity of reasoning, Peter Forrest’s proposal of a God that grows from pure power to pure love is not a version of theism that process theists would find appealing (Forrest 2007). Some of the central themes and arguments of process theism, however, are evident in less well-known thinkers scattered throughout history. One can mention the names of Levi ben Gerson (1288–1340), Fausto Socinus (1539–1604), Friedrich Wilhelm Schelling (1775–1854), Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), Rowland Gibson Hazard (1801–1888), Jules Lequyer [or Lequier] (1814–1862), Lorenzo D. McCabe (1817–1897), and Otto Pfleiderer (1839–1908). Some might count G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) as a forerunner of process theism, but his case is not clear. The idea of development is central to Hegel’s thinking about the Absolute Spirit. On the other hand, his philosophy was more influential in ushering in what he himself called “the death of God” than in providing a clearly articulated theistic alternative to classical theism (cf. Küng 1980, 138–42). It is also ironic that it was much less in the positive influence of Hegelian idealism than in the negative reactions to it that process philosophy, and by implication process theism, matured in the twentieth century.

 

B-PROCESS THEOLOGY AND BIBLICAL DCOTRINE OF GOD

 

1-PROCESS THEOLOGY AND REVELATION

Instead of considering Bible as the basic of theology, he turn to philosophy, particularly philosophy of science. Whitehead claims that “we do not possess a systematic details record of the life of Christ; but we do possess a peculiarly vivid record of first response t it in he minds of the first group of his disciples after the lapse of some years, with their recollections, interpretations, and incipient formularizations.” So, for Whitehead, Scripture is not divine revelation but merely a human response to a divine revelation. Whitehead rejects and minimizes the greatest revelation of God given through Jesus Christ by downgrading Scripture, ad he becomes lost in a morass of human idea that do great disservice to the truth about God. By turning away from Gods’ revelation in written and Living Word of God, he ends up with human tradition with God of both being different from the God of Scripture.

 

2-THE CONCEPT OF GOD.

For them God is not a cosmic moralist, judging, rewarding, punishing, even forgiving unacceptable human behavior and attitudes. God is not the unchanging and passionless Absolute, essentially uninvolved in the world and unaffected by it, and distracting human minds from it. God is not controlling power, with a mysterious plan and in control of everything that happens. God is not the sanctioner of the status quo, primarily interested in order. God is not male, as most religious language maintains. (Cobb and Griffin, Process Theology, pp.8-9.).

If God is any or all of these, process thinkers and even process theologians are atheists. They explicitly reject this general view of God. If this is the case, why do they use the word? Is the word “God” so much a part of the traditional vocabulary concerning reality, that they are simply accepting it and redefining it?

If that  is the case, given the unacceptable connotations of the word, why not avoid it? Or is there some aspect of process that calls out for the word “God,” and none other will do?

In the case of the omnipotence of God, the position of process theology is pretty straightforward: God is not all powerful. The title of one of Hartshorne’s books is Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes (1984).

Whitehead remarks that some medieval and modern philosophers got into the unfortunate habit of paying God “metaphysical compliments”—that is to say attributing properties to God that seem to make the divine more worthy of devotion but that are contrary to sound metaphysical reasoning…In a deliberate play on J. B. Philips’ classic Your God is Too Small,” Tyron In body sums up the criticism of traditional accounts of divine power by saying, “Your God is too big.” (Viney, 5).

This is because for process theology God is involved in process, and is affected by process. For Hartshorne God’s actuality (as distinguished from God’s existence) is constantly changing as a result of the “actual occasions” in which God is present, active, and altered. God cannot impose God’s will. God’s activity is characterized by process theologians as “persuasion” rather than “coercion.” God cannot force things to happen.

For Whitehead, the idea of Trinity is “terrifying and unprovable” because it belong to the Semitic concept which brought death to dissenters. He said the modern world needs to find a God of Love, not of  fear, and it needs to do so through John not through Paul.

The Process God can not exist without the physical universe, nor can the world exist without God, for there is mutual interdependent relationship between them.  The Process God is not a Creator, but director. He does not create exhilo but ex materia. He is not sovereign over the world but  works with the Lord.  He is not independent but dependent upon the world. God is not unchanging but changing. He is not infinite but he is finite. He is not absolute perfect but toward perfection. One thing good about Process theology is that it rejects the Reformed view of God with predestination overriding human autonomy.                                                                                                                                                                                                

3-PROCESS AND GOD’S OMNISCIENCE

According to process theology, God knows everything that can be known. But what can be known is limited. The details of the future cannot be known, simply because they do not yet exist. Still, God does know everything about certain aspects of future events (just not the details, which always have yet to be decided in “actual occasions” by “actual entities,” including God). It is called God’s omniscience because what it represents what exceeds and is unavailable to the other “actual entities,” even in their aggregate. What God knows is everything that has been previously decided or actualized—God’s memory is complete and universal, and provides God’s contribution to the present “actual occasions.” This knowledge is combined with God’s knowledge of possibility—that there is possibility generally and the limited possibilities in the present “actual occasion.” And God knows what “new thing” is possible.

In process theology, God does not know the future exhaustively.  He can guess at what may or may not happen, but absolute knowledge is not attainable until events actually occur.

In Process theology, God doesn't know much more about the future than human do. His only advantage is (1) He know the presence and the past exhaustively, and (2) the characteristic of humans better and so draws from this knowledge to determine their possible future decisions.

Whitehead focuses on the process view of God that is preoccupied with God’s being immanent, relative, and having only consequent foreknowledge (dependent of human decisions). This immanent God respects human freedom occupies center stage in Process thought, so that the potential pole never realizes its potentialities.

 

4-PROCESS THEOLOGY AND CREATION

Process thinking has been said to reach back to the time of the Greeks and the philosopher Heraclitus (500 B.C.). In recent times process theology was revived by Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) who believed the universe was in a constant state of change. He believed that matter is eternal, and that God did not create the universe at all. God is conceived as having a primordial nature that has potentiality to it, which means it changes. God is a “god” of flux and change.  

Process theology does not deny that God is in some respects eternal (will never die), immutable (in the sense that God is unchangingly good), and impassible (in the sense that God's eternal aspect is unaffected by actuality), but it contradicts the classical view by insisting that God is in some respects temporal, mutable, and passible.

For process theism, God is the supreme or eminent creative power, but not the only creative power. Thus, process theists speak of God and the creatures as co-creators (Hartshorne and Reese 2000, 140; Hartshorne 1967a, 113).

Process theology is the philosophical and theological position that God is changing, as is the universe.  Therefore, our knowledge of God must be progressing as we learn more about him and it can never rest in any absolutes, which is why process theologians deny the absolutes of God's immutability and truth.  Furthermore, this would mean that absolute knowledge of God would not be achievable, and a self-revelation of God (in the person of Jesus Christ and the Bible) would also not be possible.  So there is no absolute truth.

 

C-EVALUATION

This would open the door for humanistic philosophy and/or theological systems to be "rationalized" by process theologians. Logically speaking, if process theology maintains that God is progressing and changing, then given an infinite amount of time in the past, God may not have actually been God. Also, it could be argued from this perspective that there is something outside of God that works upon him, bringing him into a greater knowledge and increased greatness.

The process God is co-creative with all other creatures, including blooming flowers, singing whales, and insect architects. The source of power and creativity is ontologically distinct from God.  Both God and finite beings draw on the same source of creative energy. 

This precludes the idea of God as the source of all power and creativity and gives finite beings and nature as a whole an independence and autonomy of their own. There is no beginning to creation; God and the universe are co-eternally creative. Whitehead does, however, have a concept of cosmic epochs which appears compatible with an oscillating "big bang" cosmogony.

Process creation is creation out of chaos, not creatio ex nihilo. There is precious little biblical support for the latter; but more importantly, the ultimate implication of creatio ex nihilo is the imputation of all evil to God. (For more see .)

 

Power

Potentia as creativity (Whitehead) or I prefer "creative energy" is ontologically distinct from God. The process God shares the same power source with finite beings.  God therefore does not have absolute coercive power but only has persuasive power.

Although Alfred North Whitehead was not a confessing Christian, he believed that the best expression of divine persuasion was found in the life and teachings of Jesus.  "The brief Galilean vision of humility flickered throughout the ages, uncertainly....But the deeper idolatry, of fashioning God in the image of the Egyptian, Persian, and Roman imperial rulers was retained.  The Church gave unto God the attributes which belonged exclusively to Caesar." The traditional idea of divine power reflects a worship of raw power, the power of the state and of the authoritarian father.

 

Knowledge

The process God is omniscient but not omnipresence.  The process God knows all there is to know but will not know the future until it is actualized.  Traditional ideas of divine foreknowledge equivocate about the meaning of knowledge and close off the freedom of the future -- i.e., as something not yet happened. 

Rem B. Edwards' critique of Augustine: "Even from a divine point of view, the notion of the simultaneity of past, present, and future is nonsense.... What is the difference between saying that God perceives the future as present and saying that God perceives the square as round?"

 

Change

In giving up the concept of unchanging substance process philosophy and theology avoid the concept of divine immutability that came with this substance metaphysics.  Like the God of revealed religions the process God is dynamic, ever-changing, taking in new experience as the universe grows and develops in creative transformation. 

The process dipolar concept provides for a dynamic, changing aspect of God (Whitehead's "consequent nature") and a formal, unchanging aspect (Whitehead's "primordial nature" [PN]).  As the "mind" of God, the PN contains the formal principles ("eternal objects") which allow for order and structure in the universe.

 

Christology

Although Whitehead himself was not a confessing Christian, he nonetheless placed great emphasis on the importance of the historical Jesus and his teachings. He believed that the essence of Christ's teaching was that God's power is persuasive (not coercive) and that this divine power was revealed in the tenderness and subtleties of creative and responsive love. Jesus' message dwelt upon the "tender elements in the world, which slowly and in quietness operate by love.“

Whiteheadians believe that Jesus was one of the supreme historical expressions of the Platonic idea of persuasive creativity.  (The other major expression is found in the Bodhisattva ideal of Mahayana Buddhism.) In the Timeaus Plato wrote that "reason has need to persuade her [the primordial stuff, hypodoché] not having unlimited power to compel." Early Christianity made the fatal error in not incorporating this concept into its systematic theology.  As Cobb and Griffin state: "If we truly love others, we do not seek to control them."¹⁵

Whiteheadian Christians simply apply these basic insights about Jesus to the doctrine of God outlined above.  Jesus Christ is God in the sense of  "creative love" or, to use the Greek Christian term, logos.  As we have seen, one of the basic meanings of the verbal infinitive of the Greek logo is "to put together," which is much more compatible with Christ as Logos than the later analytical meanings of our modern logic. 

Creative love is indeed a synthetic process, not only in the sense of the order and structure that the PN of God imposes on an otherwise unruly creativity, but also in terms of the ideal satisfaction that God urges each AO to reach. The presence of Christ as Logos in most events will simply mean that order and structure are maintained. Only in human beings does the presence of Christ take on the significance of meaningful response and free decision, with of course the risk of a decision against Christ.

The teachings of Process Theology demonstrate their firm resistance to traditional orthodoxy. They reject the Bible as God’s authoritative word (how could a pantheistic ideology hold to verbal revelation?). The bible is only what one desires it should be subjectively. Thus, there is no authority system except one’s own ideas. God is seen as either in flux and changeable, or as in pantheistic ideologies. Christ is not the Son of God and does not do miracles.

The Bible is myth in this regard, as true as the Olympian gods. They reject Christ as the divine God-man, and see him only as the authentic man who sacrificed himself for his fellow human beings to show them a better way and higher view of life. Salvation is not the inward regenerating work of God, but a self-consciousness that causes one man’s work for the community of humanity and fulfills his purpose for the good of mankind in general. Process theologians deny that Jesus Christ is God in flesh and therefore mankind has no need for salvation.  Process theology denies the Scriptures which teach that God has always been God (Psalm 90:2) and that God is unchanging (Malachi 3:6; Hebrews 13:8).  Of course, it denies and contradicts God's word regarding the necessity of the Savior and the deity of Christ (John 1:1, 14; Colossians 2:9).

Process theologians are Pelagians who believe that men simply need to climb up the ladder of “humanitarianism” to reach a greater height before their fellow men in service to one another. Process theology sets the stage of Open Theism which tends to view God in the same light as changeable, mutable, and likened to the Greek mythological Zeus.

 

 CONCLUSION

The concepts of process theology include: God is not omnipotent in the sense of being coercive. The divine has a power of persuasion rather than force. Process theologians have often seen the classical doctrine of omnipotence as involving coercion (arguably mistakenly), and themselves claim something more restricted than the classical doctrine. Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. The universe is characterized by process and change carried out by the agents of free will. Self-determination characterizes everything in the universe, not just human beings. God cannot force anything to happen, but rather only influence the exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. God contains the universe but is not identical with it (panentheism). Because God contains a changing universe, God is changeable (that is to say, God is affected by the actions that take place in the universe) over the course of time. However, the abstract elements of God (goodness, wisdom, etc.) remain eternally solid. People do not experience a subjective (or personal) immortality, but they do have an objective immortality in that their experiences live on forever in God, who contains all that was. Dipolar theism, or the idea that our idea of a perfect God cannot be limited to a particular set of characteristics, because perfection can be embodied in opposite characteristics. For instance, for God to be perfect, he cannot have absolute control over all beings, because then he would not be as good as a being who moved by persuasion, rather than brute force. Thus, for God to be perfect, he must be both powerful and leave other beings some power to resist his persuasion.

jacob Aguimesheo

Jacob Aguimesheo

©Copyright 2020 All rights reserved by Journal of Theological Studies Online

jacob Aguimesheo