Process theology

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Process theology (also known as neoclassical theology) is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). Process theology is unrelated to the Process Church.

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, and themselves claim something more restricted than the classical doctrine. "Persuasion" in the causal sense means that God does not exert unilateral control.
Reality is not made up of material substances that endure through time, but serially-ordered events, which are experiential in nature. These events have both a physical and mental aspect. All experience (male, female, atomic, and botanical) is important and contributes to the ongoing and interrelated process of reality.
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 totally control any series of events or any individual, but God influences the creaturely exercise of this universal free will by offering possibilities. To say it another way, God has a will in everything, but not everything that occurs is God's will.
God contains the universe but is not identical with it (panentheism, not pantheism). Some also call this "theocosmocentrism" to emphasize that God has always been related to some world or another.
Because God interacts with the 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.
Charles Hartshorne believes that people do not experience subjective (or personal) immortality, but they do have objective immortality because their experiences live on forever in God, who contains all that was. Others believe that people do have subjective experience after bodily death.
Dipolar theism, is the idea that God has both a changing aspect (God's existence as a Living God) and an unchanging aspect (God's eternal essence).

The original ideas of process thought are found in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead. Various theological and philosophical aspects have been expanded and developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb, and David Ray Griffin.

Process theology soon influenced a number of Jewish theologians including Australian philosopher Samuel Alexander (1859-1938), and Rabbis Max Kaddushin, Milton Steinberg and Levi A. Olan, Harry Slominsky and to a lesser degree, Abraham Joshua Heschel. Today some rabbis who advocate some form of process theology include Donald B. Rossoff, William E. Kaufman, Harold Kushner, Anton Laytner, Gilbert S. Rosenthal, Lawrence Troster and Nahum Ward.

Alan Anderson and Deb Whitehouse have attempted to integrate process theology with the New Thought variant of Christianity.

Thomas Jay Oord integrates process theology with evangelical, openness, and Wesleyan theologies. Oord argues that it is part of God's essence as relational to provide freedom to others. This loving act means that God cannot withdraw or override the freedom of others, but this inability is part of who God is and not imposed by outside forces or conditions.

1 Process theologians
2 Readings
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Process theologians

[edit] Readings

Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki's God Christ Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (1989, ISBN 0-8245-0970-6) demonstrates the practical integration of process philosophy with Christianity.
C. Robert Mesle's Process Theology: A Basic Introduction (1993, ISBN 0-8272-2945-3) is an introduction to process theology written for the layperson.
Harold Kushner's When Bad Things Happen to Good People (1981, ISBN 1-4000-3472-8) and Jewish Theology and Process Thought, (1995, ISBN 0-7914-2810-9) eds. Sandra B. Lubarsky and David Ray Griffin.
Jewish introductions to classical theism, limited theism and process theology can be found in A Question of Faith: An Atheist and a Rabbi Debate the Existence of God (1994, ISBN 1-56821-089-2) and The Case for God, (1991, ISBN 0-8272-0458-2) both written by Rabbi William E. Kaufman.
Christian introductions may be found in Schubert M. Ogden's The Reality of God and Other Essays, SMU Press (1992, ISBN 0-87074-318-X); John B. Cobb, Doubting Thomas, (1990, ISBN 0-8245-1033-X); and Charles Hartshorne, Omnipotence and Other Theological Mistakes, State University of New York Press, (1984, ISBN 0-87395-771-7). In French, the best introduction may be André Gounelle, Le Dynamisme Créateur de Dieu Van Dieren Editeur (reprint in 2000).
For essays exploring the relation of process thought to Wesleyan theology, see Bryan P. Stone and Thomas Jay Oord, Thy Nature and Thy Name is Love: Wesleyan and Process Theologies in Dialogue (Nashville: Kingswood, 2001, ISBN 0-687-05220-3).
The most important work by Paul S. Fiddes is The Creative Suffering of God, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992); see also idem., 'Process Theology', in A. E. McGrath, ed., The Blackwell encyclopaedia of modern Christian thought (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), pp. 472–6