Question: What is Process Theology
Answer: Process theology is best
understood as an ever-evolving Christian monism—some prefer to call it
panentheism, as opposed to pantheism—that is actualized in and through the
catalysis of a telos of christological love, which in and of itself gives a productive
creative purpose to all that is. Thus, in actuality the catalyst engulfs any distinct
Godlike attribution characteristically thought of as God in the classical sense
of the word. Creation is thus the catalytic stuff in which God works through
the teleological attraction of love to bring about the pleasure of His good
will. God, again in this cosmic scenario, is the cosmic persuader rather than
King and Sovereign Lord over all creation.
Therefore, in this theological consequence
God needs creation, as much as creation needs Him—that is, creation needs the
wooing of love, and love needs the milieu of the fluctuating cosmos to lure creation
into perfection. Love is, therefore, the cosmic glue that keeps the cosmos from
disintegrating into chaos.
God, in this motif, acts and
reacts to cosmic realities—thus, He is ontologically part of the on-going
process of becoming the potentialities of His intentions. As odd as that may
seem to the classical theologian, it is none-the-less, in the mind of the advocate
of process theology the evident reality.
Evident reality is the reflux in
which reason operates and is the on-going substance that provides the ground
for all that is current in any given moment. That being the case, it is
reasonable to assume that morals, for instance, have only the permanency of the
moment. The only steadying force, to their way of thinking is love—which to
them is the dominant principle at work at all times in the process.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, love is never clearly defined—it is the elusive
good that is ever escaping, always morphing into an ill-defined category that
only satisfies the arbitrary assertion of the observer. That being the case,
absolutes are out the window, subjective opinion moves in and the structure of
this catalytic interior is never the same for any two observers. God, morals,
everything ethereal or spiritual is in a constant cosmic reflux, folding and
enveloping upon itself in an everlasting evolutionary telos of love that recycles
and hopefully morphs the cosmic stuff which we think of as reality into christological-perfection.
It is not as if the world or cosmos gets better, it simply ideally becomes more
compatible with the realities at any given moment.
Reason most definitely reigns;
but it is an intuitive reason that is based on experience and that which is
assumed to be in synch with creative reality. Although, I have not read it
anywhere that I can think of, it seems to me that the moral reality of which
they speak is more akin to the Maslovian hierarchy of human needs than it is to
the moral demands of Scripture. It is survival of the fittest and Maslow’s
model fits the bill in that case—particularly if the model is designed to
preserve the evolutionary process of the survival of the fittest. Ethics,
however, in process theology is another subject for another time.
In the simplest of terms, God is
a spiritual process that is both passive and active: active in
the sense of love as the principle of a persuasive lure; and, yet, impassive in
the sense of influence. That luring impassionability is best understood as an
aesthetic effect –that is the luring effect of the beauty of his holiness. Beauty
has in their mind the telos of order, and thus creation strives to accommodate
that structure. Thus, God is at any given moment caught in an everlasting drama
of was, is, and is yet to come. Always changing; yet never without purpose. His
only real power is in the power of his attractiveness. God’s authority rest
entirely on the persuasive principle of his undaunting love; thus, potentially,
at all times, he is a victim in the sense that He has no choice but to accept
the fact and consequence of each and every temporal circumstance. Dig as deeply
as you might into that thought pattern and to my mind it is impossible to find
either a will or wisdom or any other conative system that can make a difference
in the outcome.
One of the problems, among
others, is that this love is never profoundly described—it is always the
elusive “Eros of the universe (Whitehead)”; or at best the “harmonization of
all possibilities (Suchochki).” The motivating “agape/ἀγάπη” love of Scripture
is far too passionate for thoughtful consideration. Cognitively, God is
therefore always reduced to a principle; never elevated to a person. He is
therefore mindless, uncaring, the ultimate delight of the Deist, perhaps, but
never the compassionate One.
Process Theology vis-à-vis the Trinity
As it can be imagined, classical
Trinitarianism has no place in Process Theology. Jesus at best is an ongoing
ever evolving Christological principle that reached a temporal pinnacle in
Jesus of Nazarene who exemplified a paradigmic and symbolic show of the godly
essence of love—a creative urge, a surge of irresistible attraction of an
irrefutable Logos. I use the adjectival connate “irrefutable” since love which
is intrinsically infused in the Logos concept is never satisfactorily defined
to an unbiased intellect—at least not my intellect.
Jesus, on surface, is not, in
Process thinking, unique in our generation, since he does not speak to our
culture which has evolved from the Palestinian Judeo culture of his. This is
keeping with the philosophical position that each generation (actually each
moment) in history defines at its best the condition of the pure Logos—urges,
and surges as well. I say, “urges and surges,” because to the Process thinker
God alone does not just shape creation, but creation shapes God—the only
abiding essence is, of course, this ill-defined love of which they speak.
To digress slightly, it must be
understood that Process Theologians have neglected this task—that is to define
love; it is not to say, however, that they have not tried to conceptualize
love. Love is at best, ‘the essence of beauty,’ ‘a telos of purpose,’ ‘an aesthetic
sense of awesomeness;’ statically flexible but never emotive. Static in the
sense that it is structed, flexible in the sense that it rises to the occasion.
A paradox in motion, you might say. Such is the foolishness of process
theology, in my opinion.
