Process Theology

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.