Process Theology
Embracing Adventure with God
Bruce G. Epperly
Topical Line Drives, Volume 5
Energion Publications
Gonzalez, FL
2014
Copyright © 2014, Bruce G. Epperly
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Aer.io Edition
ISBN10: 1-63199-259-7
ISBN13: 978-1-63199-259-9
Print ISBNs
ISBN10: 1-63199-002-0
ISBN13: 978-1-63199-002-1
Energion Publications
P. O. Box 841
Gonzalez, FL 32560
energionpubs.com
In Gratitude
to my teachers John Cobb, David Griffin, Bernard Loomer, Richard Keady, and Marie Fox
and South Congregational Church, Centerville, MA,
a congregation where God is still speaking
and the process continues.
1
What Is Process Theology and
Why Is It Important?
Susan came to my study with a spring in her step. For several weeks, this inquisitive and intelligent young mother had met with me for conversations about God. She had come from a conservative Christian background which discouraged her questions and doubts as a sign of unbelief. Her childhood pastor asserted that all the answers she needed were found in a literal understanding of the King James Bible. He regularly pitted the Bible against science, psychology, literature, and the follies of human reason. She was taught at an early age that only faithful Bible-believing Christians were saved. Despite their good works and commitment to their spiritual traditions, everyone else, including more liberal Christians, was doomed to eternal damnation unless they accepted Christ as their personal savior and subscribed to an inerrant understanding of scripture.
Susan could no longer accept what she perceived to be the narrow vision of faith she had learned as a child. She loved Jesus, but had outgrown the faith of her childhood and saw no alternatives to the old time religion of her youth. When she sought my counsel, she wondered if she could still call herself a Christian.
But, now, two months after our first meeting, Susan greeted me with excitement. “I think I get it now. Christianity is different than I thought it was. I really am a Christian! I’m just different from my parents and pastor. Following Jesus doesn’t mean believing outdated creeds or literal understandings of scripture or turning my back on science. I respect my childhood church. But God is so much bigger. I believe God is alive and as real as my next breath. God wants me to grow and explore new ideas. Now I realize that faith is a journey and not a destination, and God is with me with in all my questions and doubts. God’s love includes everyone, including people who ask questions and have doubts!”
All I could say in response was “Hallelujah! Praise God,” for Susan had found a faith and a God as big as her questions. Susan had discovered that God was intimate, lively, adventurous, and as near as her next breath and her daughters’ heartbeats.
What Susan didn’t entirely know when she initially sought me out was that the village pastor was also a process theologian. In the spirit of process theology, our conversations were free-wheeling and open-ended, with many possible destinations and no censorship. I accepted her where she was and invited her to be comfortable exploring new visions of God and herself. While I didn’t try to convince her about the superiority of my theological vision, I invited her to imagine God as intimate, relational, and creative. I asked her to ponder the possibility that the future is open not just for us but also for God. I asked her to consider the possibility that God is constantly at work in the world inspiring us to be partners in creating a better world. In contrast to her childhood pastor, I invited her to see the relationship between science and religion as a creative dialogue and explore the possibility that God’s revelation comes to people from other cultures and spiritual traditions and not just to Christians.
In the months following her theological epiphany, Susan began reading process theology. She had many questions and struggled with the contrasts between process theology and the faith of her childhood church. But, one afternoon she asserted, “I am so grateful for your introducing me a new way of looking at God and the world. I feel like I’m coming home to a God I can believe in. I don’t have to be afraid of my doubts. I see faith as an ongoing adventure with God right beside me, challenging me with new ways of looking at things. God is real to me again. God is right here in your study and down on the beach. I can find God wherever I go, listening and sharing, and growing along with me.” Susan had rediscovered a living God through encountering the welcoming spirit of process theology.
The Origins of Process Theology. Theology has always been connected with philosophical reflection. One of the greatest theologians, Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE), was shaped by Greek philosophical ideas of perfection, meditated through the thought of the philosopher Plotinus and Neoplatonism. He struggled to connect the lively embodiment of Hebraic spirituality and Jesus’ ministry with the neo-Platonic definition of perfection as unchanging and embodiment as a hindrance to spiritual growth. Another great Christian theologian Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) was influenced by Aristotle, who described the ultimate reality as the Unmoved Mover. Any change in God or influence from the changing world on God’s experience constituted a diminishment of divine perfection. Aquinas also struggled to join the unchanging divinity of Greek thought with the lively, intimate and emotional God of the Bible, embodied most fully in the Suffering Savior, Jesus of Nazareth. The parents of the Protestant Reformation Martin Luther (1483-1546) and John Calvin (1509-1564) saw God as dynamic and active in the world, but also struggled with the character of divine knowledge and power. Their understandings of divine perfection required God to have active foreknowledge and foreordination in relationship to the events of the world. Nothing new could possibly happen to God nor could the world determine any aspect of God’s experience. Their vision of divine activity demanded either: 1) that God predestine in advance all the events of history, including the fate of humans as saved and damned or 2) that God choose those who were saved in an eternal vision, while overlooking the unsaved entirely. As a result of their understandings of divine knowledge, power, and grace, they saw humans as powerless to effect anything positive apart from divine initiative and determination.
Process theology is also philosophically driven, but its philosophical foundations emphasize movement, change, relationship, possibility, creativity, freedom, and open-endedness. Process theologians see the origins of process thought as two-fold. First, they see the Bible as the primary inspiration of process theology. The biblical tradition envisions God as intimate, active in history, and capable of changing course in response to human decisions. God’s mercies are new every morning. God’s redemptive vision is reflected in God’s innovative actions to restore the fortunes of Israel and broaden the scope of salvation to include the whole earth. The prophetic tradition, described by Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel in terms of the “divine pathos,” saw God as intimately involved in the smallest details of economics, politics, and spirituality. Process theologians also see Jesus as a model for process-relational thought. As the word made flesh, Jesus testifies to the goodness of embodiment and the importance of the historical process. Jesus’ revelation of God’s nature points to a vision of God as intimate, suffering and celebrating, supporting human freedom and creativity, and inviting us to do great things as God’s partners in healing the world.
In addition to scripture, process theologians affirm the significance of the British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947) in the formation of process theology. The son of an Anglican clergyman,