process theology based on the textbook -...

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Process TheologyA Short Course

Michael A. Soderstrand

Wellspring UCC Wednesday Morning Group

June 11 – August 13, 2014

Based on the textbook:

C. Robert Mesle, Process Theology A Basic Introduction, Chalice Press, St. Louis, MO, 1993 (final chapter by

John B. Cobb, Jr.) or the 2007 version.

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Introduction

“God is love, and he who abides in love

abides in God, and God abides in him” (1 Jn 4:16). These words from the First

Letter of John express with remarkable clarity the heart of the Christian faith:

the Christian image of God and the resulting image of mankind and its

destiny.†

†ENCYCLICAL LETTER, DEUS CARITAS EST OF THE SUPREME PONTIFF

BENEDICT XVI TO THE BISHOPS PRIESTS AND DEACONS MEN AND

WOMEN RELIGIOUS AND ALL THE LAY FAITHFUL ON CHRISTIAN LOVE

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Introduction

“You see that the love John speaks of is not

the love of soap operas! No, it is something else. Christian love has a particular quality:

concreteness. Christian love is concrete. Jesus Himself, when He speaks of love,

speaks to us about concrete things: feeding the hungry, visiting the sick, and many

concrete things. Love is concrete. . . . And when this concreteness is not there, you

can live a Christianity of illusions.†

†THE SUPREME PONTIFF FRANCIS I VATICAN RADIO 2014-01-09. (see:

http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-christian-love-is-concrete )

http://www.news.va/en/news/pope-francis-christian-love-is-concrete

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Introduction• Process Theology is the name for an

effort to make sense, in the modern world, of the basic Christian faith that God is Love (1 John 4:16).

• Process Theology provides a concept of divinity that results in a social justice and environmental ethic similar to many progressive Christians (and humanists), but with a firm theological basis.

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Introduction• This course will primarily be concerned with

Process Theism -- a way of re-thinking the concept of GOD as the divine Subject who loves, wills, intends and acts in nature and human history

• Process Theology does not fit within the traditional categories of theism nor does it fit within the many modern theologies or religious naturalisms that think of God in terms of human love and natural processes.

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Introduction• This course will present a Christian

perspective on Process Theology

• Process Theology , however, is not

uniquely Christian.

• There are Jewish, non-Christian

Unitarian, Buddhist, naturalist and

others who embrace Process

Philosophy the general term for

Process Theology.

A Driveway Theological Discussion

7http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSeS3oRK5ho

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DefinitionsTraditional or Classical Theology in this

course will refer to an understanding of God as:

1. Omnipotent: has all the power there is,

can do anything God wants that is not self-contradictory

2. Omniscient and Eternal: stands outside of time so as to see all of time at once, and

hence knows the “future” infallibly

3. Unchangeable in every respect.

Christians would say that God limits God’s own

power so as to allow room for human freedom.

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Plato’s Philosophy is complex and has strongly

influenced western philosophy. Key features are:

1. Essences: or “the ideal” or what is “truly real” comes from heaven.

2. Material things: are imperfect images of the heavenly “ideal” or “real things”.

3. Soul: the physical body has “forgotten” what reality is and the soul must move

about until such time as it becomes aware of its true nature and is freed from the physical

realm.

Definitions

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DefinitionsAristotle’s Philosophy is also complex and has

also strongly influenced western philosophy, particularly science. Key features are:

1. Essences: are not “real” but are concepts (or models) created by the human mind.

2. Material things: are what is “truly real” and study of nature will reveal reality.

3. Soul: is unique “doe” of human reason. There are two parts to human reason:

“passive” tied to the physical mind and “creative” tied to the soul or “spirit”. At

death “passive” reason dies but “creative” reason lives on to return to God the “prime

mover”.

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Observations

Ptolomy, Copernicus and Galileo all thought the heavens were perfect and insisted on perfect

circles for planetary orbits. Contrary to popular belief, The Catholic Church was actually correct

in questioning the teachings of Copernicus and Galileo as they were wrong. Kepler, was correct

with elliptical orbits – but Galileo rejected this. As a result, Galileo was NOT able to prove his

model correct and that is why it was rejected

(see David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions, Yale University Press, 2009, pp. 66-67.)

Plato’s Philosophy strongly affected Christian thinking before the

“Enlightenment” and the re-discovery of Aristotle’s Philosophy

was central to the Renaissance and particularly science:

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Observations

1. Ancient Greek Philosophy may have had

more impact on Traditional Christian Theology than the Bible.

2. It is impossible to make truly fundamental

theological revisions without challenging those Greek origins.

3. In this course we will use the findings of

modern science to challenge those origins and inform Process Theology

Plato’s Philosophy and Aristotle’s Philosophy have had

a profound impact on Traditional Christian Theology.

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Observations

1. Ancient Greek Philosophy may have had

more impact on Traditional Christian Theology than the Bible.

2. It is impossible to make truly fundamental

theological revisions without challenging those Greek origins.

3. In this course we will use the findings of

modern science to challenge those origins and inform Process Theology

Plato’s Philosophy and Aristotle’s Philosophy have had

a profound impact on Traditional Christian Theology.

3. In this course we will use the findings of modern science to challenge those origins and inform Process Theology

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How Does God Act?

1. Process theology is exciting and intellectually responsible precisely because it does try to talk

about how God acts in the world.

2. By setting the idea of God within a comprehensive view of reality, Process Theology is able to

address the difficult questions we encounter today.

3. However, to understand those answers we must re-think our basic view of reality.

When you ask “How does God Act in the world?”, most

Traditional Theologies have no answer. “He just does!”

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Is Process Theology True?

1. Process theology makes sense. It is consistent with itself, with science and with experience (suffering,

ambiguity, feminism, ecology, etc.)

2. Process Theology leads to good ethics. At best, traditional theology depicts God as allowing needless

suffering and at worst God is the instigator of such

suffering. Not so with Process Theology.

3. Process Theology is a model or “myth” that creatively

draws upon and leads the way in the very best of our

modern struggles to envision the nature of reality, the meaning of love, and the depths of the sacred as we

experience it today.

NO! Process Theology is a model of reality and as such is

only an approximation to truth. But here is why I think it is

so important to study Process Theology:

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Is Process Theology True?

So even if the God of Process Theology should turn out not to exist, or even if there is no divine being at all, Process

Theology deserves our serious attention because the ethical model that it shows us can transform our whole way of thinking

about religion, life, and values in a very positive way.

I urge you to approach this course on

Process Theology with an open mind and an open heart.

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Process Thought Overview

This overview is intended to fill

an important function:

1. It is a condensed survey of

Process Theology without detailed

explanations and complications.

2. As we progress in the course,

refer back to this regularly.

3. This is the skeleton upon which

the course is built.

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The Process Vision

1. All things flow and evolve. Reality is a social

process (not essence or matter as Plato and

Aristotle argued)

2. Freedom is inherent in the world. To be a human

or an elementary particle is to be self-creative.

3. Experience is rich and complex. Adequacy to this

wealth of experience is the ultimate test of our

ideas.

4. The universe does not center around human

beings. We are participants along with God in a

complex and fragile web of relationships through

which we have significant value.

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Process Theism

1. God is Love.

2. God is the unique Subject, whose love is the

foundation of all reality.

3. It is through God’s Love that all things live and

move and have their being.

4. God is the Supremely Related One, sharing

the experience of every creature and being

experienced by every creature.

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Process Theism

5. God’s power in the world is necessarily

persuasive, not coercive.

6. God acts by self revelation.

7. God, who is the source of our freedom,

CANNOT coerce the world.

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Process Theism

8. We need a new model of Jesus (the Jesus Myth)

based upon the historical Jesus stripped from its

Traditional Theology and understood in a Process

Theology way.

9. Jesus too had freedom.

10. Jesus is the mythical character that chose to be

fully responsive to God’s call and love.

11. Jesus’ life and death thereby reveal the character

of God’s love and God’s call to each of us.

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Process Theism

12. Because God loves perfectly, God suffers with

the world.

13. God calls us in each moment through divine

self-revelation, sharing a vision of the good and

the beautiful.

14. God CANNOT overrule our freedom, but awaits

our free response, constantly and with infinite

patience seeking to create the best that can be

gotten from each choice we make.

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Process Theism

15. God is omniscient knowing everything there

is to know. But this means knowing the future

as open, as a range of possibilities and

probabilities, not as fixed or settled.

16. God is co-eternal with the world and shares

the adventure of time with us. There has

always been a world of some sort in which God

has been active.

17. God is omnipresent. Every person in every

moment is experiencing God as the ground of

both order and freedom.

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Process Theism

18. Our experience of God is interwoven with

our experience of the world.

19. God struggles to reach us through the dark

glass that obscures our vision. Hence,

revelation is omnipresent and ongoing, but

appears ambiguous.

20. God is the ground of the world’s becoming.

The power of God is interwoven with the power

of the world. Hence, every event reflects both

the power of God and the power of the world.

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Overview of the Short Course on Process Theology

Topic Date Introduction (1)

Part I: A God Worthy of Worship (11) June 11, 2014 Chapter 1 Love, Power, and Worship (13)

Chapter 2 God’s Love and Our Suffering (17) June 18, 2014

Chapter 3 Love, Power, and Relatedness (25)

Chapter 4 Freedom, Time, and God’s Power (33) June 25, 2014

Part II the World and God (41) Chapter 5 Time (45)

Chapter 6 A World of Experience (51) July 2, 2014

Chapter 7 How God Acts in the World (58)

Part III A Liberating Theology (65)

Chapter 8 How Religion Becomes Oppressive (69) July 9, 2014 Chapter 9 A Process Theology of Liberation (75)

Chapter 10 Women’s Experience and Process Thought (80) July 16, 2014

Chapter 11 Revelation, Scripture, and Liberation (85)

Chapter 12 Committed Relativism An Approach to Ethics and Global Community (91) July 23, 2014

Chapter 13 Religious Pluralism (98)

Chapter 14 Jesus (104) July 30, 2014 Chapter 15 Prayer, Liberation, and Healing (110)

Chapter 16 Miracles (117) August 6, Part IV Naturalism and Theism (123) 2014

Chapter 17 Process Naturalism (127)

Chapter 18 Process Theism – By John Cobb, Jr. (134) August 13, Conclusion 2014

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Chapter 1 – Love, Power and

Worship

In Process Theology, God is constantly, in

every moment and in every place, doing everything within God’s power to bring about

the good. 1. However, divine power is persuasive

rather than coercive. 2. God CANNOT (really cannot) force

people or the world to obey God’s will. 3. God works by sharing with us a vision of

the better way, of the good and the beautiful.

4. God’s power lies in patience and particularly LOVE, not in brute force.

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Worship

Process Theology does not confuse “power” with “brute force”.

1. Brute force power is seldom associated with love.

2. God is Love.

3. Thus God’s power (and all true power) comes through Love – not brute force.

4. God’s power is not like that of an

Emperor, Caesar or King but more like

that of a Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Mandella.

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Worship

Process Theology does not confuse “power” with

“brute force”.

1. This is the key message that Jesus preached.

2. God is Love. Love your enemy, love your

neighbor, …

3. Jesus came to announce the Kingdom of God.

4. The Kingdom of God is not like that of an

Emperor, Caesar or King but more like that of

a Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Mandella.

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Worship

Fear verses “awe”, “worship” and Love.

1. One might FEAR a God of ultimate Brute force.

2. But one is in awe of a God of ultimate Love.

3. One might worship a God of ultimate Love.

4. One might love a God of ultimate Love.

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Worship

To worship properly is to center our lives around something, to see it as the proper

focus of our ultimate commitment. Raw power may evoke fear and even awe, but

not worship. Worship awaits something or someone worth giving our lives to. A

God that calls us to be the best we can be, to give the best we can give, to share

in the great good work.

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Worship

It would be a huge mistake to think the God of Process Theology is weak.

God is LOVE and LOVE is the most Powerful thing in the Universe

We must understand that it is goodness, not coercive power, that is worthy of ultimate commitment – of worship.

Ethically, God is worthy of Love because God is perfectly Loving.

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Worship

KJV: 28And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are

the called according to his purpose.

Theology effects translation of Scripture

(eg: Romans 8:28):

RSV: 28And We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called

according to his purpose.

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Worship



The first issue is the phrase: “know that all things work together.”

1. In the original Greek, the word “panta” (all things) can be either the subject or the object

of the verb “sunergei” (work together) 2. The KJV translates it as the subject.

3. RSV, NIV and the CEV all translate it as the object.

4. Later Greek manuscripts modify the Greek to

assure that “panta” is the object.

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Worship



RSV: We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called


NIV: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been

called according to his purpose.

CEV: We know that God is always at work for the

good of everyone who loves him. They are the ones God has chosen for his purpose,

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The second issue is the verb: “sunergei.” (work together)

1. In the original Greek, the verb “sunergei” means that God works together with people.

2. The KJV misses this completely. 3. RSV, New Jerusalem Bible (NJB) and an

alternative given in the footnotes of the NIV get this right.

4. However, traditional theology does not

contemplate God working together with people but rather God working for people.


Worship

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RSV: We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called


NJB: We are well aware that God works with those who love him, those who have been called in

accordance with his purpose, and turns everything to their good.


Worship

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RSV: 28We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called


The RSV above is the best translation.

1. The RSV is consistent with the Greek grammar.

2. The RSV stresses that God works for good.

3. The RSV stresses that God works with those who

love him.

4. For a more detailed discussion of the issues of

translation of Romans 8:28, please go to:

http://www.mbseminary.edu/files/download/geddert1.htm?file_id=12815136

Tim Geddert, Prof. of New Testament, Fresno Bible College


Worship

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Worship




(eg: Romans 8:28):



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Worship




(eg: Romans 8:28):



Emphasizes God works WITH

Implies that it is known and fixed

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Worship




(eg: Romans 8:28):



Implies all who love God are called

Implies a select group that is predetermined

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Worship

Summary of Chapter 1 on Process Theology

1. The battle between good and evil is a real one.

2. God cannot guarantee the outcome within this world.

3. What can be guaranteed is God’s steadfast love and constant working for the good.

4. God will be with us in each moment, sharing our struggles, sharing our experiences of sin

and suffering, and loving us in the midst of

them all.

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NEXT WEEK

Wednesday June 18

• Chapters 2 and 3 of the text

• Now time for discussion

• NOTE: You can find all class materials

online at: http://class-notes.us

http://class-notes.us/

process theology based on the textbook -...

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