Process theology
Explanation
Process theology is a twentieth-century theological current developed from the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), British-American mathematician and philosopher, author of Process and Reality (1929). Whitehead proposed a metaphysics in which ultimate reality is not static substances but actual occasions, momentary, interrelated events of experience. The universe is made of processes, not things.
Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000) was the great disciple and systematiser of Whitehead, applying his ideas to theology. Subsequently, figures such as John B. Cobb Jr., David Ray Griffin, Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, Catherine Keller have developed process theology, especially at the Claremont School of Theology in California, which became the principal centre of this current.
Against the classical theology of theos apathēs (immutable, impassible, omnipotent God outside time), process theology proposes a dipolar God: in his primordial pole he is eternal, perfect, source of possibilities; but in his consequent pole he is affected by the world, suffers with suffering, grows with growth, evolves with cosmic evolution. God is the suffering and understanding companion. He does not impose but persuades; he does not coerce but attracts.
This view solves (or dissolves) the classical problem of evil: God is not omnipotent in the classical way; evil arises from the genuine free will of creatures, and God works persuasively to maximise the possible good. It also opens theology to dialogue with evolution, science, feminism (the feminist process theology of Suchocki, Keller), ecology, interreligious dialogue.
For the theory of consciousness, process theology is very interesting: Whitehead already held that every actual occasion has a mental or experiential pole, which approaches it to panpsychism (David Ray Griffin has explicitly developed this connection). Consciousness is not a rare exception in a dead cosmos but an intensification of a fundamental experientiality that accompanies every process. The model is compatible with contemporary theories that see experience as ubiquitous and fundamental.
Process theology has had great influence on the science-theology dialogue (John Polkinghorne, Ian Barbour, Arthur Peacocke have engaged with it), on ecological theology, on the theology of interreligious dialogue. It is perhaps one of the most creative theological proposals of the twentieth century to think God not as the immutable tyrant that modern critique rightly rejected, but as the creative, relational, evolutionary and loving principle that accompanies and sustains the becoming of the cosmos. For a theory of consciousness in philosophical key, Whitehead and process theology offer very rich conceptual resources being rediscovered today.
Strengths
- A rigorous and original metaphysical system.
- Integrates cosmology, experience and divinity.
- Anticipates contemporary panpsychism.
- Fruitful dialogue with science and ecology.
Main critiques
- Enormously demanding technical vocabulary.
- Difficulty of empirical verification of metaphysical claims.
- Theism debatable for naturalist audiences.