What Would Process Christianity Look Like?

Amazon Link

Open and Relational Theology:

An Introduction to Life-Changing Ideas

by Thomas Oord

published July 2021

I have been asking myself how to go about producing a doctrinal theology on Process Christianity. I believe I no longer need go about taking on this task as my friend, Thomas Oord, has accomplished a part of it in his latest upcoming book out this July 2021. I believe Tom's text would be a good beginning in summarizing a Process Theology through the perspectives of an Open and Relational Theology. Thank you Tom for this help!

What Would Process Christianity Look Like?

Process Christianity might be condensed in an Open and Relational form which at present I might sum up in five motifs:

1 - A personal/relational God who "Is" and not "It"

2 - A unique divine ontic distinction between God and creation/creatures expressed in terms of divine alterity (radical otherness) inseparably combined with divine immanence (radical intimacy)

3 - A God who everlastingly creates. This refers to the universal process of "organic being which is always in process of becoming". Ex: God said "I Am and Am Becoming" (Ex 3.14). Thus rejecting creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing) by replacing it with creatio continua (creation always forming).*

4 - A theology which addresses the problem of evil in terms of creationally imbued agency rather than in terms of divine determinism. This would then necessarily re-orientate traditional ideations of divine sovereignty into more formative terms of process-based sovereignty in accordance with who God is in His divine Self and Self-expression. 

5 - Lastly, Process Christianity must include as foundational to its categorical genres a close affinity with Panentheism, Panexperientialism, and Panpsychism. The first speaks to organic relationship, the second to organic wholeness, and the last to organic awareness.

R.E. Slater

May 25, 2021

*This will be a developing post

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*Creatio Ex Nihilo by Keith Ward

Creatio ex nihilo (Latin for "creation from nothing") refers to the view that the universe, the whole of space-time, is created by a free act of God out of nothing, and not either out of some preexisting material or out of the divine substance itself. This view was widely, though not universally, accepted in the early Christian Church, and was formally defined as dogma by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215. Creatio ex nihilo is now almost universally accepted by Jews, Christians, and Muslims. Indian theism generally holds that the universe is substantially one with God, though it is usually still thought of as a free and unconstrained act of God.

*Creatio Continua, by Keith Ward

The term creatio continua refers to God's continuing creative activity throughout the history of the universe. In a sense, most theologians accept creatio continua, since creation is the dependence of the whole of space-time on God. But more traditional views hold that because God is timeless and immutable, there is only one divine creative act, which originates the whole of space-time from first to last. Those who speak of creatio continua think of creation taking place in many successive acts, partly in response to events in time. Thus, at any particular time God's creation has not been completed, and the future is partly open, in some theological views, even for God.

Creatio Continua