Back to the Basics, Part 3 - Open Theism v Process Theology

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Back to the Basics, Part 3:

Open Theism v Process Theology

by R.E. Slater

In this post I would like to explore the criticisms of process theology by open theists and perhaps the criticisms of process theists towards open thesim. Generally, "Open theism" is part-and-parcel of "process theology" but they come into the space from differing philosophical foundations. Open theism from Westernism's analytical and logical approach... and Process theism from Whitehead's process philosophy which is an integral theory of cosmological metaphysics unlike the "tools" of Western philosophy. Other examples of integral metaphysics would be Platonism, Aristotelianism, Scholasticism, and Modernism.

Of noted, I do not intend to cover the criticisms of open theism by classic evangelical Calvinists as that line of argument can be found everywhere on the Internet and is a very common criticism. But the lesser known subject is process theism which is the focus of this website and why it should be utilize in place of Western philosophies infilling and affecting the study of God, the bible, Jesus, the church, and Christian mission. By removing Western philosophies - such as Greek Hellenism - from interpreting the Christian faith and by utilizing process philosophy to do the same (ala Whitehead's process philosophy) we get a far different picture of Christian theology than we do from Classical / Classicized Christianity.

By appropriating outlooks more closely associating with how God's creation works, such as we find in process philosophy, the ancient Jewish and Semitic cultures, today's quantum sciences, Jungian Archetypes, some East Religions, etc., we can remove Greek and Roman influences upon the Christian faith, expanded and enhanced through the Medieval Ages, repurposed by Catholicism, the Protestant Reformation, and today's Modernistic faiths.

Hence, if process correctly (or more closely) describes how creation is, in it's "being", and how its works and affects all processes within and outside of itself (there is no "outside": this is a literary device to speak to the "metaphysic's of the cosmos, ontologies, ethics and value, identity and anthropological culture") than we may obtain better glimpses of God through God's creation. Lesser outlooks and foundational constructions cannot and will skew the same task towards themselves.

By agreement, one wishes to use the best theological tool in the toolbox which means we want to have the more accurate and affective philosophy to help guide us in our reading of the ancient cultures, the history and reasons why their religions and beliefs were the way that they were, and how our own modernistic religions and beliefs today are fashioning our outlooks on God and people, nature and ecosystems, business practices, war, strife, and civil government.

Another underlying subject to point out is that Christian theology is adaptive to the time, era, and culture absorbing it. Americanized theology differs from South American, African, European, and Asian Christian theology. Obviously the Christian faith is affected by the geographical culture applying it to their societies and civil structures. An Christian theological eclecticist would want to highlight the Christian positives discovered within that culture as well as the unhelpful Christian negatives. In a way, the "Study of Religion" is an academic discipline with colleges and universities use to help enhance their own civil societies, economies, and politics.

I mention the study of religion and culture to illustrate how the Christian faith has not only "flavors" to its theology but significant signifiers which will change its constructs and outcomes. Thus, to help in the task of worshipping God qua God and not God as we think God should be the bible and Christian faith must critique itself archaeologically, geographically, temporally, culturally, and philosophically. This is the task of the Christian philosopher cum theologian and is the task here by the newer discipline (Hegel cum Whitehead) of process philosophy and theology. It gets back to the idea of using the best tool in the toolbox on which to build a (Christian) faith on.

And it is with this tool of Process philosophy which gives as one of its derivatives Process theology, science, evolution, psychology, sociology, etc., that it is radicalizing all academic disciplines as they come into reflective experience with it. Which is also why classic Calvinism simply fall apart against process theology. Unlike Arminianism which is Calvinism' opposing theology built upon a Western basis, process being it's own basis, tells us that Calvinism's main arguments for and against the kind of Christian God we worship falls apart quite completely.

As example, a freewill cosmos of agency (Arminianism) will deny to Calvinism's determinative, all-controlling God of the cosmos... however, Process states that not only is agency true of the universe but that God's Image - or Spirit-DNA - infills, informs, and affects all creational agencies. But rather than saying Process is "both/and" to past 16th Century Reformed theological perspectives, it is saying why it is so because of why it is unlike Reformed theologies built upon other past philosophical structures and constructs. Thus, the "possibility for a freewill agency to act lovingly, beneficially, and in a manner which heals, redeems, and resurrects is ALWAYS present within it" but so is the potentiality to act otherwise to its inherent composition so that it's negentropy might give way to unloving, unbeneficial, unhealthy deaths spurning life and spawning dearth, ecological deserts, and toxic streams of generational darkness.

Another salient point to make between Open theists and Process theists is the fact that once an Open system of the future is embraced where all is potential, possible, and problemmatic, so also must "relational theology" be affixed to any "open theology of cosmological metaphysic." We, like nature, like the cosmos, do not operate / live by our own selves. Our bodies are formed of trillionis uopn trillions of bacterial and biological agents including quantum physical forces. We also operate / live with in dependency to our childhood parent's, friends of youth, to our teacher's and employers to come, and within the economic and social structures we grow up within. So too do all such influencer's and significant forces in our life depend upon the biotic environment which sustains it; with, or against, all political forces affecting our culture; and to the influence of the ecocosmological universe upon us (meteors, winds, deluges, pandemics, etc). 

We do not live alone... nor does the Triune Trinity of God to God's Self, to the created/reorganized cosmos, nor to all which is within this cosmos. And yes, pan-en-theism does not need an "ex nihilo" creation but can just as easily comport with a "creational void" of hot homogeneous plasmic matter of 1 D Space ("creatio continua" or however matter comes to be in a pre-Big Bang multiverse). Meaningfully, any open theology must recognize and admit to it's outlook of past, present and future to affecting "relationships" within its cosmological scope.

Hence, we do not say "Open theology" alone but "Open and Relational theology" together. And when speaking with Thomas Oord one day on this matter I reminded him that the more complete and accurate phrase descriptor is "Open and Relational PROCESS theology." Being a process theologian he readily assented to this completing description known, as I did, that Open theology resting on Westernized philosophies are incomplete metaphysical things with Whitehead's foundation of Process harkening back to Hegel, to ancient Semitic philosophies, etc.

And so, an Open theist is also an Open and Relational theist. Relationalism makes all futures possible; and non possible if things did not INTERACT with other things.... And to a process theologian, when things interact with other things we may then speak of the "experience" of those interactions between things. We may also speak to the "reaction" of those events. And thus, relationality will necessarily include experientiality with it. And to experientiality things like matter and forces, people and their relationships to other people, nature and the universe, may "feel" the experience of that interaction and reaction between relational things. Which then gives to process philosophy not only it's organic fluidity but also it's correspondent internal interactions experienced to external forces and energies. Whitehead thus speaks to the occuring "panpsychism" of the cosmos... a cosmos which "feels" its interactions and reactions within-and-without itself.

So where open theism stops a process theism goes on to complete the "relational theism" of its side of the (analytical and logic) equation by stating process to be an organic, fluid, open-ended relationality infecting and affecting experientialized events spawning counteractive "feelings, synergies, energies, and forces" internal and external to itself. Process is a theology which is not only open but metaphysical to its ontological selves with all the ethics, values, and identities so occurring as a result of its relational interaction within its (eco)cosmological self (with a little "s" and not a big "S," aka self v Self ).

There is One God and One creation of which we are a part of its infinite? and immortal? experience. This God is ever present with us and has infilled/affected/infected all creation to have worth and fulfillment when identifying with God's Self. A religious structure like Calvinism, it's opposing twin Arminianism, or Open theism are incomplete statements of creation reality and of God when neglecting to CONNECT ALL the parts of the cosmological metaphysic which they are attempting to describe.

Further, Calvinism, Arminianism, and Open theism errantly describe this same God, the bible, and God's creation when applying lesser philosophical metaphysics into its Christian philosophical theology when disconnecting it from God, creation, ourselves, nature (we "use" nature instead of causing it to "thrive"), to other communities, societies, technologies, cultures, and religions. Process philosophical theology is a CONNECTING metaphysic of all things to all things.

Process theology then is not an isolating eventful thing but a connecting eventful thing. One which is infused by God to heal, redeem, nurture, thrive, and birth renewing, resurrecting structures.... All of which Christian Reformed theology positively states in negative ways because within those "Reformed, evangelical" theologies is premise the centrality of sin over that of God's centering love. Yet process does not deny sin but rather subsumes sin into the freewill agency structures of its open and relational theology.

If God is to be God, then God's Love must be central not only to God's Person, God's Character, and God's Attributes but to God's creation... a creation which is ever new and ever-ly, or all-ways, recreating, rebirthing, and resyncing life to life, light to light against the negative qualities of darkness and death continually challenging life and light. In creation, we see this struggle of agency displayed in the Person and Ministry of Jesus as one of those creational outcomes even as this struggle is also displayed in the life of the church and our own lives as Christian faithful.

Blessings,

R.E. Slater

May 18, 2024