- Changes in language and understanding: As societies and languages evolve, older expressions of theological concepts may lose their original meaning or resonate less with modern sensibilities.
- New knowledge and perspectives: Developments in fields such as science, psychology, and philosophy can provide new insights into the human experience and the world, influencing how theological ideas are understood and communicated.
- Promoting clarity and accessibility: Translating theological language into contemporary language helps make it more accessible and understandable to people, fostering engagement and dialogue.
- Addressing cultural biases: Each generation must wrestle with how to be relevant to the world around it and how to best communicate the gospel message. Theology can act as a filter to strip out unnecessary doctrines or beliefs and translate core truths into the language and culture of the time.
- Encouraging critical thinking: Examining theological language encourages deeper engagement with beliefs, leading to a more nuanced understanding of one's own tradition and other perspectives.
II. Methods for Updating Theological Language:
- Translation into contemporary language: This involves finding ways to express theological ideas using modern vocabulary and phrasing while maintaining the original meaning or belief.
- Reinterpreting traditional concepts: This involves understanding ancient concepts in light of modern knowledge and experience, offering new interpretations that resonate with contemporary concerns.
- Engaging with new perspectives: Drawing from modern academic disciplines, philosophy, and other areas of inquiry can provide new insights and language for theological discussions.
- Textual updating (in the context of religious texts): Involves changes made to religious texts by authorized writers, as evidenced by textual analysis and critical scholarship.
III. Challenges and Considerations:
- Maintaining fidelity to original meaning: A key challenge is to ensure that updating theological language doesn't distort or lose the core message of the original texts and traditions.
- Overcoming historical and cultural distance: Interpreting ancient texts and concepts requires understanding the historical and cultural context in which they were written.
- Addressing linguistic differences: Translating theological terms across languages can be challenging due to inherent differences in vocabulary, grammar, and cultural idioms.
- Avoiding reader-response bias: It is crucial to approach updating theological language with a focus on understanding the author's original intent rather than imposing modern interpretations.
IV. Examples of Updating Theological Language:
- Inclusive language: Replacing gendered terms with more inclusive language to better reflect the diversity of humanity.
- Metaphorical reinterpretations: Understanding traditional concepts like "God" as an "Ultimate Reality" or "Cosmos" instead of an anthropomorphic being.
- Re-evaluating traditional doctrines in light of new knowledge: For example, interpreting creation stories in light of scientific discoveries.
Updating theological language is an ongoing process that seeks to bridge the gap between ancient wisdom and modern understanding, making faith relevant and meaningful for contemporary believers and society as a whole.
II. PROCESS THEOLOGY BRINGS CONTEMPORARY LANGUAGE
So it is very reasonable to expect that traditional church doctrine will resonate with ancient concepts, ideas, social structures, old world constructions, meaning, and positional qualifications.
Since those very ancient eras of beliefs and religious formation much has passed in world history and with it, the evolution of human language, concepts, ideation, etc, across the spectrum of human knowledge.
It has competently, and fully, replaced Platonic thought and all other major philosophies of their time. It is why the quantum science correlate so very well with process philosophy, as well as major non-Westernized, non-Christian religions like Eastern Buddhism. It elucidates how creation works very well.
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| Illus by RE Slater & ChatGPT |
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| Illus by RE Slater & ChatGPT |
The Christian faith has always sought to express divine truth in the language and philosophy of its time. However, many of the categories that undergird classical Christian theology—especially those formulated during the Patristic and Conciliar periods—draw heavily from Hellenistic metaphysics, which emphasized static being, essentialism, and hierarchical order. While these terms once served to clarify doctrine, they now often hinder clarity in light of contemporary metaphysics, science, and relational ontology.
Process Theology, rooted in the work of Alfred North Whitehead, offers a new set of categories—dynamic, relational, participatory—that better resonate with modern scientific and philosophical sensibilities. This shift is not a rejection of Christianity but an evolution of its conceptual vocabulary, offering clearer pathways for expressing enduring truths.
II. Classical Doctrinal Language: Hellenistic Foundations
Ancient church doctrines—especially those from the Patristic and Conciliar periods (2nd–5th centuries)—were profoundly shaped by Hellenistic philosophical categories, particularly:
1. Substance Metaphysics (Ousia, Hypostasis)
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One Ousia (essence/substance) and three hypostases (persons = individual reality) were key to Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations of the Trinity and Christology.
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These terms attempted to define God's being using static categories suited to Greek metaphysics, not dynamic relationality. That is, God's Being was framed in essentialist terms of what something is rather than what it does or becomes.
2. Immutability and Impassibility
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God was understood as changeless and unaffected by creation, a view inherited from Plato and Aristotle.
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Divine perfection was thought to require absolute immutability—making God unmoved even by love or suffering.
3. Timelessness
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God exists outside of time (eternal, aeviternal, timeless) per Neoplatonic hierarchies, where the One is beyond becoming, and rendering divine action unrelated to temporal becoming.
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This static eternal concepts framed doctrines of providence, omniscience, and predestination.
4. Dualism of Form and Matter
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Influenced by Platonic dualism, many early doctrines saw the physical as inferior to the spiritual (body vs. soul, world vs. heaven).
Spirit was seen as eternal, pure; matter was transient and corruptible.
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This dualism devalued the body and material world, influencing doctrines of resurrection, asceticism, and sexuality.
5. Monarchical Hierarchies
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Church doctrines mirrored the hierarchical cosmologies of Stoic and Platonic worlds, emphasizing top-down divine sovereignty.
God’s rule was conceptualized like that of a Hellenistic emperor: absolute, unilateral, and top-down.
Mirrored imperial politics and law, shaping images of divine judgment and control.
- Substance metaphysics does not account for quantum indeterminacy, evolutionary development, or relational causality.
- Today’s sciences and philosophies describe reality as processual, probabilistic, and interdependent.
- Doctrines like the Trinity or Incarnation become paradoxes or riddles when framed in static metaphysics.
- Terms like “essence” and “substance” suggest rigid categories ill-suited to describing love, presence, or transformation.
- An unchangeable, impassible God cannot be meaningfully affected by creation.
- This contradicts Scripture’s portrayals of a God who weeps, rejoices, suffers, and responds.
- By placing God “outside time” or “above the world,” traditional metaphysics alienate divine presence from lived experience.
- This supports deism or fatalism rather than intimacy and co-creation.
- The term ousia implies a fixed essence, but contemporary physics and metaphysics affirm relational becoming over fixed substances.
- Process theology, influenced by Whitehead, sees every entity as a series of events in relation, not as fixed objects.
- Instead of saying God is “unchanging,” process theology says God’s character (love) is constant, but God’s experience is open and evolving.
- Divine Immutability can now be redefined as faithful relationality
- This better fits biblical portrayals of a God who grieves, relents, rejoices, and participates.
- Rather than timelessness, process theology affirms God is deeply temporal, knowing the unfolding present with perfect immediacy.
- This renders divine providence more interactive and responsive rather than predetermined.
- Process theology affirms the unity of mind and body, world and spirit, God and creation—panentheistically rather than dualistically.
- The process view replaces unilateral divine control with co-creative, participatory power—a more ethical and relational understanding of sovereignty.
Process theology shifts theology from a substance ontology to an event-based, relational ontology.
| Hellenistic Term | Modern/Process Equivalent | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| Ousia (Essence) | Actual Entity / Occasion | Dynamic event in becoming |
| Immutability | Faithful Relational Constancy | Constant love, evolving response |
| Timelessness | Deep Temporality | God in time, not above it |
| Hypostasis | Subjective Aim / Actual Occasion | Entity with internal drive toward value |
| Logos | Divine Lure | Persuasive call toward beauty/novelty |
| Sovereignty | Relational Power | Co-creative influence, not coercion |
Additional Categories
- Quantum physics, evolutionary biology, and cosmology resonate with relational, dynamic models of being.
- A God who suffers with us and calls us into co-creation is more ethically persuasive than a remote, impassible monarch.
- While mystery remains, it is no longer rooted in metaphysical contradiction, but in the depth of relational love and becoming.
- Trinity, Incarnation, Atonement, and Eschatology become more congruent when reframed in relational, dynamic terms.
- Instead of “three persons, one substance,” the Trinity is understood as three relational aspects of divine becoming.
- Reflects divine relationality, creativity, and shared becoming, not ontological abstraction.
- Jesus is not a divine being “inserted” into flesh, but the perfect expression of God’s relational aims in his humanity.
- Christology becomes a model of deep divine-human participation, not metaphysical ousia contradiction.
- Rejects penal/juridical satisfaction; instead, the Cross shows God’s solidarity with suffering and the divine lure toward transformation.
- Love and suffering are redemptive not because they appease wrath, but because they express ultimate relational fidelity.
- Each emphasize ongoing, present transformation, not only future events.
- Resurrection is the processual renewal of life, inviting all beings toward divine beauty, harmony, and co-creation.
VI. WHY THIS SHIFT MATTERS FOR CONTEMPORARY FAITH
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Clarity over Confusion: Instead of defending ancient paradoxes (three=one, immutable yet personal), process theology speaks with philosophical clarity and emotional resonance.
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Relevance over Rigidity: Aligns Christian faith with contemporary cosmology, ethics, and psychology.
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Hope over Fatalism: Divine relationality opens the future rather than determining it. God’s work is ongoing, participatory, and responsive.
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Love over Control: The central divine attribute is not power, but love in relationship—a God who invites, responds, and transforms.
VII. CONCLUSION: NOT REJECTION - BUT REFORMATION
The goal is not to discard the creeds but to reinterpret their insights through better metaphysical lenses.
The God of classical orthodoxy is often frozen in philosophical categories that no longer serve the church or the world.
Process theology offers a vibrant, scientifically coherent, and ethically compelling alternative that honors the living heart of the gospel.
