I
(a) Is Process Theology's teaching of a loving God so shaded in inference that it neglects God's wrathful character or,
(b) Can Process Theology reposition the character of God as wholly loving in a way that allows for past propositional beliefs of a wrathful God to transition and transform to God's truer character?"
1. How Classical Theologies Framed Wrath and Love
In traditional Jewish and Christian theologies, God’s wrath was often taken as a real, personal stance of divine anger against sin - not merely metaphorical.
God’s love was also affirmed, but the tension between the two has long driven theological reflection (e.g. how judgment and mercy meet at the cross in Christianity).
This made wrath and love almost “co-equal poles” within divine character: justice and holiness on one side, mercy and compassion on the other.
[Side Note: My argument has always been since the outset of this blog, that love undergirds all of God's attributes... including justice and holiness. Without love there can be no true justice nor holiness.]
2. Process Theology’s Starting Point
Process thought (Whitehead, Hartshorne, Cobb, Keller, etc.) reframes God not as omnipotent ruler imposing decrees, but as persuasive love luring creation toward richer possibilities.
God does not coerce or violently punish; God’s power is relational and invitational.
Thus, the primary description of God in process is not wrathful sovereignty but co-suffering love: a God who feels the world’s pain, absorbs its tragedies, and persistently offers new paths forward.
3. What Happens to Wrath in Process Thought?
Process theology tends not to emphasize wrath as an essential attribute of God.
Wrath, when acknowledged, is interpreted more as a human perception of the pain we create when resisting God’s lure toward goodness, or as the natural consequence of destructive choices in a world that God cannot override.
In this sense, wrath is repositioned, not denied:
It is not God’s active fury.
It is the world experiencing the tragic clash between divine call and creaturely refusal.
It is the consequence of human sin and the result of divine rage.
4. Is Process Theology “Neglecting” Wrath?
Critics argue yes: by foregrounding love and relational persuasion, process thought risks under-articulating the seriousness of divine judgment, making God seem too gentle to confront evil.
Supporters argue no: process theology is not neglecting wrath but translating it into a framework consistent with divine love. God’s “wrath” is not erased but understood as:
God’s grief over brokenness.
God’s unyielding opposition to what destroys life.
The felt consequences of rejecting God’s lure toward wholeness.
5. The Net Effect
Classical view: wrath and love stand in tension almost as if co-equal attributes of God; essentially then, God is both wrath and love, and thusly to be feared.
Process view: God is wholly loving; wrath is not an independent attribute but the shadow side of love in a resistant, non-loving, freewill world.
So process theology does not make God “half-wrathful, half-loving.” It makes God wholly loving, but interprets wrath as the world’s tragic experience of love resisted.
Conclusion
Process theology does not neglect wrath; it repositions it. God is not divided between wrath and love, but wholly loving in nature. What tradition called “wrath” is reframed as either the consequence of resisting divine love or the pathos of God’s opposition to evil. This preserves the seriousness of judgment without making wrath an eternal attribute alongside love.
II
Observation of God's Nature
How is "wrath" contextualized in the dipolarity or multipolarity of God's Nature or Self?
Process Theology’s dipolarity (and some would even say multipolarity) really matters here. Let’s slow down and unpack what “wrath” could mean in a process framework that emphasizes God’s dual aspects. Let's first start with what is meant by divine dipolarity....
1. What is Dipolarity in Process Thought?
Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne describe God as having two poles:
A Primordial Pole - Here, God is eternal. The One who values all possibilities and continually presents a divine “lure” toward harmony, beauty, love across all creation.
A Consequential Pole - This is God as a temporal Being who is "touched" by creation, feeling it deeply. That is God feels and experiences all temporal actualities, sufferings, joys, and activities with the world, responding in real time to creaturely events.
Newer process thinkers some hundred years since Whitehead do now extend the concept of divine dipolarity to a multipolar model, thus highlighting God’s felt responsiveness in multiple relational ways rather than two rigid poles.
2. Where Wrath Fits in Dipolarity
Primordial Pole → Wrath does not belong here. God’s eternal nature is persuasive love, not anger. God does not eternally decree wrathful punishment as consequence to sin.
Consequent Pole → Wrath may be understood here, but reframed. God “feels” the destructiveness of evil, violence, injustice, cruelty. Wrath is not divine rage but divine grief or pathos resulting from human sin and evil:
God grieves over sin and evil.
God resists evil by refusing to integrate it into the divine vision of harmony except as tragedy to be overcome.
Wrath is the “No” of divine love in the face of what violates flourishing.
Thus divine wrath is relationally real - but not metaphysically essential to the primordial nature of God.
3. Multipolar Reading
If we extend dipolarity toward multipolarity (a fuller spectrum of divine responses), wrath could be viewed as one “face” of God’s relational engagement with creation:
As lure: God calls us toward the good (love).
As pathos: God suffers with us (compassion).
As resistance: God opposes what destroys life (wrath).
As creativity: God transforms evil into new possibilities (redemption).
Wrath here is not God’s opposite to love, but love expressed in another register: love’s resistance to sin and evil - as well as God's experience of sin and evil to which God's love responds.
4. Repositioning Wrath
So in process theology:
Wrath is not a timeless attribute in God’s essence.
Wrath is God’s relational opposition to evil, grounded in love, experienced in the (temporal) consequent pole.
From the creaturely side, wrath feels like the direct outcome or consequence of not loving: when we resist the divine lure of love, we run into the tragic structures of reality.
From the divine side, wrath is God’s participatory pathos - the suffering, grieving, and opposing emotions of love against all that corrodes creation.
5. Why This Matters
Traditional theologies: Wrath and love are separate attributes, held either in tension or as co-equal divine attributes (similar to the dipole between justice vs. mercy).
Process theology: Wrath is not a coequal pole with love. Love is the essence; wrath is how love is experienced when resisted.
Multipolar view: God has many modes of relation (lure, compassion, grief, resistance, transformation). Wrath is any one of these as many multiples of these - it is a real but secondary dimension or experience of God’s wholly loving nature.
Conclusion
In process theology, wrath is not erased but reinterpreted through di/multi-polarity.
Primordial pole: only love.
- Consequent pole: love manifest as grief, opposition, even “wrath” against destruction.
- This makes wrath not a rival to love but love's protective and resistant face. God remains wholly loving, yet relationally wrathful against what frustrates love’s aims.
III
How might we reinterpret the ancient and traditional observations of God’s wrath in light of process theology’s dipolar/multipolar framing?
1. Ancient/Traditional Observations of Wrath
From sacrificial practice and covenantal life, the Hebrew tribes inferred:
God takes wrongdoing seriously (a blood sacrifice was demanded).
Divine wrath implies divine anger and judgment.
Divine wrath is a core attribute of God’s holiness, standing alongside mercy.
The offender’s life is spared, but only through substitution.
This yields an image of God as partly wrathful, partly loving - a paradox of severity and mercy we might call "a severe mercy".
2. Repositioning Through Process Dipolarity
Process theology reframes these ancient insights by relocating wrath into the consequent pole of God, rather than God’s primordial essence:
Primordial Pole (Eternal Love): God’s nature is wholly persuasive love, always offering harmony and life. Wrath is not an eternal “trait” of God.
Consequent Pole (Responsive Pathos): Wrath is the way God relationally feels and opposes sin and evil's destruction, injustice, and covenant-breaking. Wrath is real, but it is the shadow side of love in motion, not an equal opposite of love.
Thus, the ancient perception of wrath can be reinterpreted as humanity’s early encounter with God’s resistant aspect of love - felt as judgment, consequence, and holiness.
3. Multipolar Nuance
Expanding beyond dipolarity, we can view God’s wrath as one of many relational expressions:
Love as lure (drawing creatures toward flourishing).
Wrath as resistance (opposing destructive choices).
Compassion as pathos (suffering-with creation).
Creativity as transformation (redeeming tragedy into new possibilities).
In this frame, wrath is not God’s essence, but the protective contour of divine love.
4. What Changes in the Repositioning?
Then (ancient/tradition view): Wrath was inferred as part of God’s essential character - a coequal attribute alongside love.
Now (Process View): Wrath is repositioned as love’s relational stance against evil. It is not erased, but nested within God’s wholly loving nature.
Wrath is not God’s eternal decree of punishment, but God’s grieved and resistant response to life’s violation.
The lamb’s sacrifice can thus be read not as appeasing a wrathful God, but as a human ritual attempt to repair relationship with a God whose love resists covenant-breaking.
5. Summary
The ancient observations of a wrathful God are not dismissed; they are reinterpreted. Wrath is still real - but not a coequal, eternal trait of God’s being. Instead, it is how finite humans experienced the consequent pole of divine love when their lives were out of alignment with the covenant.
In short: what the ancients named “wrath” can, in process theology, be seen as the resistant, protective face of a wholly loving God.
IV
Jesus' Sacrifice
How might a process theology reframe Christ's sacrifice on the Cross by the very Hebraic system which God established?
1. The Heritage of Propitiation
In classical Christian teaching:
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Jesus’ death is a propitiation - a sacrifice that turns away God’s wrath, satisfying divine justice so humanity can be forgiven.
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This flows directly from the logic of covenant sacrifice: sin breaches relationship, blood restores it, and a substitute (lamb, bull, goat) carries the cost.
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As historic background, in Genesis 15, God Himself passes between the pieces of Abraham’s covenant sacrifice, symbolically saying: “If this covenant is broken, may the cost fall on Me as I am the only One who can restore relationship.” Many later Christians read Jesus’ death as God fulfilling this self-binding promise.
2. Was Jesus’ Sacrifice Necessary?
Here the interpretive divide opens:
A. Necessary Divine Act (Traditional View)
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Jesus’ death was God’s self-sacrifice, bearing the covenant curse on behalf of humanity.
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This honors the Abrahamic covenant (Gen. 15) and the entire sacrificial system.
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God’s wrath against sin is real; only divine self-offering can satisfy it without destroying creation.
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In this sense, the Cross is both justice satisfied and love revealed.
B. Symbolic Divine Act (Process View)
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In process categories, "divine" wrath is not a divine eternal trait needing satisfaction.
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Thus, Jesus’ sacrifice was not “necessary” to appease God’s inferred "wrath" as wrath is not a part of God's Nature - but it was necessary for us as religious-symbolic beings.
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Humans needed a symbol of ultimate covenant fidelity, a divine act that embodied God’s willingness to suffer with creation and show that love does not abandon, even in death.
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The Cross becomes the supreme symbol of persuasive love - not a transaction to satisfy wrath, but a revelation of God’s unbreakable solidarity.
3. Integrating the Two in Dipolar Terms
We don’t have to choose between the two extremes. In light of dipolar/multipolar theology:
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From the human perspective, Jesus’ death addressed our perception of wrath and judgment. We needed assurance that sin’s cost was real and borne in full.
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From the divine perspective, the Cross is God’s ultimate act of self-giving love - not to “appease” God, but to reveal God’s true character as love even when wrath is felt.
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Thus, Jesus’ sacrifice is necessary symbolically (for covenantal beings who interpret life through ritual and symbol) and necessary relationally (as God’s self-giving act that fulfills the Abrahamic covenant promise).
4. Summary
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If wrath is coequal with love (traditional view): Jesus’ sacrifice was metaphysically necessary to satisfy God’s wrath and keep covenant.
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If wrath is love’s resistant face (process view): Jesus’ sacrifice was symbolically necessary to assure us that God’s love holds even through sin, death, and tragedy.
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In dipolar synthesis: The Cross is both covenantal fulfillment (God bearing the cost) and relational symbol (God showing love’s solidarity). It unites the ancient language of wrath with the deeper reality of divine love.
And so, Jesus’ sacrifice can be seen as a divine symbol for religious-symbolic beings, and also as the self-binding fulfillment of God’s own covenant promise. In process theology, these are not contradictions but complementary readings of a God whose love expresses itself in many registers - primordial, consequent, symbolic, covenantal.
In process theology, God is not divided between wrath and love; God is wholly love. What we call “wrath” is love’s grief and resistance to sin and evil, while what we call “love” is God’s eternal lure toward life. Divine "wrath" is love in protest; divine love is wrath fulfilled in healing.
Appendix: Christ as Propitiatory Sacrifice
The word “propitiation” belongs naturally to covenantal language. Paul uses it to describe Christ’s death (hilastērion), drawing on the grammar of temple sacrifice and covenant fidelity. In this framework, Christ’s death is indeed a propitiatory act - the covenant cost borne by God’s own self-offering, fulfilling the promise first dramatized when God passed between the halves of Abraham’s sacrifice. It is not about appeasing an angry deity but about God demonstrating His initiative in reconciliation: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).
Yet, over time - both in ancient perceptions of God and even now in present perceptions of God - “propitiation” became stretched beyond its covenantal setting. The image was hardened into doctrines of eternal hellfire, purgatorial torment, and a God imagined primarily as wrathful judge. Covenant symbol became cosmic ontology, and God’s character was cast in terms of punitive horror: an eternal torturer rather than a steadfast lover.
Process theology repositions this language. Wrath is not an eternal attribute of God, demanding appeasement; it is love’s grief and resistance to sin's destruction, experienced in the world as consequence. God is wholly loving, and the Cross is the supreme revelation of that love - not rage satisfied but solidarity enacted. Christ as propitiatory sacrifice is God bearing the weight of our fear of divine wrath and transforming it into assurance of unbreakable love.
In this sense, “propitiation” remains right and appropriate covenant terminology, but it must not be mistaken for the essence of God’s being. For process theology, it is a symbol pointing beyond wrath to the heart of God as love itself.
A Suggested Outline
1. Paul’s Use of Propitiation
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Paul reaches for sacrificial language (hilastērion) because covenant categories are the shared grammar of his audience.
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In that frame, Christ is indeed a propitiatory act: the covenant curse borne by God’s own self-offering, a symbol of ultimate fidelity and reconciliation.
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For Paul, this was less about appeasing divine rage and more about declaring God’s initiative in grace: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19).
2. The Horror of Wrath-Centered Theologies
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Over centuries, “propitiation” was stretched beyond covenantal limits:
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Hell as eternal burning.
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Purgatory as punitive cleansing fire.
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God’s essence imagined as wrathful judge first, loving redeemer second.
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These developments turned symbolic covenantal imagery into ontological absolutes, presenting God as essentially punitive.
3. Processual Re-reading
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Process theology cuts to the root of this distortion: God is not wrath and love in competition; God is wholly love.
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Wrath is not God’s essence but love’s resistance to destruction, God’s grief over brokenness, God’s “No” to what corrodes life.
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In this light, the Cross is not divine rage satisfied but divine love revealed — the ultimate act of solidarity with suffering creation.
4. The Pastoral and Theological Shift
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If wrath is seen as God’s essence, religion tends toward fear, horror, and coercion — heaven and hell divided by an arbitrary decree.
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If love is God’s essence, religion moves toward healing, transformation, and invitation — wrath as the felt consequence of resisting love, never as an eternal decree of torture.
Conclusion
The word “propitiation” is covenantally right — it names how God bore the cost of relationship. But when misread as proof that wrath is God’s deepest essence, it generates the nightmare of a deity who eternally torments creation. The process view insists instead: God is not wrath tempered by love, but love experienced as both lure and resistance. Christ as propitiatory sacrifice is not God appeasing Himself, but God showing once for all that love bears all things, even the full weight of our fear of divine wrath — and transforms it.
