The Sense & Sensibility of Process Theology Combined with the Gracious Orthodoxy of Church and Liturgy

What happens when church and liturgy meet real life the way it is meant to be? When we discover fellowship, service and ministry are the bedrocks for relational enjoyment, identity and being? When community opens up to embrace the fullness of its members, their cultures, and religions? Welcome to the healing lands of process theology which imbues all things with spirit of the living God flowing through the lands of the living like air, water and light as each flows through the connectedness of creation as one symmetry underlying all as music upon the heart of God.

R.E. Slater

October 7, 2017

Wings Of Love by Marilyn Biles. Posted in Episcopal Art Blog
by C. Robin Janning on May 11, 2013

What is Missing in Process Theology

by Jay McDaniel
and
What I Learn from Process Theology

by Teri Daily 

* * * * * * * * *

What Is Missing in Process Theology

http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/what-is-missing-in-process-theology.html

by Jay McDaniel, Editor of JJB

Something's missing in process theology and I've known it a long time. Teri Daily helps me put a name to it. Process theology is not orthodox enough, at least in the way that Teri Daily is orthodox. Let me back up:

WHAT IS PROCESS THEOLOGY?

For me process theology is not a metaphysical philosophy but rather a set of sensibilities: a cluster of motivating intuitions, values, and attitudes. When process theology is reduced to a mere set of ideas to which people adhere -- or worse than that, a metaphysical system that seems to answer all important questions -- it lapses into a fundamentalism of its own. I've seen it with my own eyes, a couple of times while looking into the mirror.

That's why I say that, at least for me, process theology is a set of sensibilities rather than a system; and these sensibilities can be internalized by people from different religious traditions: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Unitarian, Taoist, Confucian, and Bahai, for example.

Process theology is now a multi-faith tradition. Most of us in the process community trust and hope that the sensibilities important to us will be concretized and particularized in different kinds of communities, which will add distinctive richness and wisdom of their own. As I write this I am reading an advance copy of a book called God of Becoming and Relationship by Rabbi Bradley Artson, of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies in Los Angeles, to be published by Jewish Lights Publishing, in the Fall of 2013. It will be Jewish process theology. Hindu and Buddhist and Muslim process theologies are now being developed.

Teri Daily has named many of the sensibilities that are important to me and other process thinkers of different faiths:

• Generosity of spirit embodied in the embrace of diversity

• Common ground for interfaith dialog

• The call to humility

• Playfulness and imagination as part of the spiritual journey

• Novelty in the face of tragedy

• The tender nature of God

These are good things about process theology. It is what draws us to process theology and to the philosophy of Whitehead.

It is noteworthy to me that only THE second one -- common ground for interfaith dialog -- implies a reference to Whitehead's philosophy as a framework for appreciating the different yet complementary forms of beauty and wisdom that can be embodied by different religious traditions.

But it seems to me that the others can well be embraced, and are embraced, by people from different religious traditions and no religious tradition. You don't really need Whitehead to be humble, or to face tragedy in a spirit of novelty, or to trust in the tender nature of God. Many orthodox Christians -- and people of other faiths and no faith as well -- were doing these things long before process theology was ever conceived. That is good news.

Moreover, even the second item Teri names -- common ground for interfaith dialog -- presupposes an attitude of welcoming interfaith dialog, which likewise need not be based on Whitehead. Whitehead's philosophy is an invitation to have a hospitable heart and open mind, but [it is] not a precondition for those qualities. This is good news, too. And this is why process theologians rightly recognize that it would be a sad world indeed, all too devoid of diversity, if everyone became a Whiteheadian. In our world there needs to be competing worldviews, many of which can elicit the sensibilities identified above from radically different and opposing points of view. Teri has it right: "Agreement is overrated."

As I see things, Whitehead's philosophy is helpful because it offers a way of affirming these and other sensibilities, showing how they are all connected. It helps with many other topics, too:

• It helps with a dialogue between religion and science;

• it helps in affirming the value of aesthetic as well as ethical experience;

• it helps with appreciating the intrinsic value of all living beings, not humans alone.

Perhaps most importantly,

• it offers a powerful alternative to mechanistic ways of thinking that emerged in the West in the seventeenth century.

It is a philosophy of organism which helps people re-claim and also advance organic ways of thinking that have been part of many cultural traditions: Middle-Eastern, South Asian, African, East Asian, and American. Nevertheless, the verbalized propositions in Whitehead's philosophy are not the heart of the matter. They are, in his own words, lures for feeling and appeals to intuition. What is important about Whitehead's philosophy are the sensibilities to which his words point and the feelings they can help evoke.

Here is the problem. We humans cannot live by sensibilities alone. We need practices and traditions, community and rituals, meditation and prayer. We need stories, too, and opportunities for service. These offer wisdom and substance to a life that cannot be provided by theology alone, much less metaphysical systems. And this is one of the many things that I myself am reminded of, when I learn from orthodoxy, Teri Daily style.

How to put this? Teri Daily often uses two words as an abbreviation for practices and traditions, communities and rituals, meditation and prayer, stories and service: Church and Liturgy. Of course she has in mind the Christian church and Christian liturgy because, after all, she is a Christian priest. But if we widen our sense of church and liturgy to include other forms of community and tradition, then my point is that most of us -- maybe even all of us -- need something like church and liturgy, something like community and practice, to become the people we probably want to be: carriers of God's love: love of other people, love of the earth, love of heaven and, yes, love of ourselves.

Buddhists tell us that wisdom and compassion are the two most important virtues. I think the sensibilities are vessels for these virtues. But how do sensibilities gain a foothold in history, or even in a local community, unless they are enlivened, enriched, and deepened by church and liturgy.

Most process theologians know this. Many belong to churches, synagogues, sanghas, and temples. Or at least book clubs and maybe bowling clubs. But their weakness -- our weakness -- is that we too often focus on worldviews or, in my case, sensibilities, at the expense of the nitty-gritty of the incarnate life. We fall into the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Especially if we are Christian (but not as much if we are Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu) we fall into the bane of white, western, male-dominated Protestant Christianity [with an] an overemphasis on belief and worldviews. We dwell too much in our heads. The orthodox Christianity which Teri Daily so well represents is a healthy and wonderful antidote to head-based Christianity and, for that matter, head-based process theology.

There is something else missing in process theology, and that is a recognition that, as meaningful as the process idea of God is to many people, there's more to God than is contained in the idea. It is important to orthodox Christians not to reduce God to a being among beings who can be encapsulated within a philosophy and thus reduced to an object about which people have convictions. I will say more about this in closing, but first a further word about sensibilities.

RELATIONALITY

I want to add two sensibilities that are also important to many process thinkers, and that Teri doesn't list but are quite evident in her life and also entailed in orthodox Christianity as she understands it. The first is relationality.

Many turn to process theology because it emphasizes that we humans, while delightfully different from each other, are also formed through our relationships with each other and, for that matter, with other animals and the surrounding world. We process-influenced pilgrims agree with Teri Daily; these relationships can be deeply loving. She believes that the God is the perfection of love and we do, too. She believes that this love is deeply relational and we do, too. Indeed, what she says of the Trinity we say of the universe as well. Process theology affirms the primacy of what Buddhists call inter-being and propose that even the Soul of the universe -- even God -- is formed through loving relationships with the world. This is why we also call ourselves relational theologians.

Teri Daily finds a similar perspective in the Trinity, which for her is not simply an idea that is reflected upon but, more deeply, a reality that is felt and also, in the liturgy, danced. She speaks often of a space within the Trinity in which all beings, not Christians alone and not humans alone, are held, which seems to me very much like the spacious love of God as understood in process theology.

I see with her help that the Trinity -- as felt -- is both the reality of, and an invitation for, the kind of difference-respecting yet destiny-sharing love that is important to process theology. I find myself believing very much in "the space within the Trinity" and I hope that orthodox Christianity can help me better walk within this space. I do not ask people of other paths to be Trinitarian; I know that one in whose love I want to walk, Jesus, was no Trinitarian. But I suspect that his heart was opened in a Trinitarian way and I'd like for my heart to be opened in this way, too. Still, think he must have felt the Trinity. I suspect he danced it, too, at weddings, when he beheld lilies of the field, and when he suffered little children to come unto him. I learn from Teri Daily that the Trinity is not simply something we feel, it is also something we do.

CREATIVE TRANSFORMATION

The other idea that is so important to process thinkers is creative transformation. It's the idea that we walk with God by being open to novelty, not only in times of suffering but in all times. As I read what she has written I know that she has this in mind with two of her emphases: playfulness and imagination as part of the spiritual journey and novelty in the face of tragedy.

But what strikes me about her essay, and what I find helpful and inspiring, is that she herself so vividly exemplifies the spirit of creative transformation with help from, not despite, her orthodoxy. Hear the last line of her essay: "Perhaps there will be more changes along the way, and another installment of 'an orthodox-oriented Christian encounters process theology.' I look forward to it."

She explains earlier that this hospitable approach to being changed by the voice of other people and other ideas comes, not from process theology, but from orthodox Christianity itself. Hers is not a rigid or fixed orthodoxy. It is a creative orthodoxy that nourishes her with a freedom to listen and be changed, and with a freedom, if needed, to leave orthodoxy behind in fidelity to the very God to whom orthodoxy points. I can only hope that I have the courage to be changed in just this way, to listen to orthodoxy and a range of other perspectives in an open way, and to leave process theology behind if Wisdom calls. May those of us in the process community be as receptive to creative transformation as Teri Daily is.

But she knows and we know that the deepest forms of creative transformation are not exactly mental but more holistic. Hear these words of hers:

We encounter the Holy in brief, life-changing moments that can’t be described with words, that can’t be mapped out, that can’t in and of themselves be organized into an over-arching system of thought. Such experiences often don’t lend themselves to an adequate construction of meaning, and so we need the experiences of others in order for us to make sense of our own.

A danger of having a theology that means too much to you is that you will use it to organize the moments of your life into "an over-arching system of thought.." There is a resistance in orthodox Christians of the kind she represents to fall into such systemolatry. For orthodox Christians in her tradition, the liturgy and sacraments are much more important than systems; and this freedom from dogma, this freedom from system-worship, is at the heart of creative orthodoxy. In this and in so many other ways, orthodoxy offers a prophetic word to process theologians, and it is called liturgy. Liturgy opens us up into the possibility of life-changing moments in ways that systems can never understand. It opens us up into novelty or, as process theologians like to say, creative transformation.

THE SPIRIT OF THREE-NESS

We process-influenced travelers speak of God as the spirit of creative transformation in the world. We say that God is not a created good but is instead the creative good. This creative good is like a third person in an otherwise binary relationship, who perpetually unsettles pre-existing habits of thought, feelings, and actions by proposing new possibilities that the first two [individuals] never thought of. But the truth is they are third persons, too. Teri Daily helps me see that three is better than two, because it opens all partners involved into [a] newness [of imagination, living and worship.]

If this newness is part of what orthodox Christians mean by threeness, then process theologians of many faiths can learn from orthodoxy. We believe in threeness and call it the spirit, the creative good. There is a space within the three that is always moving and never still, productive of novelty and surprising all parties involved, changing them from who they have been into who they can become. There's an important social lesson here. Threeness takes us beyond binary thinking into multiplicity thinking where each particular is preciously odd, preciously unique, preciously queer, because not reducible to any other or any "system of categories" we might impose upon ourselves and the world. In a certain sense threeness is a metaphor for deep and creative multiplicity, both heavenly and earthly. It makes space for differences.

We process travellers know that we cannot contain the spirit of threeness and pretend that it is an object in our minds. We know that the spirit is like the wind, blowing wherever it will. At our best we remember that the spirit flows from a mystery that can never be contained by our minds or ensconced within our systems. It is not "the primordial nature of God" or "the consequent nature of God" or any such nature that fits within a conceptual whole. The very idea of "natures" is problematic, if hardened into fixed essences in the imagination.

I suspect that one of the deepest lessons we can learn from orthodoxy is that we have been far too sure of ourselves and insufficiently humble in the presence of mystery. The more we know our unknowing, the more we can dance freely, without pretending we have all the answers, in the space of the Trinity, however understood. And then we will better understand that transcendence belongs, not only to the creative good, but also to each finite being - each person, each plant, each animal -- who forever transcends whatever worldview we might bring to the world, thanks be to the mystery of life.

Objects congeal around little specks of Cosmos. Some objects hide and protect us from this immensity.
Some objects may form points of access to this immensity. Many are both – we need them to be both.

Images above, top: Altar of St. Francis; and, bottom: Bronze Altar #7356

by David Orth. Words above from Threshold Objects by David Orth.

Read more HERE. And a special thanks to the Episcopal Cafe Art Blog

for sharing: http://www.episcopalcafe.com/art/. Originally posted by

C. Robin Janning on May 6, 2013

* * * * * * * * *

 What I Learn from Process Theology

http://www.jesusjazzbuddhism.org/what-is-missing-in-process-theology.html

by Teri Daily, Episcopal Priest

Image by Jeanelle McCall. Originally posted
by C. Robin Janning in Episcopal Art Blog,
 April 9, 2013.

When Jay McDaniel suggested that I write an article for JJB along the lines of “an orthodox-oriented Christian encounters process theology,” I was pretty much immediately onboard. But some disclosures might be in order at the outset. I am not an academic theologian; I am a parish priest. And one with a fairly limited knowledge of process thought. My experience with process theology in seminary was limited to the following three occasions: 1) a brief encounter with Catherine Keller’s Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming while making an argument myself for creatio ex nihilo, 2) reading Proverbs of Ashes by Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker in a Feminist Theologies class, and 3) using an in-depth look at Catherine Keller’s Apocalypse Now and Then to suggest that a process understanding of eschatology might have a prophetic word to offer the Anglican Communion in the midst of conflict.

Recently, I have resumed my relationship with process theology. For the past eight months I have read JJB faithfully. I have also read Bob Mesle’s book Process-Relational Philosophy: An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead, The Handbook of Process Theology edited by Jay McDaniel and Donna Bowman, a few other books by Jay, The Metaphor Maker by Patricia Adams Farmer, and (with John B. Cobb Jr.’s Whitehead Word Book by my side) Whitehead’s Process and Reality. But that, I confess, is the sum total of my lifetime experience with process theology.

Finally, I consider myself an “orthodox” Christian who is deeply drawn to the sacraments. I say the creeds without embarrassment and without crossing my fingers behind my back, I find my life shaped by liturgical seasons and the rhythms of worship, and I accept (sometimes more easily than others) the meaningful and authoritative role of tradition in my own faith journey. That being said, I also find myself drawn to process theology—not despite, but precisely by way of, my orthodox understanding of God and my sacramental view of both religion and the world.

Let me try to make this connection—not meaning to imply that it is the only pathway from one to the other, just that it happens to be mine. For orthodox Christians, metaphysical (or analogical) transcendence—with God as source of all being and not one being among many—is the very means of intimacy with God. It allows God to be present with and in the world without competition between God and creation when it comes to agency, power, dignity, or will. By virtue of God’s transcendence, we participate in the life of God not as something separate from or reducible to our experience within the world, but as a dimension within our daily lives that is, at times, revealed unexpectedly to us.

We encounter the Holy in brief, life-changing moments that can’t be described with words, that can’t be mapped out, that can’t in and of themselves be organized into an over-arching system of thought. Such experiences often don’t lend themselves to an adequate construction of meaning, and so we need the experiences of others in order for us to make sense of our own. According to William Countryman in Living on the Border of the Holy: Renewing the Priesthood of All, this is where the priesthood of all humanity comes in.

My own ordination to the priesthood is really a sacrament of sorts; my presence as a priest is meant to be “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace” that is, in reality, the priesthood as it exists in all humanity. The priesthood we see in religion is a reminder that we are all meant to be priests to one another—to share our experiences of the Holy and to help one another make sense of them in ways that bring meaning to our lives. Countryman describes this priesthood of all humanity beautifully in this passage:

Since we are, by nature, finite beings, each of us limited by time and space, none of us will ever experience directly more than one life’s worth of God, of Truth, of Reality. What each of us comes to know are fragments of something immeasurably larger than we can grasp. My neighbor knows other fragments, which may well be the ones to make sense of my own. Therefore, I must turn to my neighbor in search of understanding, in search of the priestly ministries that can flow from that person’s experience. And my neighbor will need to turn to others, too—perhaps to me.[1]

Image by Virginia Wieringa. Originally posted by
C. Robin Janning in Episcopal Art Blog, June 16, 2013.

Those interested in process theology may well want to expand this universal priesthood to include other aspects of creation—such as animals, rivers, trees, and distant galaxies. And rightly so. But the point I want to make is this: If I believe that all creation directly participates in and experiences God, that God is much greater than any single one of us (or even all of us together) can comprehend, and that the priesthood is both sacramental and universal in nature, then I have to acknowledge that truth can be found outside my well-constructed system of beliefs and practices. In short, I have to be willing to seek and honor truth as it is found in process theology, too.

There is an irony here: It is my own understanding of what it means to be an orthodox Christian that pushes me to explore process theology, and yet the exploration itself may ultimately change the very faith that brought me here. It already has. In fact, the willingness to be changed by an encounter is the defining characteristic of true and holy hospitality. As Scott Bader-Saye writes,

"The true practice of openness to the other, of hospitality, means that “we must be ready to let our identities morph over time, allowing the stranger to become friend and in so doing change in some way how we see ourselves.”[2]

Sometimes my encounter with process theology has felt like the collision of two theological tectonic plates, resulting in a radical change in the landscape.[3] At other times this encounter has seemed more like a blowing wind, slowly changing the landscape in subtle ways. Sometimes this encounter has been priestly in nature, revealing new understandings and ways of seeing. At other times it has borne the marks of the biblical prophetic tradition, calling me back to aspects of my faith that I have neglected or forgotten. But almost always this encounter with process theology has been a source of balance and grace within my own spiritual life.

So here are just a few aspects of process theology (as I have experienced it) that have enriched my own faith:

1) Generosity of spirit embodied in the embrace of diversity – I have found in process theology a generosity of spirit, embodied in its embrace of diversity. Perhaps this is one of the strongest pulls for me. An explicit distinction between contrast and incompatibility, a desire for contrasts (even contrasts of contrasts), an understanding of beauty that requires as much difference as can be harmonized, God as lure toward greater beauty—all this presents diversity not as a threat, but as an essential element in a beautiful life. In the Church, we often understand diversity through the lens of Paul’s description of various spiritual gifts within the Body of Christ—“To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Corinthians 12:7). There is definitely beauty in the harmonic, cooperative nature of community, no doubt. But can’t difference be beautiful in its own right, apart from the work it makes possible? Can’t we delight in the very existence of diversity, in a harmonization that is not purely functional? Process theologians would, I think, say “yes.”

2) Common ground for interfaith dialogue – While embracing diversity certainly stirs the desire for interfaith dialogue, I’m not sure that it alone makes such dialogue possible. Perhaps process thought is so conducive to interfaith dialogue because it allows conversation from the perspective of a philosophical system rather than a particular faith narrative. Of course, it can be argued that there is an embedded narrative within all systematic thought—in process thought, it’s a story of change and permanence woven throughout time, of the ever-present promise of newness, of a Love that always remembers. But when an explicit and dearly-held narrative alone is what undergirds one’s faith, such as the incarnation and the resurrection for many Christians, a starting place and common language for interfaith dialogue can be challenging to find.

3) The call to humility – In a world where contradictory certainties in the form of “talking heads” flood every twenty-four hour news channel, I find Whitehead’s humility in the preface to Process and Reality to be a prophetic reminder for this and every time:

There remains the final reflection, how shallow, puny, and imperfect are efforts to sound the depths in the nature of things. In philosophical discussion, the merest hint of dogmatic certainty as to finality of statement is an exhibition of folly.

For my own spiritual path, it is a reminder that faith and mystery go hand-in-hand, and that any absolute claim to truth is a form of idolatry.

4) Playfulness and imagination as part of the spiritual journey – Once we let go of the oppressive idea that we should or ever could grace the world with the complete knowledge of absolute Truth, playfulness and imagination quite naturally become part of our search to know God. I see it all over JJB—finding God in fudge, mashups, the self-dependence of cats, and everything in-between. Why in our culture do we always associate linear, rigid logic with truth and imagination or fantasy with falsehood? Maybe the storyline of modernity keeps us from seeing the crucial role imagination plays in the world. Maybe that’s why this statement from Whitehead in Process and Reality (Part I, Chapter 1) was, for me, a freeing revelation of sorts:

After the basis of a rational life, with a civilized language, has been laid, all productive thought has proceeded either by the poetic insight of artists, or by the imaginative elaboration of schemes of thought capable of utilization as logical premises. In some measure or other, progress is always a transcendence of what is obvious.

Image by Melissa Strickler. Originally posted
by C. Robin Janning in Episcopal Art Blog,
 June 16, 2013.

5) Novelty in the midst of tragedy – I admire process thought for its profound appreciation of novelty and hope, held in tension with its refusal to trivialize the tragic dimension of the world in which we live. It’s precisely this tension that resonates with my own understanding of the beauty of resurrection. Grace is not found in denying or trivializing the loss, suffering, and pain that are part of our story; instead, grace is found in the new life that comes through it.

6) The tender nature of God – I find the tenderness of God in process theology to be like a mother who meticulously gathers up the pain and joy of her children like pieces of glass scattered on a hard tile floor. She then creates from those shards of glass a totally new piece of art that embodies (in Whitehead’s words) “truth, beauty, and goodness.” In this work, all the sufferings, pain, joys, and triumphs are redeemed, made whole, and offered back in an act of love. To label this mother as “all-powerful” or “not all-powerful” is not something I feel compelled to do, for I can’t imagine anything more deeply powerful or salvific than a love like this.

Of course, there are other elements of process theology that have also influenced my spiritual life, and there are some that do not resonate with my own experience. Agreement is overrated. I suspect that there are as many understandings of God/Truth/Life as there are people on this planet (and maybe even beyond). At the end of the day, I trust that God is found in the journey itself and not just in the end, in the seeking and not just in the finding, in fellow travelers we encounter on the way and not just in those who have already arrived.

I am grateful to have the JJB community as companions on the way, as priests and prophets in my own spiritual journey. And I’m grateful to Jay McDaniel for a friendship of holy hospitality. Perhaps there will be more changes along the way, and another installment of “an orthodox-oriented Christian encounters process theology.” I look forward to it.

You might also enjoy these articles by Teri Daily:

These Kids are Gorgeous: Seeing Beauty in an Asymmetrical World

Love Made Gritty

Love's Oblivion: Mary Anoints Jesus' Feet

Angels Everywhere: Revelation's Image of the New Jerusalem

The Space within the Trinity: All Beings Included

The Space to See Things Differently: The Ascension of Christ

Mothers of God

Bearing Witness to Broken Bodies

So You want to be a Doctor?

Robert B. Mellert - What Is Process Theology: Chapters 11 & 12

What Is Process Theology?

http://www.religion-online.org/book/what-is-process-theology/

by Robert B. Mellert

Dr. Mellert is an assistant professor in the department of theological studies at the University of Dayton.

Published by Paulist Press, New York, Paramus, Toronto, 1975. This material was prepared for Religion Online by Ted and Winnie Brock.

Summary

(ENTIRE BOOK) Dr. Meller writes about Whiteheadian thought, without the jargon and technical intricacies, so that the lay person might have better understanding of the thinking of the founder of process philosophy.

Chapters

Preface

Few libraries had any books on Whiteheadian thought in 1947 when he died. Today libraries of all sorts have shelves laden with books trying to explain, interpret and apply his thinking, but these authors are inclined to talk to each other. The author attempts to make process thought understandable to the rest of us.

Chapter 1: Why Something New?

The core of process thought: Rather than a “substance theology” based on static, spatial models, process thought “switches gears” to a concern with spatial-temporal models such as change in God, Christ becoming divine and the on-going process of revelation.

Chapter 2 Some Basic Concepts

Some basic Whiteheadian concepts: becoming, actual occasions, eternal objects, prehensions.

Chapter 3: Religion

The author contrasts Whitehead’s thought with traditional religions which start with proof of God. Whitehead inverts the process, starting with the experience of religion and grasping the truth that there is more at issue in the world than the world itself.

Chapter 4: God

God is constantly changing as he includes more and more reality in his consequent nature. What we do on earth makes a difference in the very reality of God.

Chapter 5: Creation, Grace, Glory and the Kingdom

Dr. Mellert discusses the relations both of God to the world and the world to God.

Chapter 6: Man

Process thought is being compatible with the presumptions of Christian faith and is friendly with Christian ideas regarding body and soul.

Chapter 7: Jesus

Jesus is unique because in his humanity he presents a more perfect model of ideal humanity than has ever existed, or will ever exist. He is divine because of the realization of that divinity within him.

Chapter 8: The Church

The Church is a process whereby individuals come to believe in Jesus and add the weight of their belief to the furtherance of the process that is the Church. The Church is not a stable, immutable institution that has existed since the time of Jesus.

Chapter 9: Sacraments

In the process perspective, each sacramental action is both created by the community and creative of the community. Concrete experiences of the past contribute positively to the present and are immanently incorporated in what the present is becoming.

Chapter 10: Morality

The new and the old morality are both inadequate. Process thought can make important contributions to the old and new because it is both metaphysical and flexible.

Chapter 11: Immortality

Process theology as a provider of a solid philosophical framework for a great diversity of human experience and belief. It therefore is helpful in synthesizing the diversity of interpretations of immortality.

Chapter 12: Theology and Relativity

The notion of relativity that process theology employs is discussed. All reality is inter-related in space and time, and no single real entity has a prior absoluteness that stands outside the process of reality as a whole.

* * * * * * * * * *

Chapter 11: Immortality

http://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/chapter-11-immortality/

The ultimate mystery of life is death. Science and philosophy can tell us a lot about life, but when the final moment of life has passed us by, they must abandon us to our faith. Death transcends the powers of reason and shrouds itself in ineffability. Despite this eternal verity, there is presently a surge of interest in death and in the speculation about what, if anything, occurs after death. Inter-disciplinary courses are being taught in colleges and numerous new books and articles are being published dealing with the topic. What makes this enterprise so fascinating is that there are no criteria for determining which opinions are right and which are wrong. Spiritualists and rationalists both contribute their evidence and compare notes, but in the final analysis the mystery always remains.

Traditionally the Church has answered this question for its faithful with its teaching on the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell. At the moment of death, each soul is called to a particular judgment by God. As a consequence of the way one lived on earth, the soul is then determined for a heaven of eternal happiness with God or a hell of everlasting fire. Since the presence of God is reserved only for the worthy, imperfections and lesser evils in one’s life have to be “worked off” before the beatific vision is possible. This intermediate state of purification is a place of temporary suffering, called purgatory. Finally, for those souls never officially admitted to membership and grace in the Church, a fourth place, called limbo, allows them the fullness of natural happiness, but without the vision of God.

There is, of course, no way to dispute the Church’s teaching, nor is there any way apart from faith that it can be proved. For many theologians today, however, the doctrine is too intertwined with ancient culture, tradition and myth to be literally credible. Their recent reflections on the subject have resulted in drawing together ideas from anthropology, psychology and philosophy, as well as theology, in order to profit from new insights regarding the counsel that reason can offer to faith in clarifying the issue for the individual believer.

In the absence of indisputable evidence, the theologian too must ultimately make up his mind about an issue according to what he believes. If he is honest with himself — and hopefully most theologians are — his belief will be formed from the best evidence he can muster. But in the matter of death and immortality, none of his evidence can be verified. It is not surprising, therefore, that theologians, even within a single school of thought such as process theology, will argue a variety of positions regarding death and immortality. In fact, among process theologians such a diversity does indeed exist.

Whitehead himself was somewhat ambiguous on the subject. He does deal with death in a way that is logical and coherent in his theoretical synthesis and in a way that is open to a variety of imagery for pastoral purposes. The question of the afterlife, however, is left unresolved. For Whitehead, dying (or to use his term “perishing”) is the antithesis of emerging, and each is continually occurring in every moment in every bit of reality. Only in the constant ebb and flow of emerging and perishing is change and enrichment possible. Perishing, therefore, is just as essential to the world as emerging.

In his essay on “Immortality”1 Whitehead says that there are two abstract worlds, the “World of Value” and the “World of Activity.” Neither is explainable except in terms of the other. Value can only be explained in terms of its realization in concrete actual occasions as they emerge and perish. Thus, “value” is always experienced as “values.” Values are concrete, individual and unique contributions to future actualities. The realization of a particular moment of actuality is likewise the realization of a particular value, and this becomes part of the data for the succeeding moments of actuality. Values derived from the past are thus immanently incorporated into each emerging occasion. This is what Whitehead means by “immortality.” Nothing that is of value is ultimately lost. Apart from such immanent incorporation, nothing could be preserved, and “value” itself would have no ultimate meaning.

This understanding of value is exactly parallel to Whitehead’s notion of God. God, like every actual entity, is di-polar, reflecting both the mental and the physical, both the World of Value and the World of Activity. These two aspects in the divinity are, as we have seen, called God’s primordial and consequent natures, lust as God, if he is to be actual, must be really related to the world and allow it to be incorporated into himself, so also the World of Value, if it is to be more than pure abstraction, must be realized in the World of Activity. That is why value, in its concrete reality, is none other than the concrete elements of process. God embodies this in himself in his consequent nature, and offers it back to the world in each emerging occasion. To put it another way, the world adds activity to God and God adds value to the world.

The perishing of an actual occasion, therefore, need not be its extinction. Rather, it can be understood as a kind of switching of modes. Whereas in the emerging of an actual occasion God’s immanence is felt in the incorporation of value, in its perishing that actual occasion is felt immanently in God as a fuller realization of the divinity. In this way the occasion continues to be felt in the formation of the future. Death, then, is emphatically not a passing into nothingness. Instead, it is immanent incorporation into God, in whom each actuality is experienced everlastingly for its own uniqueness and individuality. In dying, one “gets out of the way” of the present in order to be available to the future in a new way.

Does this doctrine of immortality, which Whitehead calls “objective immortality,” correspond to the faith expectations of those who seek the reassurance of an afterlife, a place of eternal happiness, or a heaven? In some fundamental ways, at least, I think that it does. The basis for their belief is the impossibility of man’s conceiving of himself as not being. The one absolute and certain experience that endures throughout his entire life is the experience of being in the present, recalling the past, and anticipating a future. One experiences a profound continuity with oneself in space and time.

Everyone has moments of unconsciousness where his experience of the world around him is temporarily interrupted. The most common example is sleep. But one always awakes to find himself the same person he was when he slumbered. There is an experience of the continuity of the self as far back as the memory permits. To think of this continuity as being abruptly and completely terminated is almost impossible to imagine or accept. This is the reason why man so often seeks to find a place and a time for himself after his death. That place can be a paradise free from the evils and insecurities of earthly existence, or it may simply be a place in the records of history or the lives of one’s offspring. However he imagines it, it gives him some extension in time in which to maintain the continuity of self into the future.

This problem is acute in Western culture where one must reconcile death and immortality with lineal time. For lineal time, unlike cyclical time, implies an ending, termination or death, or at least a state of permanence, where time (and therefore change) is no more. Hence the common Western belief that once the final state of man has been reached, the world of activity is effectively excluded from his existence. This is just as true for those who believe that their personal extinction is permanent in death as it is for those who anticipate personal salvation in a heaven where suffering and sin are no more. In both cases, death is a permanent thing, and the forces of change are no longer relevant. The alternative to total annihilation for Western man is bare existence in an absolutely unchanging condition!

The belief of permanency after death has always been one of the difficulties of the Christian doctrine of heaven. On the one hand, Christian tradition holds that at the moment of death the eternal fate of the person is irretrievably sealed. Heaven is eternal happiness and hell is eternal punishment. In traditional thought this is necessary, because if the happiness is to be perfect, it cannot be threatened by change. Since the possibility of change is itself the cause of insecurity, perfect happiness is realizable only in the state of total security and stability. So, the Christian believes in the permanence of his final state.

But what possible meaning can be assigned to experience if it does not involve change? To experience is to take account of things outside the self and to allow them to affect the self, and this implies undergoing some change in the self. What we experience becomes a part of us. This necessarily alters the reality of the continuity that is the self, and it implies an absence of certitude about the future. Consequently, when personal experiences are admitted as part of the belief in heaven, the belief in the absolute changelessness of the afterlife is put into serious question. Thus, the dilemma. Either personal experience is retained, in which case the series of actual occasions constituting the self continues, and change is still possible, or personal experience is abandoned in favor of permanency, in which case immortality can only consist in a completed and non-experiencing self, whose existence consists in being experienced by another as an objectively immortal actuality.

The openness of Whitehead’s thought on this point permits an explanation of the religious hereafter according to either possibility, and this is why process theologians often differ among themselves without abandoning their fidelity to the process system. We will begin with an explanation of the latter possibility, since this is a more direct application of Whitehead’s own doctrine of ‘‘objective immortality.’’ Here the emphasis is on permanency. What one was during life, especially during the final moments of life, determines what one is eternally. In this interpretation, the series of actual occasions that constitutes the continuity of the self throughout one’s personal history culminates in one final occasion in which that history is synthesized. The entire continuity, but especially this final synthetic occasion in the continuity, is experienced by God and becomes a part of the data of God’s own actuality. In this way each person is immortalized everlastingly in God, retaining permanently his own uniqueness and individuality, and contributing that uniqueness as data to a fuller appreciation of value and novelty for the future. However, this interpretation does not allow for any further subjective experiences or subjective change.

One can also argue for the possibility of “subjective immortality” using the thought of Whitehead.2 In this interpretation the series of actual occasions that constitutes the continuity of the self is not interrupted or terminated by death; it only changes the environment in which it does its experiencing. The ordinary environment for the experiencing self is the body. However, there is no necessary reason why the series of actual occasions that constitutes the self cannot continue in some other non-material environment. Hence, death can be understood as the detachment of that dominant series of actual occasions we recognize as the self from the many supportive material series which constitute the human body. The new environment is the consequent nature of God, where the serial reality of the self continues to experience and to change, but without any direct attachment to the material world.

Given the Whiteheadian frame of reference, both of these interpretations are philosophically consistent within themselves, even though they may not be reconcilable with each other. Therefore, the decision which to choose in articulating one’s belief depends upon the belief itself. This can actually be a significant advantage to the process theologian. Unlike other theological questions, which can be studied and discussed at leisure, the issue of immortality often arises in the context of a sudden personal tragedy. At such moments, the theologian would like to be able to provide an immediate, clear and definitive answer to comfort the dying or the bereaved. But in fact he must embarrassingly reply that there is no certain knowledge about what happens on the other side. There is only the assurance of one’s personal faith.

Even the assurance of faith, however, must demonstrate a certain credibility. This means that it must seem reasonable to the one who believes. At this point the theologian can perhaps be of some practical help. Even while not being able to offer certitude, he can suggest reasons why the faith of the believer is plausible, whether that faith be in the literal continuance of subjective experiencing in a heaven or hell, or in some kind of objective permanence in human history. Thus, in those cases where the person does not want a reaffirmation of the traditional symbols about life after death in his particular circumstances, the appropriate theological explanation is Whitehead’s “objective immortality.” This option can be illustrated by religious statements suggesting that a goodness is never lost, that the world is permanently enriched by the past, and that God himself is magnified because of the goodness of each human person. On the other hand, process theology can also assist one who is committed to a more literal belief in the traditional teachings. Since his major concern is an anxiety about the future, he can be offered some assurances about his personal continuity within the framework of “subjective immortality.” Here some possible religious statements may — with an underlying theological consistency — suggest that when a person dies he is taken up into God for an evaluation of his life, that he will be able to experience the effect that his life had on the world, and that he will have the opportunity to enjoy the good he helped to realize.

Is this a theological cop-out? Is it honest for a theologian simply to provide a set of reasons for whatever faith-option is proffered him? The answer to that question is both yes and no. Insofar as he attempts to be of service to human needs, the theologian may well decide that a moment of personal tragedy or crisis is not the moment to expose the differences between mystery and myth. In this capacity, the theologian is acting as minister, or as the scholarly aid to the minister. As such, he may in certain situations need to call upon theological reasons that are possibly not in accord with his own belief. The service function of the theologian, therefore, may include the formulating of a rationale for theological positions that he would not personally hold.

This need not compromise the theologian in his capacity as pure scholar. He can and should speak out honestly, in the ordinary course of his work, regarding the conclusions that he has come to in his quest for a theological understanding of the issue. The theologian, therefore, actually functions in two capacities: as a scholarly aid to the minister and as a ruthless seeker for truth. The advantage of process theology is that both functions can be adequately discharged in the matter of death and immortality from the single perspective of Whiteheadian thought.

The richness of process theology is such that it provides a solid philosophical framework for a great diversity of human experience and belief, and it is a helpful means of synthesizing them in interesting. creative new ways. It can account for, and indeed deepen, the thinking of traditionalist and liberal alike. Sometimes it can also be a useful instrument for translating between their different interpretations of their experiences of reality and their options of faith. These are the fundamental responsibilities of theology on behalf of faith: to understand, to support, and to deepen. For this task, process theology is very well suited.

Notes:

1. Published in The Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead, Paul Arthur Schilipp, ed. (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1951), pp. 682-700.

2. Cf. David Griffin, “The Possibility of Subjective Immortality in Whitehead’s Philosophy,” University of Dayton Review. VIII, 3, pp. 43-56.

* * * * * * * * * *

Chapter 12: Theology and Relativity

http://www.religion-online.org/book-chapter/chapter-12-theology-and-relativity/

For many theologians any talk of relativity as adding something significant to their work is immediately rejected as a professional “no-no.” Theology deals with what is most absolute in reality — God, man, and the eternal truths. If theology cannot offer man the absolutes of life, then no absolute standards of truth and morality are possible at all. Man is left hopelessly at sea, with neither rudder for direction nor a final port in which to drop anchor.

As one can see from the previous chapters, the process theologian does not share this anxiety about relativity. Indeed, many of the concepts with which he works are based upon the assumption of relativity. This does not mean that everything is arbitrary and man can believe and act on his whim or fancy. The notion of relativity that process theology employs is that all reality is inter-related in space and time, and that no single real entity has a prior absoluteness that stands outside the process of reality as a whole. Relativity thus contrasts with absoluteness in that it rejects the availability of any privileged moment or point of view from which everything can be finally and objectively evaluated. For the relativist, there is no way to set up criteria by which one moment or perspective can be more objectively valid than any other. The closest we can get to such objectivity is the judgment of reality as a whole upon any one of its parts.

What makes a moment or perspective privileged, then, is not any intrinsically determinable superiority, but the wide acceptance of its claim to privileged status. If or when that acceptance is eroded, the special status is diminished at the same time. According to this interpretation, then, the basis of Christianity is not found in the absolute uniqueness of Jesus as second person of the Trinity, but in the acts of faith that Jesus inspired and has continued to inspire in his own person throughout the centuries. The significance of Jesus can only be understood in relation to his followers.

The same is true of God. If he is serious about the reality of God, the process theologian will want to explain how God and the world are inter-related and how the significance of God is derived from the world. Process theologians, therefore, generally hold that God is in some sense dependent upon the world and that in that sense he is subject to the changes that take place in the world. Hence, God, like the world, is temporal.

These are the two most important instances where process theology causes difficulty for the Christian believer. It seems to do violence both to his affirmation of the divinity of Jesus and to his belief in the absolute immutability of God. The reason for this difficulty, however, is probably more a question of philosophy than a difference of faith. The traditional Christian belief regarding both the divinity of Jesus and the immutability of God is formulated in a set of static, non-temporal categories that give the impression of a certain absoluteness about these matters which is heedless of their relation to the temporal. Jesus, if he is God, has to be God eternally, and God, if he is truly God, has to be perfect eternally. The philosophical presuppositions implied in these statements have come to be accepted with the same act of faith that affirms the reality of God and the importance of Jesus.

The underlying philosophical position of traditional theology and its difference from the presuppositions of process thought can perhaps best be illustrated when we analyze the meaning of “perfect” and see its application to the Christian idea of God. For ages of Greek-educated Western minds, “perfect” referred only to a being in which there was no further possibility of improvement. The perfect being was one that could not be surpassed in any way with regard to its perfection. Change was therefore antithetical to perfection. It was the admission that imperfection existed either before the change or after it. Thus, a being that changed could not be called perfect, because it had not reached the optimum of its perfection, or because it did not have the guarantee of the permanence of its perfection.

The difficulty with the traditional interpretation is that improvement and growth are also perfections. That is, something that can grow or improve is more perfect than one that cannot. If, therefore, something is perfect in the traditional sense of being unchangeable, then it has lost the perfections of growth and improvement. There are, in other words, processive perfections as well as static ones. If God is truly perfect, he must exemplify both kinds of perfection. This means that a God who can grow and improve upon himself is more perfect than a God who remains static and unchanging, while other elements of reality are growing and improving.

The incorporation into God of both the static perfections and the processive perfections is the great achievement of Charles Hartshorne. In his writings he distinguished between absolute perfection and relative perfection. The former is applied to a being that is “unsurpassable in conception or possibility even by itself”; the latter obtains when the being is “unsurpassable except by itself.”1 It is the latter concept that is important for process theologians. It means that, in addition to imperceptible perfections, which are static, there are also perfectible perfections, which are dynamic. Given the temporal frame of reference, relative perfections do not and need not imply imperfection, which is the absence of a perfection that should be present at that time. It simply means that something which reaches a perfection relative to the rest of reality in one moment of time can be further perfected at a future moment of time.

When we apply this distinction to God, we can describe him as perfect if he has absolute perfection and/or relative perfection in all respects, and imperfection in no respect. This is another way of saying that God is perfect at every given moment of time. There is never anything imperfect in him at any moment, and at no time is he ever surpassable by any other being. However, he is capable of improving upon and surpassing himself. This is the way in which he relates himself concretely to the world: the realization of its values increases the values in him. It is also the way in which the world can relate itself to God: it can call him a “living God” because he can love, suffer and change. What happens in the world does make a difference to God, but without gainsaying his perfection in the process.

Traditional theology has always had a difficulty reconciling this belief in the personal nature of God with its belief in his absolute otherness, precisely because persons are relational realities and never absolutely other. This has created a series of questions that are literally unanswerable in the philosophical framework of that theology. For example, how is an absolute or “Supreme Being” really able to love in a personal way? If God loves each of us individually, must he not share our helplessness and powerlessness to deal with the forces of evil with which we must struggle in our lives? Yet, if he is perfect, how can he really be affected by the consequences of the imperfections and evils of the world?

The contribution of process theology to Christian faith is that in its perception the Christian does not have to compromise his belief that God is personal and loving for the sake of his belief in the perfection of God. Because of its philosophical presuppositions, it can explain divine love in terms that are fully compatible with our human experience of love, and it can explain divine perfection in terms that correspond to our own experience of change and growth.

The process theologian sees God’s love as personal, extending to each actual entity individually and freely. God does not impose a particular destiny as a condition for proffering his love. Instead, by reason of his love, he offers the full range of possibilities without moral or religious imperatives, so that each entity can choose for itself what it will become. Freedom is essential to love, and when conditions are attached to the giving of love, they compromise the fullness of that love. God, as the perfect lover, does not attach any such conditions. Furthermore, genuine love not only wills the freedom of the beloved. It also accepts the consequences of that freedom It must be willing to suffer and rejoice, initiate and acquiesce, give and receive. It must allow itself to be changed by that love. The God who truly loves, therefore, is a God who must also suffer and rejoice, initiate and acquiesce, give and receive. He must allow himself to be changed by that love.

Traditional theology sometimes speaks of God as suffering, rejoicing, or interacting in other ways with his creatures. The use of such terms is justified as anthropomorphisms – man’s way of speaking about God in the absence of any language adequate to divine things. But while such language is tolerated, it is not applicable to God as he really is, because God cannot be affected by what happens in the world.

Process theology takes a different position. As the late Daniel Day Williams has written,2 the very essence of love requires individuality, freedom, action, suffering and causality. The fact that biblical images attribute such love to God requires that Christians give them serious consideration as actual characteristics of God. Indeed, the biblical insight about God is precisely that he is more than an abstract, philosophical Being. He is the God of love, the God that Jesus called “Father.” To maintain that the essential qualities of love are merely anthropomorphic ways of speaking about God questions whether God’s love is truly love in any human understanding of the word.

If God is truly personal and living, his love for us must correspond to the way in which we understand love for each other. When a person takes on the personality of God, therefore, divine love is realized and incorporated into human affairs. This, as we have seen, is the explanation for the divinity of Jesus. Divine love had to grow and develop in him, much as it does in each of us. But unlike us, this love in Jesus continued to increase at every moment of his life, so that at every moment he was as perfect as he could be at that moment. He was like us in all things but sin.

In this context, it is not necessary to locate Jesus’ divinity in an eternal pre-existence with God. This doctrine was important to the Greek-oriented theologians and Church Fathers who were unable to explain the perfection of Jesus in any other way than absolute perfection. Their decision to dogmatize this teaching reflected their concern for the uniqueness of Jesus, not for a philosophical statement about the nature of perfection. Since that time, however, many new insights have been added to human thought. If, for example, we accept relativity as an appropriate explanation of reality, then God is related to the world as a changing Becoming, and Jesus is related to God as a changing, growing person. The divinity of Jesus is thus located in the fact that his change and growth always realized concretely the most complete incorporation of divine love in his life. Thus, he was always perfect: as a human person he was unsurpassable in divine perfection in conception or possibility, except by himself. That is, he had relative perfection in every respect.

Do we do violence to Church doctrine and our traditions when we interpret God and Jesus in this way? Are we not taking rather bold liberties with the pronouncements of popes and councils down through the ages? For many, the answer will undoubtedly be in the affirmative. And for this reason, they will reject process theology and its explanations of the faith. For others, however, fidelity to the Church and to its traditions is not attained by faith in formulae, or even by the exigency of reconciling new ideas with old formulae. For these latter, fidelity consists in adherence to the fundamental experience of the early Church about Jesus and the God he proclaimed. Expressions are indeed important, but they are never more than expressions. The faith of the Church is found in the souls of Christians who from time to time try to articulate what they believe in various expressive forms. The Spirit speaks to man’s soul, not to his verbiage. What man has written in the past as his Scriptures and as his dogmatic statements were expressions that more or less captured the experience of faith that was his at a particular moment in time. For this reason they are respected and reverenced, but they are not definitive expressions of the faith experience. The Spirit is always free to do what it will.

If our God is living, surely the Spirit is living also. It still speaks to the soul of man, but it speaks in new ways and with new words. This means that doctrine and tradition must be expected to grow, take on new forms, and find expression in new ideas. The discernment of spirits is not in the comparison of one set of words with another set of words, or even of oneidea with another idea. The manifestation of the Spirit is to human experience, not to human expression. Discernment, therefore, is in the comparison of one faith experience with another faith experience, and in the concrete way in which that faith manifests itself in living. By their fruits you shall know them.

The process experience of Christian faith is certainly not alien to the experience expressed in the tradition. It is basically the experience of the inter-relatedness of reality through time. God, Jesus, the Church, and the other elements of Christian theology are understood and interpreted in that perspective. Love is central to the process perspective, much as it has been for all Christians since the time of John the Evangelist. Significantly, love is itself a relational concept. Love is not possible, or even conceivable, in isolation. It requires relatedness. To say that God is Love, as John does, implies that his fundamental character is that of relation to the world. If God is Love, he can exist only with a world and in a world. He is not possible, or even conceivable, in isolation from the world. And if indeed God actively manifests himself to the world through a man or through a Church, that manifestation will be characterized by love and thus by relatedness. This is what Jesus is, and this is what, hopefully, the Church continues to become.

But this is not yet the end of the story. Life goes on. The Church is still living, just as we are and God is. Process is still operative, and the world is still in labor as it struggles to bring forth the Christ in new ways. We are, in our century, very much aware of that process and very committed to new ways. It is the spirit of our age. Perhaps it is also the Spirit inspiring our age. It is in this spirit that process theology is born and offers its contribution to a continuing and deepening understanding of our Christian faith.

Notes:

1. Charles Hartshorne, Man’s Vision of God (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1964), p. 7.

2. Daniel Day Williams, The Spirit and Forms of Love (New York: Harper and Row, 1968).