How My Theology Has Changed, Thank God
Part VII: Process Theology
It was in Chicago at the Lutheran School of Theology that I was exposed to the work of Jurgen Moltmann, which led me into both the Theology of Hope and The Crucified God (my last two blog posts). However, when I transferred to Luther Seminary in St. Paul, I discovered that in the Systematic Theology Department there the new theology that was creating a good deal of excitement--and controversial discussion--was Process Theology, a unique creation of American philosophers and theologians, based on the process philosophy of England’s Alfred North Whitehead.
At that point in my theological journey, I was still working hard on the Theology of Hope, including writing a 200-page paper on it at Luther Seminary, and I did not have time to dig into Process Theology. However, I was captivated by what students were saying about it, and put it on the back burner.
After I graduated from Luther and took my first call at Faith Lutheran in West Fargo, ND--especially as Pauline’s health continued to deteriorate--my mind and heart were again thrust into reflection on the relationship of God to human suffering.
As I explained earlier, I was raised to believe that everything that happens, good or bad, is God’s will. This theology grows out of the philosophic desire to prove God by assuming that, if there is a God, this God must be the greatest and biggest and best of all things. So, God is omniscient, knowing all things ahead of time. God is omnipresent, able to be at all places at all times. God is omnipotent, having power over all things. Throw all this together, and you come up with a portrait of a God who knows everything that is going to happen, is in charge of everything that happens, and can be everywhere at the same time to make sure those things happen. To label this view, it is the God of Supernatural Theism that we have been discussing.
This is far more a Greek view of God than a Hebrew one, and really does not coincide well with what we discover in scripture. And, as I had already experienced, this view of God can lead to anger at God for deciding when and where and how we suffer.
As I became more comfortable in parish ministry and felt closer to God again, I decided to tackle this theological issue head on. One of the reasons for this was that, if Pauline were to die, I did not want to experience the same kind of separation from God I felt after my parents died.
I decided to head back to Luther Seminary for a continuing education seminar on this very subject, with the speaker being one of the brightest and most profound professors at Luther, Dr. Paul Sponheim. Just as my traveling companion, Marcus Borg, had turned to Sponheim for more profound ideas of how God is connected to the world when he was in college at Concordia, so did I now. [See Parts 1, 2 and 3 of this blog series]
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Dr. Sponheim classified evil in three main categories. The first is natural evil, such as earthquakes and floods. The second is moral evil, caused by human sin, such as holocausts and genocides. The third, which is the most obtuse, is metaphysical evil, which is part of the structure of reality as created by God. We may not think of it as evil, but mortality, for instance, means we will die, and being finite means we are limited in our power to do good, both of which may come to us as forms of suffering.
Now, of course, if God is indeed the creator of our present reality, then, in a sense, you can blame God for everything: Why a creation with natural evil? Why the limits on human freedom through mortality and being finite? Why create humans with a free will that allows them to do unspeakable forms of cruelty?
However, what if God is not omnipotent and omniscient. Process Theology asserts that God’s love is greater than God’s power, and love, as St. Paul puts it, does not insist on its own way. God, rather than controlling human behavior, gives us free will and then tries to guide us, to “woo us,” to do the good and the right. However, we have the freedom to refuse to listen and to be disobedient.
C. Robert Mesle explains this view:
In process theology, God is constantly, in every moment and in every place, doing everything within God's power to bring about the good. Divine power, however, is persuasive rather than coercive. God cannot (really cannot) force people or the world to obey God's will. Instead, God works by sharing with us a vision of the better way, of the good and the beautiful. God's power lies in patience and love, not in force.
[Process Theology: A Basic Introduction]
Most of the great evil in the world is moral evil, caused by human beings. God does not cause mass shootings in schools. Humans choose to do that. God does not bomb people. Humans do that.
God also does not decide when someone will die. Sometimes that can be found in moral sin, as, in the case of my father, who chose to smoke most of his life. Sometimes it is just the mystery of the universe, as when a child is born with a terminal illness or gets cancer at an early age.
In Process Theology the future is not pre-determined. Humans have a part in what happens, and the good happens when we follow God, and the bad happens when we rebel against God, which has been the case since Adam and Eve and Cain and Abel.
Bruce G. Epperly puts it this way: “God does not determine everything but presents a vision of beauty and the energy to achieve it for every moment of experience.” [Process Theology: Embracing Adventure with God]
He then goes on to describe what this process of God and humans working together looks like:
God is source of energy and possibility in each moment of experience and over the course of a lifetime. God supplies the initial aim, or vision, that orients and energizes each moment of experience as it arises. While God is one of many factors that shapes our lives, moment by moment and day by day, God's vision constantly presents us with the most life-supporting and ethically-grounded possibilities, given our particular communal and cultural context. Accordingly, spirituality involves orienting our lives creatively towards God's vision for ourselves and our communities. [Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed]
From a pastoral and spiritual point of view, this theology makes it possible to view God, not as the cause of our suffering, but as someone, demonstrated most clearly in Christ, who is with us in our suffering, crying with us.
Some people just seem to know this intuitively, as was the case with Pauline. She never blamed God for her illness, and she seemed always to feel that God was with her in her suffering.
I, on the other hand, had to take the academic route. I had to find a theology that gave me hope, and brought me closer to God rather than driving me from God.
It is one thing to come to this conclusion in the classroom or by reading a book. It is another thing to see if a theology “works” in the midst of reality. It if does work, that doesn’t mean it is necessarily true, but (and this will surprise a lot of people), the church has always asserted that if something “works,” that must be considered—along other factors—as evidence of a possible truth.
Theologically and spirituality, I was now in a very different place than I had been when my parents died. Process Theology gave me a new way of seeing how God is at work in the world: God doesn’t control everything that happens and is not the source of all our suffering. The Crucified God gave me a new vision of the presence of the suffering God who chooses to be with us in our pain and suffering. The Theology of Hope helped me to trust that God would always help me find a way through the loss and grief I might experience.
I experienced what Dr. Sponheim describes in his book, Faith and Process: “The wholly-other is wholly for us! God grants freedom and seeks service. What we do matters to God directly and personally. Without denying our sin, we can affirm that we are God’s creatures. We are called to serve God and to enjoy God forever!” [266]
