Process theology

Process theology is a newer mindset predominantly North American theology. It is closely related to the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1947), which this particular in the works How is religion? has developed and Process and Reality.

Key messages

For process theology God is the origin of the New and order. The world was not created out of nothing ( creatio ex nihilo ), but is an open, ever- continuing -setting process of the emergence of the new ( creatio continua ) The traditional terms being and substance are replaced by the terms process and becoming. The whole world consists of interactions, is involved in God. Concerns of process philosophy is the development of a worldview that can be reconciled with the pluralistic reality experience of the modern world.

In particular, the concept of process theology includes the following key messages:

• The omnipotence ( omnipotence ) of God is being redefined and partially negated; God never makes use of coercion to implement its will, but allows for a world of self- creation, in which the subjects have space for free decision. This is also a solution of the problem of theodicy.

• The reality and the universe are defined by process and change, determined by free -willed individuals. At this point the process theology creates a connection with modern scientific theories, such as the theory of evolution in biology.

• God contains the universe but is not identical with it ( panentheism ).

• Because God contains a changing universe, he is even in the time variable (ie, influenced by the events in the universe ). God is not self-sufficient, but involved in the life of the universe as primordial ground. He responded to the happenings in the world and is itself by becoming the world.

• The man has no subjective ( or personal ), but on an objective immortality in which his life forever in God, everything is included, lives on.

Currents

The process philosophy is no uniform system of theology. The term is rather combine a variety of approaches, which have in common are some key points and in terms of the philosophy of Whitehead.

A major developer and founder of process theology was the former assistant Whitehead at Harvard, Charles Hartshorne (1897-2000), whose earnings were above consisted interpret and continue the theological aspects and implications of Whitehead's philosophy. A continuation of the thoughts Hartshorne found in Schubert Miles Ogden, who grappled simultaneously with the theology of Rudolf Bultmann.

Besides Hartshorne has at the Chicago Divinity School a more empirically oriented, naturalistic theology developed, whose founder Henry Nelson Wieman (1884-1975) was. Martin Luther King wrote his doctorate on the difference in the concept of God in Henry Nelson Wieman and Paul Tillich. Students were Bernard Eugene Meland Wieman (1899-1993), Bernard M. Loomer (1912-1983) and Daniel Day Williams ( 1910-1973 ).

A major center of theological thinking is the process established in 1973, Center for Process Studies in Claremont, whose representatives of the theologian John B. Cobb, who had gone from Chicago to California, David Ray Griffin, Lewis S. Ford, Philip Clayton, Roland Faber and Marjorie Suchocki count. Here an attempt is made to establish a direct link between prozesstheologischem thinking with Christian teachings. The journal Process Studies was established in 1971 and the first editors were Cobb and Ford

In Germany there is a sympathetic discussion of the process theology at Godehard Brüntrup ( see for example Brüntrups article " 3.5 Dimensionalismus and survival - a process- ontological approach " ) and Michael Welker, in the Netherlands, Jan Van der Veken.