© 2000 Keith McPaul
© 2000 The Brotherhood of Man Library
Twelve years ago, Dr Jim Mills, then a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Florida, and a former trustee of the Urantia Foundation, introduced me to process philosophy. Jim expressed his fervent hope that it could be the key to the finding of a place for the Urantia Papers in the curriculum of tertiary institutions for study by philosophy and theology students. Jim died without seeing his hope fulfilled.
Recently, I attended an introductory lecture on process theology presented to a local church congregation and, with the permission of its author, have reproduced it as a matter of great interest. Its author, incidentally had never heard of The Urantia Book.
Ken Glasziou
Keith McPaul, Australia
The Christian application of process theology is about knowing a truly relational God, knowing a God who is with us at all times, a God who shares both our joys and our sorrows.
Before I go any further on the process understanding of God, I think it is appropriate to say a little about where this understanding comes from.
As Christians, we believe in a Supreme Being that we call God. Our understanding of God comes mainly from two sources. The image of powerful kings and rulers comes from the social and political environment at the time of writing of the Bible. The words used to describe the Gods come from Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE, through Plato, Aristotle in the 4th century BCE, to Plotinus in the 3rd century CE.
The Bible and much of our current liturgy use the words, symbols, and metaphors of that era. God was described in terms of a king and a ruler who had absolute control over everything. God was all-powerful, eternal, never changing. They described God in terms of their understanding of human beings, with God being greater than anything that could be humanly imagined. God was described as a superhuman.
As our understanding of the universe increased, many of these earlier images and metaphors no longer made sense to us. However, we seem reluctant to give them up because it’s “in the Bible.” Most of them are not in the Bible—they came from our church fathers, people like us, trying to explain what is revealed to us in the Bible.
Most serious theologians and teachers now think that it is about time we used words, images, and metaphors that make sense of, and are appropriate to, our modern understanding of the universe and our place in it. Let me give two quotations to illustrate this:
“If we believe that all new knowledge is revealed to us from God for a purpose, then there is a need to reformulate our theology to take into account the world as we know it.” (Pope John Paul 11)
“There is a large and alarming dissonance between the language of devotion, doctrine, and liturgy, and the way people see themselves and reality in the world.” (Arthur Peacocke, Dean of Clare College, Cambridge)
In process theology there is an attempt to reconcile our belief in a loving God, the God we see in the scriptures, and the God we experience personally, with the God we see in the world and the wonders of God the scientists have shown us.
Process theology does not claim to have the whole truth but it does claim to give us a new understanding of our relationship with God that is consistent with what we know and experience about the world about us. It gives us a new set of words and metaphors which are more understandable in our world of today.
Modern science has learned many things about the universe and our place in it, most of which we take for granted because they do not seem to impact on our daily lives. For example, science now tells us that:
This is very different from what was understood when the Bible was written, when Jesus was alive, and when our church fathers established the creeds.
Isn’t it time we incorporated some of our modern understanding of the universe into our religious thinking? Surely religion should try to illuminate reality, not confuse it. We need a theology which tries to bring together our scientific understanding of the universe and our understanding of God as revealed and experienced. Process theologians are trying to do just that.
The theory behind process theology is very complicated, but I try and understand a simplified version as follows:
All activities, including humans, are influenced by three forces:
What does this mean to me? Some of it is difficult to grasp but if we think about it we can see from simple examples how it could make sense.
Am I the same person that I was sixty years ago? Yes and no. I am still Keith McPaul but I have grown, changed, processed. I know that my past decisions have influenced present decisions, so maybe all past experiences influence my decisions. I know that the past actions of other people also influence my present decisions., so maybe all past actions everywhere somehow have an influence on my present decision. I know that what I have done, and do now, will influence other people’s decisions. By taking note of your reading of this, you can see how the connectedness between ourselves and other people works.
If I accept that this makes sense, how does it affect my understanding of God? Theologians have developed a comprehensive Christian theology based on Whitehead’s process concept, but again I like to look at it in a very simple way.
I said earlier that we have described God in terms of what we understand of the world. So, if we understand the world as a process, we can also understand God as a process. We can think of God as:
The first of these is not that strange, we have traditionally believed that God somehow directs our paths.
The second and third open up a fantastic new way of understanding our relationship with God.
Although we have the freedom to disobey, importantly for us, whatever we do influences God.
This means the core of Christian theology is the belief in a relational God:
Thinking of God in relational terms makes sense when we look at the world around us.
By knowing that what we do has an influence on everything else in the universe, we know that we have a responsibility to look after the rest of God’s creation. This must change the way we look after the environment. We are also responsible for our own actions and there is no one going to come and solve all our problems for us. Freedom and responsibility means that it is up to us, but we know that we always have God to guide us.
God gives everything an initial aim and is with them always. We do not know how God guides plants, animals, and people of other religions, but we do know that God is also in relationship with them.
By thinking of God from a process perspective I can better understand and appropriate the Christian message.
Learning about God is a life long exercise with God directing our path all the way. We should not stop at the Sunday School story level. It is acceptable to change our mind about what the Bible stories mean as we grow older and as our understanding of the world grows.
Process theology does not claim to have all the answers, God still remains a mystery. However it does give me a more credible way of thinking of God. I think that process theology makes the church more credible and more relevant to the modern world and gives us a better chance of meeting the challenges of the next millennium. Thanks be to God!
Time is but the shadow of eternity cast by Paradise realities upon the moving panoply of space. (UB 101:10.9)