process

When he thinks of the divine, it is not as some grand logician but as the poet of the world. God does not make the world but makes something of the world, allowing us to find or create meaning in the creative onrush of reality despite the wreckage of history. God leaves open the possibility of reconciliation even if it in fact never fully arrives.... See more

In Whitehead’s scheme, God has both a primordial and a consequent nature. The primordial side relates to the universe’s tendency toward harmony rather than total chaos, offering an “ideal lure” to every creature. This ideal does not determine our choices but provides a sense of contrast and possibility. The consequent nature of God responds to our... See more

The word “God” is like a stick of dynamite. It remains valuable precisely because its utterance sets off such potent cultural and conceptual reverberations. Whitehead, in his own way, used it to name something at once tender and cosmic, intangible yet inescapable, the poet of the world who does not create the world from nothing but helps us make... See more

On Whitehead’s reading, God conditions Creativity—which by itself lacks a definite vector and can be akin to nothingness or chaos—and gives it both aim and memory, so that process can take on a historical trajectory. God instills a sense of purpose but we are never going to arrive at a final, finished state. Whitehead’s theology attempts to provide... See more

The process conception of God offers both a source of refreshment and a sense of relevant novelty, as well as a sense of companionship, because this is not a God that exists outside the world. This is a God who suffers with the world, as much subject as object, as much a lack as a presence. I do think there is a radical negativity in this vision in... See more

To address both the frame problem and the fine-tuning conundrum, I propose that the continuum of possibilities is itself structured by what we may as well call a divine act. This is not the notion of God as an external watchmaker who meticulously designs each actual outcome. Rather, I draw on Whitehead’s process philosophy to argue that the divine... See more

Process theologians like John Cobb also emphasize a Biblical basis for the view of a God who is not “Almighty” in the traditional sense of omnipotent but might be better described as “all-nourishing” (a better translation of אֵל שַׁדַּי/El Shaddai)—suggesting that patriarchal scriptural translations have often overshadowed more relational or... See more