I have decided
to do a set of blog posts which might at some point become one of my small
books. The idea here would be to
discuss, first, what causes me to identify with process thought, and how I feel
connected to it. I believe my work
qualifies as being part of the process tradition, even though I do have some
substantial differences with other process thinkers. These thinkers, people like Thomas Jay Oord,
Jay McDaniel, Bruce Epperly and Chad Bahl are my friends. I believe there is a lot of mutual respect
because I have read and endorsed or quoted them, as they have with me.
The differences
do matter. I believe sometimes process
thought has ignored some issues to its own detriment. It is
important to me that we be able to talk to other philosophers and theologians
and have our thoughts be intelligible and accessible to them. That is why I believe it is essential that
process and open-and-relational thought be willing to subject itself to the
rigors of Aristotelian logic. I wrote about this in A Brief Process Look at Logic.
This should not be optional, as far as I am concerned, because we have
to be able to present our ideas in a way which
honors what my mentor, D. Elton Trueblood taught me, about the
importance of coherence and correspondence.
Coherence means we do not contradict ourselves in what we are saying. We
have an intellectual obligation to make sure what we are writing does not
contain within it internal contradictions which betray it as not possibly
true. Correspondence means it has to fit
with what we already know, or at least what we know with confidence. Sometimes there are new, groundbreaking ideas
which may seem to lack correspondence, but when we probe further we find that
the new idea fits better with the rest of what we know than the previous idea
did. Neither of these tasks is easy.
To
begin, I want to discuss what, in my mind, makes process thought process
thought. I think I have discussed this
in several places, including my books.
To me the main aspects of process thought are as follows:
·
God is not omnipotent.
·
God is not omniscient.[1]
·
Reality is process, not static.
·
God is not coercive.
·
God is relational.
·
God cannot guarantee outcomes.
·
God neither wills nor permits evil, it just
happens.
·
God is subject and therefore effected by what
happens in creation.
Now there are
areas where I have serious disagreements with my process friends and
colleagues. One of these is that I do reject
outright the idea of creatio ex nihilo. I do not believe it is necessary that something
has always existed alongside of God for God to be relational. As I proceed with these blog posts, I will be
identifying areas where I think the metaphysics of many process thinkers is not
in a coherent relationship with their ontology.
I have written about that in a series of three books on metaphysics.[2] I do feel gratified that some of my colleagues
who do not agree with me here have said
I present one of the strongest counterarguments to their position they have
seen.
But I definitely
want to begin this series on common ground.
I think that is important. The common ground is what makes me, in my
view, a process theologian and not a classical theist. I will say, however, I
do not view classical theism as my intellectual enemy although I have noticed
some -process theologians and some classical theologians write in such a way
that it seems like they view each other as suspect if not as enemies. That causes me pain. I do not believe process thought would have
ever existed if it was not for classical theism. We owe classical theism a
tremendous debt of gratitude, because without it, the clarifying call made by
process would not have ever emerged.
One of my
concerns is, if process thinkers do not embrace and use traditional logic to
express their ideas, then the wider academic community will see process as
insular and self-referent. I rather
doubt being esoteric will be a drawing card for many Christian intellectuals.
This is important to note because process theology has so much to offer with
regard to major problems such as the problem of evil. I do not believe process thought completely
solves this problem, but it makes an important and coherent contribution. I think
that if we are not careful, we can come across looking like those who
reject western medicine in favor of what they consider holistic. I had a
relative like that who threw away her blood pressure medicine and ended up
having a stroke! We do ourselves and those we hope to reach a
major disservice if we believe we have the answers and they don’t. I think we should be thinking, where
possible, in complimentary terms rather than seeing our way as the way.
Sometimes we cannot be complimentary. For example, there is no room for
compromise about who should receive basic human rights. But where we can, the complimentary approach
should be chosen.
This is why I
write books like A Brief Process Look at
Logic. The very ideas which
Whitehead offer in works like Process and
Reality depend entirely on, and stand completely on the shoulders of, logical
principles like the law of non-contradiction. Two contradictory statements cannot both be
true at the same time and in the same respect.
They can both be false, but they cannot both be true. I have had people
in online discussions bristle when I say that but the very ideas of process
thought are impossible without it.
If we reject the law of non-contradiction, then all
sorts of intellectual mishmash and nonsense ensue. If there is no the law of non-contradiction, then two
contradictory statements can both be true.
If that is the case, Whitehead cannot say reality is process and not substance,
because someone could say, “reality is
substance and process at the same time.”
He could not say every actual occasion prehends every other actual occasion,
because someone could respond with, “every actual occasion both prehends and
does not prehend every other actual occasion at the same time.”
No one can
consistently live like they believe that.
One person in a process discussion group became extremely irate with me
for suggesting the law of non-contradiction
is true. She said it is false. My response is her statement belies the fact
that she believes it is true. No one can
ever say anything at all is not true if they do not believe in the law of non-contradiction. As D.
Elton Trueblood notes,
The logical result of the
notion of something existing for one person and not for another would be a
theory of the world in which all knowledge would merely refer to what is in the
knower’s mind. In that case, not only
would God, and the material order be mere ideas in his mind, but also Henry
would be nothing but an idea in John’s mind and John would be nothing but an
idea in Henry’s mind. We have not the
disposition to argue with anyone who wants to travel that ancient road but it
is not a road which leads to any profitable destination. Certainly when [people] have worshiped God
they have not supposed they were worshiping ideas in their own mind. These would not be worthy of worship. We are
not doing a service either to faith or reason by failure to make a sharp
distinction between truth and falsity.[3]
My mentor was D.
Elton Trueblood. He was both a student
of, and later a colleague of, Alfred North Whitehead, and highly praised
Whitehead in his books, as did another 20th century Quaker philosopher,
Thomas R. Kelly.[4] I think I can make a claim most current process
thinkers cannot. I was mentored by someone who Whitehead actually mentored. I
believe many of my friends and colleagues, coming through the John Cobb and
David Griffin streams of thought, were mentored by Charles Hartshorne (a man who
lived in three centuries, by the way).
Hartshorne was mentored by Whitehead.
By
no means does this mean my thinking is better than any of my friends. I do
however, think it explains why my thinking is different from theirs. I wanted to begin this series of what I hope
will be 10-12 posts here. This is the
foundation on which I do all my work. In
coming days I will write a handful of essays on where I agree with process
thought (as noted above) and a few on areas where I do not think I disagree
with process thought but I do disagree with some process thinkers.
[1] I discuss this in my essay in Baker,
Chris S., et al. Amipotence: Support and
Criticism Volume One Edited by Chris S. Baker, Brandon Brown, Melissa Owens
Stewart, and James Travis Young. SacraSage Press, 2025. 235-241.
[2] A Brief Process Discussion of Dualism, A
Brief Process Reappraisal of Creatio Ex Nihilo, and How Well Do You Know Your Ex?:
Metaphysics in the Service of Caring.
[4] See
my Process Themes in Four Quaker Philosophers.
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