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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 June 2011
Process theology is generally defended in one or more of three ways: In some cases it is proposed as the only coherent and consistent way to satisfy the requirements of a constructive, systematic metaphysics. In other cases it is presented as the only way to avoid the fatal paradoxes inherent in the classical notion of an unchanging God. In still other cases it is urged as the only view compatible with the God of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures and the Christian religious experience.
The first two considerations quite naturally exercise whatever appeal they have on minds of a certain philosophical bent and background. The third consideration is attractive to a far wider audience. For it seems to rest on a reading of the Scriptures and a lived religious experience shared by large numbers of people with limited philosophical interest or expertise.
1 Cobb, JohnA Christian Natural Theology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1965)Google Scholar relies heavily on the first kind of defense. Charles Hartshorne's many works appeal to the first two kinds, but not—contrary to the sound of certain passages—to the third kind. Cf., e.g., The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven: Yale University, 1948)Google Scholar; A Natural Theology For Our Time (La Salle: Open Court, 1967)Google Scholar; and Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (London: SCM, 1970)Google Scholar. Ogden's, SchubertThe Reality of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977)Google Scholar appeals to all three, treating the third as independent of the first two. In fact, he sometimes speaks as though classical theology is susceptible to the charge of inconsistency precisely because of its attempt to construct a concept of God which combines the principles of classical metaphysics with the allegedly incompatible scriptural concept of God. Cf., e.g., 65, 140. Cf. esp.: “the classical metaphysical denial that God can be in any sense temporal and relative… stands in stark contradiction to Scripture's representation of God as the eminent Self or Thou” (p. 65) and also: ”Whereas the mythical representations in Scripture having to do with God's own being (say, as the heavenly Father or King) could be accommodated within limits to the God conceived by classical metaphysics, this proved quite impossible in the case of the myths having to do with God's action in relation to the world” (p. 221). Ogden's view seems to be shared by Tracy, David (Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology [New York: Seabury, 1975Google Scholar]), where classical theology is said to be apparently untenable both as philosophical analysis and as an analysis of Christian self-understanding as expressed in its Scriptures. Cf. 147, and also 155, 172, 174, 180–81, 183.
2 The prime targets of the thesis and the paper are certain elements in the work of Ogden and Tracy (cf., e.g., Ogden, The Reality of God, 65, 66, 161). I take Hartshorne to be in substantial agreement with my thesis. And even Ogden and Tracy at times, but not consistently, seem not unequivocally opposed to it. In addition, my target is the strong (but in my judgment unwarranted) attraction which process theology seems to have for many people who are engaged primarily in pastoral ministries.
3 Ogden expects classical theologians to view the assertion of a temporal God as “the denial of essential Christian truth” (The Reality of God, 161). Ogden, however, argues that the temporality of God is an essential Christian truth: “the fundamental insight that God himself is essentially temporal and related to others” is, he says, “the central discovery implicit in the witness of Holy Scripture, and its locus classicus is the Old and New Testaments” (The Reality of God, 161). It is my view that one's affirmation or denial of God's temporality is not determined solely by what the Scriptures say but is rather a function of the presuppositions and conceptions that one brings to one's reading of what the Scriptures say. Denial and affirmation of truth may well be at stake. What is “implicit” (Ogden's word) in Holy Scripture may be at stake. But disagreement about what is implicit is a function of one's interpretive principles, which in this matter carry only the authority of philosophy and not that of Holy Scripture itself. It is therefore either mistaken or misleading to speak of the temporality of God in terms of affirming or denying “an essential Christian truth.”
4 Compare this with Ogden's charge that the classical theologian's prejudices against process theology “spring, not from commitment to the understanding of God attested by Scripture … but rather from the tacit assumption of the premises of classical metaphysics” (The Reality of God, 175). I would not agree that the assumptions are typically tacit, and I would extend the view to apply equally to the process theologian's rejection of the classical view.
5 This is a stronger case against classical theology than process theologians sometimes propose. If, e.g., one accepts Ogden's analysis of God's acting in history, it is not clear that i t would require a temporal God incompatible with classical theology. Cf. The Reality of God, 184: “… what is meant when we say that God acts in history is primarily that there are certain distinctively human words and deeds in which his characteristic action as Creator and Redeemer is appropriately re-presented or revealed.” I intend to show that classical theology can accommodate even the much stronger sense of “act in history” which I have developed in the text—if classical theology's account of God is meaningful at all.
6 Process theologians quite often argue against classical theology as though it were proposing a God like the advance planner supposed here. But classical theology's timeless God is radically different from this cosmic advance man, as succeeding paragraphs point out. Cf. Ogden, The Reality of God, 51 ; Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 183.
7 Ogden, of course, charges the classical account with logical inconsistency and incoherence. Cf., e.g., The Reality of God, 17–18. But he considers that fault less important than its “existential repugnance” (cf. 18, 64–65). Cf. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 180. I do not wish to deny that some people find the classical account of God repugnant. I do wish to argue that, if the account is coherent and meaningful, existential repugnance is unwarranted and unreasonable, and that if it is not, that fault is more radical than such repugnance.
8 Cf. Ogden, The Reality of God, 68; Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 161, 189.
9 Cf. Ogden, 18, 46–48, 50–51.
10 “Since nothing whatever can make the least difference to such a God, all our strivings and sufferings also must be ultimately indifferent. From the perspective of the Absolute, which alone enjoys ultimate reality, what we do or fail to do can neither add nor detract in any permanently significant way. God's perfection is in every sense statically complete, an absolute maximum, so we can no more increase him by our best efforts than diminish him by our worst” (Ogden, The Reality of God, 51).
11 Cf. Ogden, The Reality of God, 190–91, esp.:
... we are impatient with theological statements … that do not really mean anything to us at all because they are framed in terms we no longer understand. I do not mean simply that we have become impatient with the jargonistic predilection of the professional theologian. That, unfortunately, seems to be an occupational hazard, which no theologian had better claim to have overcome. What I have in mind is something worse (and there is something worse!) than using technical language in nontechnical contexts—namely, the widespread habit of using the technical or even non-technical language of the church's past to speak to men today in the present.
… one criterion of theological adequacy is that the understanding of faith be formulated “understandably.” The theologian defaults in his responsibility if he does not make an earnest effort to state the eternal word of the Christian gospel in a way that will seem both meaningful and true to men who live in the particular time in and for which he has his theological vocation. … Hence what is needed from theology is a thoroughgoing attempt to translate the meaning of the church's traditional witness into terms in which contemporary men either do or can most readily understand their life as human beings.
I take there to be a task of the sort which Ogden here describes. I do not take it to be the task of the theologian. It is, I think, the task of the evangelist, the preacher, to translate the Gospel message, i.e., to proclaim it in an idiom intelligible to the audience. The theologian's task is not to translate the message, but to penetrate it—to understand it as well and as deeply as a human can understand it. It is a specialized Christian calling which, of course, has significance and implications for the evangelical task. But the relation of the theologian to the faith community is analogous to that of the scientist to the human community. Nothing would be more destructive of science or more obstructive of its proper contribution to society than to insist that the scientist adopt an idiom comprehensible to all. Something similar is true of theology. Tracy seems to recognize this. Cf. Blessed Rage for Order, 16 n. 9, and 148. But while Tracy speaks of false expectations of theory, as though it can resolve existential or cultural crises, and false expectations of Christianity, as though it can resolve intellectual or cultural crises, Tracy himself, unfortunately, seems to indulge in the false expectation that Scripture will be able t o resolve philosophical issues of the sort which divide classical and process theology. On the general issue, cf. also 148.
12 Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, 267.
13 Cf. The Reality of God, 57. Cf. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 65, 173, 182.
14 The Reality of God, 57. Cf. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 55, 65, 173.
15 Cf. The Reality of God, 58.
16 The Reality of God, 58. Cf. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 173, 174.
17 The Reality of God, 58. Cf. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 181.
18 The Reality of God, 57.
19 Ibid., 105.
20 Ibid., 141.
21 Ibid., 147.
22 Ibid., 148.
23 Ibid., 148.
24 Ibid., 66.
25 Ibid., 66.
26 Cf. ibid., esp. 66.
27 Ibid., 66.
28 Cf. Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order, 135.
29 The Reality of God, 65.
30 Ibid., 175.
31 Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, 137.
32 Ibid., 142.
33 The Divine Relativity, 9.
34 Ibid., 109.
35 Ibid., 15. Ogden is not explicit about this premise. But he is clearly dependent on it. Cf., e.g., The Reality of God, 133: “Supposing, then, that its objects are contingent, … one can hardly deny that even a perfect consciousness would have a contingent or non-necessary aspect.”
36 Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, 265.
37 Summa Theologiae, 1.28.1 ad 3.
38 Summa Contra Gentes, 2.11.
39 Summa Theologiae, 1.13.12. This translation is that of Henry F. Tiblier, S.J., in his translation of Peter Hoenen, S.J., Reality and Judgment According to St. Thomas (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1952) 75Google Scholar. Hoenen's entire chapter on “The Structure of the Proposition in General” (73–94) is a helpful discussion of certain of Aquinas's views on the relation between logical and real structures.
40 Summa Theologiae, 1.13.12.
41 Ibid., 1.13.12.
42 This paper rests in great measure on research and reflection made possible by a sabbatical leave and a Faculty Fellowship funded by Canisius College.