Process theology

Process theology, also called process theism, is the view that God is not self-existent and unchanging but exists within, and is affected by, the ongoing process of the world’s history, so that God “takes good works (service) into Himself and becomes increasingly better as a result” and is therefore, in the movement’s own phrase, “in process.”¹ It grows out of the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and denies God’s aseity and omnipotence, holding instead that God and the world act on, and are changed by, each other.²

Historical Origin

Alfred North Whitehead laid the philosophical foundations of process thought in the early twentieth century.³ His ideas lay largely unused for several decades before American successors, writing later in the century, took them up and developed them into a Christian theology.³ Norman Pittenger, one of those successors, argued that “a God who was not a part of the historical process could play no part in it.”³ Craig Carter places the resulting system at “the radical end of the spectrum” of twentieth-century proposals that reworked the doctrine of God to resolve the supposed tension between divine immutability and God’s action in history, alongside Jürgen Moltmann’s panentheism and, further toward the conservative end of that same spectrum, open theism.²

Core Tenets

Process theology holds that “God is actualizing himself in the process of history; that is, as history develops, so does God.” God is “both the source and the goal of all things,” having begun the process and being that toward which the whole process moves, but he is “not other than the process”: to describe him as other than it, on this account, would be to remove him from his active engagement with it.³

Because God is not other than the historical process, he cannot direct it unilaterally. Craig Carter describes this as “the weak, pleading, cajoling God of process theism, who, as part of the cosmos himself (or itself?), is incapable of directing history by his power to its appointed end.”² Process theologians hold that omnipotence in the classical sense must be denied precisely so that God is not held responsible for evil. Catherine Keller states the logic: “If the God of justice is to be counted all-powerful, that God must be held accountable for all injustice.”² On this view God cannot prevent evil, but he suffers along with the creation as it occurs.²

That denial of unilateral divine power supplies process theology’s own account of evil. Evil is not treated as an entity in its own right but as “a violation of the compulsion of love.” God does not cause evil, and when evil occurs, he “suffers more deeply than any of us,” because God and the world are “all inherent in the historical process” together. Because nothing stands outside that process to define or evaluate its course in advance, process thought holds that “there can be no plan or strategy for the unfolding of history,” only the “compulsion to love” working itself out as the divine and the world “interpenetrate each other” toward a shared goal.⁴

The same denial of aseity extends to how process theology understands creaturely worship. Charles Hartshorne, one of the system’s leading philosophical exponents, wrote that “true religion” means serving God, not merely “admiring or ‘obeying’ him,” but “contributing value to God which he would otherwise lack.”¹ By this reasoning, God is made better by what his creatures do, rather than being complete in himself prior to and apart from creation.

Confessional and Biblical Response

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession describes God, in its opening statement of who he is, as “infinite in being and perfection… immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, every way infinite, most holy, most wise, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory.”⁵ Against process theology’s dependent, developing deity, the confession states a God who is already, and unchangeably, everything the process account says he is still becoming, and who directs history by his own will rather than being carried along by it.

Scripture answers the claim that creaturely service adds anything to God. Paul tells the Athenians that the God “who made the world and everything in it… does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24-25). A God who receives value he would otherwise lack from his creatures’ worship, as Hartshorne describes, is not the God this text names.

Craig Carter traces the problem to process theology’s denial of the asymmetry between Creator and creature: “Characteristic of all relations between creatures is the mutual influence of creatures on each other, resulting in change on both sides. But in God the relation is one way only: God causes and changes creatures, but creatures do not cause or change God.” When a system affirms “two-way relations of causality and change between God and creatures, it eliminates the uniqueness of God and brings him down to the level of a creature.”⁶

Related Doctrines

References

Peter Sammons, The Forgotten Attributes of God: God’s Nature and Why It Matters (Fort Washington, PA: CLC Publications, 2023), chap. 3, “Aseity,” 58-74: “For example, the process theologian Charles Hartshorne wrote, ‘I take “true religion” to mean serving God, by which I do not mean simply admiring or “obeying” him, or enabling him to give benefits to me and other nondivine creatures, but also, and most essentially, contributing value to God which he would otherwise lack.’ ‘Process theology’ teaches that God takes good works (service) into Himself and becomes increasingly better as a result. God is therefore ‘in process.’” ↩ ↩²
Craig A. Carter, “Classical Orthodoxy and the Rise of Relational Theism,” in Contemplating God with the Great Tradition: Recovering Trinitarian Classical Theism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2021), chap. 1: “On the radical end of the spectrum we see the weak, pleading, cajoling God of process theism, who, as part of the cosmos himself (or itself?), is incapable of directing history by his power to its appointed end. This God changes along with the world and interacts with it in such a way that God changes the world and the world changes God. Process theologians think that the omnipotence of God must be denied lest God be responsible for evil. For example, Catherine Keller, speaking of what she terms ‘the contradiction growing in the heart of monotheism,’ says, ‘If the God of justice is to be counted all-powerful, that God must be held accountable for all injustice.’ The God of the various forms of relational theism cannot prevent evil, but he/it can and does suffer along with the creation.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵
John N. Oswalt, The Bible among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature?, Ancient Context, Ancient Faith (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), chap. 9, “Origins of the Biblical Worldview: Alternatives”: “Alfred North Whitehead laid down the foundations of what has become process thought in the earlier years of the twentieth century. However, it has remained to the successors of Bultmann in America in the latter twentieth century to pick up Whitehead’s thoughts, which had largely lain fallow for fifty or sixty years, and to develop them more fully… Norman Pittenger goes so far as to say that a God who was not a part of the historical process could play no part in it… The development of Whitehead’s thought in recent times may be outlined as follows. God is actualizing himself in the process of history; that is, as history develops, so does God. In this sense God is both the source and the goal of all things; he began the process and he is that to which the whole process is moving. However, it is important to recognize that he is not other than the process.” ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Oswalt, The Bible among the Myths, chap. 9: “Furthermore, process thought supplies at least a possible comprehensive answer to the problem of evil. Evil is not a ‘something,’ an entity; it is merely a negative, a violation of the compulsion of love. Thus, God does not cause evil; in fact, when it occurs he suffers more deeply than any of us. Yet at the same time his suffering is our suffering, because he and we are all inherent in the historical process. As a result of this insistence on the continuity between God and the historical process, there can be no plan or strategy for the unfolding of history… By ‘compulsion to love,’ it is meant that the divine in history is compelled to achieve its own self-realization, and that realization is achieved in creative self-giving. In that the divine and the world interpenetrate each other, the world moves to the same goal.” ↩
The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 1. ↩
Carter, “Classical Orthodoxy and the Rise of Relational Theism,” chap. 1: “One crucial way of expressing this difference has been to speak of God as acting causally on the world while denying that the world acts causally on God… Characteristic of all relations between creatures is the mutual influence of creatures on each other, resulting in change on both sides. But in God the relation is one way only: God causes and changes creatures, but creatures do not cause or change God… When relational theism affirms two-way relations of causality and change between God and creatures, it eliminates the uniqueness of God and brings him down to the level of a creature.” ↩