CHRIST in the MAZE of PROCESS THEOLOGY Process Theology's Influence on Post Modern Christology

CHRIST IN THE MAZE OF PROCESS THEOLOGY Process Theology's Influence on Post Modern Christology (Einstein, Whitehead, Cobb, Ogden, Pittenger, et al)

INTRODUCTION

Process Christology is an outgrowth of Process Theology, which is an outgrowth of process metaphysics. The main concern of Process Theology is with the relationship between permanence and change, or being and becoming, in the universe. It is important to understand that for centuries the Church had held to Aristotelian physics, which postulates that substance is the basic building block of reality. Thomas Aquinas had adopted Aristotelian philosophy as the basis for his theology. Consequently the church wanted to hold stubbornly to that teaching.

It wasn't until the 20th century than an alternative philosophy came to the forefront. Alfred North Whitehead, a mathematician, proposed that the most basic units of reality are not fixed substances, but processes and events. He emphasized change instead of permanence of events. All the universe and all of reality, including God, is characterized by change and process rather than fixity and absoluteness. The traditional Aristotelian substantial philosophy had fit well with Newtonian physics, however the onslaught of Einsteinian physics forced new thought and understanding about the universe. It became obvious that in a world where time and space are relative, "a more dynamic or relative concept" of reality fits the factual understanding of the universe better (Erickson p. 244). Consequently Whiteheadians (as his proponents came to be known) chose to propound their metaphysics on that basis. Some of the leading scholars who have chosen to follow in this line of thought are: Norman Pittenger, Schubert Ogden, John Cobb and David Griffin. Here is Erickson's statement of Pittenger's 8th basic tenet of process philosophy:The fundamental cause of what occurs within the universe is the supreme reality which religion refers to as God. This is by no means the sole cause, for all events have a measure of self-determination. Nor is this God somehow outside of or opposed to that whole of which we are a part. He (or it) is the supreme exemplification of process and of freely chosen actualization of potential. God cannot be surpassed by anything, but is capable of self-surpassing by making use of that which is occurring within the creation (Erickson, p. 247).

There is so much packed into this little statement that deserves critique. This entire paper will be an exegesis of this statement, and will end with a critique of the entire theology that gave birth to it.

The extreme importance of this topic can be clearly seen. Bruce Demarest in Process Theology[1]writes:

Another factor that highlights the importance of this topic is that process theology has mounted one of the most potent challenges to orthodox Christian truth in the second half of the twentieth century. The process school of Whitehead, Hartshorne, Cobb and company has promoted its gospel of naturalistic theism with unflagging zeal, such that in many academic quarters it has supplanted classical theism, neo-orthodoxy, or theistic existentialism as the viable theological system (p. 63).[2]

The purpose of this paper is to set forth the way that process theologians understand the nature of God and Jesus Christ, and then to critique that understanding both negatively and positively, and both Scripturally and logically.

1. PROCESS THEOLOGY AS IT RELATES TO THE NATURE OF GOD.

According to process theology one of the primary characteristics of God is immanence. God is not remote from the universe, or even separate from it or outside it, but within it and therefore even limited by it. This can be seen in Pittenger's words: "If God is himself related to everything else, and is affected or influenced by everything else .... then there is always and everywhere an interpenetrative activity between God and the creation" (from. The Incarnation in Process Theology[3], p. 49). Cobb's words also reveal the transcendent immanence of God here in his description of the Logos: "The Logos is the cosmic principle of order, the ground of meaning, and the source of purpose. Whitehead called this transcendent source of the aim at the new the principle of concretion, the principle of limitation, the organ of novelty, the lure for feeling, the eternal urge of desire, the divine Eros, and God in his primordial nature" (Cobb, Christ in a Pluralistic Age[4] p. 71).

It is clear that Process Theology is basically panentheistic. Bruce Demarest has done tremendous work in exposing the dangers and problems of Process Theology:

"The first is its postulate of the universe as panentheistic;namely, that the reality of God includes the world within itself while at the same time transcending the world. Reality, according to process thought, is a single spatio-temporal process consisting of a series of becomings and perishings, with new becomings emerging from that which has perished (Demarest, PT, p. 64).

In other words. God is the whole toward which all reality is moving, this is His "creativity". It should also be understood that God transcends the universe in that He is always greater than the universe — the whole is the greater than the sum of the parts. However, this is transcendence of the future over the present (Stauss notes, Nov. 10). God has a bipolar nature, which to process theologians apparently means that, "all constituent events are bipolar, comprising abstract possibility and concrete actualization" (Pittenger, Christology in Process Theology[5], p. 187). He is not thought of as absolute in the sense of being unable to change or grow. He is not omnipotent, there are certain aspects of creation which He cannot alter. He is an active, dynamic, creative being who is being revealed in all of creation.

Another very important primary attribute of God is love. The concept of God as love as taught by process theologians is evidenced in the words of Pittenger:

The main stress of that 'revelation in act' is in the disclosure of God as that which 'Plato divined in theory' (and other thinkers, philosophers, sages, have also divined), namely that God is nothing other than pure unbounded love. At this point it is necessary to notice that the word 'love', highly ambiguous as it is, means for process theologians no sentimental attitude but the positive give-and-take sharing or mutuality, ecstasy and anguish, which is shown in Jesus' own contacts with others, in his teaching as a whole, and in the understanding which finds its chief expression in the Cross. It is important to say this, since some critics have wrongly charged these theologians with a far too simplistic and superficial notion of love (CPT, p. 189).

This teaching of God as love can be seen to be the bridge between God the Father and God the Son, and even the way the incarnation takes place in the life of the Church:

Thus sound Christology will reckon both with the historical event and also with the continuing experience; and it will find a way of accounting for the Christian community as profoundly, if not always visibly, the new social process whose characteristic quality is God as Love brought near and made available in Jesus Christ (Pittenger, CPT, p. 190).

A fuller critique of how process theology view the church will be presented later. First it is necessary to look more in depth at the Jesus of Process Theology.

2. PROCESS THEOLOGY AS IT RELATES TO THE NATURE OF JESUS CHRIST.

Erickson asserts that Norman Pittenger's starting point for Christology is faithfulness to the doctrinal aims of Christian tradition. However, Pittenger agrees with Maurice Wiles that, "true faithfulness to the age of the Fathers goes beyond repeating and building upon their doctrinal conclusions to consciously continuing their doctrinal aims." In other words theologians must leam to say old things in a new way, or as Erickson puts it, "But since it is an abiding reality about which we speak, continuity with the aim and objective of traditional theology guarantees that what we say will not be entirely new, though it will be new" (p. 250). Pittenger claims to identify himself with the position of Thomas Aquinas, and yet he says his goal is, "that of George Tyrrell: to reconcile 'a perfect loyalty to the fundamentals of the Catholic tradition with an equal loyalty to the claims of scientific truth and moral sincerity'" (Erickson, p. 250). In other words, he found his desire to remain true to tradition to be in extreme tension with his drive to appeal to scientific modernity.

Consequently by 1970 he was seeing the need to intentionally alter the tradition because of the changing intellectual world. He came to see that modern theologians cannot accept the Bible and the stories of Jesus as pure biography because form criticism has shown that the early church modified them "in the direction of the element of wonder." He also realized the inability to accept the reports of Scripture because they reflect a 1st century world view. Notice what he writes concerning the historical event of Jesus Christ: "both in the historicaldatum itself and in the consequences of that event in later history, we can no longer easily use the categories of thought appropriate for the Hellenistic Age but must seek for an idiom which is more satisfactory in our own time" (CPT, p. 189). To sum up, two reasons that traditional metaphysics can no longer be accepted are:

(1) Most of us do not think in static categories (due to the prominence of Einsteinian metaphysics) and; (2) Static categories distort the biblical conception of God as living and as vitally related to the world.[6]

To gain a fuller understanding of process Christology one must move from Pittenger's traditionally modem Christ, to John Cobb's "Christ as Transforming Force"[7](as Erickson puts it). He attempts to locate Christ in contemporary experience: "He begins by showing how Christ is experienced in the present; he then relates this experience to the Jesus of Scripture and Christian tradition, and afterwards to some images of hope" (Erickson, p. 254). Cobb's agenda along these lines can be seen in the following:

What I do hold is that today, as the church confronts the largely autonomous achievements of the sciences, and the fully autonomous achievements of non-Western Ways, we seek an analogous synthesis with them — one that not only transforms them but also respects their integrity, even while recognizing that this respect for their integrity must lead to our own creative transformation[8]as well. (Cobb, Response to Pannenberg, p. 188).

It seems clear that Cobb's main agenda is transformation of the teaching of Christ to fit the prevailing understandings of scientific modernity.

In order to present a more complete understanding of the Jesus of process Christology the it is essential to discuss how process theologians define the Deity, Humanity and Uniqueness of Jesus.

The Humanity of Jesus

Process theologians strongly affirm the humanity of Jesus, and are opposed to any hint of doceticism. According to Pittenger, "Jesus was a concrete human individual who lived in a definite time and place" (Erickson p. 257). In "A Whiteheadian Christology", Cobb states Jesus' humanity in these words: "The one God was thus uniquely present in him. At the same time, Jesus was fully human and no' aspect of his humanity was displaced by God. It was a thoroughly human 'I' that was constituted by God's presence in Jesus" (p. 394). One of Cobb's favorite phrases is, "Common sense dictates that two objects, like a stone and a table, cannot occupy the same space at the same time"[9] (Demarest, Pauline Studies[10], p. 125).

Process theologians teach that Jesus' humanity necessitates his participation in sin.[11]However, though Pittenger believes that Jesus participated in human sin, he has a view of the sinlessness of Jesus in the sense that "the direction of His life was unswervingly toward fulfillment of the aim given to him initially by God — he made God's will his own" (Erickson, p. 258). Concerning the meaning of the Cross, Pittenger's understanding is that through it, Jesus gives man a demonstration of what human life can be when lived to full potential.[12] In this regard Jesus is "a representation of what human existence can be and is meant to be" (Pittenger, Unbounded Love. p. 11). This could be paraphrased to say that Jesus reached his potential, therefore he was sinless. In this sense He is our example.

Obviously such strong statements affirming Jesus humanity come into conflict with the teaching of His virgin birth. It is therefore no accident that process theologians disavow the doctrine of Jesus' virgin birth as mythological and non-historical. Jesus was simply a carpenter from Nazareth who was the humanly conceived son of Joseph and Mary. In Lure of Divine Love.[13] Pittenger writes: "Thestories told in the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke are apologetic, or Christological, in intent, and they cannot be taken as historical narratives. Insistence on a biological virgin birth has been a mistake"[14] (pp. 114-15).

Process thinkers like to point out that Jesus Himself strongly affirmed his own humanity in that he rejected the address 'Good Teacher' with the remark 'No one is good but God alone'.

With this strong affirmation of the humanity of Jesus, the question that then must be answered is, "In what sense is Jesus Divine?"

The Divinity of Jesus

Two other ways to state this question are: In what sense was Jesus of Nazareth God in the flesh? What is the essence of the Incarnation? This brings us to the center of how process theologians conceive of Jesus Christ. Those '.ho hold to Whiteheadian concepts reject as "crassly mythological the idea or the literal enfleshment of the second person of the triune God" (Demarest, PT, p. 66). Such modern minds abandon "as incredible and impossible the Greek idea of a god who comes down to earth and walks about as a human being" (Pittenger, LODL, p. 11). According to Pittenger, Jesus "should be viewed not as the God-man but in terms of the rubric 'God-in-man'" (Word Incarnate, p. 221). Concerning the sense in which Christ was in God, reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor 5:19), Pittenger wrote:

"God is doing something there, in that historical and human event. The Pauline text is not so much concerned with the how of God's 'presence' as it is with the what of God's activity. Thus we have here a clear instance of the general scriptural stress upon God's energizing in the historical process" (IPT, p. 48).

Cobb expressed the Incarnation in process terms that link it to his understanding of actualization of human potential: "'Christ' refers to the Logos as incarnate hence as the process of creative transformation in and of the world" (CPA, p. 76). Concerning this, Demarest further points out, "It should be underscored that in the process vision, Christ or the incarnate Logos, is present in all human beings and, indeed in all creation" (PT, p. 67). Cobb also wrote:

"Jesus existed in full unity with God's present purposed for him" (CPA, p. 141). Taking these statement together, they mean that Jesus' divinity is basically understood as the actualization of His potential as a human being. This is the sense in which Jesus' life and death "exerted on humankind a Godward moral influence" (Demarest, PT, p. 73). Jesus was divine in the sense that He is becoming God, and He is luring mankind to God by His example. There is a process of development in His life[15]and that process is present in every man and woman who will consider His example. It is obvious that there is no sense of immanence here, and consequently Cobb does not equate immanence with Jesus' identity. He wrote that the name "Christ", "does not designate deity as such but refers to deity as graciously incarnate in the world" (CPA, p. 66).

Another classical doctrine that obviously must go, according to process theologians, is the doctrine of Jesus' pre-existence. They refuse to identify Jesus' selfhood with a pre-existent divine person. Demarest points out, "The orthodox claim that the personal center of Jesus' existence antedated his birth is viewed as a purely mythological notion" (Demarest, PT, p. 65).

A final concept that demands some attention in relation to the divinity of Jesus is His title, "Son of God" by which He is referred to in Scripture, and the attending fact that it suggests He deserves worship. Process theologians handle the obvious problem by saying that to the early Christians the title meant "privileged creature of God" by virtue of the activity of divinity within him.

Concerning the question of worship, process theologians insist that because Jesus is simply a man, (although he is a man who specially reveals God), he must not be the object of worship. God alone is worthy of the Christian's worship (Mellert, p. 78).

The Uniqueness of Jesus

The final issue that must be dealt with to understand this topic is the uniqueness of Jesus. Taking the concepts put forth concerning Jesus' Deity and Humanity, the questions must be answered: In what sense is Jesus unique, or special, from all other men? What is the sense in which God was at work in Jesus, but not in other humans? This is an issue that process theologians are somewhat divided about. The statements they make about it are seemingly different in certain ways and yet the end result is much the same.

Cobb finds the uniqueness of Jesus in the fact that Jesus has made his God-given initial aim, the Logos, into his subjective aim without distortion (CPA, p. 140ff). This is mainly a difference in reference to Jesus' self actualization. Griffin's statements are along the same lines, for instance: "Jesus' specialness can be understood as rooted first of all in God's aim for him, the content of which was different for Jesus than all other men" (A Process Christology, p. 218).