Theology of the Process

introduction

The theology of the Process , is a vision Cosmologique world exit of the theory of relativity. A Métaphysique results from this. Cosmology affirms that reality is in a constant process of flow and change whose each element joins together at the same time material and the sensory one. At the end of the reasoning, reality is identified with this process of movement even. Alfred North Whitehead in his work Process and Reality , takes as starting springboard the quotation of Héraclite:
" One never bathes twice in same the fleuve"

The concepts such as the creativity, the Freedom, the innovation, emergence, and the growth are the fundamental explanatory categories for theology of the Process. In fact, this theology has an impact criticizes on the dogmatic traditional one, for example, the immutability, omnipotence, the omniscience and the other attributes of God chosen among the 7 " omni " supposed to be those of the Transcendence. Withehead points out that these " omni" are the attributes of the figures of Emperor (César, Persian, etc).

Operation

This metaphysical prospect criticizes substantialist philosophy , largely that of Thomas d' Aquin, which sees a fixed and permanent reality at the base of a changing world or the fluctuation of the ordinary experiment. Considering that substantialist philosophy underlines the static being, philosophies and theologies of the Process underline to become dynamic: the basic elements are drops of experiment (concept of current entity) which cease being as soon as they were connected to all the others that those are present or through time. Although the theology of the Process enracine in ancient philosophy, that of the Life century before the era current, in particular in that, Greek, of Héraclite, the interest which it presents was stimulated, at the XIXe century by the quantum Mécanique.

The various answers to the question of the gasoline of the world result in noting that, until very recently, the answers given did not take account of time. Substantialist research metaphysics always arrived at the conclusion which the Being is apart from time. However, the world is in time and the human one approaches its clean dead every day. Thus, traditional metaphysics seems to be a search to flee the existential anguish of dead and finitude. To introduce the notion of time is to apprehend the question of the gasoline of the world from an ontological point of view.

It introduces a deep revision of concepts for the readers of Martin Heidegger whose principal question is What the being as being?

The answer is then elsewhere than where the being is held and has the conscience of this “being”, Where is the being “conscious of existing” , where is the human one. Only the study of the phenomena of the existence of the human being can result in including/understanding something to be it as being which composes the world. That does not result in concluding that the concepts “existence” and “gasoline” express the same reality. However, it is by taking self-awareness that we can include/understand the world more. It is what this old maxim allotted to Socrate Connais expresses, yourself, and you will know the universe and the gods.

reception in contemporary Theology

Contemporary theology was strongly influenced by philosophies of the process. The American theologist Charles Hartshorne, for example, rather than to interpret God like an immutable absolute, underlines the significant report/ratio of God worrying about the world. This personal God starts reports/ratios in such a way that it is affected by these reports/ratios; to be affected by reports/ratios, it is to change. Thus God is it also in the course of growth and development. Important contributions in the field of theology were also made by theologists such as William Temple (1881 - 1944), Daniel Day Williams (1910 - 1973), Schubert Ogden (1928 -), and John B. Cobb, Jr. (1925 -. For the Judaism, one can also quote Abraham Joshua Heschel

  • the reception is excellent as regards physicist. Indeed, the cosmology of Whitehead takes as a starting point the quantum Mécanique. Whitehead is indeed more known for its work of mathematician than for his philosophy and its theology safe in the United States, where it belongs to works to the program of the secondary course for those which have an option Philosophie.

  • It is excellent as regards philosopher. It makes it possible to reconsider the concept of God with the categories of time present.
  • It is received in the liberal theologists who they are Protestant or Jewish
  • the Christian Churches more the traditionalists reject this theology with the argument that it supposes a Immanentisme in contradiction with the apostolic tradition and the doctrines on the grace and the sin. In some kind, they suppose that philosophy must be subjected to the doctrines. Especially, within the framework of the thought of Alfred North Whitehead in his work Process and Reality , the theory of the Immanence does not take place any more to be. Indeed, maneo (Latin verb) means to remain, remain and, in the theology of the process, nothing remains nor does not remain, nothing is not immutable. This criticism is thus not suitable.

Diffusion

The principal personalities having supported the development of philosophies of the modern processes are the British philosophers Herbert Spencer, Samuel Alexander, and Alfred North Whitehead, the American philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, and the French philosophers Henri Bergson and Pierre Teilhard of Chardin.

Of Alfred North Whitehead Process and Reality and: An Essay in Cosmology (1929) is generally regarded as the systematic expression most important of the philosophy of the process.

Representations of God

  • It is as true to say as God is permanent and the flowing world, to say that the World is permanent and flowing God.

  • It is as true to say as God is one and the World plurality, to say that the World is one and God plurality.
  • It is as true to say as, in comparison with the World, God is eminently current, than to say that, in comparison with God, the World is imminemment current .
  • It is as true to say as the World east immanent with God, to say that God east immanent in the World.
  • It is as true to say as God transcends the World, to say that the World transcends God.
  • It is as true to say as God creates the World, to say that the World creates God. - (quotations extracted from Process and reality , p.348)

Can this design “monist” of the world answer the questions from which comes the world? or concerning the origin of the world? Not. Does this design lead to rejetter the idea of creative God? Not.

However, the mode to be of God developed by theologies of the Process reject creation ex nihilo (from nothing) by God whose being would be foreign. They propose God whose creative act consists in making open out the life in all its forms. Thus, for God, to create does not consist in working in order to maintain or restore creation according to an order (plane) pre-established but acting as interaction with the world while proposing, rather than ordering, in order to produce creative changes supporting the life. One leads to the idea of a continuous creation for little that the duration keeps a direction in the philosophy of the process. Thus, conservatism is contrary with the being even of God who is itself in evolution and growth.

Some theologists of this current

  • John B. Cobb (French works: God and the world , Van Dieren editor, 2006, Thomas taken of doubts , Van Dieren editor, 1999, Buddhism and Christianisme , Labor and Fides, 1989)
  • Charles Hartshorne (1897 - 2000) Omnipotence and other Theological Mistakes
  • Paul Tillich (1886 - 1965) (in French): Courage to be (Médiaspaul Co-edition, Stag, Labor and Fidès), Systematic Theology (Volumes 1 and 2), God beyond God . Translations under the direction of Andre Gounelle. Other German and English works.
  • David Ray Griffin (1953)

To see too

  • Andre Gounelle creative dynamism of God , Van Dieren ED., Paris, 2nd re-examined and increased edition, 2000. Broad extracts of the first edition of 1975 are on line.
Gounelle, Andre. In the ISCED; Reflections Of a Believer. Paris: Van Dieren Editor, 2002.
  • Andre Gounelle “the Debate between Tillich and Hartshorne.” Review of History and Philosophy Nuns 76, No 3 (1996): 315-26.
  • Andre Gounelle “God according to the “process theology”.” Theological studies and Nuns 55, no.2 (1980): 1* “Creative Dynamism of God: Test on the Theology of the Process.” Theological studies and Nuns 56 (1981).
  • Andre Gounelle “Cobb, John B.” In Dictionary of the theologists and Christian theology, ED. Gerard Reynal (Paris: Bayard Editions, 1998): 115.
  • Andre Gounelle “Le Monde and God according to the Theology of the Process.” Light and Life 161 (Winter 1982): 51-9.
  • Elisabeth Parmentier Introduction to theologies of Process'
  • Jean-Marc Rouvière Short meditations on the creation of the world Harmattan 2006 Paris, ISBN: 2-7475-9922-1

  • Jean-Michel Maldamé COp. “Cosmology and theology. Study of the concept of creation in the thelogy North-American of the Process.” Reuve Thomiste 86, no.1 (Jan- March 1986): 90-114. recension

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