Process Theology

Process theology is the religious thought inspired by Alfred North Whitehead's Process and Reality as developed by a succession of thinkers, notably Charles Hartshorne, John B. Cobb Jr., and David Ray Griffin. As a philosophical program process philosophy anticipated much later twentieth-century metaphysics, but was largely ignored by the academic establishment, although welcomed by some theologians. In this entry the distinctive character of process thought will be examined, as well as its theological applications. Finally, a justification is given for theologians' reliance upon a speculative, fairly systematic, but often confusing and contestable metaphysics, process philosophy.

Process theology rejects the theses that god is omnipotent, unchanging, unaffected by creatures, and supernatural. Its positive theses include the dipolarity of god, namely that in some respects god is unchanging and unaffected by creatures; and panentheism, the thesis that god includes the universe. The chief characteristic of process theology is not so much these specific theses, but a dipolar and "organic" way of understanding things, which blends efficient and final causation in an original fashion.