PROCESS THEOLOGY

Introduction

While it has roots in Antiquity, Process Theology is a rather recent philosophical development. It may be termed Process Philosophy, Process Thought, Process Theology, or even Process Naturalism, depending on where the various proponents may be coming from, whether from a religious or faith point of view, an agnostic point of view, or even an atheistic point of view. It enables people to talk a more common language in matters of belief and faith, and the meaning of life and our place in the Universe.
Process Theology comes the closest to applying a scientific-like method to the discussion of religion, faith, and spirituality. While it does try to stretch our understanding of things beyond the bounds of science, it is never intentionally in conflict with science or observed reality.

Some of the major contributors to Process Theology have been Alfred North Whitehead, Charles Hartshorne, and John B. Cobb.

I will reference John B. Cobb, Jr.(1), to define what a process is, since this is central to Process Theology. Everything that is an actuality, that has existence, is a process in motion, transition, or transformation, or is reflexively composed of yet other processes. Everything else is an abstraction of a process, which, while it represents potential, is not quite real. The flow of process is broken into a series of events, some of which are arbitrarily marked off by us, some of which are externally imposed upon us, and some of which are naturally quantized according to the rules of physics. We see these events as accumulations of animate and inanimate structures in motion.

We do not personally experience all the processes in motion around us; our consciousness is highly selective about what matters and what is important, what is relational to us. The great majority of animate processes occur unconsciously, which is fortunate, since it reduces the sensory processing load. As higher lifeforms, we have a lot more conscious processes going on, and many of these have impact on our unconscious processes.
Inanimate matter is also composed of active processes; however, much of these occur at the atomic levels, rather than at the macro levels, where we actually observe matter. While matter still has free will and self-identity, it can only be expressed within the laws of physics. Also, at atomic levels, processes are documented using wave mechanics, rather than particle mechanics. Wave mechanics creates a whole new way of describing identity.

All lifeforms experience objective and subjective existence, which is a relationship borne out of internal processes in conjunction with physical motion and interaction. Too often, we only want to analyze this objectively, without taking into account all the subjectively interesting experiences in life, which all lifeforms have to some degree. Just as there are actually no independent lifeforms, there are also no independent experiences. Even God cannot be exempt from this rule. While God does have a transcendent nature, it is only through Hir immanent nature that S/He can interact with us. It is not possible to have relationships and be independent at the same time.
Subjective experiences, especially those that are enjoyable or involve intimate relationships, are often suspect.