A few thoughts on Process theology paraphrased from "The Openness of God" IVP Pinnock, Rice, Sanders, Hasker, Basinger:
(p.92 ff.= Sanders)
Progressive theology (modern)...process theology...God is ontologically dependent on the world....emphasize divine immanence...all things are essentially related..God and the world are involved in an ontologically interdependent relationship.
- criticizes classical theism for overemphasis on absolute transendence, immutability, impassibility. Instead, God is seen as an ever-changing being evolving toward the perfection that is potentially his. God is creative, but only in the sense that God 'creates' as WE act, since this God cannnot unilaterally act upon the world. (?!)
(Open Theism differs with that understanding; God is sovereign, transcedent, distinct from creation, and immanent).
- God lures the world by love toward his purposes. "In general, process thought tends to stray from any biblical moorings and substitutes the metaphysics of change for the metaphysics of static substance, ending up with a God that, if personal at all, CANNOT act in history. What sort of relationship can we have with a God who cannot act or communicate clearly? Consequently, the doctrines of creation, incarnation and salvation are radically revised." (cf. Stoicism; Hellenism= the world is not created but eternally dependent on God).
Pinnock (p.112 ff.):
- Process theology denies ontological independence, maintaining that God needs the world as much as the world needs God (rather than uncreated/created distinction).
- It makes God too passive, able only to experience the world and to organize the elements that present themselves to him.
- Process theology moves away from the static model, but its dynamic model is not as biblical as Open Theism (= The Creator gives life and freedom to the creature and voluntarily limits the exercise of his power in relation to it. God's openness to the world is freely chosen, not compelled).
Hasker (p. 134; 138 ff.):
- theories (highest to lowest level of divine control) include Calvinism, Molinism, simple foreknowledge,
free will theism= there are some logical limitations on God's knowledge of the future,
process theology (neoclassical theism)= many aspects of the future are unknowable but also imposes some very stringent inherent limitations on the way in which God is ABLE to act in the world (OV disagrees).
- main proponents A.N. Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne: (synthesis with Greek philosophy)
- God and the world are interdependent ('the world created God').
- God's power is always persuasive and never coercive. God does not permit the evil, but could not prevent it (too limiting).
Open theism is a third alternative to the extremes of Calvinim and Process Theology. It embodies many of the strengths of both views while avoiding their weaknesses.
So, some of the anti-Open View books attack the weaknesses of Process theology (straw man caricature of the Open view) claiming it makes God finite and impotent (Open Theism upholds God's absolute wonders). They confuse the views and do not fairly represent or understand the Open view (who would also attack process thought on many points).
