process studies articles @ religion online...
Volume 18 (1989)
- Number 1, Spring 1989
- Does Omniscience Imply Foreknowledge? Craig on Hartshorne by Donald Wayne Viney
- Hartshorne on the Ultimate Issue in Metaphysics by John D. Gilroy
- Nonhuman Experience: A Whiteheadian Analysis by Susan Armstrong-Buck
- Whitehead’s "Theory" of Propositions by Anthony J. Steinbeck
William Lane Craig’s views of Hartshorne, regarding God’s foreknowledge because of God’s omniscience, are misunderstood and unjust.
The challenge of explaining reality’s ultimate features, which seems especially difficult to those who view all of reality, including God, in terms of process or becoming.
The author suggests that animal consciousness is closer to human consciousness than Whitehead believed.
We grasp propositions as lures for feeling, dependent upon the prehending subject for completion and determination. It is in this way that propositions account for the process view of the world and the self-realization of the subject.
- Number 2, Summer 1989
- Confessional Postmodernism and the Process-Relational Vision by Leslie A. Muray
- Feminist Separatism -- The Dynamics of Self-Creation by L. J. "Tess" Tessier
- Hauerwas Represented: A Response to Muray by Charles Pinches
- Process-Relational Christian Soteriology: A Response to Wheeler by David Basinger
- Radical Relatedness and Feminist Separatism by Nancy B. Howell
- Toward a Process-Relational Christian Soteriology by David L. Wheeler
The author analyzes Stanley Hauerwas’ thought concerning character and virtue, the Christian story, and the relation between the church and the world based on process-relational thought.
The author discusses the paper "Radical Relatedness and Feminist Separatism" by Nancy R. Howell. The more inclusive our actual world, the more expanded our potential for novel creations. However, there may well be a time and place for worldless dissociation.
Dr. Pinches critiques Leslie Muray’s "Confessional Postmodernism and the Process- Relational Vision." He believes Muray does not so much build on as offer an alternative to Hauerwas’ thinking about virtue, character and Christian theology.
The author responds to David Wheeler's "Toward a Process-Relational Christian Soteriology." What Wheeler says about the relationship between evangelical thought and Whiteheadian process seems uncertain. There are greater differences between these approaches than Wheeler realizes.
The author examine how Whiteheadian philosophy might complement radical feminism.
Dr. Wheeler envisions from an evangelistic background, the transformation of humanity through relationship with Christ, as per Biblical tradition and Christian experience, in a process-relational mode.
- Number 3, Fall 1989
- Bergson, Prigogine and the Rediscovery of Time by Eric V. Szendrei
- Energy-Events and Fields by Joseph A. Bracken, S.J.
- Recent Classical/Process Dialogue on God and Change by Philip Clayton
- The Moral Stance of Theism Without the Transcendent God by Marvin C. Shaw
- Whitehead and a Committee by Robert S. Brumbaugh
Science has traditionally ignored the significance of time. The attempt to treat all processes as theoretically reversible processes have failed to account for the results of many experimental investigations.
Bracken indicates how the field-approach to Whiteheadian societies allows for a trinitarian understanding of God in which the three divine persons of traditional Christian doctrine, by their dynamic interrelatedness from moment to moment, constitute a structured field of activity for the whole of creation. Metaphysics is considered to be an event-ontology rather than a substance-ontology.
The author discusses classical versus process theological dialogue in four central themes: 1. Being and becoming; 2. The question of personal identity; 3. The part/whole relationship; 4. The Trinity.
A sense of the mystery of Being can enrich the sense of meaningfulness in life, setting limits to our attempts to reorder nature. Such writers as Wieman and Heidegger have written of concepts suggesting we seek this experience.
Dr. Brumbaugh sees Whitehead as not divorcing his role as educator from that of philosopher.
- Number 4, Winter 1989
- Alien Gods in Black Experience by Archie Smith, Jr.
- Hartshorne’s Neoclassical Theism and Black Theology by Theodore Walker, Jr.
- I’ve Known Rivers: Black Theology’s Response to Process Theology by Thandeka
- Process Theology and Black Liberation: Testing the Whiteheadian Metaphysical Foundations by Henry James Young
- Process Theology: Guardian of the Oppressor or Goad to the Oppressed by William R. Jones
Dr. Smith looks at process thought and black liberation from a pastoral psychology perspective and black people’s experience of oppression: The struggle against oppression in black people’s experience is a constant struggle against external forces as manifested in economic, social, and political exploitation. It is also a struggle against internalized forms of oppression as manifested in negative self-images, depression, a sense of hopelessness, and apathy.
Both black and process theologies are defined in large part by their opposition to or protest against certain features of classical Western theism.
The author challenges the pretensions of process thought: The oppressed do not share process theology’s rationalism and idealism; it is too essentially rationalistic, European, and radically monistic.
Young believes that Whitehead’s conception of god is supportive of liberation struggles because it takes contextualization seriously by making God responsive to actual conditions of the world without resort to divine coercion.
The author assesses process thought from a liberation theology perspective, challenging the claim by process theologians that process and liberation thought are compatible.