process studies articles @ religion online...
Volume 30 (2001)
- Number 1, Spring-Summer 2001
- Deep Ecology and Process Thought by John B. Cobb, Jr.
- From Criticism to Mutual Transformation? The Dialogue Between Process and Evangelical Theologies by John Culp
- One, Two, or Three Concepts of God in Alfred North Whitehead’s Process and Reality? by Denis Hurtubise
- Philosophical Growth, Future Subjectivity, and David Pailin by Lewis S. Ford
- The Time of Whitehead’s Concrescence by John W. Lango
To Whitehead there is an intrinsic importance of what happens to all things and how the effects of each act ramify throughout the whole. Therefore his philosophy can be understood as a deep ecology.
Dr. Culp describes several discussions between evangelical theologians and process thinkers. Wesleyan theology is neither exclusively liberal nor evangelical, thus this discussion revolved around the more specific relationship between Wesleyan theology and process theology.
Dr. Hurtubise details several different concepts of God as contained in Whitehead’s Process and Reality. Whitehead had not developed the distinction between a primordial and a consequent nature at an earlier stage. Even earlier, he did conceive God as nothing more than a formative element.
Lewis Ford critiques Transforming Process Theism by David Pailin. Ford discusses some Whiteheadian concepts that to Pailin seem contradictions. Also discussed is the question: Is the notion of a future subjectivity credible?
Dr. Lango discusses in detail the actual occasions in the Temporal World in abstraction from the Whiteheadian conception of God in Process and Reality. Concrescence is temporally ordered. Dr. Lango calls this answer temporalism.
- Number 2, Fall-Winter 2001
- A Psychologist’s Philosophy Evaluated After Fifty Years: Troland’s Psychical Monism by Charles Hartshorne
- Darwin and Some Philosophers by Charles Hartshorne
- God as Composer-Director, Enjoyer, and, in a Sense, Player of the Cosmic Drama by Charles Hartshorne
- Philosophy After Hartshorne by Donald Wayne Viney
- Thomas Aquinas and Three Poets Who Do Not Agree with Him by Charles Hartshorne
- Why Only Two? Why Not Three? by Lewis S. Ford
Hartshorne states that Leonard Thompson Troland was wrong about all theoretical problems being scientific ones. All of Troland’s ethical views derive from science, but Hartshorne does agree with him that in an ultimate world-view the key science is not physics but psychology. Only psychology can deal with the inclusive form of reality, the concrete as such.
A book review article by Hartshorne of John Bowlby’s Charles Darwin: A New Life. Hartshorne comments about Darwin’s theology.
So long as there are those who identify God with some one-sided abstraction like infinity; absoluteness, or worst of all omnipotence (not even a self-consistent abstraction), we shall need the help both of more balanced theists and of nontheists to counteract these more subtle and intellectual forms of idolatry.
The author gives references to many tributes paid to Hartshorne: The theistic metaphysics of Hartshorne along with Whitehead is one of the great intellectual contributions of the twentieth century.
Hartshorne analyzes the thinking of Thomas Aquinas, Omar Khayyám, and Sidney Lanier from a Process Thought point of view. Properly interpreted, these writers can help us live better than we might live without them.
Dr. Ford argues with Denis Hurtubise concerning the subjectivity and temporality of God. (See One, Two, or Three Concepts of God, by Denis Hurtubise.