Ba-derekh: On the Way—A Presentation of Process Theology

Introduction

Process Theology—a constellation of ideas sharing the common assertion that the world and God are in continuous, dynamic change, of related interaction and becoming—can be unsettling at first glance. We take for granted what it means to be conventionally religious, and those traditionalist assumptions make it difficult to open ourselves to an engaging and explanatory way to conceive and connect to an embracing faithfulness. Much of what Process Thought will offer as an alternative may sound shocking, perhaps even irreligious, if this is a first encounter with Process Thought. I want to provide an image that makes it possible, at least, to work through the shock and discomfort to some degree. It is still possible to reject this dynamic/relational approach, and that is your privilege; but the opening image may help create the possibility of a new understanding.

I live in west Los Angeles in a home that was built in the 1950s. Our dining room has wood paneling along its four walls. When we first bought the house a decade ago, the room was painted a sickly green, presumably in the late 70s during the high watermark of the aesthetics of the Brady Bunch and Partridge Family. The actual wood grain and tone were covered, though I think that in that era people thought such a look was cutting edge. With that greenish coat of paint, the walls looked fake and cheap. When we finally got around to repainting the upstairs of the house, we asked our painter if he could just paint the phony paneling a simple white because the green was hideous. He pondered for a moment, then took his thumbnail and scratched on the panel. The paint peeled away, and he said, "You know, I think that under this green there is actual wood." His team spent three days sandblasting and then varnishing. At the end of the week our dining room was transformed! The wood is so rich and the patterns in the grain are magnificent. It is now my favorite room in the house. I had thought, erroneously, that it was the wood itself that was that sickly green, when in fact, that trashy look was just the coating that someone had painted over it.

Modern Western people often approach religion as I did the paneling: they assume that the only way to be religious is to accept the sickly green overlay of Greek philosophy. They take neo-Platonized Aristotelian scholastic presuppositions and filter religion through those ideas. Then, because they have insurmountable problems with those assertions, they assume that the quandary involves religion itself, or the Bible, or the Talmud, or observance, or God. What Process Thinking offers is the opportunity to sandblast the philosophical overlay of ancient Greece and medieval Europe off the rich, burnished grain of Bible, Rabbinics, and Kabbalah so that we can savor the actual patterns in the living wood of religion, the eitz ḥayim,¹ and appreciate Judaism for what it was intended to be and truly is.

Problems with the Omni's

Because we are habituated to the pale green overlay, we assume that drab impression is what religion necessarily entails: specifically, the kind of theology that most Christian theologians call "classical," by which they mean Augustine, Aquinas, and the broad spectrum of medieval philosophy—which presupposes that God must be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent.² Based on this presumption, God has—and must have—all the power (that is what omnipotent means).³ God has—and must have—all knowledge, knowing everything that is, was, and will be. God is omnibenevolent—pure good. The challenge for many contemporaries is that certain intolerable consequences result from these three axioms.

For God to be omnipotent implies that no power exists that is not God's, which means, first of all, that any occurrence is God's responsibility. Sometimes we like what happens, sometimes we do not; regardless, all that happens comes from God. So God gets the credit for anything good in life; for anything bad in life, God gets the blame. There is no escape from...