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121 Is the God of Process Theology a Valid Option? 9 I I came to Claremont as a graduate student in philosophy in 1966 and started teaching full time at (what was then called) Claremont Men’s College in 1970. I soon learned that Claremont was the world center of Process Theology (PT), a way of doing Christian theology that is based on the thought of Alfred North Whitehead. Charles Hartshorne, a disciple of Whitehead, is also an important source. John Cobb and David Griffin were longtime colleagues of mine. I have been widely (and correctly) perceived here in Claremont as an opponent of PT. Despite that fact, I have always felt that Whitehead’s philosophical system is one of the most brilliant intellectual accomplishments of the twentieth century. And one thing that I have always appreciated about Process theologians is their emphasis on rationality, rigor of argumentation, and logic. In a time when many other theologians seem not to espouse such ideals, the Process emphasis is badly needed. There have been several occasions over the years in which I have interacted with Process thinkers, usually in conferences or at presentations here in Claremont. I have always enjoyed such events, and it has been stimulating to think about the rebuttals to my arguments against Process thought that have been offered by Cobb, Griffin, and others. I do not claim to be able to refute Whitehead’s philosophical system (although I disagree with it), but I think Much of the present chapter is taken from my “Why God Must Be Unlimited,” in Concepts of the Ultimate: Philosophical Perspectives on the Nature of the Divine, ed. Linda J. Tessier (London: Macmillan, 1989) and from my contributions to Davis, ed., Encountering Evil, 2nd ed. 122 Disputed Issues I can make cogent points against PT, that is, against the application of Process philosophy to Christian thought. So far as the concept of God is concerned (there are other points as well where I would part company with PT), I will try to do so in the present chapter. I will argue that the Process God is not a valid option for Christians. My argument will go as follows: first, I will ague, contrary to PT, that Christian theology and practice need an unlimited God. Second, at the level of pure metaphysics, I will explain why I prefer what I call the Aristotelian ontology to the Process ontology. Third, I will defend the notion of creation out of nothing from criticisms offered by Process theologians. Finally, I will raise criticisms of PT on the problem of evil. II For people who believe in God, the question of what God is like is obviously crucial. What are God’s attributes? How should we describe God? One of the most important such questions is whether God should be described as limited or unlimited. One way to begin a discussion of this point is to note that there seems to exist a fairly broad consensus on what we might call criteria of divinity, that is, conditions that a being must satisfy if it is to be divine or worthy of worship. It seems that in order to be God, a given being must be: (1) very powerful (far more powerful than human beings); (2) the creator of the heavens and the earth (although there are various notions of what is meant by “create”); (3) everlasting (this term, too, is interpreted in various ways); and (4) loving, compassionate, gracious, and morally good. Beyond these points, however, Christians differ on many other questions about the nature of God. One of them is the question whether we ought to speak of God as unlimited. Let us define this term in a relatively simple way. That is, let us say that an unlimited being is one that is not bound by causal constraints. Such a being might still be bound by logical constraints and so will be unable to do things like create a married bachelor or bring it about that the sum of 6 and 5 is 13. But such a being will be quite unrestrained by the causal or natural laws that prevent human beings from doing things like parting the waters of the sea or raising the dead. One difficulty with this way of understanding the term unlimited, however, is that only power is taken to be relevant. Possibly what makes a being unlimited is more than just omnipotence—perhaps maximal degrees of knowledge, wisdom, goodness, and so forth...

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