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Relation of The Urantia Papers and Process Theology.
Twelve years ago, Dr Jim Mills, then a lecturer in philosophy at the University of Florida, and a former trustee of the Urantia Foundation, introduced me to process philosophy. Jim expressed his fervent hope that it could be the key to the finding of a place for the Urantia Papers in the curriculum of tertiary institutions for study by philosophy and theology students. Jim died without seeing his hope fulfilled.
Recently, I attended an introductory lecture on process theology presented to a local church congregation and, with the permission of its author, have reproduced it as a matter of great interest. Its author, incidentally had never heard of The Urantia Book.
K.T.G.
What is Process Theology and What Does It Mean To Me?
Keith McPaul, Australia
The Christian application of process theology is about knowing a truly relational God, knowing a God who is with us at all times, a God who shares both our joys and our sorrows.
Before I go any further on the process understanding of God, I think it is appropriate to say a little about where this understanding comes from.
As Christians, we believe in a Supreme Being that we call God. Our understanding of God comes mainly from two sources. The image of powerful kings and rulers comes from the social and political environment at the time of writing of the Bible. The words used to describe the Gods come from Greek philosophers such as Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE, through Plato, Aristotle in the 4th century BCE, to Plotinus in the 3rd century CE.
The Bible and much of our current liturgy use the words, symbols, and metaphors of that era. God was described in terms of a king and a ruler who had absolute control over everything. God was all-powerful, eternal, never changing. They described God in terms of their understanding of human beings, with God being greater than anything that could be humanly imagined. God was described as a superhuman.
As our understanding of the universe increased, many of these earlier images and metaphors no longer made sense to us. However, we seem reluctant to give them up because it's "in the Bible." Most of them are not in the Bible--they came from our church fathers, people like us, trying to explain what is revealed to us in the Bible.
Most serious theologians and teachers now think that it is about time we used words, images, and metaphors that make sense of, and are appropriate to, our modern understanding of the universe and our place in it. Let me give two quotations to illustrate this:
"If we believe that all new knowledge is revealed to us from God for a purpose, then there is a need to reformulate our theology to take into account the world as we know it." (Pope John Paul 11)
"There is a large and alarming dissonance between the language of devotion, doctrine, and liturgy, and the way people see themselves and reality in the world." (Arthur Peacocke, Dean of Clare College, Cambridge)
In process theology there is an attempt to reconcile our belief in a loving God, the God we see in the scriptures, and the God we experience personally, with the God we see in the world and the wonders of God the scientists have shown us.
Process theology does not claim to have the whole truth but it does claim to give us a new understanding of our relationship with God that is consistent with what we know and experience about the world about us. It gives us a new set of words and metaphors which are more understandable in our world of today.
Modern science has learned many things about the universe and our place in it, most of which we take for granted because they do not seem to impact on our daily lives. For example, science now tells us that:
Everything is made of small pulses of energy, and not small units of matter.
Every building block from which we are made has a degree of freedom to do what it likes. We do not know with certainty what any unit might do or even where it is.
Nothing is static. Everything in the universe is in a state of change or process of becoming something else. You, me, the flowers, even the table are all in the process of becoming something else--obviously some things move slower than others.
All things in the universe have an influence over every other thing in the universe. Everything is related to every other thing, even if in a very minute way.
This is very different from what was understood when the Bible was written, when Jesus was alive, and when our church fathers established the creeds.
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