PROCESS THEOLOGY OFFERS AN INCAPABLE STUPID GOD IN ORDER TO AVOID CONDONING A STRONGER GOD ALLOWING EVIL TO HAPPEN

Process theology faces the problem of evil and unjust suffering and instead of trying to argue that God is ultimately right to let it happen, it argues that God is growing so it is no wonder things go wrong.  He is not perfectly powerful.

 

A version of this called panentheism claims that God and the universe depend on each other but that they are not one and the same thing. The proponents reject the idea of an unchanging and apparently impersonal God who makes all things out of nothing. They call the world God’s body meaning that God needs the world to exist like the mind needs the body. Their God is the mind and soul of the world.
 
Process theology says that God like us, is subject to the changes that time brings.
 
This God is not needed as an explanation for the existence of the universe. You may as well say you need Santa as an explanation. If God needs the universe and the universe needs God then neither of them is really supreme or fully in charge. God is not God.
 
If God made all things from nothing then there was a time he did not need anything. Why would he need the universe now? It is because of this problem that some say that God did not make all things from nothing and made the universe for he needed it. He made it from stuff that was already there.
 
Suppose he does need the universe. When God has the power to make all things why could he not use the power to fulfil his needs directly rather than using it to make a universe which is very much a roundabout way of handling his needs?
 
The Process theology God cannot guarantee that he will be able to save us finally from death and sin and suffering. Though the universe is his body, things do go wrong. Could it have been his will to put uranium on earth and lead the world to the power to destroy itself a hundred times over through nuclear war?
 
This God who is not all-powerful is not like the God of Jesus Christ. But if the concept is decent and better than Jesus’ that shouldn’t be a problem. Jesus is the one that should be dumped. Plus we must leave Jesus out and look into the face of God without letting him colour the picture. Philosophy demands that.
 
This God cannot predict the future for he is subject to time himself and cannot look into the future. Process theologians respond to the complaint that God could be so radically different from what he was a hundred years ago that it makes no sense to think he is the same God now by saying that as long as God loves us who cares.
 
The theory is heretical and humane. I like it best out of all the different and contrary God theories there are but....

 

This God started the process and that process includes the seeds of evil.  He knew what he was starting and he knew he had no control over much of it.  So he is to blame for evil.  Why can't he entice you to evil if he gives up control for some purpose?  We just cannot get away from this mysterious purpose rubbish.  It happens with this sad God and also the absolute omni-God of Christianity who has all power and love.   Many goods we do are not in response to some evil.  So we cannot argue that God lets a terrible plague happen so that we might respond with love and compassion and that they would not happen otherwise.  No matter what kind of God you come up with you are going to have to be sympathetic to such notions.
 
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