ORTHODOX CHRISTIANITY, WESLEYANISM, AND PROCESS THEOLOGY

by Michael L. Peterson

One of the most important questions facing educated Christians today concerns the relationship of Christian orthodoxy to "process philosophy." The major doctrines of the Christian faith must be interpreted and related within some general conceptual system, and one task of Christian philosophers and theologians is to determine which conceptual system is best suited for this purpose.1 During the 1960s, many thinkers began to claim that process thought can be used to fashion a theology which explains Christian doctrines more adequately than any competing conceptual system. More recently, John Culp has claimed that process thought can even offer new and important insights into distinctive Wesleyan commitments (see "A Dialog with the Process Theology of John B. Cobb, Jr.," in the present issue of this journal, pp. 33-44). The purpose of this article is to respond to both claims.

While I have great respect for all of the complex and sophisticated conceptual systems which come under the rubric of process philosophy. I will express here some serious reservations about whether they can properly interpret essential Christian beliefs in general or Wesleyan beliefs in particular. I develop this response in four phases. First, I briefly summarize the essentials of process philosophy. Second, I assess the basic impact which process philosophy has had on Christian theology. Third, I consider the proposal that process thought can shed light on certain Wesleyan distinctives. Fourth, I explore some background issues which must be resolved before reaching a final assessment of process thought vis-à-vis orthodox Christianity and Wesleyanism. I. Essentials of Process Philosophy

There are at least three different senses in which the label "process thought" can be understood: (1) as a motif running through the otherwise diverse systems of such thinkers as Heraclitus, Charles Darwin, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, Henry Bergson, John Dewey, and Guatama the Buddha; (2) as the optimistic thesis of dynamism, development, and improvement as articulated in the work of Teilhard de Chardin and of those whom he substantially influenced; (3) the basic metaphysical scheme which emphasizes becoming, organism, experience, and creativity as proposed by Alfred North Whitehead and his intellectual followers.

It is the third sense which I wish to discuss in this paper. Although the philosophical descendants of Whitehead (e.g., Hartshorne, Cobb, Griffin, Ogden, Ford, etc.) have augmented and revised portions of his thought, Whitehead is still the fountainhead and prime representative of process philosophy. Hence, the thought of Whitehead himself provides a natural introduction to the whole area of process philosophy. Furthermore, the treatment of Whitehead here applies, with appropriate modification, to virtually all variations on process philosophy espoused by his followers. So, in responding to Whitehead, I am in effect responding to Cobb, who is endorsed throughout Culp's paper.

Whitehead's whole philosophy is based on a highly abstract and general metaphysic of becoming.2 Central to this metaphysic is his notion of "actual occasion," which is his term for an actual entity. According to Whitehead, the entire world is composed of these actual occasions, each of which is a center of experience. These actual occasions are fleeting and perishing, always making room for successive occasions which also perish in their turn. Although these subjects of experience are transitory, each one is able to unify and objectify its experience and transmit it to subsequent subjects. By what Whitehead calls "prehension" an actual occasion receives the data of experience (also called "feelings") from previous actual occasions. By "concrescence" the receptive occasion integrates the data into a unified whole. By "transition" each occasion then donates its initial data and subjective response as a completely new datum to successive occasions.

Obviously, we are not directly aware of these actual occasions and their unique activities. They are metaphysical postulates which Whitehead uses to explain reality. All relevant actualities can be explained in these terms. For example, an object of common experience may seem relatively stable and enduring; but ontologically it is really an aggregate or nexus of these actual occasions. A human being can also be explained in similar terms: the physical body is a succession of relatively low-grade occasions which is coordinated by a soul, or series of dominant, high-grade occasions. Although God does not have a physical body, He too can be explained as the supreme and everlasting actual entity which experiences temporal succession. We can now draw out the implications of this sketch of reality for theology. I find it best to start with the concept of power, which in turn leads to the concepts of creativity and value.

There are two kinds of power in what is actual. There is the power of the past to affect a given occasion; but there is also the power of that occasion to respond in its own way in the present. Now if it is true (and by Whitehead's definition it is) that reality is constituted by such actual occasions, and if it is a necessary metaphysical principle that such actualities possess an inherent power of self-determination, then not even God can completely control or determine the responses of those actualities. According to Whitehead, then, God does not have a monopoly on power, although He has all the power which is conceivable for a being to have. This new meaning must therefore attach to the use of the term "omnipotence" instead of the traditional meaning. In view of this critical change in the concept ion of divine power, Whitehead concludes that creatures, or actual occasions, have the ability not to follow the divine purpose. This ability is in effect the power to do evil. Hence, Whitehead describes God's power as "relative" to the free exercise of power by other actual occasions.

Whitehead posits God's chief goal for the universe to be the realization, maximization, and harmonization of values. But this cannot be explained apart from God's dual nature. God has two distinguishable (though perhaps not separable) natures, the Primordial Nature and the Consequent Nature, both of which play crucial roles in effecting the divine purposes. In His Primordial Nature, God is the repository of all eternal possibilities for the world. Although Whitehead sometimes seems to indicate that these infinite possibilities are indeed under divine decision and control, Hartshorne points out that it is more consistent with Whitehead's overall metaphysic to hold that they are independent of God's determination.3 Still, the basic point is that these potentialities represent all of the different way-s in which the world can advance or increase in value. Out of this range of possibilities, God attempts to draw out His specific purposes for the course of things:

. . . God is not to be treated as an exception to all metaphysical principles, invoked to save their collapse. He is their chief exemplification.

Viewed as primordial, he is the unlimited conceptual realization of the absolute wealth of potentiality. In this aspect, he is not before all creation, but with all creation. . . . He is the unconditioned actuality of conceptual feeling at the base of things; so that, by reason of this primordial actuality, there is an order in the relevance of eternal objects to the process of creation. . . . The particularities of the actual world presuppose it; while it merely presupposes the general metaphysical character of creative advance, of which it is the primordial exemplification.4

Connected with this notion of fixed eternal possibilities is the belief that God did not create ex nihilo. Instead the world allegedly originates from an aboriginal disorder and chaos. In a sense, then. God is still creating the world, although He is not able to determine all of the metaphysical principles which govern the evolution of the world out of chaos into order.

We must now be more specific about what it is that God is trying to accomplish in the continual process of creation. Since the experiences of temporal subjects play an important role in Whitehead's metaphysic, it is quite natural that his definitions of good and evil relate essentially to the experiences of these subjects. He holds that experience is intrinsically good in so far as it is characterized by beauty. In delineating the aesthetic concept of beauty, he employs the concepts of "harmony" and "intensity." Hence, the most worthwhile and important experiences will possess both harmony and intensity to a high degree. Alternatively, "discord" and ''triviality" are the opposites of harmony and intensity respectively, and are thus intrinsically evil. Consider Whitehead's description of the interplay of good and evil in the world:

The temporal world exhibits two sides of itself. On one side it exhibits an order in matter of fact, and a self-contrast with ideals, which show that its creative passage is subject to the immanence of an unchanging actual entity. On the other side its incompletion, and its evil, show that that temporal world is to be construed in terms of additional formative elements which are not definable in the terms which are applicable to God.5

So, the unfolding history of the world is really God's persistent attempt to bring the world out of discord and triviality into harmony and intensity.

Without going into the intricate relationship which obtains among the relevant values and disvalues, and what kinds of trade-offs can be justified in this imperfect world, let it suffice to say that God seeks to produce an interplay which makes for important, or worthwhile, or "higher," experiences for His creatures. But in order for this plan to be successful, God must also produce "higher" kinds of creatures capable of enjoying and appreciating such experiences. Now "higher" beings are those with a great degree of individual autonomy who are able to produce novelty. This novelty consists in a creative response to and integration of the prehended data of experience. Of course, being autonomous, such creatures may respond in ways which bring evil instead of good. Thus, in His tortuous and risky development of significant individuals, God must countenance the possibility of evil as well as the possibility of good.

All of this means that God's agency in the world is not coercive but persuasive. God must persuade or lure the world toward the realization of greater value. He does this by providing input for the prehension of all actual occasions. Each actual occasion receives from God an initial aim or nudge toward the ideal. However, the subjective aim of each occasion, which is its response to initially prehended data, may or may not conform to the divinely imparted ideal, since each occasion has some power of self-determination. Whitehead explains the subtle combination of the dual aims:

. . . the initial stage of its aim is an endowment which the subject inherits from the inevitable ordering of things, conceptually realized in the nature of God. The immediacy of the concrescent constitution. Thus the initial stage of the aim is rooted in the nature of God, and its completion depends on the self-causation of the subject-superject.6

So, as Whitehead says, each actual occasion, "derives from God its basic conceptual aim, relevant to its actual world, yet with indeterminations awaiting its own decisions."7

What about the prospect for the triumph of God's good purposes? The Whiteheadian answer is fascinating and begins with a consideration of God's Consequent Nature. Since all finite actualities are perishing, the matter of personal immortality is problematic in Whitehead's thought. However, it is a question which he really need not resolve in order to draw the conclusions he wants regarding the end of all things. God's Consequent Nature is always storing up all of the experiences of fleeting actual occasions and synthesizing them into a fitting whole. Just as God's Primordial Nature contains and selects from among all possibilities, His Consequent Nature collects and harmonizes all actualized possibilities. Whitehead writes:

Each actuality in the temporal world has its reception into God's nature. The corresponding element in God's nature is not temporal actuality, but is the transmutation of that temporal actuality into a living, ever-present fact. An enduring personality in the temporal world is a route of occasions in which the successors with some peculiar completeness sum up their predecessors. The correlate fact in God's nature is an even more complete unity of life in a chain of elements for which succession does not mean loss of immediate unison.8

So, although all other things come to be and then pass away in the stream of time, God conserves their experiences and unifies them in His own conscious life.

Whitehead provides an interesting image for understanding this divine process:

The perfection of God's subjective aim, derived from the completeness of his primordial nature, issues into the character of his consequent nature. In it there is no loss, no obstruction. The world is felt in a unison of immediacy. The property of combining creative advance with the retention of mutual immediacy is what in the previous section is meant by the term "everlasting."

The wisdom of subjective aim prehends every actuality for what it can be in such a perfected system-its suffering, its sorrows, its failures, its triumphs, its immediacies of joy-woven by rightness of feeling into the harmony of the universal feeling, which is always immediate, always many, always one, always with novel advance, moving onward and never perishing. The revolts of destructive evil, purely self-regarding, are dismissed into their triviality of merely individual facts; and yet the good they did achieve in individual joy, in individual sorrow, in the introduction of needed contrast, is yet saved by its relation to the completed whole. The image-and it is but an image-the image under which this operative growth of God's nature is best conceived, is that of a tender care that nothing should be lost.

The consequent nature of God is his judgment on the world. He saves the world as it passes into the immediacy of his own life. It is the judgment of a tenderness which loses nothing that can be saved. It is also judgment of a wisdom which uses what in the temporal world is mere wreckage.9

Whitehead makes this same basic point in Religion in the Making: "Since God is actual, he must include in himself a synthesis of the total universe."10 II. Implications of Process Philosophy for Christian Theology

We are now in a position to evaluate the implications of Whitehead's process philosophy for Christian theology. Although there are numerous theological concepts to which process thought can be applied (e.g., grace sacrament, glory, etc.11), I select four which seem fundamental: God, man Kingdom, and Jesus Christ. What I conclude with regard to each of these four concepts, which have doctrinal status within orthodox Christianity, is that process philosophy modifies or distorts their essential meaning to such a great extent that orthodoxy is lost.

The doctrine of God is central to any theological framework and conditions virtually every other assertion made in other parts of the framework. That is why it is important to trace very clearly what process thought does to the concept of God.12 As we have just seen, all reality is in process including God. Furthermore, the ongoing process or development of God is intimately linked with the process of the world; and the processive realities of the world are crucially tied to one another. What we have, then, is a monistic philosophy of organism, of the unity of all reality. The precise kind of monism which process thinkers espouse is typically called panentheism, a view which supposedly incorporates the strengths of traditional theism and pantheism while avoiding their weaknesses. What is meant is simply that the world is "in" God, an integral part of God's consciousness and life.13 One can readily see the new meanings which now have to be given to the theological terms "transcendence" and "immanence." And this is exactly what process thinkers desire, particularly since they believe that the old view of transcendence prevents deity from being religiously available or historically active. Process theology, it is claimed, provides a deity who is closely involved in the affairs of the world in order to elicit beauty from it, with the ultimate purpose of conserving it forever.

I believe that this picture of God is unacceptable. First, process thought erases the metaphysical dividing line between Creator and creature in such a way that God's status is dangerously lowered and the world's status is unduly exaggerated. The concept of God is no longer ontologically rich enough to account for the free and independent decision of God to create the world in love; and the concept of the world is elevated to the point of being eternally necessary to the divine life. Second, process thought not only shifts the meanings of transcendence and immanence in order to alter radically the relation of Creator to creature, but also specifies that this relation is not one between beings but between becomings (e.g. processes). God is not a being with stable and identifiable characteristics but is rather the principle or dynamic behind the evolution of things. In Science and the Modern World, Whitehead writes: "In the Place of Aristotle's God as Prime Mover, we require God as the Principle of Concretion."14 In so far as the concept of God as a definite being is eliminated, so is the concept of Him as personal; in so far as the concept of God as personal is eliminated, so is the concept of Him as worshipable. Granted, process theologians often insist that this Principle is worshipable. But their justification of worshipability illicitly smuggles in personal concepts traditionally applied to deity, such as love, creativity, choice, and so forth.

Third, God's worshipability is jeopardized for other reasons as well. Neither the values which God seeks to realize nor the manner in which He seeks to realize them are appropriate to the perfect moral character of deity. Note that Whitehead's God seeks the aesthetic value of beauty, and that all other values are somehow subordinated to this aim. This ultimately implies that moral values are subsumed under aesthetic ends, and opens the way for hideous evils (e.g., the discord of extreme physical suffering) to be justified if they are instrumental in the attainment of certain aesthetic goods (e.g., the conceptual intensity of discovering meaning through pain). We must also note that God's method for achieving His purposes seem to be nonmoral or immoral as well. God does not communicate a clear message to His creatures "from outside" themselves. Instead He nudges them "from deep within" and thereby tries to persuade them to achieve higher and better things. Here divine persuasion becomes nothing more than a kind of subliminal or precognitive inclination toward harmony and intensity. The net result of all this is that God's values and methods are not fundamentally moral, but nonmoral or perhaps immoral. But perfect moral goodness is a necessary condition of worshipworthiness.

The doctrine of man is another important matter to consider in evaluating process theology.15 Man, like all other realities in process thought, is described in terms of actual occasions. Man is a series of lower-grade occasions constituting the body and a series of higher-grade ones constituting the more central aspect of the self. As Melt explains, "These actual occasions are in a serial order, so that the history of an individual man is traced out and defined by their continuity or historical route through time."16 According to process thinkers, this concept of man successfully explains the identity of the person through change, whereas traditional metaphysical anthropology does not. On the process account, past experiences are accumulated and transmitted through the series of occasions, so that there is genuine identity. Yet there is always openness to new experiences and new responses to them, so that there is real change. Some times there are major changes, such as religious conversion. In conversion, the person puts together past experience, or prehended data, in a radically new way, and thus significantly reorients his life. All of personal life is characterized by a type of freedom which is best defined in terms of the ability for novelty and creativity. At death, the particular temporal succession of occasions known as an individual person ceases to exist. However, the accumulated experiences of that personal series are not lost, since they pass into the consciousness and life of God.

I believe that this picture of man is unacceptable. First, the process description of man robs man of viable personhood in much the same way that it robs God of personhood. A person, on this view, is nothing more than a series of events. The only continuity in such personhood is the content of cumulative experience. As with God, it is difficult to see how personal concepts (e.g., love, repentance, responsibility, etc.) can be legitimately applied to these droplets of experience, taken either individually or collectively. Perhaps one of the most obvious problems is the application of the personal concept of freedom. For process thinkers, freedom is virtually synonymous with spontaneity, creativity, novelty, indeterminancy. As long as an occasion is not completely determined by its pretended data and can make a new response to that data, process thinkers are willing to predicate freedom of that occasion. However, the meaning of this type of freedom falls sadly short of the traditional meaning. The process idea of freedom as novel response does not rise above the impersonal and mechanical. Second, the kind of personal salvation offered on the process scheme is inadequate. Conversion, for example, is a change which is only greater in degree from previous changes in life. However, conversion in the traditional view is a change which is different in kind from any other event. It includes the direct and radical intervention of God and the appropriation of a new spiritual life. Third, the brand of immortality offered by process thought is very weak, but I will postpone discussion of this until our consideration of the Kingdom.

The doctrine of the Kingdom of God, in both its temporal and eternal aspects, is another matter which receives reinterpretation by process categories.17 For process theology, the present Kingdom of God includes all reality, all things, as they experience, develop, and pass into the divine life. The orthodox concept designates the Kingdom to include only those persons redeemed by supernatural grace. For process theology, on the other hand, the future Kingdom of God is not the culmination of all things and the final division of the society of the redeemed from the rest of the world. This is because there is no end of the world at all; everything is in continual progress. It is also because there is no society of real individuals who maintain personal identity at death. The only sense in which things are culminated and redeemed is that they are fittingly included within the ongoing life of God. Robert Mellert explains the peculiar process notion of the Kingdom:

The addition of each actual occasion in the consequent nature of God means that God must be understood as a multiplicity as well as single entity. This multiplicity is God in his function as kingdom of heaven. As every actual occasion perishes, it is preserved everlastingly in the consequent nature of God and it is immortalized as part of the kingdom. For God loses nothing that is to be saved. He takes all things up into himself and thereby manifests his kingdom. The kingdom of heaven, then, is already with us, in what God is drawing to himself. . . . Salvation is for all reality, because all reality has value for God and is saved by God. Everything ultimately contributes its own reality to the reality that is God.18

Thus we have the process scenario of the Kingdom, both present and coming.

The process idea of the Kingdom of God is fraught with problems. It opens the door for universal salvation, a notion which has never gained acceptance by orthodox believers. Two of the strongest criticisms against universalistic theories are that they do not square with biblical exegesis and that they tend to make the ultimacy of moral and spiritual commitment meaningless. But there are other problems with the process idea of the Kingdom. One of these is that there seems to be no adequate basis for personal immortality within such a monistic system. It is true that process thinkers differ over the degree to which personal immortality is possible; but they commonly agree that the concept is quite problematic.

Probably the acid test of any theology which calls itself "Christian" is what it says about Jesus Christ. In a very real sense, the problem is to find suitable conceptual categories (and hence suitable language) for expressing the significance of the life and death of Jesus. The typical process view of Jesus is not hard to explicate.19 As an historical person, Jesus was human in exactly the same way we are human. He was a unified body and soul; i.e., a nexus of low-grade occasions coordinated by a series of high-grade occasions. Now, God is the source of every initial aim for the prehension of every actual occasion. Of course, no person, except Jesus, has ever freely chosen to realize all of these promptings of God. According to process thought, Jesus so strongly prehended God that we can say that He was unique. We could even say that Jesus' intense prehension of God and consistently favorable response constitutes His divinity. It is in this sense that process theology holds that two natures, human and divine, resided in one person. And it is in this sense that God revealed Himself in history so powerfully in Jesus that we can call Him Savior. Through Jesus we can understand that we need not proceed through life from experience to experience, seeking worldly satisfaction, but may respond in much the same way Jesus did to the divine immanence within us.

In the case of Christology, process thought seems to be at its limit. The above description comprises the maximal statement that process theology can make about Jesus Christ, but still fails to capture much that orthodoxy has always wanted to affirm. First, the process idea of Jesus does not include the emphasis that God took special initiative on the part of Jesus. In the interest of maintaining Jesus' humanity and freedom, and God's impartiality, process thinkers prefer to say that God was present in Jesus in the same way He is present in all humanity: God provides, in grace, the ideal aims to which all men may respond. Using Shubert Ogden's terminology, what is manifested of God in Jesus is no different from what is presented to man in God's "original revelation," i.e., the events of nature and history.20 The difference between Jesus and every other person, for process thinkers, is that Jesus was the first working model of humanity. In Jesus God produced a person who realized a complete relationship with Him, one who affirmed and maximized at every moment the divine initiative within Himself. Although precise Christological formulations are hard to come by, surely this one is too weak. This formulation endorses a fully immanentistic view of God's working through Jesus. It relinquishes the concept that a holy and transcendent God originated a special plan of salvation through history, which culminated in the absolutely decisive person of Jesus.21 According to orthodox conceptions, God was uniquely present in Jesus and was making a special intervention in human affairs through Him.

Second, process theologians ascribe to Jesus the function of offering a kind of salvation which is quite different from that ascribed to Him by orthodox thinkers. For process theologians, our salvation is largely comprised of the realization that we can synthesize prehended data in a new way, in a way which maximizes the divine aims within us. This kind of salvation seems unable to adequately interpret the supernatural dimension of orthodox doctrines of justification, reconciliation, atonement, etc., since salvation simply occurs through the natural mechanisms of prehension and concrescence already existing in reality.

Third, the orthodox position on the literal, historical resurrection of Jesus is either implicity or explicitly denied in process thought. Jesus was resurrected for process theologians, only in the sense that He was powerfully prehended in the experience of the disciples after His death and was taken up into the consciousness of God. However, this kind of resurrection is hardly unique or decisive. We are likewise "resurrected" into objective immortality upon our deaths and become permanently a part of God's Consequent Nature. As such, we like Jesus, are available as prehensible data for future occasions. III. Implications for Wesleyan Distinctives

To be compatible with Wesleyanism in particular, a metaphysic must first be compatible with orthodox Christianity in general. Although the preceding criticisms of process thought are brief and general, they nonetheless suggest grave difficulties in wedding process thought and Christian orthodoxy. It is my belief that, however tantalizing it may be to some contemporary thinkers, the wedding cannot be successfully consummated. If I am right, then there should be no important sense in which process thought applies to Wesleyan concerns. However, in the interest of completeness, we must consider John Culp's recent proposal that process thought is not only applicable to Wesleyanism, but that it is indeed more adequate than other conceptual systems for understanding certain Wesleyan distinctives. Here I briefly discuss just four areas where Culp believes process thought is helpful for Wesleyans: experience, sanctification, biblical interpretation, and the defeat of evil. Unfortunately, Culp's proposals seem vague and in need of further clarification and justification. As Culp expresses these proposals, they fail to show clearly why existing conceptual schemes do not fully interpret Wesleyanism and to demonstrate precisely how the process scheme is superior to existing schemes for such an interpretation. I am tempted to think that these proposals trade on superficial or verbal similarities between process thought and Wesleyan thought. But let us now take a closer look at Culp's case.

As Culp notes, the concept of experience is undoubtedly an important concept for Wesleyans. The Wesleyan emphasis has always been that the believer could have an existential or experiential confirmation of God's presence in his life, in addition to sheer intellectual knowledge of it. However, Culp seems to imply that the historic Wesleyan emphasis on experience inevitably falls into a subjectivism which leads eventually to solipsism. He then claims that process thought also recognizes the importance of experience, but avoids subjectivism and solipsism by holding that experience is generalizable to speak of all reality, since all reality "experiences." I think that neither of these points is obvious.

First, although some believers within the Wesleyan tradition have overemphasized the role of personal experience in religion, almost making it normative, this has not been the essential import of the tradition. All that historic Wesleyanism claims in this regard is that experiential confirmation is an accompaniment or result of objective factors such as proper belief, moral change, and trust in God. Only by imputing to Wesleyanism principles which it does not hold can one find a strong subjectivism or solipsism in it.

This brings me to the second point, that subjectivism and solipsism (supposing that they are implicit in Wesleyanism) could be handily avoided by appealing to the process idea of pan-experientialism. There are several philosophically adequate ways to avoid subjectivism and solipsism without invoking process concepts, particularly since they involve serious problems of their own.

Culp further proposes that Cobb's process thought can provide a model for understanding the experience of entire sanctification, especially in terms of its crisis and progressive aspects. To be sure, there are difficulties over the relationship and relative priority of crisis and progress in the sanctified life. But such difficulties are not insurmountable without process models. Besides, even if a process model were used to explain the matters of crisis and progress in the experience of sanctification, there is far more to the experience which process thought seems inadequate to explain. For example, the whole dimension of supernatural intervention (which we have already seen to be generally weak in process philosophy) cannot be fitted easily into a process model.

The issue of biblical interpretation is another one which Culp believes that process thought can settle. While claiming that process thought remains sensitive to the contingent and culturally conditioned aspects of biblical documents, Culp asserts that it need not degenerate into pure relativism. In an attempt to specify criteria of biblical interpretation which are non-relativistic, Culp cites consistency and coherence (after Griffin). However, this will not do for at least two reasons. First, there is the quite lively debate over whether these criteria themselves are subject to change and relativity. Second, even if these formal criteria are not relative or changeable in themselves, they certainly do not restrain relativism in areas of substantive knowledge. For present purposes, such criteria only stipulate that whatever interpretation one derives from the biblical materials must not contradict itself and must hang together as a unified position. But these criteria are hardly strong enough to constrain the variability of interpretations over time, and do not even preclude the possibility of one interpretation being totally contradicted by a subsequent one, as long as both positions are internally consistent and coherent. So, while consistency and coherence are necessary conditions for a proper non-relativistic view of biblical interpretation, they are not sufficient conditions.

The ultimate defeat of evil and the triumph of good is a major theme in Christian theology in general and in Wesleyan theology in particular. Of course, the scenario envisioned by Wesleyanism differs in important ways from that envisioned by Calvinism, because of the premium which the former places on free human volition. As Culp says, the process concept is that the general exercise of God's power is persuasive rather than coercive. But, in the final analysis, the process view of this tacitly denies God the power to guarantee the final triumph of good as affirmed in orthodox theology, let alone Wesleyanism. For process theology, God simply makes the best out of every free creaturely response which is undesirable or evil, and this process continues forever. IV. Concluding Comments

There are two issues which have loomed in the background of the preceding discussion. One issue concerns the relationship of process thought to orthodox theology. The other issue pertains to the independent philosophical appraisal of process thought. Let us now be more specific about these.

The process thinker does not see the question of the relation between process philosophy and orthodox theology in quite the same way I do because he typically exhibits disdain for anything labeled "orthodox." Orthodoxy denotes an expression of the faith which is fixed, stable, normative. However, the whole impetus of process thought is away from such notions. Furthermore, according to the process thinker, all expressions of orthodoxy simply adopt the assumptions and categories of one philosophical scheme over another, and thus cease to be relevant when new philosophies replace the old ones. In typical process style, Culp infers that this means that there should be no fixed guidelines for determining what is a true or false statement of Christian belief, since such guidelines not only become obsolete but also seem to raise human autonomy over God.

I find grave problems with this attitude toward orthodoxy. First of all the process appraisal of orthodoxy already assumes process philosophy to be true, and hence begs the question. More exactly, process philosophy postulates total and continual change as the essence of reality and therefore automatically excludes attempts at formulating orthodoxy. Process philosophy suggests that the modes of thought of one era are virtually meaningless to another era. But surely this view is quite exaggerated. Although there are a number of variable factors among cultural settings and historical eras, which certainly complicate the business of establishing orthodoxy, it is not at all clear that older ones are completely unintelligible or false. The real point is that through the ages, philosophers and theologians have conscientiously extracted the enduring and universal meanings from various statements of faith and thereby arrived at some reliable formulation of orthodoxy. When the process interpretation of Christian theology is fully examined, it is evident that it departs radically from the orthodox doctrinal meanings, meanings which I, contrary to the process thinker, see no good reason to reject. Of course, I would not pretend for a moment that we need not undertake the task of relating these meanings to our contemporary culture.

My second point now becomes relevant. Process thinkers not only reject the idea of formulating orthodoxy at all, but also have definite objections to the substantialistic philosophical categories in which Christian orthodoxy has traditionally been formulated. According to process thinkers, Christian orthodoxy has too long been tied to Platonic and Aristotelian concepts which fail both to provide a viable interpretation of reality and to square with the dynamic, personal God of the Bible. Hence, process thought can be understood as a strong reaction against classical metaphysics and its doctrinal implications.

But this raises two considerations. One consideration is whether process thought is philosophically more adequate than classical thought. The other consideration is whether classical thought more appropriately expresses the intended meanings of orthodox doctrines. My own appraisal of process thought relative to classical thought is that it is neither more adequate philosophically nor more adequate doctrinally.

First, the process stereotype of classical philosophy as static and impersonal ignores many of the fine points of classical metaphysics of being which, if heeded, help it avoid the problems imputed to it. For example. the ideas of substance and nature need not be taken to imply a rigid, deterministic system which cannot account for freedom, creativity, and change The classical account of natures includes not only the essential properties of substances, but also their dispositions, which are dynamic capabilities to act and react under appropriate circumstances. This dispositional aspect of natures is receiving renewed attention in current philosophical explorations, most of which recognize its classical Aristotelian character. Hence, substantialistic philosophy, properly understood, can account for real change and activity in the world: change happens to and through relatively stable objects. There is, then, no pressing conceptual need to adopt the process preference for switching the matter around and making change fundamental and permanence derivative. In fact, once process thinkers make this radical switch, it is not at all clear that they can adequately account for the relatively stable and enduring particulars of our world. Thus, instead of doing better than classical philosophy in accounting for both permanence and change-both particulars and events-process philosophy actually does a little worse.

Second, if the categories of classical metaphysics once seemed well-suited for expressing certain orthodox beliefs, it is not obvious that process thinkers can now simply point out that such classical categories are obsolete and then supply radically new expressions which contradict them. Whatever else may be culturally conditioned in classical expressions of the faith, no decisive argument has been offered to show that classical metaphysical categories were so culturally conditioned that they have no generalizable meaning and importance for contemporary expressions of the faith. Unless we see this point, we will be susceptible to adopting a view of God as having no stable nature, a view of Jesus as being merely a perfected man, a view of the soul as having no lasting individual identity, etc. exactly what process thinkers have done. None of what I say here is meant to minimize the difficulty of applying enduring orthodox meanings to contemporary cultural and intellectual modalities. However, unless we affirm that there is some non-negotiable meaning, or range of meaning, to orthodox conceptions of Christianity, we will always be vulnerable to concocting versions of it which are markedly discontinuous with the original faith.

I fear that this discussion of process thought has been all too brief and has left many detailed and sophisticated matters untouched.22 But I hope that it supplies a perspective from which to approach the large and important questions which Christians must answer about process theology. As I have argued, process philosophy seems to be a weak if not distortive conceptual system for interpreting Christianity in general and Wesleyanism in particular. Furthermore, as I have also argued, process philosophy seems to be an inadequate conceptual system apart from any religious or theological application it might have. Notes

1See Frederick Sontag, How Philosophy Shapes Theology (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).

2The central work of Whitehead's philosophy is certainly Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan, 1929). Also see Adventures of Ideas (New York: Macmillan, 1933); Religion in the Making (New York: Macmillan 1926); Modern Science and the Modern World (New York: Macmillan, 1925)

3Charles Hartshorne, Whitehead's Philosophy: Selected Essays 1935-1970 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1972), p. 139.

4Whitehead, Process and Reality, pp. 521-22.

5Whitehead, Religion in the Making, p. 99.

6Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 373.

7Ibid., p. 343.

8Ibid., p. 531.

9Ibid, pp. 524-25.

10*8Whitehead, Religion in the Making, p. 98.

11See the treatment of these and other concepts in Robert Mellert, What Is Process Theology? (New York: Paulist Press, 1975).

12See the very fine collection of essays n this topic in Delwin Brown, et al., eds., Process Philosophy and Christian 1 bought (Indianapolis: BobbsMerrill, 1 971).

13See the discussion of this in Alan Cragg, Charles Hartshorne (Waco: Word Books, 1973), pp. 91-102.

14Whitehead, Science and the Modern World, p. 216.

15See the collection of essays on this topic in Brown.

16Mellert, p. 65.

17See the treatment of this topic in John Cobb, Jr. and David Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), pp. 118-24.

18*8Mellert, pp. 58-59.

19See the collection of essays on this topic in Brown, and the other collection in Ewert Cousins, ed., Process Theology: Basic Writings (New York: Newman Press, 1971). Also see David Griffin, A Process Christology (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973).

20Shubert Ogden, Christ Without Myth (New York: Harper and Row, 1971), p. 156.

21See Peter Hamilton, "Some Proposals for a Modern Christology," in Brown, p. 362.

22To be sure, further discussion of process thought is necessary. Although a number of good bibliographies of process works exist, one of the most recent and most helpful ones is in Appendix B of Cobb and Griffin, entitled "A Guide to the Literature."