George Hermanson Speaks About Process Theology

Whitehead's work has spawned a school of theology called Process Theology. Rev. Dr. George Hermanson writes from this perspective -

Believe or not, most mainline Christians have had a mystical or religious experience. In order to make sense of these transcendent experiences, we need a new way to understand God - one that makes sense in our world. In our quest for religious authenticity, a process/relational view of God, “God with us”, gives us an understanding of divine power and compassion. This view is called `panentheism’.

We experience God as both subject and a mystery- the eternal and the personal. God is in the world and the world is in God and God is more than the world.  God is the necessary and eternal source for the world; it is God’s creative act that makes ‘no thing’ into some thing- God brings order out of chaos.  God depends on the world because the nature of God’s actual experience depends on the interaction with all living reality.  “God is the supremely related one.”  

God is at home in this unfinished creation.  There is independence in the created order that God loves to work with, blessing it.  God is a source of novelty with which our freedom works. The world is at play, able to mess up and to go forward into a new future.  The future becomes through God offering possibilities or aims of beauty to each moment and we in turn responding and adding to the offering. 

God’s power is relational and persuasive, not coercive.  What we say and do has an effect on how God will respond.    God gives, but also receives; acts but also responds; has a vision, but is open to change and transformation.  There is a call and response built into our relational world and the world becomes through it. 

Imagine a jazz group.  God setting down the melody.  It is passed on to the others in the group, and they get the feel for it.  Each, in their turn, add  their own originality,  colour and difference,  ( tweaking) the piece to offer it back to God. God now has to work with what was created by the subjective experiences of the players.  God has to feel the offering to give it more feeling.  The piece is transformed, to arrive at some satisfaction, which then becomes the ground for the next moments of improvisation.

God with us. Alive. Creating. Transforming. Visioning . Maturing. It is within our experience of the world that we vividly experience the presence of God.