The Father Almighty or the God of Process?

Fr. Scott Haynes

Introduction

Process theology often appears gentle at first glance. It speaks of a God who suffers with the world, draws creation forward by persuasion, shares the sorrows of creatures, and never overwhelms freedom by force. For modern readers troubled by war, disease, cruelty, and the apparent silence of Heaven, this can sound like a more compassionate doctrine of God. It seems to say: God is not responsible for evil because God cannot simply stop evil. He is beside us, not above us; persuasive, not almighty; evolving with the world, not ruling it from eternity.

Yet this very appeal reveals the danger. Process theology does not merely soften the language of classical Christianity. It alters the doctrine of God Himself. It weakens or denies divine omnipotence, reinterprets creation from nothing, makes God dependent on the world, blurs the distinction between Creator and creature, reshapes Christology, and changes the Christian understanding of providence, miracles, evil, and redemption.

The Catholic faith does not confess a God who is trapped within cosmic development. It confesses the living God who says, “I AM WHO AM” (Exodus 3:14); the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth; the eternal Word made flesh; the Lord who permits evil only mysteriously and providentially, conquers sin by the Cross, destroys death by the Resurrection, and will wipe away every tear in glory.

I. What Is Process Theology?

Process theology developed from the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead and was later adapted by theologians such as Charles Hartshorne, John B. Cobb Jr., David Ray Griffin, Schubert Ogden, Daniel Day Williams, and others. It is not one perfectly uniform system, but its central impulse is clear: reality is understood primarily as process, becoming, relation, and creative advance, rather than as a created order grounded in the immutable Being of God. [1]

In classical Catholic theology, God is not one being within a larger process. He is the Creator of all things, the One from whom all being comes. Process theology, by contrast, tends to imagine God and the world as deeply interdependent. God influences the world, suffers with creatures, offers possibilities, and draws creation toward greater harmony, but He does not rule creation with absolute sovereign power in the classical Christian sense.

This is not a minor shift. Catholic theology certainly teaches that creatures have real agency and that human freedom is genuine. It also teaches that God works through secondary causes. But it does not teach that God and the world are partners within a larger metaphysical process. God is not the highest participant in the universe. He is the Creator of the universe.

II. Who Were the Main Architects of Process Theology?

Process theology did not arise from the Fathers of the Church, the ecumenical councils, monastic theology, scholastic theology, or the sacramental life of the Church. Its principal roots are in modern philosophy and liberal Protestant academic theology.

This historical fact does not automatically refute it. Catholics have often learned from non-Christian and non-Catholic thinkers. Saint Augustine drew from Platonism. Saint Thomas Aquinas drew from Aristotle. But Augustine and Thomas purified philosophy under the authority of revelation. Process theology often does the reverse: it revises Christian doctrine under the authority of Whiteheadian metaphysics.

Alfred North Whitehead: The Philosopher Behind the System

Alfred North Whitehead was born in 1861 and died in 1947. He was a British mathematician and philosopher who collaborated with Bertrand Russell on Principia Mathematica and later taught at Harvard University, where he developed a comprehensive metaphysical system. His father was an Anglican clergyman, and Whitehead himself came from that Anglican cultural and religious world. [2]

Whitehead was not primarily a Christian theologian. His mature idea of God arose within a philosophical system concerned with process, relation, novelty, and becoming. In Whitehead’s thought, God functions as a metaphysical principle who orders possibilities and lures the world toward value, harmony, and beauty. His famous work Process and Reality became the foundation for later process theology. [3]

That matters profoundly. Whitehead did not begin with Genesis, the Prophets, the Gospel of Saint John, Nicaea, Chalcedon, Saint Augustine, or Saint Thomas Aquinas. He began with a metaphysics of process. Later theologians then attempted to reinterpret Christian doctrine through that lens.

The Catholic contrast is immediate. God does not reveal Himself to Moses as “I am becoming.” He reveals Himself as “I AM WHO AM” (Exodus 3:14). The God of Catholic faith does not become God. God is.

Charles Hartshorne: The Systematic Defender of Process Theism

Charles Hartshorne was born in 1897 and died in 2000. He was one of the most important philosophical defenders of process theism. Like Whitehead, he was the son of an Anglican minister, though many of his ancestors were Quakers. He studied at Harvard, met Whitehead there, and later taught at the University of Chicago, Emory University, and the University of Texas at Austin. [4]

Hartshorne developed the idea of a God who is in some respects eternal and in other respects temporal, in some respects independent and in other respects dependent upon the world. His version of process theism became one of the most influential alternatives to classical theism in twentieth-century philosophy of religion. [5]

This directly conflicts with Catholic dogma. The Fourth Lateran Council confessed “one true God, eternal and immense, omnipotent, unchangeable, incomprehensible, and ineffable,” Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, “one essence, substance, or nature absolutely simple.” [6] Vatican I reaffirmed that God is eternal, immense, incomprehensible, infinite in intellect, will, and every perfection, “absolutely simple and immutable.” [7]

A God who is partly temporal, partly dependent, and partly completed by the world is not the God confessed by Catholic faith.

John B. Cobb Jr.: Process Theology, Ecology, and Religious Pluralism

John B. Cobb Jr. was born in Japan in 1925 to Methodist missionary parents. He studied at the University of Chicago and became one of the most important Christian process theologians. He taught at Claremont School of Theology from 1958 to 1990 and co-founded the Center for Process Studies with David Ray Griffin in 1973. [8]

Cobb’s work took Whitehead’s philosophical insights and applied them to Christian theology, ecology, economics, religious pluralism, and interreligious dialogue. Claremont School of Theology describes his work as helping to define a theological paradigm that embraced change, relationality, and the interconnectedness of all things. [9]

Cobb’s concern for ecology and social ethics may be sincere and at points admirable. Catholic theology also affirms the duty to care for creation and to seek justice. But the difficulty comes when ecological interdependence becomes the basis for redefining God Himself. Creation’s dignity does not require making God part of the world’s development. Creation is good because it comes from God, is sustained by God, and is ordered by divine wisdom.

David Ray Griffin: Process Theology and Constructive Postmodernism

David Ray Griffin was born in 1939 and died in 2022. He was professor of philosophy of religion and theology at Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, and he co-founded the Center for Process Studies with John Cobb. He wrote extensively on process theology, postmodernism, the problem of evil, science, religion, and Christology. [10]

Griffin helped present process theology as a middle path between secular naturalism and traditional supernaturalism. But from a Catholic perspective, that “middle path” often comes at too high a cost. It tends to reject or radically reinterpret creation from nothing, miracles, divine omnipotence, providence, and God’s definitive supernatural victory over evil.

Process theology may continue to use Christian words such as God, Christ, grace, prayer, creation, resurrection, and redemption. But those words are often given meanings very different from those taught by Catholic faith.

Schubert Ogden: Liberal Protestant Reconstruction

Schubert M. Ogden was born in 1928 and died in 2019. He was an ordained United Methodist theologian and taught at the University of Chicago Divinity School and Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University. SMU described him as a widely recognized United Methodist theologian. [11]

Ogden’s project was typical of a certain kind of liberal Protestant theology. He sought to interpret Christian faith in a way he considered faithful to apostolic witness and credible in light of common human experience. [12] The problem is not that theology should be unreasonable. Catholic faith is not irrational. The problem is that modern human experience can become the judge of revelation rather than revelation becoming the judge, purifier, and elevation of human experience.

Daniel Day Williams: Process, Love, and Pastoral Theology

Daniel Day Williams was another significant process theologian. He taught at the University of Chicago, Chicago Theological Seminary, and Union Theological Seminary. His work helped connect process theology with doctrines of love, grace, redemption, and pastoral care.

Williams shows why process theology can sound attractive. It speaks warmly about compassion, healing, suffering, relationship, and love. But Catholic doctrine cannot judge a theology merely by whether it sounds compassionate. It must ask whether it is true. A theology of divine love that sacrifices divine omnipotence, divine immutability, and creation from nothing is not a deeper Christianity. It is a different doctrine of God.

III. The Religious World That Produced Process Theology

The major architects of process theology were largely modern academics, usually Protestant, often working in liberal divinity schools or university settings. They were influenced by modern science, evolutionary thought, philosophy of religion, religious pluralism, ecological concern, and the problem of evil.

None of this is automatically evil. The Church has never feared true learning. But the direction of thought is important. Process theology often begins with a modern philosophical problem and then reshapes Christian doctrine to solve it.

Catholic theology begins differently. It begins with revelation. God has spoken. God has acted. God has created. God has become incarnate. God has redeemed. God has founded His Church. Philosophy is welcomed, but as a servant of truth, not as the master of dogma.

The Catholic question is: How may philosophy serve the revealed mystery of God?

The process question often becomes: How must Christian doctrine be revised so that it fits a philosophy of process?

Those are not the same question.

IV. Error One: It Weakens or Denies Divine Omnipotence

Process theology commonly rejects the classical doctrine of omnipotence. God does not, in this view, possess unilateral sovereign power over creation. He persuades, lures, invites, and suffers with creatures, but He does not govern all things as almighty Lord.

This contradicts the Creed:

“I believe in God, the Father almighty.”

The Catechism teaches that God created freely, with wisdom and love, and that creation is not the result of necessity, blind fate, or chance. It teaches that God created out of nothing and infinitely transcends the world He made. It also teaches that divine providence consists in the dispositions by which God leads creatures toward their ultimate end. [13]

Scripture says:

“Thou hast mercy upon all, because thou canst do all things” (Wisdom 11:24).

“With God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26).

“Our God is in heaven: he hath done all things whatsoever he would” (Psalm 113:11).

Process theology cannot comfortably receive such texts in their full Catholic meaning. It must qualify them until “almighty” no longer means almighty.

The Catholic answer is not that God is coercive. It is that God’s power is the power of infinite Being, wisdom, goodness, and love. God’s omnipotence is not opposed to mercy. It is the very power by which mercy triumphs.

V. Error Two: It Makes God Dependent on the World

Catholic doctrine teaches that God is perfect in Himself. He did not create because He lacked something. He did not need the world in order to become fully God. Vatican I teaches that God is blessed in Himself and from Himself, distinct from the world, and infinitely above all things outside Himself. [14]

Process theology moves in a different direction. In many process systems, God receives something from the world. God’s concrete experience is enriched by creaturely becoming. The world contributes to God’s own developing life.

That reverses the order of dependence.

Saint Paul writes:

“Who hath first given to him, and recompense shall be made him? For of him, and by him, and in him, are all things” (Romans 11:35–36).

Catholic doctrine says creation depends entirely on God. Process theology tends to say that God, at least in His concrete experience, depends on creation. That is not a minor adjustment. It changes the meaning of God.

VI. Error Three: It Denies or Distorts Divine Immutability

Classical Catholic theology teaches that God is immutable. He does not change because He lacks nothing, gains nothing, loses nothing, and is not moved from potency to act. He is pure act, eternal perfection.

The Fourth Lateran Council confessed God as “unchangeable.” Vatican I taught that God is “absolutely simple and immutable.” [15]

Scripture says:

“I am the Lord, and I change not” (Malachi 3:6).

“With whom there is no change, nor shadow of alteration” (James 1:17).

Process theology often tries to preserve a partial immutability. It may say that God’s goodness is unchanging while God’s experience changes. But that does not preserve the Catholic doctrine. God is not merely morally consistent while metaphysically developing. God is immutable in His divine being.

A Catholic may say that God truly loves, knows, wills, creates, judges, and saves. But these actions do not introduce change into God. The change is in creatures. God’s eternal will produces temporal effects.

VII. Error Four: It Undermines Creation from Nothing

One of the gravest errors of process theology is its opposition to, or radical reinterpretation of, creation ex nihilo, creation from nothing.

Catholic doctrine teaches that God freely created all things from nothing. The Compendium of the Catechism states that “God created the universe freely with wisdom and love” and that the world is not the result of necessity, fate, or chance. It also states that God created “out of nothing” a world that is ordered and good and which He infinitely transcends. [16]

Scripture says:

“In the beginning God created heaven, and earth” (Genesis 1:1).

“Who calleth those things that are not, as those that are” (Romans 4:17).

“By faith we understand that the world was framed by the word of God; that from invisible things visible things might be made” (Hebrews 11:3).

Creation from nothing is not a technical detail. It protects the distinction between Creator and creature. If God does not create from nothing, He is no longer the absolute source of being. He becomes the supreme participant in an ongoing cosmic process.

VIII. Error Five: It Blurs the Creator-Creature Distinction

Process theology often tends toward panentheism, the idea that the world is “in” God in such a way that God and world are mutually involved. Not every form of panentheism is identical, but process panentheism often weakens the sharp Catholic distinction between God and creation.

Catholic theology teaches that God is present to all things, but not because all things are parts of God. He is present because He gives being to all things and sustains them at every moment.

Vatican I explicitly teaches that God is distinct from the world. It also condemns the claim that the substance or essence of God and all things are one and the same. [17]

Saint Augustine’s insight is essential here: God is more inward than our inmost self, yet higher than our highest self. God is intimately present, but He is never absorbed into creation. He is not the soul of the world. He is the Creator of the world.

A simple example shows the danger. In Catholic theology, when a saint suffers, God knows and loves that saint eternally, sustains him by grace, and can draw good from his suffering. In process theology, the suffering becomes part of God’s own developing experience. That may sound tender, but it risks turning God into the cosmic register of creaturely pain rather than the eternal Lord who conquers pain.

IX. Error Six: It Gives a False Solution to the Problem of Evil

Process theology is attractive because it seems to solve the problem of evil. It says, in effect: God does not stop evil because God cannot unilaterally stop evil. God persuades toward the good, but He cannot override creaturely freedom or natural processes.

This has emotional appeal. It seems to protect God from responsibility for evil. But it does so by making God less than almighty.

Catholic doctrine gives a deeper answer. God is not the author of evil. He permits evil, but He remains omnipotent and providential. The Catechism says there is no quick answer to evil and that only the whole Christian faith gives the answer: creation, sin, covenant, the redemptive Incarnation, the gift of the Spirit, the Church, the sacraments, and eternal life. It also teaches that God can bring good from the consequences of evil, even moral evil. [18]

The Crucifixion is the great test case. If process theology is right, the Cross is mainly God’s solidarity with suffering. But in Catholic faith, the Cross is more. It is the sacrifice by which Christ conquers sin, death, and the devil. God does not merely suffer alongside the world. He redeems the world.

X. Error Seven: It Weakens Miracles and Divine Intervention

If God cannot act with sovereign power within creation, miracles must be reinterpreted. They become symbols of divine persuasion, unusual natural possibilities, heightened religious experiences, or poetic expressions of hope.

But Scripture and Catholic tradition speak of real divine acts.

Christ raises Lazarus:

“Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:43).

Christ calms the sea:

“Then rising up he commanded the winds, and the sea, and there came a great calm” (Matthew 8:26).

Christ forgives sins:

“The Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10).

Christ rises bodily from the dead:

“He is risen, he is not here” (Mark 16:6).

The sacraments also depend on divine power. In the Eucharist, bread and wine do not merely become symbols of Christ’s persuasive presence. They become His Body and Blood. That doctrine presupposes a God who can act with sovereign efficacy in creation.

Process theology may speak beautifully about divine presence, but it has great difficulty with divine intervention, transubstantiation, bodily resurrection, exorcism, prophecy, and final judgment.

XI. Error Eight: It Undermines Christology

Orthodox Christianity confesses Jesus Christ as true God and true man. The Incarnation is not merely the supreme example of human responsiveness to God. It is the eternal Word made flesh.

“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14).

“In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead corporeally” (Colossians 2:9).

Process theology often shifts the emphasis. Jesus becomes the man who most perfectly responds to God’s lure, the supreme instance of God-consciousness or divine-human harmony.

That is not enough.

A saint responds to grace. A prophet speaks God’s word. A martyr witnesses to truth. But Christ is not merely saint, prophet, or martyr. He is God the Son.

If process theology reduces Christ to the highest example of creaturely cooperation with God, then the Incarnation becomes a difference of degree rather than a unique divine mystery.

XII. Error Nine: It Weakens Divine Foreknowledge and Providence

Classical Catholic doctrine teaches that God knows all things: past, present, future, and conditional. His knowledge is not discursive. He does not wait to see what happens.

Vatican I teaches that all things are open and manifest to God’s eyes, including those that will happen through the free action of creatures. [19]

Scripture says:

“All things are naked and open to his eyes” (Hebrews 4:13).

“Before I formed thee in the bowels of thy mother, I knew thee” (Jeremiah 1:5).

“Known unto the Lord are all his works, from the beginning of the world” (Acts 15:18).

Process theology often denies exhaustive definite foreknowledge, especially of future free acts. The future is not fully knowable because it is not yet actual. God learns what creatures decide.

Catholic providence is not fatalism. God’s providence includes real secondary causes and real human freedom. But God is not one actor among many trying to steer an uncertain future. He is the eternal Lord of history.

XIII. Error Ten: It Replaces Being with Becoming

At the philosophical root of process theology is the replacement of being with becoming. Classical Catholic theology, especially in the Augustinian and Thomistic traditions, teaches that God is not one being among others, nor merely the most advanced being in the universe. God is subsistent Being itself.

Again, the words spoken to Moses are decisive:

“I AM WHO AM” (Exodus 3:14).

God does not become God. God is.

Process theology places becoming at the center of reality. But becoming requires explanation. A thing that becomes is not the fullness of being. It is moving from potency to act. If God is also in process, then God too requires explanation. Catholic theology avoids this by confessing God as pure act, the One who gives existence to all things without receiving existence from anything.

XIV. Error Eleven: It Confuses Sympathy with Redemption

Process theology often speaks movingly of God’s compassion. God suffers with every creature. God receives every sorrow. God preserves every value. These ideas can sound close to Christian devotion, especially devotion to the Sacred Heart.

But Catholic theology teaches something greater than divine sympathy. God does not merely feel our wounds. He heals them. He does not merely accompany death. He destroys death.

“O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).

The Sacred Heart is not the symbol of a powerless God who can only suffer with mankind. It is the Heart of the Incarnate Word, pierced for sinners, burning with divine charity, and victorious over sin.

Process theology gives us a God who shares the tears of Martha and Mary. Catholic faith gives us the Christ who weeps, then cries out:

“Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:43).

XV. Error Twelve: It Conflicts with the Binding Character of Catholic Dogma

A Catholic is not free to replace the revealed doctrine of God with a process model when that model contradicts defined teaching.

Canon Law states that Catholics must believe with divine and Catholic faith those things contained in the word of God, written or handed on, and proposed as divinely revealed by the solemn or ordinary and universal Magisterium. It also states that all are bound to avoid doctrines contrary to them. Canon 751 defines heresy as the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt, after baptism, of a truth that must be believed with divine and Catholic faith. [20]

This does not mean every confused student or reader of process theology is formally a heretic. Formal heresy requires knowledge, obstinacy, and will. But the doctrines themselves must be judged objectively. If one denies divine omnipotence, creation from nothing, divine immutability, divine foreknowledge, or the unique Incarnation of the Word, one has departed from Catholic faith.

XVI. Examples of Process Theology Today

Process theology is not dead. It continues today, especially in progressive Protestant, academic, interfaith, ecological, and open-relational settings.

1. Academic Centers

The Center for Process Studies continues to promote process thought and describes Process & Faith as a multi-faith network for relational spirituality and the common good. It explicitly says that many in its network are influenced by Whitehead’s organic philosophy and by process philosophies and theologies indebted to it. [21]

Claremont School of Theology also continues to describe process studies as a field concerned with the applications of process thought to religious life and reflection, including theology, philosophy, ecology, economics, physics, biology, education, psychology, feminism, and cultural studies. [22]

2. Process & Faith

Process & Faith offers educational initiatives, interfaith collaborations, resources, courses, learning circles, book studies, and training for faith leaders. This shows that process theology is not merely an abstract academic theory. It is applied to preaching, spirituality, pastoral care, religious education, and interfaith life. [23]

3. Open Horizons and Popular Process Spirituality

Open Horizons presents itself as an online magazine for spiritual seekers in the tradition of open and relational, or process, thinking. It includes material on Christian process theology, interfaith spirituality, culture, ecology, music, politics, and open-relational religious imagination. [24]

This shows how process theology often spreads today: not simply as a formal doctrine, but as a broad spiritual mood. It emphasizes relationality, creativity, interdependence, compassion, pluralism, ecology, and the idea of God as persuasive rather than sovereign.

4. Open and Relational Theology

Process theology also overlaps with what is often called open and relational theology. These movements are not identical, but they commonly emphasize that God is affected by creatures, that the future is genuinely open, and that God works by love rather than coercive control. The Center for Open and Relational Theology promotes academic research on open, relational, and process perspectives in theology and religion. [25]

Some of this language may sound harmless. Catholics certainly believe that God is love. But if such language implies that God does not fully know the future, cannot act omnipotently, or changes in His divine being, it conflicts with Catholic doctrine.

5. Eco-Theology and Ecological Civilization

Process theology remains influential in some ecological and social-ethics circles. It often presents the universe as a web of relations and God as the persuasive source of harmony, beauty, novelty, and ecological interdependence.

Catholics should be careful here. Care for creation is good. It is part of moral responsibility. But Catholic ecological theology must be rooted in creation, providence, stewardship, and the goodness of the created order, not in a doctrine that makes God dependent on the world or dissolves the distinction between Creator and creature.

XVII. A Concise Table of Contrasts

Question	Process Theology	Catholic Doctrine
Is God almighty?	God persuades but does not unilaterally rule.	God is Father almighty, Creator and Lord of heaven and earth.
Does God change?	God is affected by temporal events and grows in concrete experience.	God is immutable, eternal, and pure act.
Did God create from nothing?	Often denied or radically reinterpreted.	God freely created all things from nothing.
Is God dependent on the world?	God’s concrete experience depends on the world.	God is perfect and blessed in Himself.
What is evil?	Evil exists because God cannot fully prevent it.	God permits evil and can draw greater good from it.
What are miracles?	Often reinterpreted as unusual natural or spiritual possibilities.	Real divine acts in history are possible.
Who is Christ?	Often the supreme human response to God.	The eternal Word made flesh, true God and true man.
What is providence?	God lures creation toward good but does not govern all things sovereignly.	God protects and governs all things by providence.
What is creation?	A cooperative cosmic process.	The free act of the almighty Creator.
What is salvation?	Healing participation in divine relational love.	Redemption from sin and death through Christ’s Cross and Resurrection.

Conclusion

Process theology arose not from the altar, the monastery, the Fathers, or the councils, but from the modern academy. Its principal architects were philosophers and liberal Protestant theologians trying to reinterpret Christianity through a metaphysics of becoming, relation, and cosmic development. Whitehead supplied the philosophical structure. Hartshorne developed the doctrine of a changing, relational God. Cobb, Griffin, Ogden, Williams, and others applied the system to Christian doctrine, ecology, pluralism, suffering, and pastoral theology.

Its appeal is understandable. It offers a God who suffers with the world, persuades rather than coerces, and seems innocent of responsibility for evil. But its cost is severe. It gives up the God of Catholic faith: the almighty Creator, immutable and eternal, who creates from nothing, governs all things by providence, acts in history, becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ, conquers death, and will judge the living and the dead.

Process theology says:

God cannot stop every evil, but He suffers with you.

Catholic faith says something greater:

God permits evil only mysteriously and providentially, enters suffering through the Incarnation, conquers sin by the Cross, destroys death by the Resurrection, sanctifies souls by grace, and will wipe away every tear in glory.

That is why the Church does not confess:

“I believe in God, the sympathetic participant in cosmic becoming.”

She confesses:

“I believe in God, the Father almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.”

Footnotes

[1] Donald Wayne Viney, “Process Theism,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published April 10, 2004, revised February 21, 2024, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/. See also John B. Cobb Jr. and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976). (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

[2] Victor Lowe, “Alfred North Whitehead,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alfred-North-Whitehead. See also J. J. O’Connor and E. F. Robertson, “Alfred North Whitehead,” MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive, University of St Andrews, https://mathshistory.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/Whitehead/. (Encyclopedia Britannica)

[3] Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology, corrected ed., ed. David Ray Griffin and Donald W. Sherburne (New York: Free Press, 1978). See also Viney, “Process Theism,” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

[4] Daniel A. Dombrowski, “Charles Hartshorne,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, first published July 23, 2001, revised April 5, 2023, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hartshorne/. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

[5] Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948). See also Dombrowski, “Charles Hartshorne,” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hartshorne/, and Viney, “Process Theism,” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/process-theism/. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

[6] Fourth Lateran Council, “Constitutions,” canon 1, 1215, in Medieval Sourcebook, Fordham University, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/lat4-select.asp. See also “Fourth Lateran Council: 1215,” Hanover Historical Texts Project, https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/344lat.html. (Hanover College History Department)

[7] First Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius, chap. 1, April 24, 1870, https://inters.org/Vatican-Council-I-Dei-Filius. See also Decrees of the First Vatican Council, https://www.papalencyclicals.net/councils/ecum20.htm. (Vatican)

[8] “John B. Cobb, Jr.,” Process & Faith, https://processandfaith.org/john-b-cobb-jr/. (Process & Faith)

[9] Claremont School of Theology, “John Cobb and the Soul of Claremont: A Legacy That Lives On,” https://cst.edu/news/john-cobb-and-the-soul-of-claremont-a-legacy-that-lives-on/. (Claremont School of Theology)

[10] “David Ray Griffin,” Critical Edition of Whitehead, https://encyclopedia.whiteheadresearch.org/entries/bios/scholarly-legacy/david-ray-griffin/. See also John B. Cobb Jr. and David Ray Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Exposition (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976). (Claremont School of Theology)

[11] Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology, “Remembering Rev. Dr. Schubert Ogden,” June 11, 2019, https://www.smu.edu/perkins/news/news_archives/archives_2019/2019-schubert-ogden. (SMU)

[12] Schubert M. Ogden, The Reality of God and Other Essays (New York: Harper & Row, 1966); Schubert M. Ogden, Christ without Myth: A Study Based on the Theology of Rudolf Bultmann (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1961). See also SMU, “Remembering Rev. Dr. Schubert Ogden,” https://www.smu.edu/perkins/news/news_archives/archives_2019/2019-schubert-ogden. (SMU)

[13] Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 54–55, Vatican website, https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html. (Vatican)

[14] First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, chap. 1, https://inters.org/Vatican-Council-I-Dei-Filius. (Vatican)

[15] Fourth Lateran Council, “Constitutions,” canon 1, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/lat4-select.asp; First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, chap. 1, https://inters.org/Vatican-Council-I-Dei-Filius. (Hanover College History Department)

[16] Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 54, https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html. (Vatican)

[17] First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, chap. 1 and canons on God the Creator of All Things, https://inters.org/Vatican-Council-I-Dei-Filius. (Vatican)

[18] Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 309–314, Catholic Culture edition, https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/catechism/index.cfm?recnum=1764. See also Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 57–58, https://www.vatican.va/archive/compendium_ccc/documents/archive_2005_compendium-ccc_en.html. (Catholic Culture)

[19] First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, chap. 1, https://inters.org/Vatican-Council-I-Dei-Filius. (Vatican)

[20] Code of Canon Law, canons 750–752, Vatican website, https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/documents/cic_lib3-cann747-755_en.html. (Vatican)

[21] Center for Process Studies, “Process & Faith,” https://ctr4process.org/programs/process-faith/. (Center for Process Studies)

[22] Claremont School of Theology, “Process Studies,” https://cst.edu/degree-programs/ph-d-in-religion/process-studies/. (Claremont School of Theology)

[23] Process & Faith, home page, https://processandfaith.org/; Center for Process Studies, “Process & Faith,” https://ctr4process.org/programs/process-faith/. (Process & Faith)

[24] Open Horizons, home page, https://www.openhorizons.org/. (Open Horizons)

[25] Center for Open and Relational Theology, “Resources,” https://c4ort.com/resources/. (c4ort.com)