1997 Lecture Notes on Philosophical Theology
1997 Lecture Notes on Philosophical Theology
A Theo-Eccentric View of God and Everything Else
A Theo-Eccentric View of God and Everything Else
Karen Armstrong’s Case for God
I am amazed at the breadth of scholarship that went into Karen Armstrong’s The Case for God (New York: Anchor Books, 2009). Yes, it’s scholarship with an agenda, but is there any such thing as scholarship without an agenda of some sort? [...]
Process Theism & Liberation Theologies
Liberation theologians make people like me uncomfortably aware of privileges we didn’t know we had. Their challenges, if heard, provoke all of us to realize how deeply our social location influences the conclusions we draw, especially when it comes to all-encompassing questions [...]
Eric Reitan’s “Ethico-Religious Hope” & Process Theism
Eric Reitan’s Is God a Delusion?* does not even mention process theism or process theology. Nor does it mention any influential contemporary theologians like Paul Tillich or Sallie McFague or Jurgen Moltmann or Karl Rahner. And you will find no discussion of [...]
Process Theism’s “Immanent Critique” of Martin Hagglund’s Atheism
[Unless otherwise indicated, page numbers are from Martin Hagglund, This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom (New York: Pantheon Books, 2019)] Hagglund: “an immanent critique of religion must transform the assumed meaning of God and show that the divine cannot be anything [...]
A Funeral Homily from a Process Perspective
This is excerpted from a funeral homily that I actually did preach. I have taken out names and pronouns and any other personal references that might identify the person or the family. References to the funeral service are to my own Episcopal [...]
Differing Versions of One Another: The Common Source of Moral and Theistic Devotion
When you address me as "you" and speak of yourself as "I," and when I address you as "you" and speak of myself as "I," only then do I begin to glimpse the fundamental and immeasurable import to being an "I" or [...]
On NOT Domesticating Transcendence in Process Theism
Process theists have been accused of domesticating transcendence. In fact, that’s the charge of a very instructive work by William C. Placher, The Domestication of Transcendence: How Modern Thinking about God Went Wrong (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996): “God is not [...]
Process Thought’s Reframing of How We Think of Absolutes
Process thinkers reframe experience in ways that emphasize relational, flowing distinctions over absolute, fixed divisions. This need not imply relativism, however. In fact, many process thinkers insist that there are still statements, principles, etc., that are true always and everywhere, and if [...]