Part 1 - Process Theology - In The Beginning

Proponents of the new atheism  often use first man in space, Yuri Gagarin's words, to drive home a point: "I looked and I looked, but I didn't see God." The common Christian response is, "Well, of course not! God is Spirit. You can't see God."

Now, that's fine and acceptable, but what we forget as Christians is that Yuri Gagarin may have been a hardcore materialist believing only in what he could see and touch, but his words were also motivated by a
particular Christian view of God being "up there" or "out there" somewhere; you just have to watch our sports people who seem to always look up and give thanks as if God is in some distant realm up in the heavens somewhere.

Process theology does not think in this way. The Divine is always seen to be a reality within. God expresses God-self  from within and through creation. A beautiful illustration of this, and I always come back to it, is a seed. The seed, moved by something within, unfolds in to what it is meant to be. Outwardly you can do to it whatever you like,  but if it doesn't have within it that inner design or energy to unfold in a process of becoming, it will simply remain a dead, hard little husk.

To begin to understand process thought and the concept of God being within, there's no better place to start than with Scripture and the beginning - the Genesis creation stories.

The traditional way of understanding God's creative work in these stories is by saying that there was a time when God was alone, and then, suddenly, God decided to create the earth and everything else, almost as if God got a little lonely and wanted companionship, a kind of Gepetto and Pinocchio thing. The big word theologians use for this is, Creatio ex Nihilo. It simply means God created all creation out of nothing. In other words, before creation there was only God, nothing else. This for centuries has been the orthodox way of believing and it has had a profound effect on the way our faith has been shaped. In some of the next studies we'll see how. Many of us  to this day continue to believe in this way.

There is however a different interpretation of the creation stories and it's the one process theology holds. It's this.

According to these creation stories God does not create the world out of nothing. At no time in these stories is God pictured as being "alone" with nothing else present. On the contrary we're told, "In the beginning when God created the universe, the earth was formless and desolate. The raging ocean that covered everything was engulfed in total darkness and the Spirit of God was moving over the water."

Right in the beginning the Divine Spirit and the stuff of creation are together, relationally and intimately connected, even though the stuff of creation is desolate and formless. We cannot separate God's presence from creation, nor can we separate creation from God's presence.

And so  God speaks from within the stuff of creation and the reality of creation begins to unfold and take shape, something which is still happening as it all grows in to greater levels of love, truth and consciousness. So God's continuous act of creation is in and through creation and not on creation from the outside.

The concept of creatio ex nihilo - God creating out of nothing and being separate from creation, has led to devastating consequences for our  world. A classic example today is the profound concern being expressed for the environment. The moment we come under the illusion that we, like God (being made in God's image) are also separate from the created world, we begin to somehow believe that we can do anything we like to the natural world without it ever affecting us, almost as if we are immune by virtue of our being separate from it. On the otherhand, the realization that we are created in the image of God who is intimately connected and embedded in creation, helps us to experience our dependence on and the sacredness of creation.

As we will see later, the concept of creatio ex nihilo not only affects our relationship to the natural world, but also many other aspects of our faith. The great shift that we have to make in postmodern Christianity is the one from separation to deep connection,  from without to within. Process theology helps us to do that. Once we have made this shift it becomes the foundation on which we can build anew. There's much that we have to unlearn. It's scary, but wonderfully exciting and full of adventure.

Between this post and the next, let's just think deeply around this issue and comment as  we feel. See if you can make any other connections, besides the one I've described with the natural world, in the way you practice your faith.